Yes we do consider the biological system is intelligent system. in my view perception of intelligence is to be respond in a way to stimulus that is eventually not harmful. and Life always finds it way to thrive, survive and prosperous. as life may start from a single entity and still its surviving due to intelligence.

@Hawa, Vahid, you gave two defenitions of intelegence:

"The ability to comprehend; to understand and profit from experience"

"The capacity of learning and memorizing"

without defenition of terms "understand", "learning", "memorizing"

The biological systems can have capacity of "learning" or "memorizing" on organism or population level. I am not sure about the term "understand".

Understanding is a psychological process related to an abstract or physical object giving the ability to think about it and deal adequately with it. Understanding is a relation between the knower and an object of understanding [Carl Bereiter. Education and mind in the Knowledge Age]. It means that the biological system must recognize and memorize individual object and transfer the memory on the similar objects. I am afraid that many boilogical systems have no such capacity.

Plants, ant colonies, single-cells, etc., are all capable of complex adaption akin to a particular type of learning humans are capable of (often called procedural learning in the literature from behavioral studies with humans and other animals). The cutting-edge algorithms in computational intelligence rely on biological systems as models, whether they utilize swarm intelligence, genetic algorithms, or neural networks, are almost all modeled on the kind of adaption living systems exhibit. To that extent, living systems are intelligent- they self-organize dynamically in response to their environments and "store" information about their environment in order to do so.

That said, very, very, few living systems are capable of conceptual processing. My dog can associate the sound of the word "food", regardless of who says it, with novel exemplars, with a place and time (saying "food" around 6PM will result in her running to a specific place expect a specific amount of "food" in a particular bowl". If I hold out a plastic toy and say "food" she will run up to it but, upon smelling, will ignore it. It isn't what she expected. This is higher level learning- the encoding of semantic information. Most living systems are incapable of this. They are no more intelligent than a pocket calculator.

DONT compare it with Human perception of Intelegence or so to say compare with most intellegent human. All natural things are chaotic intellegent.

Most natural things are not chaotic, and most chaotic systems exhibit no intelligent properties (from a pendulum to climate, complex systems exhibit chaotic behavior but lack anything remotely related to anything "intelligent" and suggesting otherwise just makes the word meaningless). Many animals (those with brains) are capable of a kind of intelligence akin to that humans are. Most are not.

Andrew you want to say the perception of intellegence is Totally human. and natural thing are chaotic we are natural to so whats the real chaos.

Sorry bu t the comment i made is nothing to do with question asked.... Biological system to some its intellegent and to others are only some are intellegnet. Viruses are more intellegent than us they hack the core of our survival and rule us on molecular level.

Yes, biological systems could be considered small world networks.

Deregibus, M. C., Cantaluppi, V., Calogero, R., Lo lacono, M., Tetta, C., Biancone, L., Bruno, S., Bussolati, B. and Camussi, G., (2007) Endothelial progenitor cell-derived microvesicles activate an angiogenic program in endothelial cells by a horizontal transfer of mRNA, Blood, Vol. 110, pp 2440-2448

The nucleic information in the system may elude to stored information?

dear all,

this question may seem tricky. when we wanna talk about intelligence in biological SYSTEMS its important to distinguish between the social or philosophical point of view with scientific experimental consideration.

i my opinion biological systems (we also should be aware of concept of System) are primarily first nature made intelligent systems and every human structured networks or operating systems are intentionally or non-intentionally a mimic of this natural systems.

a cell as a unit of life can make balance between demand and resources.

it will adapt itself to environmental perturbations and even internal mutations.

even if we just see apparently acting chemical molecules, all is a flow of information inside of a cell interacting with its outside boundaries. who can deny that gate and key responses which are widely used in electronic circuits are not the just simple sampling of proteins and their behavior in cells? (neural networks)

if we want study intelligence in ecological units of different species its obvious that species tending to have group life most of the time follow the social benefits not taking by chance choose that may cause vitality danger, and this is not the dull fool blind network acting.

you may say somebody is intelligent that proceed fast and is successful in his life but nature doesn't judge based on these factors

