What Constitutes Intelligence?

[yellowdingo]

Otter Juggles Pet Rock

The ability to Juggle (ball in one hand - or in this case two) is considered a Simple Task (for those not Handicapped or untrained). A Typical Task (Level 2 intelligence) would be if he could throw his rock to another Otter and catch it when it comes back - implicit in this is the capacity to share the fun with other otters.

[LazarX]

You're asking the wrong question. But that's always been the problem with the subject. What you're really asking about is sentience, and self awareness and there really isn't a stat that measures that.

IBM built a computer that can out chess the world's greatest Grandmaster, who does things like play two dozen people at the same time while blindfolded. On there you have a measure of intelligence that's seemingly greater than a score of Humans.

On the other hand , it has no more self-awareness than a doorknob.

There are about three animals who have a demonstrated level of self awareness that they can recognise a mirror image for what it is... porpoises, chimpanzees, and gorillas. (No one's been able to hold up a mirror large enough to a great whale to test). There are other animals who have self awareness to a lesser degree.

[jocundthejolly]

I'm interested in cephalophod intelligence. Cuttlefish and close relatives are the invertebrate intellectual giants, and/but the last common ancestor of mollusks and primates/cetaceans/other smart vertebrates was waaaaay back so it's a different model for the evolution of what we call intelligence.

[LazarX]

jocundthejolly wrote:

I'm interested in cephalophod intelligence. Cuttlefish and close relatives are the invertebrate intellectual giants, and/but the last common ancestor of mollusks and primates/cetaceans/other smart vertebrates was waaaaay back so it's a different model for the evolution of what we call intelligence.

Cephalods in general, to my knowledge, have not demonstrated any of the signs for significant intelligence compared the examples I listed above, in particular they show no signs of language. Octopi though seem to be fairly good at problem solving.

[Jess Door]

One of my two cats understand the mirror to some extent. She meows at me when we're both facing the mirror, it's obvious she's talking to me.

...the other cat cornered himself in a room with a large mirrorred closet door, because he was scared of the big cat in the room that came out from behind the mirror box whenever he came out from behind his box.

[Orfamay Quest]

LazarX wrote:

There are about three animals who have a demonstrated level of self awareness that they can recognise a mirror image for what it is... porpoises, chimpanzees, and gorillas. (No one's been able to hold up a mirror large enough to a great whale to test). There are other animals who have self awareness to a lesser degree.

Slightly more than that. The official list according to Wikipedia is:

All great apes:
* Humans
* Chimpanzees
* Orangutans
* Gorillas
Bottlenose dolphins
Orcas
Elephants
European Magpies

... with some other animals that have shown ambiguous results in the mirror test -- they appear to recognize themselves in the mirror but do not respond to the specific stimulus in the specific way the mirror test is conventionally defined.

Cephalopods haven't ever been given the mirror test, as far as I know -- there's also no reason to believe that they are visually-enough oriented that the mirror test would make sense (similarly, the mirror test may be inappropriate for dogs). They do display problem solving ability and use tools, so they're fairly high up there on the animal intelligence scale.

[LazarX]

As IBM Blue and quite a few squirrels have demonstrated, problem solving does not require self-awareness, which is a cornerstone of sentience.