from the Dept. of Throwing a Bone: Musings on Actual Intelligence (circa July 2007)

Musings on Actual Intelligence

Actual intelligence, intelligence which we would recognize as similar to our own, is made up of a very small number of peculiar things. One of them is the inability to really know what one's brain is doing/thinking about/calculating/pondering. In a truly intelligent brain, the left hemisphere doesn't always know what the right hemisphere is doing. This is because the brain has evolved enough obfuscatory structures and processes, enough self-monitoring checks and balances and enough counterbalancing and overwhelming complexity that the self-aware entity as a whole, noticing its own great capacity for understanding itself and noticing also that this capacity is often taxed beyond any ability to cope, concludes that it must be quite profound and essentially gives up in awed wonder or bemusement.
An essential corollary to this fact is the ability to meaningfully communicate this. If another person indicates to us that they realize their brain is doing things they're not aware of, we are able to recognize that from our own experience and grant appropriate status to that other person: they are like me, so they're intelligent.
A predictable corollary, then, is that intelligence is not a qualitative but a quantitative matter; it is the clear and recognizable expression of intelligence that is more often an either/or event. Thus animals don't consistently strike us as intelligent, but they can show signs of intellect at work, to which we may pay more or less attention.
An interesting side discussion involves how important it must be that intelligent behavior be recognized as such, or the organism displaying remains saddled with a status of unintelligence. Even problem-solving behavior, if seen as random or without aim, may not suffice; recognition by a human is required, and that human must then bear a massive burdern of proof with other humans who may (and clearly often do) have agendas that preclude admitting exo-hominid intelligence. Humans treat others of their species insanely while admitting (nominally) that they are the seat of intelligence; it holds no logical sway that we might treat animals better were they simply more intelligent than they seem.