Nature does it who is fast and intelligent according to nature suceeds

I would say Yes. see this book. http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-047058159X.html

Dear Mohammad Asif

I absolutely do not wish to assert that "the perception of intelligence is Totally human". The concept "intelligence" is a human concept and we are capable as humans only of perceiving what we as humans can perceive. Nor do I understand what you mean by this: "natural thing are chaotic we are natural to so whats the real chaos". First, "chaos" is far more a popular term than a term used within the sciences (where one finds "complexity", "nonlinear systems", dynamical systems", etc.). Second, my point was that complexity/chaos is found within intelligent systems as well as non-intelligent. It is a necessary but not a sufficient condition (all intelligent systems are complex but not all complex systems are intelligent). Third, it is rather useless to speak of whether the climate is "intelligent" or why an amoeba isn't but a venus flytrap is without a working definition of intelligence. I gave one earlier in terms of learning. Adaptive systems that are capable of storing some representation of their state based upon interactions with their environment are said to "learn". However, very few such systems can do more than a calculator. Rats, mice, dogs, pics, etc., vastly outstrip the most sophisticated AI technology we possess, as computers are capable only of the kind of learning that plants or single-cells are. If we define intelligence in terms of conceptual processing, than most biological systems are not intelligent. If we define it in terms of "learning" (in the formal sense) then all biological systems are intelligent and so are certain artificial systems.

Thanks Andrew for your reply

The biological systems have improved from simple to complex systems through various processes, experience, necessity, adaptation and evolution. These systems are seems to be evolved in very high level, we can not assess what level it has improved. Not only human, every organisms seems to be great. Still we have to study more about the system. According to the tradition knowledge or yogis the biological systems have enormous power while it under goes purity or enlighten.

I would consider as "intelligent" any system provided with a diversity of specifically tuned inputs which, when activated in various unpredicted combinations, is able to determine, on the basis the currently presented combination, a response that is advantageous to its current overall state. Amoebae and bacteria   - living systems that apparently lack the capacites of memory and experiential learning - exhibit intelligence according to that definition.

If we take a computational approach to biosystems, Yes even at the cellular level.Its learning would be the range of inputs- output responses.For instance, given initial states of cells within a cellular automata (CA) implementation of excitable media (e.g. base model for cells in heart tissue), what would be the state of cell excitement? That would depend in part to its "stored instruction"  its ROM,or in the parlance of CA, its transition function. The state of a cell at any one time after t=0, may thereafter be interpreted as an "adaptation". Within such a computational and in silico framing of intelligence, a possible gauge of intelligence would be the range of complex patterns produced as a result of massively parallel processing. Its evolvability.

In fact the architects of early computers seemed to have this conception in mind when they laid the foundations for our modern computational architectures.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_constructor

Article Isotropic cellular automaton for modeling excitable media

This is about animal intelligence. Just watch!

http://www.dalealplay.es/videos/Pajaro-inteligente-utiliza-carnada-para-pescar_640752

Absolutely marvellous - thank you, Ljubomir!

Dear  Havva,

''Could we consider biological systems as intelligent systems?''

First I disagree with these two expressions: ''biological systems''

''intelligent systems''.  There are biological organisms and there are intelligent animals but the use of the term system may wrongly sudggest that an organism or an animals is similar to artificial systems that humans builts.  There is no possible analogy between an organism or an artificial systems we built.  

The word ''intelligence'' was invented in human languages to be used to mean:

'' "the highest faculty of the mind, capacity for comprehending general truths;" Everybody will agree that great scientists and philosophers are very intelligent persons.  The word is not the best one to qualify great musicians, great artist, great politicians.  Any person speaking eloquently and making used of a lot of references to history and culture and articulate well a discourse will be seen as an intelligent person.  So extending this word ''intelligence'' to non-human animals demand to stretch quite a bit the meaning of this word.  Extending it to a machine or an artificial system demand a complete redefinition of the word and so is meaningless and confusing to say the least.

Speaking of "intelligence", especially artificial one, we always think of human intelligence. There is a well-known Turing test  for artificial intelligence comparison to human. Is there any general intelligence test? How can we judge without practical test of the phenomena presence?  

