INTELLECTUAL CAPACITY AND HUMAN BEINGS

INTELLECTUAL CAPACITY AND HUMAN BEINGS

Intelligence is an umbrella term describing a property of the mind including related abilities, such as the capacities for abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning, learning, learning from past experiences, planning, and problem solving.

Theories of intelligence are two-fold: (i) the “single intelligence” based upon the unilinear construct of “general intelligence”, and (ii) the construct of multiple intelligences. Influenced by his cousin Charles Darwin, Francis Galton was the first scientist to propose a theory of general intelligence; that intelligence is a true, biologically-based mental faculty that can be studied by measuring a person’s reaction times to cognitive tasks. Galton’s research in measuring the head sizes of British scientists and laymen led to the conclusion that head-size is unrelated to a person’s intelligence.

Alfred Binet, and the French school of intelligence, believed intelligence was a median average of dissimilar abilities, not a unitary entity with specific, identifiable properties.

Definitions :

(i) from Mainstream Science on Intelligence (1994), an editorial statement by fifty-two researchers:

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. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings — "catching on," "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do.

(ii) from Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns (1995), a report published by the Board of Scientific Affairs of the American Psychological Association:

Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, [and] to overcome obstacles by taking thought. Although these individual differences can be substantial, they are never entirely consistent: a given person’s intellectual performance will vary on different occasions, in different domains, as judged by different criteria. Concepts of "intelligence" are attempts to clarify and organize this complex set of phenomena. Although considerable clarity has been achieved in some areas, no such conceptualization has yet answered all the important questions, and none commands universal assent. Indeed, when two dozen prominent theorists were recently asked to define intelligence, they gave two dozen, somewhat different, definitions

On the Intellectual Capacity of Women

One of the dispiriting things about our enfeebled era is the inability of people to state obvious things that everyone knows are true. Many on the Alternative Right seem content to voice the unpopular truths about genetic links to intelligence, or statistical racial differences. A far more radical and obvious unpopular truth is that men and women are different.

I maintain that the deliberate denial of sexual dimorphism has had a larger impact on Western civilization than any other modern cultural delusion. Men and women have different psychological makeups, different athletic abilities, different aspirations, different physiology, different emotional reactions, much different reproductive functions, different consumer habits, and different capacities for rational thought and intellectual productivity. No civilization in all of human history has thought otherwise; ours is the first one to come up with something as obviously wrong as the Blank Slate theory. Human societies have survived all of the other kinds of dribbling lunacy the West presently self-immolates in. Many cultures have managed to survive for hundreds of years with multiculturalism, debasement of currencies, religious upheaval, widespread debt, usurious taxation and massive immigration and population transfer -- in some cases, even worse than we have today. None has ever thought to question sexual dimorphism, because the ancients were never that stupid.

Taking a very pedestrian example from current events, consider the dearth of women in physics and engineering. Academia, being what it is, considers this evidence of a vast world-wide conspiracy of invisible men who are diabolically conspiring to keep women from succeeding in the hard sciences. If you're a working academic in one of these fields, you will engage in ritual Maoist witch hunts, looking for sexist oppressors. There is approximately zero evidence for this conspiracy theory, yet it is unquestioned by hard nosed savants who allegedly fear no ghosts. Some of these true believers doubtless understand the concepts of "mean" and "standard deviation," and may even be aware of the fact that men have both a higher mean intelligence, and a much higher standard deviation in intelligence distribution; in particular in the areas of intelligence which pertain to these professions. With these two facts, the conspiracy theory evaporates: there are more male scientists and engineers because there are more males who are capable of doing the work. Virtually nobody is willing to say this, despite it being completely obvious to anyone not equipped with an academic sinecure.

