I would certainly agree with general formulation that
intelligence/consciousness arises from action on the physical environment, and that the structures responsible for that activity are sensorimotor reflex structures in the brain. Two other points that I would also want to make, though: firstly that sensorimotor reflexes must have some pretty remarkable features vis a vis other biological structures to give rise to intelligence; and secondly that, once established, intelligence still seems to possess a number of features that make it as irreducible to, and inexplicable in terms of, any possible biology as life itself is irredcible to/inexplicable by any possible chemistry. That does not render intelligence immaterial, because this 'transcendence' of the underlying biology is, like biology's own transcendence of its underlying chemistry, a new form of organisation, not the injection of a magic principle. (This is what my Birth of Reason is about - you can download a recent version from our website.)

I also very much agree about the radical implications of any intimate connection between intelligence and consciousness - the term 'Copernican revolution' would be no exaggeration! And scary for a lot of reasons. for example, I wonder who will be the first person to be shot dead by a fundamentalist because of this theory?

I'm happy to continue on-list - in the past people have been pretty happy to tell bores when to take themselves away, so I suspect we'll know when we are no longer welcome!

(by Richard Robinson)

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(This article is from email discussions through owner-piaget-list@interchange.ubc.ca)