Draft:Intelligence

[gL.edu] This article gathers contributions being developed by Giorgio Färber, within the context of the Conceptual clarification about "Information, Knowledge and Philosophy", under the supervisión of J.M. Díaz Nafría.

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Introduction

"Intelligence is not to make no mistakes But quickly to see how to make them good." (Bertold Brecht, The Decision (play), 1930) With this short definition Brecht effectively defines intelligence as the ability to quickly adapt to a new situation.

Etymology

The word intelligence stems from the Latin noun intelligentia. Which translates to "the action or faculty of understanding". It can also be derived from the verb intellegere, meaning "to understand". Another definition of intellegere is "the action of acquiring, processing, and storing of information."

Today intelligence is defined as "The faculty of understanding; intellect. Also as a count noun: a mental manifestation of this faculty, a capacity to understand." The fact that the meaning of the word has been so well preserved, after having been translated into many languages over the course of several centuries, shows how important it is to the basics of philosophy.

Definitions throughout History

Diogenes of Appolonia (~500 BC)

Probably one of the earliest definitions in history. He defined intelligence - noesis, in ancient Greek, an intuitive and rational way of thinking that defines and grasps the universe - as air. He thought of neosis as the mind itself, so in a way intelligence is what causes a being's existence. This is also reinforced by his thought of air being inherent to intelligence and that it provides intelligence to beings. He dubbed the provided intelligence as air-intelligence. Over the course of existence living beings also give off air-intelligence and once they run out of it, they die. This way other beings can gain intelligence. Furthermore, he thinks of air of as a divine being - as God -, because he thinks of it as a form of life essence that is all knowing and can express itself in many different forms. Effectively one can think of a soul as a dense version of air-intelligence. Every being has a soul that is provided by the air and once one passes the soul returns to the greater existence of air, providing intelligence to other souls. Diogenes also explained different forms of intelligence with the five senses. Different beings breathe differently with different amounts of air, resulting in a better or worse perception of their surroundings with, for example, their hearing. This way one can perceive air-intelligence as a kind of medium that transfers information. While the medium also affects the being’s predisposition to receive the information. He also explains pain and pleasure through different concentrations of air in the blood. Stating that when the blood flows well throughout the body, the air is well incorporated in it, but when they repel each other, the blood coagulates - resulting in pain. On top of that, the different levels of intelligence are a result of the different qualities of air. The more damp the air is, the lower the intelligence of the creates. He proclaims that in order to become more intelligent, and to live a good life, one needs to seek out warm, dry, and swift air, and to let it permeate one’s body. Finally, he also explains fertilization via air-intelligence. The sperm is provided with air through the blood and thus it instills intelligence into a new being.

Zeno of Citium (334-262 BC)

The founder of the school of stoicism. One of his believes was that practical intelligence (PI) is a form of understanding ones surrounding. PI is the root to living well, a virtue, and wisdom. It is always good. Thus, living well usually includes PI. Conclusively, the wiser one becomes the better life choices one makes; hence, their life becomes better. Another conclusion one can get from this definition is that intelligence is the basis of morality. Without intelligence one would just follow their instincts and ignore the needs of other beings.

Plotonius (204-270 AD)

The founder of Neoplatonism. His definition of intelligence was part of his definition of spiritual cosmology. All living beings emanate from three elements: The One, the Intelligence, and the Soul. The One's existence is independent of the Intelligence and the Soul, while also being their foundation. The Intelligence or Mind (Nous) is the source of being. It can be seen as the consciousness of the One. Plotonius once stated: "to think and to be are one and the same” (V.9.5; Parmenides, fragment 3). This is an important step in cognitive philosophy, as it starts to define what it means to exist. The Soul is entangled with the Intelligence, and it materializes and extends the spiritual actions of the mind. In a way the One can be seen as the imaginary space where the Intelligence, the mind, takes place. Meanwhile the Soul is the body that executes the actions the mind wants to achieve.

