[Fis] THE FRONTIERS OF INTELLIGENCE SCIENCE--Zhao Chuan

Sat Mar 7 14:53:22 CET 2015

Thanks for sharing these ideas, which, for me, raise a long standing 
problem.

The concept of 'intelligence' emerged as an ascription of a quality to 
humans and other animals who are capable of certain capabilities. That 
is to say, the starting point was the behaviours, and this led to the 
definition of the concept which charactarised those behaviours. This 
seems to be what you are describing in your section 1. The Concept of 
Intelligence, with the list (a) to (m).

In section 2, on the other hand, you speak of 'problem solving' as 'the 
major embodiment of intelligence'. In this case, 'intelligence' is no 
longer a description of behaviours, but rather the entity which makes 
those behaviours possible.

There is nothing wrong with hypothesising that an ascribed quality is in 
fact a verifiable entity. We can go and look for evidence that the 
entity exists, and that is often how science moves forward. But in the 
present case the concept of general intelligence (G), as a causal force 
rather than a statistical tool, is open to doubt. If there is a general 
intelligence (as opposed to a collection of capabilities) which can be 
'embodied' in problem solving, then a number of difficult problems are 
raised. Where does this general intelligence reside? What is it composed 
of? How is it deployed in our problem solving and other aspects of our 
living?

Our understanding of this is complicated by our experience of day to day 
interactions, in which we interact with people as wholes rather than a 
collection of individual capabilities. This gives us the intuition that 
some people have more of the quality of general intelligence about them 
than do others. And in our language it is reasonable to have a word 
which refers to that impression which we have, and that is how we use 
the word 'intelligence'. But in our scientific endeavours we need to be 
more cautious and critical, and aspire to making a distinction between 
observable mechanisms and ascribed qualities (not that this is 
necessarily easy to achieve in methodological terms). Because of this I 
am sympathetic to Steven's request for differentiation of the topics and 
types of inquiry. If we do not go down this road then we should 
recognise the possibility that we will end up with a theory which is the 
equivalent of the phlogiston explanation for combustion.

My background is in education, not in intelligence research, so I am 
happy to be corrected by those with greater expertise!

Dai

On 07/03/15 03:53, 钟义信 wrote:
> Dear Pedro,
>
>
> Thank you very much for recommending Ms. ZHAO's good topic, intelligence
> science, for discussion at FIS platform. I think it very much valuable that Ms.
> ZHAO put forward to us the great challenge of methodology shift. The attached
> file expressed some of my understanding on this iuuse that I would like to share
> with FIS friends.
>
>
> Best regards,
>
>
> Yixin ZHONG
>
>
>
> ----- 回复邮件 -----
> *发信人:*Pedro C. Marijuan <pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es>
> *收信人:*fis <fis at listas.unizar.es>
> *时间:*2015年03月04日 19时58分15秒
> *主题:*Re: [Fis] THE FRONTIERS OF INTELLIGENCE SCIENCE--Zhao Chuan
>
>
>      Dear Chuan and FIS colleagues,
>
>      The scientific study of intelligence is quite paradoxical. One is
>      reminded about the problems of psychology and ethology to create
>      adequate categories and frameworks about animal and human intelligence.
>      The approaches started in Artificial Intelligence were quite glamorous
>      three or four decades ago, but the limitations were crystal clear at the
>      end of the 80's. It marked the beginning of Artificial Life and quite
>      many other views at the different frontiers of the theme (complexity
>      theory, biocybernetics, biocomputing, etc.) Also an enlarged
>      Information Science was vindicated as the best option to clear the air
>      (Stonier, Scarrott... and FIS itself too). In that line, Advanced
>      Artificial Intelligence, as proposed by Yixin Zhong and others, has
>      represented in my view a bridge to connect with our own works in
>      information science. That connection between information "processing"
>      and intelligence is essential. But in our occasional discussions on the
>      theme we have always been centered in, say, the scientific
>      quasi-mechanistic perspectives. It was time to enter the humanistic
>      dimensions and the connection with the arts. Then, this discussion
>      revolves around the central pillar to fill in the gap between sciences
>      and humanities, the "two cultures" of CP Snow.
>      The global human intelligence, when projected to the world, creates
>      different "disciplinary" realms that are more an historical result that
>      a true, genuine necessity. We are caught, necessarily given our
>      limitations, in a perspectivistic game, but we have the capacity to play
>      and mix the perspectives... multidisciplinarity is today the buzzword,
>      though perhaps not well addressed and explained yet. So, your
>      reflections Chao are quite welcome.
>
>      best--Pedro
>
>      --
>      -------------------------------------------------
>      Pedro C. Marijuán
>      Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
>      Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
>      Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
>      Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X
>      50009 Zaragoza, Spain
>      Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
>      pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
>      http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
>      -------------------------------------------------
>
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-- 
-----------------------------------------

Professor David (Dai) Griffiths

Professor of Educational Cybernetics
Institute for Educational Cybernetics (IEC)
The University of Bolton
http://www.bolton.ac.uk/IEC

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