This is in response to a question posed by Dave over at Cognitive Daily. Dave cited a quote from a book he was reading:

Meaning is rooted in agency (the ability to act and choose), and agency depends on embodiment. In fact, this is a hard-won lesson that the artificial intelligence community has finally begun to grasp after decades of frustration: Nothing truly intelligent is going to develop in a bodiless mainframe. In real life there is no such thing as disembodied consciousness.

Discussion was then opened up regarding the plausibility of the above statement. The resulting comments quickly turned into the classic debate of “what is intelligence?” To be fair, I have no good answer to this, but I don’t believe this matters. In fact, I believe trying to define intelligence is detrimental to understanding how intelligence came to be, and therefore, how to create it.

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I began this response as a comment to an article over at The Frontal Cortex titled Reality is Fake?, but it quickly grew too long in length. My thoughts and response to Jonah after the jump.

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