For those of us who prefer not to think out details of Gaussian distributions, we have the late, great, Australian philosopher of science, David Stove. His essay on the subject should be read in its entirety by all fans of truth and common sense

Intellectual Capacity and the Young Child

The best thing parents can do to develop the intellectual capacity of their children is to expose them to a variety of learning experiences. Developing gross motor, fine motor, language, cognitive and social skills are all very important. It helps develop what are called neural networks. A neural network is simply a wiring of neurons. In the cortex of the brain there are billions of these neurons and hence the potential for children to develop more or less of these networks depending on the type of early stimulation your child receives. The more neural networks a child possesses, and the greater the frequency of use; the more likely a child is to develop a high intellectual capacity. In fact studies show that a “child has already developed half of his total adult intellectual capacity by the time he is four years old and 80 percent of it by age eight. After age eight, regardless of what type of schooling and environment a child receives, his mental abilities can only be altered by about 20 percent.”[How to Raise a Brighter Child, Joan Beck]. Learning is a gradual process that continually evolves as children grow. Parents interested in raising a 'Baby Einstein' should keep in mind the dangers of imposing advanced concepts on their children. When mature concepts are forced upon an immature brain it is like forging a connection between neurons that are not fully ready for that challenge. What happens is that the child learns these concepts with a high probability of forgetting them later in life - a type of short-term memory. In particular, preschools that emphasize pre-k algebra, pre-k physics, and three or four languages are doing just that - forcing the neural connection. Preschool kids are not mentally ready for abstract concepts and multiple languages. If abstract concepts are to be introduced it must be carefully presented in a very real and simple way that preschoolers can understand. Parents need to understand that raising a child to be bilingual is more appropriate than teaching a preschooler to be fluent in three or four foreign languages.

If you believe that your child is gifted, have your child tested, by an expert, to determine mental readiness. Find an appropriate school that challenges your child and one that does not force him to learn too fast, too soon. A careful consideration and assessment of your child's learning abilities can make learning more rewarding and enriching.

Early learning incorporates the development of skills as outlined in the child development process. Allowing your child to develop skills in the following areas can help early learning and increase mental stimulation.

I believe that the intellectual capacity of women is on the whole inferior to that of men. By "on the whole," I do not mean just "on the average"; though I do mean that much. My belief is, if you take any degree of intellectual capacity which is above average for the human race, as a whole, then a possessor of that degree of intellectual capacity is a good deal more likely to be man than a woman.

This proposition is consistent, of course, with there being women, and indeed with there being any number of women, at any level of intellectual capacity however high. But it does mean, for example, that if there is a large number of women at a given above average level of intellectual capacity, then there is an even larger number of men at that level.

In the past almost everyone, whether man or woman, learned or unlearned, believed the intellectual capacity of women to be inferior to that of men. Even now this is, I think, the belief of most people in most parts of the world. In this article my main object is simply to remind the reader of what the evidence is, and always was, for this old belief, and of how strong that evidence is. An opposite belief has become widely current in the last few years, in societies like our own: the belief that the intellectual capacity of women is on the whole equal to that of men. If I could, I would discuss here the reasons for the sudden adoption by many people of this opinion. But I cannot, because I have not been able to find any reasons for it, as distinct from causes of it. The equality-theory (as I will call it) is not embraced on the grounds of any startling facts which have only lately come to light. It is not embraced on the grounds of some old familiar facts which have been misunderstood until lately. It is not embraced, as far as I can see, on any grounds at all, but from mere prejudice and passion. If you ask people, "What evidence is there for the equality-theory?", you do not get an answer (though you are likely to get other things).

Rather, the question is felt to be somehow improper, morally or intellectually, and is thought not to deserve any answer.

The evidence for the inferior intellectual capacity of women is so obvious and overwhelming, that anyone who can lightly set it aside must be defective in their attitude to evidence; and our contemporary equality-theorists are in fact (as I have hinted several times), religious rather than rational in their attitude to evidence. As providing some further indication of this, the following thought-experiment may be of use. Suppose that the historical evidence had been the exact reverse of what it has usually been: that is, suppose that the intellectual performance of men had been uniformly inferior, under the widest variety of circumstances, to that of women. Rational people would in that case be as confident of the superior intellectual capacity of women as they now are of the reverse. But would those people who are at present equality-theorists be as confident then as they are now of the equal intellectual capacity of the two sexes? To ask this question is to answer it. The fact is, our egalitarians treat evidence on a basis of heads-I-win-tails-you-lose; indeed, to say so is "putting it mild," at that.

