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Article 1550 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: udumudi@maxine.wpi.edu (Srinivas Udumudi)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Animal Intelligence vs Human Intelligence
Keywords: Instinct
Message-ID: <1991Nov24.202442.27331@wpi.WPI.EDU>
Date: 24 Nov 91 20:24:42 GMT
References: <1991Nov19.000813.26477@spss.com> <38079@shamash.cdc.com> <6194@dutrun2.tudelft.nl>
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In article <6194@dutrun2.tudelft.nl> Sylvia Stuurman writes:
>In article <38079@shamash.cdc.com> map@svl.cdc.com writes:
>>                             What you are talking about is an
>>infant who has already reached the perceptual level, i.e., who's
>>brain has already "learned" to recognize entities.  I don't know the   
   .............
>
> .........
>So I think your concept of first reaching the perceptual level,
>then the conceptual level is far to primitive to describe
>the learning of human beings (and other animals).
>
>S. Stuurman                 e-mail winfstu@duticai.tudelft.nl

When an infant is born, no one teaches it to cry when it's hungry.
No one teaches it to suckle. It comes by birth. It's INSTINCT.

But it does LEARN somethings which _become_ instincts later in its
life. This conversion of planned (learned) activities to instincts
is a continuous process. When I go out of my room, my hand automatically
goes towards the swithces to put the lights off......I don't plan...

I think when something is done again and again, it becomes an instinct.
Coming to the subject (Animal Intelligence), it's quite clear that 
what they have is a set of instincts and nothing else (?). And they just
react to the environment based on those (the reaction comes, they don't).

BTW, I have heard a lecture by a prominent Indian philosopher who maintains
that, when humans do the same things again and again for generations and
generations, the knowledege gets recorded at the genes level (instinct - like
the baby suckling) and thus, human intelligence increases generation by
generation building on its previous generations!! Interesting, isn't it?

-Srinivas

ps: Sorry if all this has been said before. I just started reading articles
    with this subject (this group).
-- 
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Srinivas Udumudi    |      Tell me why you forget        |udumudi@maxine.wpi.edu
Grad (CS Dept), WPI | somethings while remembering most, | (508) 757-9083 (Home)
Worcester, MA 01609 | I'll give u Artificial Intelligence| (508) 831-5005 (Off.)


