Yes, that's exactly it. Kasparov is capable of deceiving the computer, the computer is not capable of deceiving Kasparov. — Metaphysician Undercover

No that's not the point. The point is that the computer behaves in an entirely intelligible manner, while Kasparov's mind doesn't. The real point is that the human mind is superior to the computer, not because it can out-calculate it, but precisely because it can't, and therefore finds a better way. It's unintelligible how the human mind skips the 99% of bad moves - without doing any calculation - and focuses on calculating just the 1% potentially useful moves. And yet, what the human mind does when it does this is intelligent - even though it appears foolish.

If there is nothing to make the act appear intelligent to you, then the act is not intelligible to you. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes it appears intelligent to me because I think it is good, even though I can't specify how it is good.

So any act which appears intelligent to you, must appear so for some reason, and by virtue of this reason the act is intelligible. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not really. For example, I believe that Jesus Christ was resurrected from the dead as specified in the New Testament, and yet I maintain that such an event is incomprehensible and entirely unintelligible to me. Yet it appears intelligent to me to believe in it because it resonates with my soul - there's no real rational reason for it.

It's unintelligible how the human mind skips the 99% of bad moves - without doing any calculation - and focuses on calculating just the 1% potentially useful moves. And yet, what the human mind does when it does this is intelligent - even though it appears foolish. — Agustino

I don't believe this to be unintelligible, it's a matter of habituation.

Yes it appears intelligent to me because I think it is good, even though I can't specify how it is good. — Agustino

I disagree with this. If a potential act appears good to you, and you can't say how, or why it is good, then I think it would be false to say that it appears like an intelligent act. That is exactly what separates an act which appears like an intelligent act, from one which just appears like a good act. if there is reason for the act, then it appears as an intelligent act. if you cannot find reason for the act, then it might still appear good, but it cannot appear as an intelligent act.

Not really. For example, I believe that Jesus Christ was resurrected from the dead as specified in the New Testament, and yet I maintain that such an event is incomprehensible and entirely unintelligible to me. Yet it appears intelligent to me to believe in it because it resonates with my soul - there's no real rational reason for it. — Agustino

Again, that "resonates with my soul" is not a matter of it appearing intelligent, it's a matter of emotion or some such thing. I think it is contradictory to say that an act, decision, or believe, appears intelligent, if there is absolutely no discernible reason for that act. On what basis would you say that it is an intelligent choice?

I don't believe this to be unintelligible, it's a matter of habituation. — Metaphysician Undercover

>:O Yeah sure labelling it a certain name surely makes it intelligible

I think it is contradictory to say that an act, decision, or believe, appears intelligent, if there is absolutely no discernible reason for that act. On what basis would you say that it is an intelligent choice? — Metaphysician Undercover

For example it leads to my spiritual well-being - but HOW it leads to my spiritual well-being remains mysterious. And I don't need to know HOW it leads to my spiritual well-being to know that it does.

But scholasticism has destroyed philosophy, and rendered it a vacuous masturbatory intellectual exercise. What use would anyone have for a Descartes? — Agustino

How are you using the word "scholasticism?" Descartes is often considered to have brought on the death of that particular school of philosophy.

How are you using the word "scholasticism?" Descartes is often considered to have brought the death of that particular school of philosophy. — Thorongil

Yes he did bring an end to the scholasticism of men like Aquinas, however, he took philosophy away from ethical concerns, and down into scholastic concerns. Thus philosophy became a field for academics, rather than for those interested in practice.

I would agree. The professionalization of the discipline has been a net negative, in my opinion. The scholasticism of the Middle Ages was nothing like university philosophy in the modern period.

The scholasticism of the Middle Ages was nothing like university philosophy in the modern period. — Thorongil

Indeed - there was a remnant of the Greeks left in the Middle Ages, which almost vanished after Descartes - except for a few exceptions like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and their ilk. But then they were always on the outskirts of Academia.

I don't think so. The philosophy you are talking about is characterised by the intersection of both scholastic concern and the intelligible. For them philosophy is not merely ethics (that's a position of heretical post-modernism), but an intersection of ethics and worldly truth which cannot possibility be denied. Without God, the world is unintelligible. God is necessarily so regardless of what happens.

It's world in which the intelligible is the highest order and it's necessarily bound with the only possible outcome: the presence of God, a practice of religious philosophy and particular cultural tradition. Rather than merely being about how one ought to live, it's about how people must think an act, what the world can only be, without falling into the unintelligible and so being impossible.

