RE: What is the best theory for what intelligence is?
December 6, 2015 at 9:46 pm
(This post was last modified: December 6, 2015 at 9:47 pm by bennyboy.)
We use all kinds of words meaningfully that don't/can't have precise definitions: beauty, value, love.
It's obvious that some people are dumb as posts, some people are brilliant, and some people are in between. And when we zoom in on details, of course it's very hard to define exactly what it is; you probably couldn't zoom in on Rembrandt's brush control and find any measure of artistic ability there. Certainly, a number can't measure a person's worth, any more than shoe size or eye color.
What we CAN do is measure people's vocabulary, their ability to solve puzzles, their recall, their reading speed, etc. etc. If a person is good at a lot of things, we can generally say that school or work tasks will be easier for them than for others. Our problem historically will be that we look at these independent of other real-life skills, like leadership, charisma (try measuring that!), stamina, emotional stability, etc. which affect our ability to get real-life results.
But we'd have to be pretty unintelligent not to accept that intelligence is very real, and that it matters.
It's obvious that some people are dumb as posts, some people are brilliant, and some people are in between. And when we zoom in on details, of course it's very hard to define exactly what it is; you probably couldn't zoom in on Rembrandt's brush control and find any measure of artistic ability there. Certainly, a number can't measure a person's worth, any more than shoe size or eye color.
What we CAN do is measure people's vocabulary, their ability to solve puzzles, their recall, their reading speed, etc. etc. If a person is good at a lot of things, we can generally say that school or work tasks will be easier for them than for others. Our problem historically will be that we look at these independent of other real-life skills, like leadership, charisma (try measuring that!), stamina, emotional stability, etc. which affect our ability to get real-life results.
But we'd have to be pretty unintelligent not to accept that intelligence is very real, and that it matters.