Psychometric approach

Despite the variety of concepts of intelligence, the approach to understanding intelligence with the most supporters and published research over the longest period of time is based on psychometrics testing. Such intelligence quotient (IQ) tests include the Stanford-Binet, Raven's Progressive Matrices, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children.

Charles Spearman is generally credited with defining general intelligence, which he reported in his 1904 American Journal of Psychology article titled "General Intelligence," Objectively Determined and Measured.[12][13][14] Based on the results of a series of studies collected in Hampshire, England, Spearman concluded that there was a common function (or group of functions) across intellectual activities including what he called intelligence (i.e., school rank, which Spearman thought of as “present efficiency” in school courses; the difference between school rank and age, which was conceptualized as “native capacity;” teacher ratings; and peer ratings provided by the two oldest students, which was termed “common sense”) and sensory discriminations (i.e., discrimination of pitch, brightness, and weight). This common function became known as “g” or general intelligence.

To objectively determine and measure general intelligence, Spearman invented the first technique of factor analysis (the method of Tetrad Differences) as a mathematical proof of the Two-Factor Theory.[12][13][15] The factor analytic results indicated that every variable measured a common function to varying degrees, which led Spearman to develop the somewhat misleadingly named Two-Factor Theory of Intelligence.[12][15][16] The Two-Factor Theory of Intelligence holds that every test can be divided into a “g” factor and an “s” factor. The g-factor measures the “general” factor or common function among ability tests. The s-factor measures the “specific” factor unique to a particular ability test. Based on a more modern interpretation of his work, Spearman’s g factor represents the fact that any set of cognitive ability tests, no matter how different, tend to all correlate positively.

L. L. Thurstone extended and generalized Spearman’s method of factor analysis into what is called the Centroid method and which became the basis for modern factor analysis.[16][17] Thurstone demonstrated that Spearman’s one common factor method (Spearman’s method yielded only a single factor) was a special case of his multiple factor analysis. Thurstone’s research led him to propose a model of intelligence that included seven orthogonal (unrelated) factors (i.e., verbal comprehension, word fluency, number facility, spatial visualization, associative memory, perceptual speed and reasoning) referred to as the Primary Mental Abilities.[16][18]

In a critical review of the adult testing literature, Raymond B. Cattell found that a considerable percentage of intelligence tests that purported to measure adult intellectual functioning had all of the trappings of using college students in their development.[19] To account for differences between children/adolescents and adults, which past theory did not address, Cattell proposed two types of cognitive abilities in a revision of Spearman’s concept of general intelligence. Fluid intelligence (Gf) was hypothesized as the ability to discriminate and perceive relations (e.g., analogical and syllogistic reasoning), and crystallized intelligence (Gc) was hypothesized as the ability to discriminate relations that had been established originally through Gf, but no longer required the identification of the relation (commonly assessed using information or vocabulary tests). In addition, fluid intelligence was hypothesized to increase until adolescence and then to slowly decline, and crystallized intelligence increases gradually and stays relatively stable across most of adulthood until it declines in late adulthood.

With his student John L. Horn, Cattell indicated that Gf and Gc were only two among several factors manifest in intelligence tests scores under the umbrella of what became known as Gf/Gc Theory.[20] General visualization (Gv; visual acuity, depth perception), general fluency (F, facility in recalling words), general speediness (Gs; performance on speeded, simple tasks) were among several cognitive ability factors added to Gf/Gc Theory.

