Our cat started me thinking on this as it came into our kitchen one day. It jumped at the sudden noise when a saucepan was dropped, then walked sensibly round a chair that was in its way. Is our cat just reacting. or conscious, or intelligent, or what?
In our eyes, intelligence and consciousness are different because homo sapiens ponder things and felines don't. But that doesn't mean the cat has no standing. Descartes was wrong to say, 'I think, therefore I am'. We don't exist because we think. We exist anyway.
Consciousness is a principle of life - that is, a mutual arrangement with the environment that evolved to sustain everything living on Earth. In us, it has adapted over time into the uniquely complex interrelationship we call intelligence.
Words can mislead. Consciousness and intelligence are the same thing, one an elaboration of the other, distinguished only because our evolved minds can think and speak of them the way we do.
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Some readers may prefer this paraphrase:
We tend to think of consciousness and intelligence as different. Yet everything alive can experience the world without knowing its problems.
Other forms of life are conscious like this - able to comprehend without needing to theorise about it.
In humans, this basic consciousness has evolved into what we call intelligence. The two things appear to be different because we've evolved to think they are.
