intelligence

College Life
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<p>[General</a> intelligence factor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_intelligence_factor]General”>g factor (psychometrics) - Wikipedia)</p>

<p>g (general intelligence) is basically some dominant factor that attempts to explain positive correlation on cognitive tests</p>

<p>one problem i find with g is that it is presumed to be a dominant factor affecting one’s general intelligence. cognitive tests don’t measure intelligence in areas that cannot be picked up by such tests. for example, an amazing artist like da vinci or mozart might not be good at cognitive tests like the lsat but might be extremely intelligent in other areas that lend toward their artistic or musical genius. i personally don’t believe there is likely to be positive correlation between one’s strength on cognitive tests versus one’s strength in other areas that cannot be picked up by such tests (like art or music). i tend to think there are no parts to the whole (no encompassing factor for general intelligence) - there are just parts (different types of intelligence). this can also be seen in non-human animals whom might be less intelligent than us in many areas, but might be more intelligent than us in some other specific areas (e.g. bats’ ability with echolocation). but then again, is this intelligence or is this innate ability that shouldn’t be counted as intelligence? if echolocation is innate ability, what about artistic or musical genius? you might argue that since not all humans have this, it is not likely innate ability. but if you are a believer in darwinism, you might wonder if it actually is, because this artistic/musical genius might be manifested in certain genes in da vinci and mozart. had da vinci or mozart killed everyone else and recreated the human population using only their offspring, artistic and music ability might actually be common traits to all humans, and then could be considered innate ability. the same could be said not only for artistic/music genius but also for cognitive abilities as measured on cognitive tests. there’s probably some bridge between intelligence and instinct that we haven’t discovered or proven yet. what are your thoughts on this?</p>

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<p>its just an ability or instinct. some people are good at somethings and others at other things. people like to have labels to explain things, but there is no such thing as intelligence really. if there had to be a term called intelligence then it would be for the top performers in any area…sports, music, philosophy, math, etc. and by top it would mean most useful/unique to the largest amount of people or the most competitive person.</p>

<p>although the ability to put off emotion and do something else in expectation for later fulfilling that emotion…maybe you could make a case for that.</p>

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<p>Don’t mind me, I was semi-high when I wrote this.</p>

<p>I didn’t mean to say that intelligence and innate ability are equivalent, only that there is some connection between them (but this seems trivial).</p>

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<p>Intelligence is a difficult concept to define. Without going into the nuances and semantics I’ve always thought that the best working definition of intelligence is simply “the ability to independently and conciously identify and and achieve goals”. A more intelligent being is thus able to identify more complex goals and develops more complex tools or methods necessary to achieve whatever goals it might have.</p>

<p>No encountered organism so far as we have observed has demonstrated themselves more adept at this than humans and therefore we conclude that we are the most intelligent species in known existence.</p>