Alex,

Turing rightly thought that the intelligences of humans and machines should be compared in the same way.  He knew that we subjectively assess the intelligence of peoples.  And so his test is a way to use the same subjective approach with machines.  This is the idea of assessing it through only talking with the machine without knowing if it is a machine or a person and judging as we normally do with people through a  conversation.  But different people may come to different conclusions and the whole thing is very vague and subjective.  Language and the use of words is subjective in general especially for such abstract word.   

Louis,

Your definition of intelligence sees it as applicable solely to the very pinnacle level of human cognition. Yet, even if I could accept that only humans, and no other species qualify as exhibiting intelligent states, I would still conceptualize a state of  intelligence, as  you have defined it, as the totality of all subordinate hierarchical levels of representation whose progressive and parallel activation results in its emergence. That substrate, to my thinking, accords with a definition of a "system" - a collaborating set of organized components.

I would suggest that the onus for your definition to explain is why any subordinate level of cognitive representation that can be selected as the top level of a downward re-activation of its subordinate cognitive and perceptual levels - resulting in purposive attending to specific environmental stimuli of relevance to the agent - does not equally qualify as an intelligent state.

Best regards.

Richard,

I do not have and nobody have a definition of intelligence.  We simply have a word and some social conventions on how to apply it in a conversation. It is a fact that that word was invented exclusively for qualifying some type of humans based on their display of intellectual mastery in conversation.  Its use in that context is already vague but extending it for non-human animals or machines make the use of this word should be done carefully.

If we want to make use of the word ''intelligence'' for non-human animals or for plants then we have to specifically define what is meant in this more general context.  So far we use the word to qualify an individual not relative to a specific physiological feature but relative to a high performance that is exhibited in a particular activity.  So we do not have to enter the extreme complexities of the physiologies.  

The word ''system'' has a very deep ''engineering connotation'' and I do think that is too biaised in that way to qualify natural organisms.  We have the word ''organism'' for them why changing this perennal word with the proper connotation with that modern word totally rooted in engineering.  The use of word is extremely important and biaise the mind in very particular way.  Many people love to use the expression ''biological system'' and love to be biaised in seeing organisms as machines.  If they love that then they should continue using that expression.  Not me.

I think we can consider biological systems as an intelligent systems , due to the adaptation of microorganisms , their living ( like for those who need intermediat host , how can they know this ?)...

Louis,

The word ''system'' has a very deep ''engineering connotation'' and I do think that is too biaised in that way to qualify natural organisms.  We have the word ''organism'' for them why changing this perennal word with the proper connotation with that modern word totally rooted in engineering.  The use of word is extremely important and biaise the mind in very particular way.  Many people love to use the expression ''biological system'' and love to be biaised in seeing organisms as machines.  If they love that then they should continue using that expression.  Not me.

For me, the word "system" does not have any specifically tied, necessary connotation with engineering, nor do I feel that my understanding of its meaning conflicts in any way with the word "organism". On the contrary, the word, "system", complements and clarifies my understanding of the word, "organism", and vice vesa.  With regard to your assertion that  it is a "modern word totally rooted in engineering", please refer to an etymological dictionary such as:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=system

The listed far-from-modern and altogether more inclusive usages and meanings accord with my own understanding of the word. In short, it seems to me that the engineering-connotation and bias is an  interpretation.personal to yourself.

Best.

Dear Richard,

You are right. I have a background in system engineering and so that engineering meaning and connotation was much stronger for me. And I have another biais against the word ''system'' I am convinced that living organisms although have all kind of systems in them are not systems or machines and for me ''organism'' does not bring this machine conception with it that the word ''system'' may bring (but not necessarily for everyone I agree).  

All biological systems are intelligent systems as they are driven by consciousness which is the raw material for all development but the level of intelligence wholly depends on the requirement and as a means to perform as per need. Intelligence though is restricted to learning and growth.

Dear Juan,

The passage is by Louis Brassard in reply to me,  - it's the next-to-last answer on the page preceding this (ie page 3 of this Question)

Kind regards!