Conversations with J, or, Resorting to the Cat.
me: do you think "knowledge" and "intelligence" are separate and disticnt and can exist independently of each other?
Sent at 9:25 AM on Friday
Jenna: yes
you mean intelligence in the brain/mind way, not in the spy way, yeah?
me: yeah.
Sent at 9:28 AM on Friday
me: I believe they are separate, but I'm not sure that a truly intelligent person won't have knowledge. I've never seen that.
Jenna: intelligence seems to be more about understanding.
i suppose if you have NO knowledge of anything than you can't be intelligent.
me: exactly.
Jenna: well, actually, come to think of it...intelligence ultimately describes either a) how easily someone has come to understanding or b) how easily they are likely to come to understanding
me: right, but you have to know SOMETHING to understand anything else.
Jenna: so...in theory...a person could be locked in a room forever and be intelligent, just ignorant
but we would have no way of measuring that
unless we knew the precise genetic markers for intelligence...and even then, that's iffy at best
Jenna: i don't think so...a person is intelligent or they're not. intelligence merely talks about capacity for understanding, usually as evidenced by how quickly someone catches onto something. A musical genius is a musical genius regardless of whether they ever play an instrument. If you take a child piano prodigy (let's imagine we can determine that without the child coming into contact with a piano), and isolate him from a piano forever...he's still a prodigy. Although, it's sort of different, because the only way to BE a prodigy is to play. Perhaps the only way to...
Okay, hang on...let me order this thought a minute
Let's take a metaphor out of physics, since I'm reading about it now.
Sent at 9:49 AM on Friday
Jenna: Let's compare intelligence to a spring -- as in, intelligence = potential energy. Some people are more...heheh...tightly wound, and therefore have higher intelligence/potential energy.
that exists without knowledge.
however, potential energy is completely dumb and means nothing if it's never used. it has to be converted into action for it to have meaning.
so, yes separate and distinct, but meaningless without each other.
voila!
your answer
me: so, then you're really making intelligence into Schroedinger's Cat. So by that rationale, Intelligence is a Quantum Factor.
That seems absurd to me somehow.
Jenna: no, i'm not making it into Schroedinger's Cat. I'm not saying it both exists and doesn't exist.
me: dude, that's Schroedingers Cat
Jenna: Although, I actually do believe that the attempt to measure or observe intelligence often/usually alters it
me: The cat is both dead and not dead until you open the box.
Jenna: right. that's what I'm NOT saying
I'm saying a person is OR is not intelligent, but that's it doesn't mean anything without action
me: no, that's what you ARE saying. That until someone has knowledge, we can't possibly know if they have intelligence.
Jenna: i'm not saying that at all. it may be possible to determine through DNA analysis whether or not a person is intelligent, just as it is possible to determine eye color, or something like that. I don't know. We haven't done it yet, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.
me: But it IS impossible in our world here now.
Jenna: whether or not they have any knowledge...although even that...you always have knowledge...even if all you know is that you breathe and your heartbeats and the room is white and there's an iv in your arm, you have knowledge
yes, here and now, it's impossible.
me: Okay...but there is a certain base level of knowledge that you must have in order to know if someone is intelligent or not.
Even if it's just I'm aware of myself, I'm alive, look at this thing in my arm.
Jenna: okay, look at it this way. New metaphor...let's say...Understanding is a house. Knowledge makes up the individual bricks. Intelligence puts those bricks together to form the house. The builder is separate from the bricks is separate from the house. And yet, the bricks and and the builder aren't the same at all.
me: So then, the answer to the question "are knowledge and intelligence separate and distinct and can exist independently of each other" is no.
Sent at 9:58 AM on Friday
me: because there must be a base level of knowlege to make intelligence evident.
So either we're back to the Cat in the Box--until you give the person some knowledge they are both intelligent and not--or there is no cognition without knowledge as raw material.
Jenna: no, the answer is they ARE separate and distinct but can only exist separate from each other in the abstract. and since they are abstract...
me: yes, but the real world is not abstract.
So the answer is still no.
Jenna: yes, and the in the real world, schroedinger's cat doesn't work that way
only quantum particles work that way
and even then...only kinda
me: Yes, but if we accept that this is NOT the cat, then the answer must be no.
Because we must resort to the cat to answer yes.
Sent at 10:09 AM on Friday
me: only you and I could have this conversation, you know.
