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Article 2875 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: kube@cs.UAlberta.CA (Ron Kube)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Intelligent Behaviour:  Is It Alive?
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Date: 18 Jan 92 18:56:54 GMT
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Classical AI relies on the Representation Hypothesis.  The notion of what
constitutes intelligent behaviour seems to get lost in the arguments over the
need for an acurate representation.  One could argue the importance of
externally manifested behaviour in a given context is far more important.
Then, the ability of an agent's internal control mechanisms to somehow mirror
the structure of its external environment becomes irrelevant.

	Does an externally viewed agent become more intelligent if we know that
it is alive?  If you were watching a box moving around in a room in response to
external stimuli, would you ascribe more intelligence to the box if you knew
there was a cat under the box?  Should it matter?

	What criteria would you use to determine if the box was alive?  If you
could interact with the box, what would you do to determine if it was        
intelligent?  Is there a relationship between intelligence and behaviour or is
intelligent behaviour simply a type of behaviour, like reactive behaviour?

	When considering the nature of intelligence, how important is it to
define different types of intelligence?  By that I mean, what is different
between human intelligence, animal intelligence, insect intelligence or
machine intelligence?

Just some things I am thinking about.  Thank you for your comments.

Ron


