Definition Essay: What Exactly Is Intelligence?

In “A Rounded Version: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences”, Howard Gardner illustrates how there are a variety of intelligences. Gardner starts off with an example how IQ tests may predict achievement in school but may not predict achievement in life. After finding out certain parts of the brain are responsible for certain functions, such as “Broca’s Area” which is responsible for sentence production, Gardner proposes the existence of multiple intelligences. Multiple studies later led him to propose seven distinct intelligences; Musical, bodily-kinesthetic, logical-mathematical, linguistic, spatial, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. Each intelligence has certain classifications. According to Gardner’s classifications, I realized my intelligences are bodily-kinesthetic, logical-mathematical, and intrapersonal.

If you had that one piece of the puzzle that would have prevented the bombings of the twin towers in New York and the Pentagon on September 11 2001 would you know it? If you saw someone do something weird or suspicious before the attack on September 11 2001, would you have called the police? If someone had walked into a United States Embassy in a foreign country and said that they know someone was going to use a plane to destroy New York in two days, could this have stopped the attack? Intelligence Analysis puts the raw sources of information together, make predictions based on the data, and finally publish the results.

     A renowned professor of education and psychology at Harvard University, Howard Gardner has radically changed the way we look at intelligence. In 1983 Gardner published the first of two books that theorize that there are multiple intelligences. Gardner believes “that human cognitive competence is better described in terms of a set of abilities, talents, or mental skills, which we call “intelligence” (378). Gardner’s theory dismisses the idea that intelligence is a single attribute of the mind and suggests that there are different types of intelligences that account for different human

Gottfredson, (1997) stated that intelligence is ‘a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience.

A big argument is that the word “Intelligence” has not been defined in its full context yet. Therefore, when a thing has not been understood properly then how can we design measures to gauge them. Walter Lippmann a journalist from the 1920s said: “We cannot measure intelligence when we have not defined it.” And I totally agree to it because to this day we have not decided upon the characteristic of intelligence. It contains very many things and to narrow it down to a few would be like being biased. Many characteristic has been defined, but many to this day remain unknown or unexplainable. Jean Piaget has said that intelligence us never stagnant it grows and develops as

“Not because you think you know everything without questioning, but rather because you question everything you think you know.”What is intelligence? Some think its only academic smarts others think there are different types of intelligences. Some examples of the multiple intelligences, like artistic, emotional, and logical mathematical. Artistic intelligence is being able to paint, and make sculptures with ease. Emotional intelligence includes interpersonal which refers to knowing others feeling, and intrapersonal which regers with knowing your own feelings. Also logical mathematical deals with being good with math, but also being connected to it somehow.

Each one of them are different and that’s why we asked ourselves is it really just one way to measure everyone’s intelligence?

Before I begin to analyse the elements of the Intelligence Cycle, I must begin with the definition of ‘Intelligence’.

The United States Intelligence community draws on advanced technology and analytical techniques. An intelligence process that sets objectives, collects, analyzes, and report findings, with feedback loops integrated throughout. Explicitly, the intelligence community advantages technology and tradecraft within a proscribed process. However, estimation of threats and decision-making are outcomes of human thinking. Analysts and policymakers create mental models, or short cuts to manage complex, changing environments. In other words, to make sense of ambiguous or uncertain situations, humans form cognitive biases. Informed because of personal experience, education, and specifically applied to intelligence analysis, Davis

Intelligence is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as being the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge. When knowledge is spoken of, it is generally used in terms of education. The extent of education a person has achieved is then what most often determines how much knowledge one has accumulated. Nevertheless, with this definition of intelligence in mind, one might possibly consider the average person to be intelligent. After all, even a person who has never gone to school a day in their life is capable of acquiring knowledge and applying it to some area of their life. Acquiring and applying knowledge could be something as simple as being shown how to mop a floor and then conducting the job using the newly gained know-how.

The concept of intelligence is to measure a person’s IQ through by processing intelligence tests and questioning different subjects. I believe that these IQ tests are valuable in the sense of it can provide and inform us as individuals the differences we contain, the specific skills we can develop to achieve greater things, helping us understand the human intelligence and get the understanding on how anxiety may influence the cognitive functioning.

Firstly, we already know what intelligence is, however, in psychology, intelligence is difficult to define, as it is seen differently by everyone. There are different kinds of intelligence, such as academic, creative and emotional. There are also several theories and research studies which have explored whether intelligence is inherited or how it should and can be measured. The five main intelligence theories that are used are Spearman’s Two Factor Theory (1904,1927), Thurstone’s Theory of Primary Mental Abilities (1938), Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences (1983), Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory (1985) and Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence Theory (1998).

For many people, the definition of intelligence on an individual is that whom stand out based on their educational accomplishments,ability to perform a hard fast fast and efficiently, and clever remarks. For psychologists;however, a simple definition isn’t sufficient to come to an agreement of the definition of intelligence , hence their developed theories. Some of the contributors to theories are Charles Spearman and his theory of General Intelligence, Louis L. Thurstone and his theory of Primary Mental Abilities, Howard Gardner: Multiple Intelligences, and Robert Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence.

When a person utters the word “intelligence,” people tend to think of a genius like Albert Einstein developing some obscure equation that the great majority of the population will never understand. The problem with the definition of intelligence is that people relate intelligence to words like “genius” which require intelligence but do not have the same definition as intelligence. Often, people try to use related words to define intelligence, but these words are unable to define intelligence since many are only different levels of intelligence. While many definitions try to encompass the meaning of intelligence and various definitions describe a small part of intelligence, no definition completely explains intelligence, because

According to the originator of multiple intelligences theory, Howard Gardner, however, intelligence can be defined in three ways, namely a property of all human beings; a dimension on which human beings differ; and the ways in which one carries out a task in virtue of one 's goals. (Donovan McFarlane)