It's the Turing box thing you're on about, isn't it, Aesthete? You can create an illusion of understanding based on identification of form, not content.
It's generally agreed humans are the best symbolisers and this ability to think in abstract allowed the large-scale, complex social forms that allowed like production, and control of environment. I think a more important question than 'is this intelligent behaviour?' is 'is this evolutionarily-effective behaviour?' and clearly it is from the (over-)preponderance of our species on this planet.
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