This is a reasonable perspective. But people other than the parent sometimes read comments! I'll do my best at a level-zero explanation of "intelligence" in the literature:
Let's start by modestly noting that I routinely got the top score on Latin tests in high school (this was worth a small box of chocolates!). Someone applying the concept of "intelligence" might predict that I would also do well in math class. The traditional explanation for this given by Latin teachers is that learning Latin trains the mind to think logically, and getting high scores on Latin tests means that the training has taken. The intelligence-based explanation is that Latin and math are two of many tasks subject to the influence of g, the "general factor".
Moving to a more general level, the observation is that for many, many tests that appear to involve "mental abilities" to a greater or lesser degree, a person's score on any one of them is predictive of the same person's score on all the others. It's rare to find someone who is good at one and bad at another; instead, people tend to be uniformly good or uniformly bad (known in the literature as the phenomenon of the "positive manifold"). This suggests that there's one quality driving all the results, which we can call "intelligence", since that's the label commonly applied to people who tend to do well on those types of tests.
The question isn't, "Is there intelligence?" The question is "What is intelligence in terms of a definition?"
You're saying that if many people find you beautiful, there's a quality driving that, and it's "beauty". That's fine. Beauty exists. But aren't you almost admitting that it is a quality and therefore subject to what evaluates it? In other words, if 5 people call someone beautiful or ugly, are they beautiful? If someone is good at Latin and languages, does that mean they are intelligent? And if someone is not good at Latin, does that mean they are not?
Further, how many people do you have to find to say you are beautiful to be you are "defined" as beautiful? That's not a definition, that's just further confidence-building; the more you have the more confident you can be. But that still doesn't mean there's a point where you can say it is definitively so, and therefore you don't have a true definition.
thaumasiotes|12 years ago
Let's start by modestly noting that I routinely got the top score on Latin tests in high school (this was worth a small box of chocolates!). Someone applying the concept of "intelligence" might predict that I would also do well in math class. The traditional explanation for this given by Latin teachers is that learning Latin trains the mind to think logically, and getting high scores on Latin tests means that the training has taken. The intelligence-based explanation is that Latin and math are two of many tasks subject to the influence of g, the "general factor".
Moving to a more general level, the observation is that for many, many tests that appear to involve "mental abilities" to a greater or lesser degree, a person's score on any one of them is predictive of the same person's score on all the others. It's rare to find someone who is good at one and bad at another; instead, people tend to be uniformly good or uniformly bad (known in the literature as the phenomenon of the "positive manifold"). This suggests that there's one quality driving all the results, which we can call "intelligence", since that's the label commonly applied to people who tend to do well on those types of tests.
Corrections are of course welcome.
david927|12 years ago
You're saying that if many people find you beautiful, there's a quality driving that, and it's "beauty". That's fine. Beauty exists. But aren't you almost admitting that it is a quality and therefore subject to what evaluates it? In other words, if 5 people call someone beautiful or ugly, are they beautiful? If someone is good at Latin and languages, does that mean they are intelligent? And if someone is not good at Latin, does that mean they are not?
Further, how many people do you have to find to say you are beautiful to be you are "defined" as beautiful? That's not a definition, that's just further confidence-building; the more you have the more confident you can be. But that still doesn't mean there's a point where you can say it is definitively so, and therefore you don't have a true definition.
011011100|12 years ago
Well I read it and I thought it was interesting. Thanks.