From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Date: Mon Sep 06 1999 - 11:09:16 MDT
On Mon, 6 Sep 1999, John Clark wrote:
> If the words "mouse intelligence" has any meaning at all then these
> are the reasons Dr. Tang is justified in saying that Doogie is smarter
> than wild mice.
I think the problem may be that I consider "mouse intelligence" to
be much more of an oxymoron than you do. I can go to the hardware
store up the street and get a wrench that dynamically adapts itself
to fit the heads of bolts of different sizes. So the wrench does the
job that it is designed to do. Do I now have an "intelligent wrench"?
I agree completely that Doogie is "smarter" than WT mice.
>
> These are thought to be 6 different abilities, 4 involved the hippocampus
> and 2 did no. Doogie did consistently better on all of them.
No problem, all I've said is said is that *in my opinion*, improving
memory (which is a primary hippocampus function) is a substantially
lesser thing than improving what I call "intelligence".
The dictionary says:
Intelligence:
the ability to perceive logical relationships and use one's
knowledge to solve problems and respond appropriately to
*novel* situations ||
capability of performing some functions usually associated with
*human* reasoning
I just don't happen to think that the case is strong that improving
mouse *memory* will be a panacea for improving the "intelligence"
of higher mammals.
Robert
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