• agency: intervening action towards an end; action personified; a source of action towards an end. ~ (Oxford Dictionary)

• agency (n.): intervening action towards an end; action personified; a source of action towards an end [agent: late Middle English (in the sense ‘someone or something that produces an effect’) fr. Latin agent- ‘doing’, from agere]. ~ (Oxford Dictionary).

• agency (n.): the means or mode of acting; instrumentality. [Medieval Latin agentia, from Latin agens, ‘agent-’, present participle of agere, ‘to do’; see agent; viz.: ‘one that acts or has the power or authority to act’]. ~ (American Heritage Dictionary).

Intellect:

intellect: the faculty of knowing and reasoning; power of thought; understanding; analytic intelligence. ~ (Oxford Dictionary)

Intellectualise: 

• ‘intellectualise: (1) to furnish a rational structure or meaning for; (2) to avoid psychological insight into (an emotional problem) by performing an intellectual analysis’. (American Heritage® Dictionary).
• ‘intellectualise: consider something rationally; to analyse, deal with, or explain something exclusively by thinking or reasoning; (psychology) reason away problems; to protect yourself unconsciously from the emotional stress that would come from dealing with fears or problems by reasoning them away’. (Encarta Dictionary).
• ‘intellectualise: to think about or discuss a subject in a detailed and intellectual way, without involving your emotions or feelings’. (Cambridge Dictionary).

Intellectualism:

intellectualism [after Greek ‘intellektualismus’]: 1. (philos.) the doctrine that knowledge is derived from the action of the intellect or pure reason; 2 devotion to intellectual pursuits; (excessive) exercise of the intellect rather than the emotions. (Oxford Dictionary).

Intelligence:

Intelligence is the cognitive faculty of understanding and comprehending (as in intellect and sagacity) ... which means the cerebral ability to sensibly and thus judiciously think, remember, reflect, appraise, plan, and implement considered activity for beneficial purposes (and to be able to rationally convey reasoned information to other human beings so that coherent knowledge can accumulate around the world and to the next generations).

• intelligence: the faculty of understanding; intellect [the faculty of knowing and reasoning]; quickness or superiority of understanding, sagacity [acuteness of mental discernment; soundness of judgement, shrewdness]; the action or fact of understanding something; knowledge, comprehension (of something). (Oxford Dictionary)

• ‘intelligence: the ability to comprehend; to understand and profit from experience; intelligent: having the capacity for thought and reason especially to a high degree (‘is there intelligent life in the universe?’). (WordNet 1.7)

• ‘intelligence: the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge; the faculty of thought and reason. (The American Heritage® Dictionary)

• ‘intelligence: the ability to learn, understand and make judgments or have opinions that are based on reason. (Cambridge International Dictionary)

• ‘intelligence: the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations; reason, also the skilled use of reason; the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one’s environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests); mental acuteness, shrewdness; the act of understanding, comprehension. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

The whole furore about what intelligence is really is quite amusing: there are people who talk sagely about dolphins, for just one example, as being ‘intelligent’ and will argue their case vigorously and vociferously and scorn IQ (Intelligence Quotient) tests as being a measure of intelligence. Yet when these self-same people turn their attention to ‘outer space’ or ‘deep space’ (as the SETI peoples do), they all of a sudden know precisely what intelligence actually is ... when they say that they are searching for extraterrestrial intelligence they do not for one moment mean that they are looking for ‘intelligent’ creatures like dolphins, for example.

No way ... they are looking for what intelligence actually is as per the dictionary definition.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

At its most simplest intelligence is the ability to anticipate eventualities and develop contingency plans rather than exigent reaction – in a drought or a famine animals, just like plants, unless particularly hardy tend to languish and/or die – in conjunction with the ability to manipulate one’s environs for beneficial purposes ... which means, at its most basic, being conscious of both place and periodicity (the cognisance of both being a sentient creature occupying space and the persistence of such existence over time) and the implications and ramifications of occupation/continuation in spatial extension and of temporal duration and acting accordingly.

Intelligence also involves being aware of birth, growth, senescence, and death (but that is another topic). (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 50, 19 November 2003).

