Animals do solve problems, they do have a bond, perhaps best described as emotional (emotions are a drive), with their offspring, they do share brain morphology with humans, they do have memories -- sometimes remarkable memories -- for many tasks, they do communicate with other animals, and they do form social bonds. Is that intelligent? Well, they don't write sonatas or design moon rockets. Is that a good criterion for intelligence? It's long been known that simple stimulus response models with no internal states (e.g., classical behaviorism) is inadequate to account for the data on animal behavior and problem solving skills, so they are more than what Skinner proposed. Does that mean the word intelligence should describe that behavior, or should we follow the practice of researchers and be specific with our terms?

Once the data is examined by reasonable people applying the best reasoning skills there will still be no resolution because, by intelligent, we are attempting to make a social statement about our role in nature. But, that is a social problem, not a scientific problem. One we must make as individuals, and as a society. No doubt some future generation will consider us barbaric for using lab rats, but so be it. Every generation needs somebody to look back on, so they can see their own progress.

Mike Sofka
New York
sofkam@rpi.edu

(I used to use the comparison between Einstein & the US-American quarterback Jim Kelly: Einstein could reconfigure physical environments in his head while Kelly - in the no-huddle offence days, in particular - could utilize a database of some 500 moves to identify the most successful strategy against the opponent's defence.) However much we might like to prefer one intelligence to the other (on strictly utilitarian grounds one might reasonably make the case for Kelly being the more intelligent; since he was dealing in realtime with an aforementioned defence which was attempting to seriously compromise his actuarial statistics... other parameters would undoubtably put the original absent minded professor ahead), they are both highly intelligent in a every real sense of the word; but beyond that: the units are literally incommeasurable.

(I also think it's safe to assume that Dr Einstein would'ave made an indifferent quarterback; while Mr Kelly's general theory of quantum relativity is unlikely to appear in Nature...)... it's either difficult or impossible to argue that animals are not intelligent; but it's also reasonable to reserve some rights to skepticism when degrees of intelligence are assessed. As my mischievous eg shows: we can't even unambiguously define degrees of human intelligence....

Similar case can be made for the end of science debate. It's entirely possible that we are drawing close to the technical limits of our ability to derive new insight via fresh reduction; but as the arguers for limits tend to mix factual argument with aesthetic ones (ie, confusing are with should), further evidence has to put forward by the proponents before the skeptic needs to switch sides....

Robert Clements
Australia
Robert.Clements@dva.gov.au