J. P. Guilford sought to more fully explore the scope of the adult intellect by providing the concept of intelligence with a strong, comprehensive theoretical backing.[21][22] The Structure-of-Intellect model (SI model) was designed as a cross classification system with intersections in the model providing the basis for abilities similar to Mendeleev’s periodic table in chemistry. The three-dimensional cube—shaped model includes five content categories (the way in which information is presented on a test; visual, auditory, symbolic, semantic, and behavioral), six operation categories (what is done on a test; evaluation, convergent production, divergent production, memory retention, memory recording, and cognition), and six product categories (the form in which information is processed on a test; units, classes, relations, systems, transformations, and implications). The intersection of three categories provides a frame of reference for generating one or more new hypothetical factors of intelligence.

John B. Carroll re-analyzed 461 datasets in the single most comprehensive study of cognitive abilities.[14][23] This analysis led him to propose the Three Stratum Theory, which is a hierarchical model of intellectual functioning. The strata represent three different levels of generality over the domain of cognitive abilities. At the bottom is the first stratum, which is represented by narrow abilities that are highly specialized (e.g., induction, spelling ability). The second stratum is represented by broad abilities that include moderate specializations in various domains. Carroll identified eight second-stratum factors: fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence, general memory and learning, broad visual perception, broad auditory perception, broad retrieval ability, broad cognitive speediness, and processing speed (reaction time decision speed). Carroll has noted the similarity of his second stratum abilities and the Gf/Gc factors, although the Three-Stratum Theory does not incorporate the developmental trajectories associated with Gf/Gc Theory. Carroll accepted Spearman’s concept of general intelligence, for the most part, as a representation of the uppermost third stratum.

More recently, an amalgamation the Gf-Gc theory of Cattell and Horn with Carroll's Three-Stratum theory has led to the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory of cognitive abilities.[24] CHC researchers have produced numerous studies that have influenced diagnostic issues and test development.[25]

Intelligence tests are widely used in educational, business, and military settings due to their efficacy in predicting behavior. g is highly correlated with many important social outcomes - individuals with low IQs are more likely to be divorced, have a child out of marriage, be incarcerated, and need long term welfare support, while individuals with high IQs are associated with more years of education, higher status jobs and higher income.[26] Intelligence is significantly correlated with successful training and performance outcomes, and g is the single best predictor of successful job performance.

Human Beings

It is important to understand what we are as human beings. The present state of knowledge of the human being is one which has been informed by the materialistic reductionist thinking of modern technological science. It is commonplace for people generally to think of the human body as being merely an elaborate machine, with all the non-material aspects of the human being- thinking, feeling, attitudes, emotions, mores, imagination, etc., etc, as being merely the result of the physico-chemical activities which take place in the physical body. However, the human organism is not a machine and does not operate under the aegis of chemical and physical laws. An important statement made by Rudolf Steiner in this context, given in a lecture series published as "Man as Symphony of the Creative Word", (Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1970, pp. 188-189) in 1923, eloquently illustrates the problem:

" Wouldst thou heal man, look into the world on every side, see on every side how the world evolves processes of healing. Wouldst thou know the secrets of the world in the processes of illness and healing, look into the depths of human nature. You can apply this to every aspect of man's being, but you must direct your gaze outwards to the great world of nature and see man in a living relationship to this great world. People today have become accustomed to something different. They depart from nature as far as possible. They do something which shuts their own sight off from nature, for what they wish to examine they lay beneath a glass on a little stand - the eye does not look out into nature, but looks into the glass. Sight itself is cut off from nature. They call this the microscope. In certain connections it might as well be called a nulloscope, for it shuts one off from the great world of nature. People do not know, when something under a glass is magnified, that for spiritual knowledge it is exactly as though the same process were to take place in nature herself. For only think, when you take some minute particle from the human being for the purpose of observation under a microscope, what you then do with this minute fragment is the same as if were to stretch the man himself and tear him apart. You would be an even worse monster than Procrustes if you were to wrench man and tear him asunder in order to enlarge him as that minute particle is enlarged under the microscope. But do you believe that you would still have the person before you? This would naturally be out of the question. Just as little do you have the reality there under the microscope. The truth which has been magnified is no longer the truth; it is an illusory image. We must not depart from nature and imprison our own sight. For other purposes, this can of course be useful; but for a true knowledge of man it is immensely misleading. Knowledge of man in the true sense must be sought in the way we have indicated. Starting from the processes of nutrition, it must be followed through the processes of healing to the processes of human and world education in the widest sense. Or we can put it thus: from nutrition, through healing, to civilization and culture."

