Ron: I tend to agree, Snip: At least two major "consensus" definitions of intelligence have been proposed. First, from Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns, a report of a task force convened by the American Psychological Association in 1995:
"Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought. Although these individual differences can be substantial, they are never entirely consistent: a given person's intellectual performance will vary on different occasions, in different domains, as judged by different criteria. Concepts of "intelligence" are attempts to clarify and organize this complex set of phenomena. Although considerable clarity has been achieved in some areas, no such conceptualization has yet answered all the important questions and none commands universal assent. Indeed, when two dozen prominent theorists were recently asked to define intelligence, they gave two dozen somewhat different definitions." A second definition of intelligence comes from "Mainstream Science on Intelligence", which was signed by 52 intelligence researchers in 1994: "A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings-"catching on", "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do." [Krimel] Right, the first example seems to refer to the traditional concept of a kind of generalized intelligence. As your quote points out there is no consensus on what this is. About the closest thing to a concensus I have ever hear is that intelligence IS what intelligence test measure. But there is a bit of common ground centering around the speed of access to short term or working memory. The idea is that this ability makes one faster at testing out new options or at comparing the present to the past. Your second quote seems to be influenced by Howard Gardner's conception of multiple intelligences. It involves the ability to respond and adapt across multiple domains, music, art, athletics, social relationship etc. Another view breaks it down into fluid intelligence which is the ability to assimilate and use new information and crystallized intelligence which is the ability to use knowledge previously acquired. The two seem to be of about equal importance until late adulthood when fluid intelligence declines while crystallized intelligence grows and becomes more significant. I see almost no connection between any of this and the MoQ account of intellect. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
