It's true that intelligence can make someone more capable of arguing for fallacy. But they can only do so with axioms that they're not arguing for. If someone takes "God exists" as an axiom as opposed to a conclusion to be made, then it's generally possible to oppose all arguments against it. If one "knows" God exists, then the issue becomes a matter of explaining away the problems with the thought. Why is there no evidence? Because he wants it to be secret! Duh. Clearly, with no evidence, however, I don't see any compelling reason to believe.
You’ve quickly found the logical problems of proof, the basis of the study of epistemology. An engineer can put a man on the moon without ever considering these questions. Thus, the engineer is intelligent, a rocket scientist literally, but if asked to consider God, might say, “Huh, never thought about it, could be."
Anselm proposed the ontological argument in 1078, a blink ago in the history of humans. At the time, he was considered brilliant. Even today, it takes a degree of intelligence to understand the logic and see the flaws. It helps to understand evolution and cosmology, to poke further holes in it. Had I been alive in 1078 I have not doubt I would have accepted Anselm as correct, but I have the help of many philosophers since so I see the ontological argument provides no real explanatory power.
As to your comment regarding being intelligent yet illogical, you might have to give some kind of example of what this intelligence even means. If a person doesn't know that A cannot simultaneously be ~A, then by what grounds do you call him intelligent?
You have to imagine that no one told you that. It’s easy once someone points it out, but imagine you are a genius cave man, trying to explain “rock, not rock" to your fellow cave dwellers. And don’t forget Deepak Chopra, he could drive you in circles saying the moon doesn’t exist when no one is looking at it, except it does it exists, because… whatever. It took highly intelligent people to see that A ~A is an important building block of knowledge. The reason it is considered simple now is that we learn algebra in grade school.
We have accounts of people like Srinivasa Ramanujan, who showed knowledge of complex math without having been taught, so we know that intelligence comes before knowledge. We don’t see this as much anymore because if someone is smart, we get them to school. We want them to get the advantage of accumulated knowledge as quick as possible. Also knowledge is disseminated better, so with hard work, someone with less “natural" intelligence can do just as well. So, in that sense, IQ doesn't matter.
You’ve quickly found the logical problems of proof, the basis of the study of epistemology. An engineer can put a man on the moon without ever considering these questions. Thus, the engineer is intelligent, a rocket scientist literally, but if asked to consider God, might say, “Huh, never thought about it, could be."
I wouldn't immediately equate a rocket scientist with intelligence. Perhaps because I'm an engineer myself, but I see engineering principles as merely knowledge that one was taught and applies in their narrow field. In my view, intelligence transcends what one was taught but finds unique ways of puzzling together those pieces of knowledge in a way that is not obvious to those less intelligent. It's perhaps the ability to pull in pieces of one's understanding into an equation that others may not have even considered since it wasn't in their textbook to do so. Perhaps intelligence can be determined to some degree by how many uses one can think of for a paperclip in 2 minutes. But still, that has a lot to do with a person's experience. A Luddite is not likely to come up with the use of opening a CD-ROM tray, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't have thought of it had they known afore-time that CD-ROM trays have a release hole. So it can't fairly be measured even though I might argue that is what intelligence is on a grander scale than paperclips.
Anselm proposed the ontological argument in 1078, a blink ago in the history of humans. At the time, he was considered brilliant. Even today, it takes a degree of intelligence to understand the logic and see the flaws. It helps to understand evolution and cosmology, to poke further holes in it. Had I been alive in 1078 I have not doubt I would have accepted Anselm as correct, but I have the help of many philosophers since so I see the ontological argument provides no real explanatory power.
I've never liked Anselm's argument. Perhaps I'm not intelligent enough to see the intelligence behind it. It sounds about as wise as arguing that God must exist because a banana is so perfectly suited for our hand and mouth. We'll just forget about pomegranates then I guess. It makes no sense to me whatsoever that the perceiving of something greater in your mind makes it exist. Imagine the greatest unicorn EVER. Now, if it were real it would be better! Therefore, unicorns exist. Ehhh, I don't follow. Is there really logic here at all?
You have to imagine that no one told you that. It’s easy once someone points it out, but imagine you are a genius cave man, trying to explain “rock, not rock" to your fellow cave dwellers.