In terms of the unintelligible, it is an utter rejection. The outcome which can never be is a believer finding the world to be unintelligible. No matter what, the world will always meet the expectation and specification of their tradition.

Intelligible on the other hand you could claim has - it follows a logical structure. — Agustino

Intelligible is something that makes sense according to the prevailing worldview/culture - in other words, an action that others can understand. — Agustino

I agree that your definitions are too fuzzy. Intelligible means logical structure to me. It is not about being in accordance with custom. It only make sense to others because it is rational.

But anyway, the issue seems to be that creative intelligence is clearly something more than just "pure intelligibility". Reasoning is not merely computation.

And we can see this in the computer chess example.

Intelligence is the ability to recognise and exploit intelligible patterns - discover the generalities that predict the particular.

A computer is not really being intelligent if it is merely making an exhaustive search of every possible combination of moves to find the winning choice. To be like the human player, it would have to start to generalise in a fashion that would allow it to constrain its play so that it is limiting its possibility of making bad moves.

The need is to restrict the patterns of the pieces so they leave the player in "a strong position" - one that, in complementary fashion, steadily reduces the options of the opponent until s/he only has bad ones.

It is impossible to "figure everything out" - especially in an inherently unpredictable world. And even in the highly regulated and predictable world of a board game, it is more efficient to limit your scope for mistakes. while attempting to force your opponent into a realm where there can only be "mistakes".

It is just the same on the tennis court or any other sport. You want to move your opponent into places where all the choices are weak ones.

So you seem to getting at the point that intelligence is not strictly intelligible because reality offers always a near infinite variety of "intelligible" paths. If you focus on trying to predict particulars, that is in fact cognitively quite dumb. The better approach is to work to constrain uncertainty. Do that, and eventually the smart path is going to pop out, all the less smart options having been filtered away.

Of course that still leaves room for the smart flashes of insight in which a pattern of connections can suddenly be recognised.

But insight always comes to the prepared mind, as any psychological study of creativity shows. Hard work constrains the possibilities. Then it becomes easy work to make the last step.

I would agree that outside of Pragmatism - which of course argues for abductive reasoning - philosophy shows a poor understanding of this constraints-based approach to reasoning or problem solving.

Philosophy is largely either analytic (in love with deduction and suspicious of induction), or continental (in love with romanticism and thus itself). ;)

Analysis is a good thing. It is a mode of thought that is great for producing machines like computers. But life and mind have a holistic or Bayesian approach to reasoning that is based on the ability to constrain possibility in fruitful fashion.

Logical structure is great for churning out concrete possibilities. A computer is a machine for generating every conceivable alternative.

But the world already has an over-abundance of possibilities. Real intelligence is about reducing them by applying generalisations. To locate answers, we just need to trap them into some tight enough corner.

It is impossible to "figure everything out" - especially in an inherently unpredictable world. And even in the highly regulated and predictable world of a board game, it is more efficient to limit your scope for mistakes. while attempting to force your opponent into a realm where there can only be "mistakes". — apokrisis

Yes, and even more than that, in chess, and especially in reality, there's is no "best play". No series of moves that are guaranteed to win, no strategies that are guaranteed to win either, because things are always changing, and even an opponent's mistake may so alter the game that the initial plan/strategy can no longer succeed. Computation is a useful skill to have - being able to see a few moves ahead - since it's what it takes in order to be able to execute tactics. But if all you have is tactical capability, and little strategy, then it will all come to naught.

But strategy cannot be taught in terms of computation or figuring things out. Strategy is always about, as you call it, constraints. Whoever manages their own constraints, and those of their opponent better wins - so long as he can also execute the tactics required. But in philosophy, especially Western philosophy, there is little discussion of this level that is beyond mere computation. This is what I call unintelligible precisely because there is no "best way". In strategy for example, there never is a best strategy. When you're playing chess for example, there is no "best" strategy, which if you adopt and execute perfectly you will win. Every strategy always has a counter-strategy. Every strategy generates both weaknesses and strengths in terms of constraints. There may be best tactics in order to fulfil strategy X, but there never is a best strategy. Why this happens is difficult to say, except that it's to do with the ever changing interaction between circumstances.

In chess, most of the world champions agree that given perfect play, the game ends in a draw - this also seems intuitively obvious for me. A perfect strategy, against its perfect counter-strategy end in a draw.