Alan Turing (1912-1954 AD)

He was probably the first cognitivist, as he defined the basic logic of how data is received, processed, organized, and stored. However, he also created one of the best thought experiments to describe behaviorism: The Turing test. In behaviorism intelligence is not defined by thoughts - the mind -, but by actions of the being. The path of logic, of how the being came to this action, is irrelevant; only the result, the action, matters. In his thought experiment, Turing basically states, if a machine can come to the same results of a given problem as a human can, one can infer that the machine is intelligent. As it imitated the human’s behavior successfully, and a human is intelligent. Hence, Turing's definition of intelligence is the ability to come to an intelligent solution to any given problem. This definition opened the door to the existence of artificial intelligence.

Howard Gardner (b.1943 AD)

Gardner defined the existence of intelligence with eight criteria:

1. "the potential for brain isolation by brain damage": This effectively means a vital type of intelligence can be isolated during brain damage, to ensure survival.
2. "it's place in evolutionary history": The prioritization of isolating and protecting a vital intelligence can be the result of evolution, to ensure survival.
3. "the presence of core operations": Effectively being able to interact with their surrounding through senses.
4. "susceptibility to encoding": A system needs to be able to accurately and systematically transfer and receive data.
5. "a distinct developmental progression": The ability to learn and accumulate knowledge.
6. "the existence of idiot-savants, prodigies and other exceptional people": In a category of beings, there needs to be outliers in both the spectrum of high and low intelligence.
7. "support from experimental psychology": The seventh and eighth category both rely on experiments done in studies. One such experiment would be: a person having to hold a conversation while walking and after a few minutes instead of walking they need to solve a crossword puzzle, while maintaining the conversation. The first task seems much more plausible, meaning two different types of intelligence are in play. On the other hand, the second task might seem impossible for most, thus the same type of intelligence is used for both tasks.
8. "support from psychometric findings": see definition of 7.

If all these criteria applied to an activity, Garner defined it as intelligence. This finding supported his developed of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences.

Theory of Multiple Intelligences

Howard Gardner proposes there to be not just one type of intelligence, but eight:

The Eight Intelligences

Intelligence	End-State	Core Components
Logical-mathematical	Scientist Mathematician	Sensitivity to, and capacity to discern, logical or numerical patterns; ability to handle long chains of reasoning.
Linguistic	Poet Journalist	Sensitivity to the sounds, rhythms, and meanings of words; sensitivity to the different functions of language.
Musical	Composer Violinist	Abilities to produce and appreciate rhythm, pitch, and timbre; appreciation of the forms of musical expressiveness.
Spatial	Navigator Sculptor	Capacities to perceive the visual-spatial world accurately and to perform transformations on one's initial perceptions.
Bodily-kinesthetic	Dancer Athlete	Abilities to control one's body movements and to handle objects skillfully.
Interpersonal	Therapist Salesman	Capacities to discern and respond appropriately to the moods, temperaments, motivations, and desires of other people.
Intrapersonal	Person with detailed, accurate self-knowledge	Access to one's own feelings and the ability, to discriminate among them and draw upon them to guide behavior; knowledge of one's own strengths, weaknesses, desires, and intelligence.
Naturalistic	Farmer Biological Scientist	Ability to make acute discriminations of flora and fauna, to make other consequential distinctions in the natural world, and to use this ability productively.

This revelation shows that intelligence is more complex than a problem that is decided with true or false. Furthermore, a door for criticism towards the educational system is opened. Most systems do not facilitate all types of intelligence equally, nearly neglecting some. One should also note that consciousness is not a necessity for intelligence to exist, as it is only the result of a strong intrapersonal intelligence.

Different "beings" with Intelligence

Generally, we link intelligence with a living being. Nonetheless, thinkers like Turing suggest the existence of artificial intelligence (AI) - a non-living being. The fact that something can be considered a being while not being alive can be well explained by combining the idea of Plotinus and Gardner. Plotinus linked existence to the act of thinking, while Gardner defines thinking with his core components. Thus, anything that is able to successfully execute these components, should be considered a being. In conclusion, the moment anything or system shows forms of intelligence, one can define it as a being - living, non-living, or artificial.