I don't understand why someone would need to point it out. Perhaps when devising logical formulas, but not in day to day understanding and manipulating of the world around you. Anyone who thinks something can both be a rock and not a rock simultaneously is clearly not very intelligent except in the means of a play on words or utilization of a riddle. What makes this caveman genius if he doesn't even know that a rock can't be both a rock and not a rock simultaneously? My 4-year-old understands this and is by no means intelligent as of yet. Intelligence is clearly relative (i.e. a genius caveman might be an idiot today), but it still bases the concept around something that should be definable even if not particularly testable.
We have accounts of people like Srinivasa Ramanujan, who showed knowledge of complex math without having been taught, so we know that intelligence comes before knowledge. We don’t see this as much anymore because if someone is smart, we get them to school. We want them to get the advantage of accumulated knowledge as quick as possible. Also knowledge is disseminated better, so with hard work, someone with less “natural" intelligence can do just as well. So, in that sense, IQ doesn't matter.
It's difficult to disseminate intelligence with knowledge. Intelligence uses the knowledge one has, but without knowing full well the knowledge one has, it makes it difficult to test them. Perhaps a test would revolve around providing the only data applicable to the test, but then it might be too obvious and too fresh in the mind to be a fair comparison to drudging up the troves of knowledge built within one's life to solve a particular problem. Can intelligence be related to problem-solving via past experiences and knowledge?
Sorry, C.M., the article was over thirty years ago, before the Internet. Perhaps contacting the USC Psychology department can give you some direction.
Quoting C.M.:
Btw, could you elaborate on succinctness being clarity’s core? I’m not sure I understand
No, that would invalidate the statement which stands for itself. :lol:
Occam
Code Monkey;
If you don’t think the people who sent rockets to the moon were intelligent (and innovative), then this conversation is taking a weird turn.
You apparently missed my point about Anselm, he was a genius in his time, but the ontological argument is not a smart one now. But it does take some thinking to understand what he was trying to say and understand where exactly the logical flaw is. If you think I’m wrong, then provide a formal dis-proof (not cut and pasted).
Also the cave man. The genius is the one who could come up with A ~A as a general principle. Try explaining that to your 4 year old. In the case of a rock, he or she will probably argue that the rock could also be a hammer.
Your last paragraph is confusing. I never said intelligence is disseminated. I said knowledge, i.e. facts are. That’s just dictionary definitions of the words. To your final question, yes, that’s my point.
Code Monkey;
If you don’t think the people who sent rockets to the moon were intelligent (and innovative), then this conversation is taking a weird turn.
All I can do is reiterate that I find a difference between intelligence and knowledge. They're knowledgeable and perhaps some were innovative, but everyone has their part in the big picture. I work on the software for car transmissions along with a ton of other people. I don't need to be intelligent for what I do. I simply need some knowledge. Of course, when someone knows nothing about what I do, they assume I'm intelligent rather than simply knowledgeable.
You apparently missed my point about Anselm, he was a genius in his time, but the ontological argument is not a smart one now. But it does take some thinking to understand what he was trying to say and understand where exactly the logical flaw is. If you think I'm wrong, then provide a formal dis-proof (not cut and pasted).
A "genius in his time" doesn't make him intelligent, per se. Maybe relatively speaking he had the highest intelligence at the time, sure, but I'm not sure why that's important. He wouldn't be considered intelligent today with such crazy conclusions. Again, I can't see logic in the statements to begin with so I'm not sure how one would go about disproving it other than saying, just because something is better if it's real doesn't make it real. Just like my unicorn example. I never saw any resemblance of intelligence in it so perhaps I'm misunderstanding his point.
Also the cave man. The genius is the one who could come up with A ~A as a general principle. Try explaining that to your 4 year old. In the case of a rock, he or she will probably argue that the rock could also be a hammer.
I'm not sure I follow. A rock can indeed also be a hammer. My 4-year-old can also tell me it's a rock and then say I'm wrong when I tell him it's not a rock. He understands that it can't both be a rock and not a rock and yet still be able to recognize it as other things. Then again, he'd probably have trouble seeing it as a hammer in the same way he has difficulty understanding that I'm not name-calling when I call him a human. "No! Me Calvin!"
Your last paragraph is confusing. I never said intelligence is disseminated. I said knowledge, i.e. facts are. That’s just dictionary definitions of the words. To your final question, yes, that’s my point.
