Re: "It's uncertain whether intelligence has any long term

From: Glen M. Sizemore (gmsizemore2_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 07/20/04 

Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 15:51:57 +0000 (UTC)

> There is ample evidence that "intelligence" has had considerable
> long-term evolutionary advantage.

HT: For those species who possess it, intelligence (given an
appropriate
definition) has probably been a selective advantage.

GS: You might want to think about whether or not it makes sense to say
that "intelligence" is a thing that can be possessed. You might also
want to think about how it is that one has license to define
colloquial terms as one wishes.

HT: I wasn't making
any claim to the contrary though. I was talking about different levels
of intelligence within the human population and questioning the
assumption that cleverer (or more educated) individuals have a
selective advantage over less clever individuals in terms of
reproductive success. In my earlier post, I listed a number of
disadvantages that might result if humans were "much less intelligent"
than they are.

GS: It is very, very likely that the term "intelligence" will prove
scientifically worthless. Anyway, the specific nature of your post
escaped me. Sorry if my reply was OT. Since you responded to the rest,
however, I'll comment upon it.

> That is, it is evident if one has
> some clue as to what is being called "intelligence." If one views it
> as some "thing" that is measured as "G" and so forth, then one can
> make the argument that there is no evidence. If, however, one views
> "intelligence" as a murky, nonscientific, simplistic description of a
> person's (or non-human animal's) behavioral repertoire, then it is
> obvious that there is such evidence. In what sense? If one views the
> behavioral repertoires of humans and non-human animals as products of
> processes that are shared by a great many animals ? especially operant
> conditioning ? the argument disappears. Operant conditioning (and
> other common behavioral processes) CAN account for the complex
> behavioral repertoires of humans (see Skinner's "Science and Human
> Behavior" and "Verbal Behavior," and, no, Chomsky didn't) and the
> process is obviously widespread in the animal kingdom. This is because
> animals that can acquire new responses are frequently in a better
> position than those that don't since the environment is always in some
> flux.

HT: You've raised a lot of issues here.

Chomsky's review of "Verbal Behavior" is a pretty thoroughgoing
demolition of Skinner's position and was one of the most important
events triggering the cognitive revolution against the old-school
Behaviourism.

GS: No, it is widely regarded as "…a pretty thoroughgoing demolition
of Skinner's position," that does not make it so. It is correct,
though, that it "…was one of the most important events triggering the
cognitive revolution against the old-school Behaviourism."
Unfortunately, Skinner had already begun dismantling "old-school
Behaviourism" 20 years earlier. The version of behaviorism that
Chomsky attacked is not the version that Skinner advocated, despite
Chomsky's numerous quotes. Anyone who has read both Verbal Behavior
and Chomsky's "review" can see easily that Chomsky never read the
book, and he admitted as much to Searle.

HT: If you haven't read this, I recommend it to you. It's online.

GS: Verbal Behavior is still available. I recommend it. Unfortunately,
however, the book is not readily understood by those not familiar with
the experimental analysis of behavior and other treatments of complex
human behavior (i.e., as are found in Science and Human Behavior –
which is, incidentally, still available).

HT: Your comments about general learning mechanisms that you say we
share
with other animals run up against a critical problem - we are capable
of things that other animals are not (language being the obvious
example). This leads inevitably to the conclusion that humans possess
different 'learning' devices.

GS: I don't think so. Natural selection propels some species along a
path in which more and more of their behavior is not elicited like
reflexes or "fixed-action patterns" etc. In primates, this trajectory
has been followed to the extreme and when the vocal musculature became
sensitive to its consequences, "language" arose. Put simply, the
argument is that there is a continuum of, let's call it, "percent of
repertoire that is not elicited" (i.e., a matter of degree) and that
the extraordinary flexibility and utility of sounds produced by the
vocal musculature made the emergence of "language" inevitable. Once
"language" and culture emerge, much of what is extraordinary about
humans follows, even though we are just a little "smarter" than other
mammals, and the mechanisms are the same.

HT: On your last point, 'learning' is not always an advantage. If what
is
learned is always the same thing, then it would pay to be equipped
with this knowledge/ability at birth or as soon as it can be
exploited. Having to learn this thing would mean a delay that could be
costly.

GS: And this is exactly why many things are "hard-wired." But learning
has obviously been an advantage, as is evidenced by its widespread
representation in the animal kingdom.

Cordially,
Glen

huckturner@hotmail.com (Huck Turner) wrote in message news:<cdhnha$1c17$1@darwin.ediacara.org>...
> gmsizemore2@yahoo.com (Glen M. Sizemore) wrote in message news:<cdfceo$hh9

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