DefinitionsAgencyIntellect; IntellectualiseIntellectualism; Intelligence; Thought
• agency: intervening action towards an end; action personified; a source of action towards an end. ~ (Oxford Dictionary)
• agency (n.): intervening action towards an end; action personified; a source of action towards an end [agent: late Middle English (in the sense ‘someone or something that produces an effect’) fr. Latin agent- ‘doing’, from agere]. ~ (Oxford Dictionary).• agency (n.): the means or mode of acting; instrumentality. [Medieval Latin agentia, from Latin agens, ‘agent-’, present participle of agere, ‘to do’; see agent; viz.: ‘one that acts or has the power or authority to act’]. ~ (American Heritage Dictionary).• agency (n.): a means of exerting power or influence; instrumentality. [1650-60; fr. Medieval Latin; agent: 1570-80; fr. Latin agent-, s. of agens, present participle of agere, ‘to drive, do’]. ~ (Webster’s College Dictionary).
• Agent/Agency (more definitions here): • agent (n.): 1. [...snip...]; 2. a person or thing that takes an active role or produces a specified effect; [e.g.]: ‘agents of change’; ‘bleaching agents’; ‘Using animals, they will study the development of mammary tissue and the effects of specific environmental agents’; ‘Indirect evidence suggests that viruses may play a role as the environmental agent’; ‘The role of moral agent has a direct effect on the patient care experience’; synonyms: medium, means, instrument, vehicle. [Origin: late Middle English (in the sense ‘someone or something that produces an effect’); fr. Latin agent-, ‘doing’, from agere]. ~ (Oxford Dictionary).• agent (n.): 1. [...snip...]; 2. [...snip...]; 3. a person or thing that causes something to happen; synonyms: agency, instrument, instrumentality, machinery, means, medium, ministry, organ, vehicle; (medical agent): 1. something that produces or is capable of producing an effect; 2. a chemically, physically, or biologically active principle; see ‘oxidising agent’, ‘reducing agent’. [Middle English, fr. Medieval Latin agent-, agens, fr. Latin, pres. part. of agere, ‘to drive, lead, act, do’; akin to Old Norse aka, ‘to travel in a vehicle’, Greek agein, ‘to drive, lead’; 1st known use: 15th century]. ~ (Merriam-Webster Dictionary).• agent (n.): 1. [...snip...]; 2. [...snip...]; 3. a chemical or other substance that has a particular effect; [e.g.] ‘oxidising agents’; ‘soil erosion is a major agent of environmental change’; synonyms or related words (for this sense of agent); substance, material, powder, wax, concentrate, matter, stuff, solid, medium, agent; (formal): something that causes change; synonyms or related words (for this sense of agent): cause, catalyst, source, contributor, occasion, influence, trigger, impetus, base, culprit. ~ (Macmillan Dictionary).• agent (n.): 1. [...snip...]; 2. a person or thing that acts or has the power to act; 3. a phenomenon, substance, or organism that exerts some force or effect; [e.g.]: ‘a chemical agent’; 4. the means by which something occurs or is achieved; instrument; [e.g.]: ‘wind is an agent of plant pollination’; 5. [...snip...]; 6. [...snip...]; 7. [...snip...]; (adj.): agential. [Origin: C15, fr. Latin agent-, noun use of the present participle of agere, ‘to do’]. ~ (Collins Dictionary).• agent (n.): 1. [...snip...]; 2. [...snip...]; 3. a means by which something is done or caused; instrument; 4. a force or substance that causes a change; [e.g.]: ‘a chemical agent’; ‘an infectious agent’; 5. [...snip...]; 6. [...snip...]; 7. [...snip...]; (v.): agented, agenting, agents; (tr. v.): to act as an agent or representative for; [e.g.]: ‘Who will agent your next book?’; (intr. v.): to act as an agent or representative. [etymology: Middle English, fr. Latin agens, agent- present participle of agere, ‘to do’. ~ (American Heritage Dictionary).• agent (n.): 1. [...snip...]; 2. an active power or cause; that which has the power to produce an effect; as, ‘heat is a powerful agent’; 3. [...snip...]. ~ (Webster’s 1828 Dictionary).• agency (n.; pl. agencies): 1. the state of being in action or of exerting power; action; operation; instrumentality; [e.g.]: ‘The agency of providence in the natural world’. ~ Woodward, Pref. to Ess. toward Nat. Hist. of Earth; ‘For the first three or four centuries we know next to nothing of the course by which Christianity moved, and the events through which its agency was developed’. ~ De Quincey, (Essenes, I.). 2. a mode of exerting power; a means of producing effects; [e.g.]: ‘But although the introduction of a fluid as an Agent explains nothing, the field as an Agency – i.e., its hydrodynamic laws – explains much’. ~ G. H. Lewis, Probs. of Life and Mind, (I. i. 92); ‘Opinion is the agency through which character adapts external arrangements to itself’. ~ H. Spencer, Social Statics, (p. 517). 3. [...snip...]. 4. [...snip...]; (n.): agential, agentship. [=French agence; fr. Middle Latin agentia, fr. Latin agen(t-)s, ppr. of agere, ‘drive, lead, conduct, manage, perform, do’; =Greek agein, ‘lead, conduct, do’; =Icel. aka, ‘drive’, = Skt. vaj, ‘drive’]. ~ (Century Dictionary).RICHARD: (...) will/volition (with both ego and soul/spirit extinct) is nothing more complicated than intent/ determination. RESPONDENT: Who has this ‘intent/volition’? (a sincere question). RICHARD: Ha ... have your other queries not been sincere, then? Put succinctly: it is this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware that generates intent, and thus volition, or will ... here is how I have described it previously:
Also, and of related interest, there is this:
intellect: the faculty of knowing and reasoning; power of thought; understanding;
analytic intelligence. ~ (Oxford Dictionary) • ‘intellectualise: (1) to furnish a rational structure or meaning for; (2) to avoid psychological insight into (an
emotional problem) by performing an intellectual analysis’. (American Heritage® Dictionary). intellectualism [after Greek ‘intellektualismus’]: 1. (philos.) the doctrine
that knowledge is derived from the action of the intellect or pure reason; 2 devotion to intellectual pursuits; (excessive)
exercise of the intellect rather than the emotions. (Oxford Dictionary). Intelligence is the cognitive faculty of understanding and comprehending (as in intellect and sagacity) ...