I meant to say it's hard to separate intelligence from knowledge. Or perhaps "intellectual capability" is a better way to put it. I imagine that a person's intellectual capability (or their IQ) is a matter of being capable of using the knowledge within them to come to conclusions. It's the ability to correlate ideas within them and logically bring them out into new ideas. Whether or not the foundations are true, I suppose, is unimportant so long as they believe they're true and managed to recall them when needed and use them in logical processing to deduce more conclusions. If a person were intelligent but knew nothing of history, he'd make for a lousy president. A historian knowing all of history but lacking intelligence would similarly make a terrible president because he wouldn't be able to draw any conclusions or lessons from it that would be applicable in any of his modern-day scenarios. It takes both to be useful.
I meant to say it's hard to separate intelligence from knowledge. Or perhaps "intellectual capability" is a better way to put it. I imagine that a person's intellectual capability (or their IQ) is a matter of being capable of using the knowledge within them to come to conclusions. It's the ability to correlate ideas within them and logically bring them out into new ideas. Whether or not the foundations are true, I suppose, is unimportant so long as they believe they're true and managed to recall them when needed and use them in logical processing to deduce more conclusions. If a person were intelligent but knew nothing of history, he'd make for a lousy president. A historian knowing all of history but lacking intelligence would similarly make a terrible president because he wouldn't be able to draw any conclusions or lessons from it that would be applicable in any of his modern-day scenarios. It takes both to be useful.
I'm going to drop the other stuff for now. Not sure why that isn't clicking for us.
Basically, intelligence is the ability to acquire knowledge and knowledge is the quantifiable stuff. So I agree with your example of the President. What I said a couple posts back is, someone born with less ability who studies hard could be indistinguishable from someone born with more ability who studies a little. IQ tests are supposed to measure the ability, and maybe they do, I don't know how that works. I know SAT tests are controversial due to their cultural biases, although I haven't heard much on that lately.
There is more to imtelligence than knowledge and even the ability to acquire knowledge. It also has a lot to do with the ability to follow a line of logic–often many and contradictory lines of logic at the same time. Having a lot of information (knowledge) is not intelligence. Some people have photographic memories and can acquire a lot of information. They don’t all know what to do with it. Intelligence has more to do with categorizing, weighing and assessing information. Creativity, maturity, willingness to take risks and the ability to focus and think logically outside the box are also necessary. Those things are hard and may be impossible to measure. Acquiring lots of information is not intelligence, though a lot of people think it is. It’s one of the reasons that students who manage to get into good universities often fail.
I'm going to drop the other stuff for now. Not sure why that isn't clicking for us.
Maybe we just don't realize we actually agree while we talk as if we don't? :-)
Basically, intelligence is the ability to acquire knowledge and knowledge is the quantifiable stuff. So I agree with your example of the President.
The ability to acquire knowledge is similar to my understanding of intelligence. I don't mean the ability to read a book, but rather to make new knowledge from the knowledge one already possesses. For example, the ability to presume that if an apple killed person A that it is potentially unwise to eat the apple yourself. That's intelligence. You derive understanding from something that wasn't spoken or taught. It's even more intelligent to surmise the other potentials that the person was allergic rather than poisoned and perhaps more tests are necessary. It's more intelligence to presume that maybe just the one apple was poisoned and not all apples or even just the one species. The only piece of knowledge was "Apple killed man" yet an intelligent person derives all kinds of meaning and possibilities from it to be studied, determined, considered, or just held in the back of the mind in case more data comes forward. I don't know how well that can be tested. It can be tested whether or not someone remembers the story of the man killed by an apple, but that's not intelligence. That's just knowledge.
What I said a couple posts back is, someone born with less ability who studies hard could be indistinguishable from someone born with more ability who studies a little.
I agree. That doesn't mean they're equal intelligence, but simply that it's hard to distinguish (or separate) the two.
IQ tests are supposed to measure the ability, and maybe they do, I don't know how that works.
Perhaps to some extent. My guess is it's a bit lacking but really only from my perspective of another person's intelligence. The intelligence might be there and perhaps the test is accurate, but because we don't derive our extra meanings from the same base of knowledge, it's hard to really know. So I wonder if there's even any value in it. For a president, I'd want to test both IQ and knowledge of which the IQ could utilize. Just saying, "I'm a Mensan" means nothing if you've never pondered any great things to actually make the IQ worthwhile.