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Memory:

Just as a computer’s ‘memory’ bears no relationship to human memory (data-base is a much better word) so too is ‘artificial intelligence’ a misnomer (data-retrieval/ data-matching system are much better phrases) as it has no correlation with human intelligence. And it is not just that a computer cannot think (cognitively understand and comprehend) which makes it not intelligent as, lacking sentience, it not only cannot be conscious (aware) it cannot be self-conscious (self-aware) either – which is the essential prerequisite for intelligence – because intelligence is not only the faculty of the human brain thinking with all its understanding (intellect) and comprehension (sagacity) but its cognisance (consciousness or awareness) of being a body in the world of people, other animals, plants, things and events. And lack of sentience means it cannot be self-referential – which involves the issue of agency and agency can be only self-referential – as computers do not have agency.

Furthermore, a self-referential organism is also self-interested: it is concerned about its existence, and by extension others’ existence, in that it is biased – it finds water appealing and acid unappealing for example – and being biased is what being self-interested means ... whereas computers are indifferent, as it were, to both their existence and their functions (switched off or on makes no difference to a computer).

Lastly, computers are not an agency because they are built by humans to serve human agency (rather than to be an agency even if that be possible) and the first principle of serving an agency is being non-resistant (obedient to the agency) and thus not self-concerned.

For an example of ‘artificial intelligence’ being a misnomer: when a computer wins at chess it is actually the programmer – the agency – who designed the programme who wins (achieves an end) via their programme.

Which is what makes a computer a remarkable tool for human intelligence to amplify itself through. (Based in part on an article by Eugene Matusov, Mon, 23 Mar 1998)

Thought: 

RESPONDENT: Richard, I have some questions: Is ‘human intelligence’ or ‘thinking’ or ‘thought’ (as distinct from the mind of a dog or even a gorilla) the result of or the property of or the ability to abstract?

RICHARD:  No, not necessarily ... in evolutionary terms the long, slow evolution of intelligence has its roots in the most ‘on the ball’, the most shrewd and/or sharp and/or smart and/or cunning and/or wily and/or sly, and so on, outmanoeuvring the least ‘on the ball’ – the most dumb – and there is nothing abstract about that (the term ‘survival of the fittest’ does not mean the survival of the most muscular, as is often commonly misunderstood, but means those most fitted to the environment live to pass on their genes whilst the least fitted languish and die out).

And, even more prosaically, the long, slow evolution of intelligence is also the result of successfully negotiating what has been called the vicissitudes of life: not only obtaining such basic necessities as air, water, food, shelter and clothing (if the weather be inclement) in the face of fire, flood, famine, tempest, vulcanicity, pestilence, disease, and so on, but prospering whilst doing so because of tool-making, for instance, or the utilisation of fire, for another ... none of which are abstract.

Intelligence is the cognitive faculty of understanding and comprehending (as in intellect and sagacity) ... which means the cerebral ability to sensibly and thus judiciously think, remember, reflect, appraise, plan, and implement considered activity for beneficial purposes (and to be able to rationally convey reasoned information to other human beings so that coherent knowledge can accumulate around the world and to the next generations). Yet there is more to intelligence than the faculty of the human brain thinking with all its understanding (intellect) and comprehension (sagacity) as, along with the self-referential nature that being conscious implies (agency, or intervening action towards an end, implies self-interest), the brain’s cognisance of being a conscious body – thus being self-conscious or self-aware – in the world of other animals, vegetation, things, and events, is an essential prerequisite for intelligence to arise ... and, again, there is nothing abstract about being aware of being conscious.

Incidentally, abstract (conjectural) thought is but one of the many ways of thinking: for instance there is practical/impractical thought; pragmatic/imaginative thought; reasoned/ expressive thought; adventitious/ principled thought; prudential/philosophical (or politic/ philosophic) thought; insightful/ intuitive thought; judicious/ injudicious thought; rational/ irrational thought; logical/illogical thought; salubrious/ pathological thought, as well as illative thought (inferential, deductive, inductive thought) and reflective thought (contemplative, meditative, pensive thought) and so on.

RETURN TO DEFINITIONS INDEX

RICHARD’S HOME PAGE

The Third Alternative

(Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body)

Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.

Richard's Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-.  All Rights Reserved.