Philosophical Foundations

[Sergio Navega]

Phil wrote:
>
>Sergio wrote:
>> The second and more important consideration is that intelligence seems
>> to have emerged to ease our survival. This means that intelligence is
>> used to improve our ability to *predict* things (predicting what are
>> the habits of mammoths would make it easier to capture them).
>
>Yes.  Roughly: Intelligence is recognizing regularities.
>Compression is recognizing regularities.  So, cognition = compression.
>
>Phil goetz at zoesis.com
>
>

Phil, although I agree with the overall tone of your equation, on the
specific level I would find it too reductionistic. Someone who is not
familiar with Gerry's work could be tempted to take your equation and
derive this one:

Artificial Intelligence = WinZip

So it could be a good idea if we add something to that equation to 
account for what we think is a better way to understand intelligence.
Using the same reductionistic spirit, I would be satisfied with
this short list of capabilities that any intelligent entity must
possess:

a) Recognizing regularities
(perception of reocurring patterns)

b) Grouping of regularities according to several similarity criteria
(conceptualization and categorization)

c) Development of causal models
(rules, theories, formalization)

d) Exploring uncharted territories
(creativity)

In principle, I can't see a single human cognitive aspect that cannot 
fit into one of those four aspects. Compression, it seems, is handled
by item b). I would really appreciate any example of cognitive ability
that can't be translated into one (or more) of those items, but only
of those items. A single example would be enough to make me rethink
my position.

Regards,
Sergio Navega.