This line of thinking leads to the logical conclusion that it is not possible to understand the human being by means of the scientific methodology employed today. Anytime we open up the human being by means of tissue samples, doing blood analysis, etc., we simply do not have any reality before us; what we have is an artifact abstracted from the context in which it naturally exists, and so whatever we find out about the artifact has no reality with regard to the living tissue itself in the context of its functioning within the human organism. This has necessarily lead to tremendous confusion and chaos in the world because it is based on ignorance about what we are as human beings. The following is a greatly simplified description of the constitution of the human being; for a more detailed description of the complexities of the human being I refer you to the book "Theosophy" by Rudolf Steiner, (Anthroposophic Press).

The human being is a microcosm of the macrocosm. If we take this statement as our starting point, we can build up a picture of the human being by observing nature, and in nature we find there are three major kingdoms:

The Mineral Kingdom. The Plant Kingdom. The Animal Kingdom.

The human being's relationship to the mineral kingdom is that the substances which are used by the human organism for the maintenance of its physical body are mineral/chemical substances. From the perspective of the human observer, the mineral kingdom is inanimate, it is dead. Therefore, if we were constituted of nothing but mineral/chemical substances we would be dead, we could not exist as human beings. So:

Mineral Kingdom / Physical Body / Unconscious.

Plants are alive; they germinate in the soil, grow, develop, mature, produce flowers, fruits and seeds and die. They thus have a 'body' which is invisible to physical sight which takes up the mineral substances of the soil, along with water and light, which gives form to the plant and is responsible for its growth, development etc. This is called the etheric, life or formative body in the Western Tradition and I think the concept of 'chi' , 'ki' and 'prana' in the Eastern Tradition is the Eastern equivalent of etheric. The consciousness of the plant is more of a dream-like consciousness. The plant is therefore constituted of both mineral body and etheric body. So:

Plant Kingdom / Etheric Body / Dream-like consciousness.

Animals are distinguished from plants by being able to move around, they show patterns of behavior which indicate they respond to whatever is going on around them; they fight, run away from danger, look for food and water, mate, take care of their young, mark out territory and guard it etc., etc. They thus have an additional 'body' to the physical and etheric body, and this is called the astral body or soul, which, like the etheric body, is also invisible to physical sight. So:

Animal Kingdom /Astral Body / Instinctive consciousness.

The major difference between animals and human beings is that in the case of animals, if we know the behavioral patterns of a single individual of a species, we know the behavioral patterns of all the individuals of the same species. This is because each species of animal has a 'group soul'. This is not the case with the human being, because no two human individuals behave in an identical manner in the same set of circumstances. The major distinction between human beings and animals is the ability of the human being to think as an individual. This ability is due to an additional spiritual constituent of the human being, called the Ego, which can simply be stated as that aspect of the human being which gives each one of us our identity. When we say, I , we can only be referring to ourselves as individuals, not to anyone else.

Thus the human being is constituted of: Physical Body. Etheric Body. Astral Body. Ego.Now, the physical body as we observe it with our physical eyes, has its actions and shape because of the etheric body. The etheric body is the spiritual body which takes up the mineral/chemical substances provided for by nourishment and molds them, (and is responsible for the activity of each organ and tissue and co-ordinating them), into the form of the tissues and organs of the physical body. In essence, the physical body is the 'mineral apparition' of the etheric body, which permeates throughout the physical body, and is responsible for its growth and development as a whole, and for the minutiae of activity and form of the various organs and tissues of the body.