There is more to imtelligence than knowledge and even the ability to acquire knowledge. It also has a lot to do with the ability to follow a line of logic--often many and contradictory lines of logic at the same time. Having a lot of information (knowledge) is not intelligence. Some people have photographic memories and can acquire a lot of information. They don't all know what to do with it. Intelligence has more to do with categorizing, weighing and assessing information. Creativity, maturity, willingness to take risks and the ability to focus and think logically outside the box are also necessary. Those things are hard and may be impossible to measure. Acquiring lots of information is not intelligence, though a lot of people think it is. It's one of the reasons that students who manage to get into good universities often fail.
If we change "the ability to acquire knowledge" to "the ability to derive knowledge" I think it's more fitting. I think intelligence is probably deriving knowledge rather than simply acquiring it. See my previous post for an example. But yeah, I've heard of people with photographic memories basically being incapable of doing much reasoning with the data. I think it gives a strong argument that there's an inverse relationship of a sort. The more information you have, the more difficult it is to draw the important links. So if your brain is good at filtering out useless stuff you'll have more ability to use what you have to draw greater conclusions. Of course, it's not simply a matter of "less data" but "less useless" and "more useful" data coupled with the ability to draw it out as needed which probably means more connections to more ideas. I can't remember the lyrics to some songs until I start singing the whole thing because the connection is so weak and only connected to the previous couple words or notes. So I can't draw that up easily. Intelligence is probably that skill of linking useful information for better retrieval of applicable data to the situation. That kind of goes back to the paperclip idea I guess.
I think the very nature of intelligence outsmarts the pre-engineering methods we use to measure it … meaning intelligence per se is more complex than any method used to measure itself.
I.Q. tests, it would seem to me, are paradigms of circular logic or false witnesses to itself declaring this or that, none of which is complete. Intelligence becomes a verdict based on the limited parameters employed which as implied, are nothing more than subsets of the whole and who knows how far that extends.
Any institution which by its own majority creates or proclaims an elite of the so-called hyper-intelligent is one I would be extremely “dubious” about. It is not rare for consensus to counter fact whether in society as a whole or it’s other in-corporations.
I don't recall the specifics, but a while ago a psychologist at USC did a statistical analysis (I'm not sure of what) and found there were fourteen distinctly different types of intelligence.
Many years ago some members of the local Unitarian church asked me to apply to join Mensa. From what I saw of their behavior and thinking, I decided that Mensa must define ego as intelligence. These people weren't very clear thinking but since they had passed some test that Mensa gives they were sure they were brilliant.
Occam
Yes, you are right. the book "Management Intelligence: Sense and Nonsense for the Successful Manager" By Adrian Furnham mentions 14 types, some of these are Analytical, Bodily-kinesthetic, Creative, Emotional, Interpersonal, Mathematical, Musical, Naturalistic etc.
IQ tests do, if constructed and administered appropriately, validly and reliably measure the specific (rather constricted) defined kind of intelligence for which they are designed (within a certain +/- standard error). Each well constructed IQ test tends to have defined categories which they are testing. One IQ test may focus on crystalized IQ (knowledge that one has learned from experience) IQ and fluid IQ (facility with new problem solving). Another IQ test might focus on Verbal IQ, Mechanical IQ, etc. There are non-verbal IQ tests that can be used to estimate an IQ for persons who would be unable to effectively communicate with the examiner. But it is not necessarily accurate to generalize beyond what the IQ actually measures to say that a particular IQ means that one person is generally more intelligent than another. Intelligence (as we tend to think of it) has various and sundry dimensions. No single IQ test (AFAIK) is designed to measure all of the possible dimensions. Then there is the problem of deciding what “intelligence” really consists of, in order to decide what all of the dimensions are, and what weight to give each. IOW, what are all of the dimensions of “intelligence” and what part does each play.
So again, IQ tests can validly and reliably measure what they are designed to measure, but ONLY the particular defined components of “intelligence” for which they are designed.
To answer one of the questions at the beginning of this thread, there are many people with high measured IQ’s who are also theists.