Testing for Intelligence

Having defined intelligence and its spectrum, leaves the question of "How to measure intelligence?" open. Over the course of history many tests have been developed. These tests have been generalized to three different beings, to account for different features of the different systems. For example, the spatial intelligence of a wild animal will be much better than that of an AI that helps translate languages. It would not make sense to test them with the same criteria.

Human Intelligence

In the beginning these tests served the goal of identifying people with mental illnesses to be able to help them. The first practical test was published by Alfred Bignet in 1903: The Bignet test. Later, in 1912, William Stern dubbed the measurement unit of intelligence as the "Intelligence Quotient" (IQ). A few years after, in 1923, Charles Spearman proposed the idea of the "g factor" (g), standing for general intelligence factor. Both the IQ and the g represent the general cognitive ability; however, the g is a mathematical construct that represents how a person performs similar on different cognitive tasks. While the IQ only measures the person's ability to perform given mental tasks. Additionally, the g factor is a constant throughout the entire existence of a given being. It also has the same value for different subjects. There is also the "s factor" which can affect the g positively or negatively, depending on the subject. The s factor could be improved by training in a given subject; it can be seen as a variable.

Much later, in 1963, the g factor was split up by Raymond Cattell's concept of fluid intelligence (g_f) and crystallized intelligence (g_c). g_f is the form of intelligence when one learns new information or is presented with an unknown problem, while g_c is the form of intelligence that uses already previous knowledge to solve problems. During a person's life, g_c increases until the thirties and then basically plateaus. g_f, on the other hand peaks in the thirties and then drops off in a linear manner.

Another interesting observation is the "Flynn effect". It discerns the growth of the IQ of humanity over the course of time. In the past 100 years it rose by nearly 30 points. This trend was noticed, as the IQ gets normalized every few years to keep a bell curve centered on the IQ of 100. The causes are yet to be determined for sure, however this suggests that humanity is becoming more intelligent with education and choice of work; As education become more common in the last century and the fields of work have gotten more challenging on a mental level.

IQ tests are a decent generalization of some of Gardners intelligences, but several ones were unaccounted for. Resulting in the development of other tests. One such test is the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEI). This test, first published in 2002, checks for one's emotional intelligence (EQ), which accounts for the inter- and intrapersonal intelligence that the IQ test fully neglects.

Animal Intelligence

Humans have realized to be superior to animals in most forms of intelligence many centuries ago. We observed them as a basic form of intelligence for us humans. Thus, making them a great subject of ethical experimentation. This way the results could potentially be transferred from the animals to us humans. The main testing of intelligence is of behavioristic manner and mainly determines how fast an animal can achieve a given goal and make mental associations. This research is very important as it helps us develop our knowledge of neurology and psychology. A great example of psychology is the idea of classical conditioning. And for the aspect of neurology, the aspect of being able to associate certain brain regions to given behavior or actions is a superb example.

Artificial Intelligence

As previously mentioned, Turing developed the Turing test. This test is often used to check the intelligence level of AI. A great example is that an AI beat a human in GO, a very complex board game.

However, AI are usually very specialized, making them really intelligent in one specific task, while having abysmally low intelligence in almost every other aspect.

Conclusion

Intelligence is the essence of existence. Intelligence can be displayed in at least eight different attributes, mentioned in Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Furthermore, each intelligence can be split once more, into a crystallized part and a fluid part. Resulting in a range of sixteen different intelligences. All these intelligences help a being overcome any kind of problem. The higher the given intelligence, the faster one comes to a solution.

Over the course of one's existence one chooses, by necessity or free will, what types of intelligence to pursue and thus strengthen. On this journey, one can also help educate others and thus promote the intelligence of others and indirectly pass on one's intelligence to others. By doing so, one helps increase the general intelligence of all beings they came in contact with throughout their existence.

Finally, one can agree with Diogenes of Appolonia's recommendation to seek out an intelligent life. All core components of the range of intelligence add more complexity to one's existence and thus make it stronger. Subsequently, increasing one’s intelligence is directly correlated to increasing one’s existence. Thus, one can conclude the existence, a being has fullended, was experienced more intensely, the more intelligent the being was.