Now, of course it stands to reason, based on what has been written so far, that when any substance or tissue is extracted from the body in order to observe it under the microscope that it is no longer is under the influence of the etheric body. Rather, once it is removed from the physical body, it then becomes subject to the same laws of physics and chemistry that operate in the mineral kingdom. This is fine as long as it is clearly understood that whatever knowledge we gain from so doing will be utterly misleading if we assume that what we discover will give us any insight into the workings of the physical organism, be it plant, animal or human physical organism.

The astral body is 'attached' to the etheric body which permeates the physical body. It is the astral body or soul which is the locus of our feelings, perceptions, memory, emotions, thoughts, imagination, attitudes, world-view, ideals, visions etc. Since this is the way we are constituted it cannot be the case that thinking, for example, takes place in the brain. It is more accurate to say the brain is the 'sense-organ' of thinking. Nor can it be said that our emotions or feelings are located in the physical body, rather the body expresses the emotions and feelings going on in our soul.

However, in the case of health and disease, the relationship of the astral body being linked to the physical body via the etheric body means that disturbances and imbalances in any one of the three will manifest and permeate into the other two. Thus, as Rudolf Steiner stated it, "all disturbances in the physical body have their origin in the astral body, and all disturbances of the soul have their origin in the physical".

Thus, in order for us to heal ourselves, we have to deal with our condition from the perspective of our ego, our psyche (the Greek word meaning soul), our etheric body and our physical organism.

All these aspects will be explored and discussed throuhout the Alchemycal Pages and I begin by talking about the material of our physical body, which is our daily nourishment. As it states in the Taittiriya of the 'Upanishads', a sacred text of India:

" Out of Brahman, who is Self, came ether; out of ether, air; out of air, fire; out of fire, water; out of water, earth; out of earth, vegetation; out of vegetation, food; out of food, the body of man. The body of man, composed of the essence of food, is the physical sheath of the Self. From food are born all creatures which live upon food and after death return to food. Food is the chief of all things. It is therefore said to be medicine for all diseases of the body."

Many centuries later, Hippocrates, the Greek philosopher/physician, widely considered to be the father of Western Medicine, said:

"Let food be thy medicine, and let thy medicine be thy food."

FOOD DOES NOT HEAL NOR DOES IT CAUSE DISEASE.

The point I want to emphasise here is the idea food has any healing qualities is absurd. In other words the idea as food as medicine, in the sense we speak of medicine today is entirely misleading if we think that eating the right diet is what heals us. We have to entirely change our ideas of what medicine is, for today it has become so degenerate that we think of it as taking a pill or having surgery, chemotherapy or radiation or, the worst error of all, thinking that diseases lie in our genes. So we are now having the great gene search where the genes attributed to be the cause of everything from alcoholism and asthma to cancer and heart disease are found, altered and then patented for the treatment of the disease for which the original gene is blamed. No amount of gene therapy is going to have any effect in the long run on the problem of disease.

Medicine means(Oxford English Dictionary): "the art of restoring and preserving the health of human beings by the administration of remedial substances and the regulation of diet, habits and the conditions of life."

Now, we need a new concept of medicine because it is clear the present concepts are completely inadequate as is clearly indicated by the vast numbers of people with degenerative and infectious diseases occurring in the context of tremendous resources of time, effort and money being poured into researching these diseases. There have probably been more people working on studying disease in the 20th Century than in all the previous 1900 years combined. The current concepts are bereft of any understanding of health or disease and I could cite all manner of data to demonstrate the paucity of understanding but one will suffice for now - in 1982 the disease-treatment costs (erroneously called health-care costs) in the United States was $185 Billion; in 1996 this figure had climbed to over $1 Trillion.

Resources : ` http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence

www.definition-of.com/intellectual+capacity

www.alternativeright.com/.../on-the-intellectual-capacity-of-women/