I would be curious as to whether there is difference in the number of theists vs. non theists among persons who score high quotients across the board in, for example, all of the 14 types of “intelligence” as suggested by Furnam. Or at least to see persons who test with high quotients in the most accepted standardized tests for “intelligence” plus high quotients in “emotional intelligence” plus high quotients in “interpersonal intelligence” plus high quotients in “creative intelligence”, and then determine if there is a significant difference among the number of theists vs. non theists.
My guess is that the percentage of non-theists/theists would be way higher than the percentage of non-theists/theists in the general population.
(My personal pet idea, is that theism is largely a developmental issue. i.e., if anyone could live long enough, and continue learning and developing, and overcome blockages to development, they would eventually become non-theists.)
Perhaps there are different kinds of intelligence, different kinds of knowledge, different kinds of wisdom? No one has all of all of them. We're actually all a mixed bag of all kinds of different things. How does Mensa define intelligence?
They define it with an itelligence test that tests for several intellectual abilities. But all IQ tests are flawed or inadequate in some way. They can't test for everything. A person with low intelligence will not pass the test, but even those who do pass have their intellectual deficits. And then there are differences in understanding and personality. People who test high on IQ tests are as different from each other as people in a mixed population. You'd be better off finding a group with similar interests than depending on IQ scores alone. And people who score high on IQ tests and who think that is a particular advantage socially are not necessarily interesting people. They can certainly be supercilious snobs.
Lois
Some persons with a diagnoses of Asperger’s have high IQs while also having profound challenges in interpreting and responding effectively, or even appropriately, in social interactions.
Some persons with a diagnoses of Asperger's have high IQs while also having profound challenges in interpreting and responding effectively, or even appropriately, in social interactions.
Comes to mind the story of an autistic girl who spent many years in an institution for the severely handicapped, until someone gave her a computer.
She now travels on lecture tours, where she communicates through her computer. Turns out she has a very high IQ and great wisdom, but just could not express her thoughts verbally. I can only imagine the sheer hell this girl lived in for many years.
I don't recall the specifics, but a while ago a psychologist at USC did a statistical analysis (I'm not sure of what) and found there were fourteen distinctly different types of intelligence.
Many years ago some members of the local Unitarian church asked me to apply to join Mensa. From what I saw of their behavior and thinking, I decided that Mensa must define ego as intelligence. These people weren't very clear thinking but since they had passed some test that Mensa gives they were sure they were brilliant.
Occam
Don’t know if anyone’s mentioned this yet, but I’ve always found it fascinating that Richard Feynman, who had an IQ of “only” 115, somehow managed to win the Nobel Prize in physics. Simply put, the guy was a genius by any reasonable standard–except IQ. I think that says something about IQ.
(By the way, I was measured as being in the 98th percentile of IQ in elementary school, put in the TAG (Talented And Gifted) program, Olympics of the Mind, represented my middle school in the Oregon Writing Festival, etc.–and yet, as an adult, I’m a complete failure in virtually every aspect of life. I just like to mention that whenever I can…you know, the high IQ part.)
Perhaps there are different kinds of intelligence, different kinds of knowledge, different kinds of wisdom? No one has all of all of them. We're actually all a mixed bag of all kinds of different things. How does Mensa define intelligence?
The ability to pass IQ tests that support their preconceived ideas about intelligence.
Lois
Don't know if anyone's mentioned this yet, but I've always found it fascinating that Richard Feynman, who had an IQ of "only" 115, somehow managed to win the Nobel Prize in physics. Simply put, the guy was a genius by any reasonable standard--except IQ. I think that says something about IQ.
(By the way, I was measured as being in the 98th percentile of IQ in elementary school, put in the TAG (Talented And Gifted) program, Olympics of the Mind, represented my middle school in the Oregon Writing Festival, etc.--and yet, as an adult, I'm a complete failure in virtually every aspect of life. I just like to mention that whenever I can...you know, the high IQ part.)
There are plenty of high IQ folks who suck at critical thinking. It seems to me that there are plenty more who are seriously deficient in intellectual integrity. You, however, seem to do well with both.
As far as being a failure in life, that's a value judgment. Ultimately, we all die, so in that respect, we all pretty much tie, in the end, with regards to failing.
"All men are created equal." is a nice ideal. But, "All men die." is an absolute fact. Enjoy the meantime.