INTELLIGENCE ENTITIES

Is intelligence best described as a single entity, or as more than one thing? If the latter, how many intelligences are there?

Is intelligence best described as a single entity, or as more than one thing? If the latter, how many intelligences are there?

Introduction

In this paper it is argued that intelligence is a multifaceted entity, a product of many factors and subject to innumerable influences; if defined in terms of capability, it is not a single capacity but "a complex of many abilities.

Having illustrated that sensible use of a person's natural strengths and types of intelligence is a good thing it's important to point out that intelligence in itself is not a measure of good or bad, nor of happy or sad.

The different intelligences - in Gardner's context (and normally in most other interpretations and definitions of the term) - are not a measure or reflection of emotion type. Intelligences are emotionally neutral. No type of intelligence is in itself an expression of happiness or sadness; nor an expression of feeling good or good or bad.

In the same way, the multiple intelligences are morally neutral too. No type of intelligence is intrinsically right or wrong. In other words intelligences are amoral, that is, neither moral nor immoral - irrespective of a person's blend of intelligences. Intelligences are separate to the good or bad purposes to which people apply whatever intelligences they possess and use. Intelligences are not in themselves good or bad. (Gardner, 2003)

Discussion

The types of intelligences that a person possesses are in themselves no indication or reflection - whatsoever - of whether the person is good or bad; happy or sad, right or wrong.

People possess a set of intelligences - not just one type and level of intelligence. This was a primary driver of Gardner's thinking; the fact, or assertion that intelligence is not a single scalable aspect of a person's style and capability. Historically, and amazingly a perception that still persists among many people and institutions and systems today, intelligence was/is thought to be measurable on a single scale: a person could be judged - supposedly - to have a high or low or average intelligence; or a person would be considered 'intelligent or 'unintelligent'. Gardener has demonstrated that this notion is ridiculous.

Intelligence is a mixture of several abilities (Gardner explains seven intelligences, and alludes to others) that are all of great value in life. But nobody's good at them all. In life we need people who collectively are good at different things. A well-balanced world, and well-balanced organisations and teams, are necessarily comprised of people who possess different mixtures of intelligences. This gives the group a fuller collective capability than a group of identically able specialists.

Incredibly many schools, teachers, and entire education systems, persist in the view that a child is either intelligent or not, and moreover that the 'intelligent' kids are 'good' and the 'unintelligent' kids are 'bad'. Worse still many children grow up being told that they are not intelligent and are therefore not of ...