okay, i'm going to think on the fly. as i said, my interest in the definition of life extends or is interrelated to my interest in intelligence. so i'm going to take a step back and talk about intelligence.
while there are many people theorizing about intelligence, there are three major thoeries i know of. the first is the classical theory, which basically views intelligence as a single trait. it's not very good at explaining qualitative differences in intelligence, i.e. what makes one person a good musician and another a good mathematician.
the next major theory is Howard Garder's theory of
multiple intelligences; this theory origianlly itemized 7 types of intelligence. in alphabetical order, they are: bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, and spatial. he subsequently added naturalistic intellignece, and there's a lot of work to add a ninth, existential intelligence (which was also vying against spiritual and moral intellinces). if you're interested in what's meant by any of these terms, check the link. his theory is criticized as being ad hoc, intuitive rather than empirical, and confusing what's better called ability with intelligence, which should point to some deeper characteristic.
the last theory, also the one i think is the most scientifically robust, is Robert Sternberg's
triarchic theory of intelligence. this one has more empirical grounding, and it focuses on the processes of thought as the major unit of analysis when investigating the nature of intelligence. basically, he sees three types of intelligence: analytical, creative and practical. i think of his analytical intelligence as 'explicit problem solving,' when all the rules, conditions and laws are known, and it's probably the type of intelligence that most separates us from other animals. practical intelligence is more or less 'street smarts,' adapting your self to the environment and your environment to yourself. creative intelligence has most to do with approaching novel situations
and automating familiar tasks; it doesn't necessarily mean you're good in the arts (also, this type of intelligence may be significantly less important to other animals*).
i like this theory because IMHO it's the most grounded in cognitive study of the mind and brain, it views humans as adapting/adaptive organisms in a natural environment, and it maintains a strong distinction between the processes that give rise to behavior and the behaviors themselves (i.e., aptitude vs. ability).
i also like it because it gives me a basis on which to imagine new forms of 'superficial intelligence' (i.e., new 'kinds' of intelligence in the multi-intelligence model). it allows me to view
any life form on a spectrum of intelligence (by analyzing the processes that give rise to its behavior). from that, i have a nice framework to imagine 1) how alien life forms might be considered intelligent in some way, without them necessarily being radio-building and starship-piloting creatures, and 2) it allows me to speculate on how future mutation of human genes and anatomy could impact our intelligence.
this isn't to say that i think i can trace the change of a chromosome to a change in brain structure to a change in cognition on a molecular level, but these ideas do give me some basis for speculation (and after all, i'm writing speculative fiction here).
*when i say creative intelligence is less important to other animals, it's by no means to say that they lack creative intelligence. the ground this branch of intelligence has to do with encountering novel situations and problems on the one hand, and automating routine tasks on the other: animals of many sorts obviously deal with both new and old situation and problems. i say creative intelligence is more important to humans because of the role creativity plays in a healthy human psychology. deep down, all humans have what R.D. Laing called "existential anxiety" - basically, we need to have confidence, faith even, in our own existence and that of the world we experience. among other things it does, creativity serves as the 'proof' to our selves of our own existences (by introducing new things into the world, we break old patterns of cause and effect that we can observe - this serves an emotional role; we prove to ourselves that our actions do have real effects on the world, on the one hand, and that we are masters of our selves, our bodies and our actions, on the other hand).
so, i hope this isn't an overwhelmingly long post. obviously enough, the mind interests me greatly - and when it comes to writing sci fi, the minds of the future are just as interesting. so i hope this can spark some discussion on the subject!