which means the cerebral ability to sensibly and thus judiciously think, remember
The whole furore about what intelligence is really is quite amusing: there are people who talk sagely about dolphins, for just one example, as being ‘intelligent’ and will argue their case vigorously and vociferously and scorn IQ (Intelligence Quotient) tests as being a measure of intelligence. Yet when these self-same people turn their attention to ‘outer space’ or ‘deep space’ (as the SETI peoples do), they all of a sudden know precisely what intelligence actually is ... when they say that they are searching for extraterrestrial intelligence they do not for one moment mean that they are looking for ‘intelligent’ creatures like dolphins, for example. No way ... they are looking for what intelligence actually is as per the dictionary definition. ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• At its most simplest intelligence is the ability to anticipate eventualities and develop contingency plans rather than exigent reaction – in a drought or a famine animals, just like plants, unless particularly hardy tend to languish and/or die – in conjunction with the ability to manipulate one’s environs for beneficial purposes ... which means, at its most basic, being conscious of both place and periodicity (the cognisance of both being a sentient creature occupying space and the persistence of such existence over time) and the implications and ramifications of occupation/continuation in spatial extension and of temporal duration and acting accordingly. Intelligence also involves being aware of birth, growth, senescence, and death (but that is another topic). ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Just as a computer’s ‘memory’ bears no relationship to human memory (data-base is a much better word)
so too is ‘artificial intelligence’ a misnomer (data-retrieval/ data-matching system are much better phrases) as it has no
correlation with human intelligence. And it is not just that a computer cannot think (cognitively understand and comprehend) which
makes it not intelligent as, lacking sentience, it not only cannot be conscious (aware) it cannot be self-conscious (self-aware)
either – which is the essential prerequisite for intelligence – because intelligence is not only the faculty of the human
brain thinking with all its understanding (intellect) and comprehension (sagacity) but its cognisance (consciousness or awareness)
of being a body in the world of people, other animals, plants, things and events. And lack of sentience means it cannot be
self-referential – which involves the issue of agency Furthermore, a self-referential organism is also self-interested: it is concerned about its existence, and by extension others’ existence, in that it is biased – it finds water appealing and acid unappealing for example – and being biased is what being self-interested means ... whereas computers are indifferent, as it were, to both their existence and their functions (switched off or on makes no difference to a computer). Lastly, computers are not an agency because they are built by humans to serve human agency (rather than to be an agency even if that be possible) and the first principle of serving an agency is being non-resistant (obedient to the agency) and thus not self-concerned. For an example of ‘artificial intelligence’ being a misnomer: when a computer wins at chess it is actually the programmer – the agency – who designed the programme who wins (achieves an end) via their programme. Which is what makes a computer a remarkable tool for human intelligence to amplify itself through. (Based in part on an article by Eugene Matusov, Mon, 23 Mar 1998) RESPONDENT: Richard, I have some questions: Is ‘human intelligence’ or ‘thinking’ or ‘thought’ (as distinct from the mind of a dog or even a gorilla) the result of or the property of or the ability to abstract? RICHARD: No, not necessarily ... in evolutionary terms the long, slow evolution of intelligence has its roots in the most ‘on the ball’, the most shrewd and/or sharp and/or smart and/or cunning and/or wily and/or sly, and so on, outmanoeuvring the least ‘on the ball’ – the most dumb – and there is nothing abstract about that (the term ‘survival of the fittest’ does not mean the survival of the most muscular, as is often commonly misunderstood, but means those most fitted to the environment live to pass on their genes whilst the least fitted languish and die out). And, even more prosaically, the long, slow evolution of intelligence is also the result of successfully negotiating what has been called the vicissitudes of life: not only obtaining such basic necessities as air, water, food, shelter and clothing (if the weather be inclement) in the face of fire, flood, famine, tempest, vulcanicity, pestilence, disease, and so on, but prospering whilst doing so because of tool-making, for instance, or the utilisation of fire, for another ... none of which are abstract. Intelligence Incidentally, abstract (conjectural) thought is but one of the many ways of thinking: for instance there is practical/impractical thought; pragmatic/imaginative thought; reasoned/ expressive thought; adventitious/ principled thought; prudential/philosophical (or politic/ philosophic) thought; insightful/ intuitive thought; judicious/ injudicious thought; rational/ irrational thought; logical/illogical thought; salubrious/ pathological thought, as well as illative thought (inferential, deductive, inductive thought) and reflective thought (contemplative, meditative, pensive thought) and so on. As thought is broadly categorised as being perceptive thought (sensible thought), or realistic (extrinsic) thought, and
imperceptive thought (intelligible thought), or autistic (intrinsic) thought, then I guess the latter could be broadly categorised as abstract
thought. The Third Alternative (Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body) Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.
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