The intuitive reaction to these suggestions is bound to be negative. When we use the term intelligence , we seem not to be concerned with any kind of intelligence - but with intelligence that is separate from and external to what has to be explained. Some automatic products of intelligent beings are inanimate and non-intelligent. On the other hand, as any Artificial Intelligence buff would confirm, automata can become intelligent, having crossed a certain quantitative or qualitative level of complexity. The weaker form of this statement is that, beyond a certain quantitative or qualitative level of complexity, is it impossible to tell the automatic from the intelligent.
Nature contains everything and, therefore, contains intelligences.
That which contains intelligence is not bound to be intelligent, unless the intelligences contained are functional determinants of the container. Intelligent, conscious, observers determine the very existence of subatomic particles, the constituents of all matter-energy. If other intelligent races populate the universe, this could be the rule, rather than the exception. If Nature is determined to a predominant extent by its contained intelligences it must be teleological. The question whether these automatic or intelligent mechanisms are at work, really deals with an underlying issue, that of consciousness.