sparked in part by destinydiva's blog entry, i've been musing on this subject for some time already. i've been meaning for some time to write a blog entry about this for at least a good half year or so. what can i say, sometimes real life intrudes. :>
as that blog entry and its comments illustrated, there's a variety of notions about what this word means, and that is only right: it's a fairly fundamental concept, the idea of intelligence, and accordingly, it makes sense that each of us would have some subjective notions associated with this.
i began as usual with the basic starting places for such blog entries. while dissatisfied with both the dictionary.com and wikipedia articles that i was able to examine, there are doubtless useful bits to be found in each.
obviously, intelligence has a meaning in the context of knowledge and/or information, such as utilized by militaries and espionage services the world over through recorded history, but this isn't the way in which i wish to examine the word today. no, i'm talking about a property of the mind, characterized in both pages as a capacity for comprehending and logic. this is the lowest common denominator i can discern between those two resources, and as such, will serve as my beginning point.
when we speak of someone being intelligent, we can obviously mean many things by that: someone who always has a different way of looking at things, someone who knows a lot, perhaps someone who reasons well or a host of other things. perhaps i'm unusual, but when i speak of intelligence, i mean several things:
exceptional capacity for understanding:
by this, i refer to the ability to comprehend both abstract ideas (e.g., imaginary numbers in algebra), as well as less ephemeral concepts (if an object costs $2.25 and i give a cashier $5, i should receive $2.75 in change). to me, someone who is intelligent can do those things more readily than the norm.
ability to absorb new information and extrapolate based upon it:
if one understands a thing, then to me, one mark of intelligence is the ability to employ that new information in some fashion. i suppose this overlaps with understanding: after all, if one understands something, one can then utilize that new knowledge. to me, this has always been part and parcel of intelligence.
these two things together then are, at least to me, native traits a person possesses. they aren’t skills, in the sense that (IMV) they are not properties one can learn and then improve upon as one might learn and then develop such as the ability to drive, or a new language, because they are about how we learn.
there’s also the concept of emotional intelligence: to wit, the ability to manage social interactions with some measure of success. and it seems to me that however intelligent we may be, the ability to deal with people is a specialized aspect of the two traits i described above, and moreover, is a skill: we learn how to deal with people successfully and constantly learn how to improve it. so while i set great store by emotional intelligence, it seems to me to be a misnomer to call it intelligence. i mean, sure, we might say someone who’s rude is an idiot, but primarily, that’s b/c we know that rudeness is a failing strategy in dealing with folks.
one way in which i’ve described intelligence previously, in discussions i’ve had previously, is to liken it to a kind of engine: “raw brainpower”, the ability to calculate and theorize. the traits i describe as being components of intelligence are to me the best ways to measure “raw brainpower”.
those are the things that intelligence means to me, but enough about me: to you, what is intelligence?
so what does intelligence mean to you? do the traits i described seem to cover it, or do the completely miss the mark? or do you find the notion of intelligence as discussed here just plain goofy? comment & let me know. :>
ed
n.
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- The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge.
- The faculty of thought and reason.
- Superior powers of mind.