Some Thoughts About "Intelligence"

Musings

I must have a different definition for intelligence than other people.

I guess I define intelligence not so much as how easy it is to acquire knowledge and remember difficult or complex things, but what one does with the assets and resources one has. A person can have a very high IQ and do nothing with it. They can sit around smoking pot, watching tv, reading trashy novels—whatever—but to me no matter what their IQ is, if they are not using it to think it seems to me maybe it ought not to be called intelligence. I mean I understand there are reasons people do things and all that (if anyone understands that it is me, it seems. I am the one who is always defending people’s inaction) but what you choose to do with your intellectual resources I think is a better measure of intelligence. The acquisition, retention or rejection of values, the drive to improve one’s self and/or one’s lot in life (and how one does that), whether one chooses to stretch one’s mind or just go along with the flow. I think questioning things, looking at things with an inquiring and questioning mind, being open to change and new ideas, looking for the connections between everything, examining one’s own beliefs and values on an ongoing basis—these I think are indicators of intelligence. Someone might be able to score perfectly on tests without ever cracking a book, they might be able to breeze through the most advanced mathematics or physics or even philosophy, but if they are not able to take what they have learned and apply it in some meaningful way in their own life and view of the world, I see their “intelligence” as being, well, not “intelligence.” It is facility, it is capability, it is capacity. But it is the meaningful understanding and application of ideas—being able to take concepts that come to you in one form or context and apply them in some other completely different form or context—which I see certain friends doing time and again which is the crux of my definition of intelligence. And also the ability to relate to your fellow humans in a compassionate, creative, meaningful way is an important quality that denotes to me intelligence. Some people who have great capacity for learning and understanding concepts have a great deal of trouble relating to other people. I don’t deny they have a great “intellect,” but if they are assholes, I think there is something fundamentally important missing from them. That takes away from their “intelligence”.

An argument for a different definition of “intelligence” that takes in the more human aspects of intelligence rather than just the mechanical.

In fact, that’s an interesting idea in itself, that of intelligence, or “IQ” being based on tests of sort of mechanistic measures of capability. It goes right along with that old and worn out concept (which is particularly prevalent in the Christian European tradition) of the conquering of nature, the separation of humans from the natural world, the greater worthiness of rationality over emotion. The Cartesian conflict, but which was developed as a concept long before Descartes.

So, that’s my little treatise on intelligence.

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