Originally published on Feb 4, 2023
David Dunning did a TED talk where he analyzed why incompetence often brings, not a sense of humility or inquisitiveness, but confidence in one’s ability. His talk discussed the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which describes our inclination to exhibit a false sense of superiority, until the gaps of our knowledge are made clear to us. Although those with expertise and education could be less vulnerable to this delusion, it is likely that all of us are vulnerable to different extents. In light of this phenomenon, I’m sure most of us would hesitate to claim to be intelligent. But apart from our inclination to falsely estimating our cognitive capabilities, another problem is that intelligence seems to be immeasurable and vaguely defined. Since the study of intelligence began in the 19th century, there have been an array of varying definitions of intelligence that all dissect intelligence in different ways and into different parts. Despite their disagreements, it is ludicrous to use one theory’s validity to refute the validity of another. I’m wary of the theories and sciences surrounding intelligence. To seek the truth of intelligence is equally ambitious as to numerically measure a person’s psychological development. The efforts are definitely worthwhile, but I bet the science of the human mind is the last science to be conquered.
A few simple questions can reveal the challenges of defining intelligence and eradicate any possibility of an unequivocal, universal definition. If education can reduce one’s likelihood of exhibiting the Dunning-Kruger effect, does it mean that intelligence can be acquired through education? Is intelligence innate? Why is it that some people seem to perform better as they age, while some, even with extensive education, can say or do things that refute their claim to intelligence? Does an intelligent person have intelligence in all areas of inquiry, or are you intelligent in certain areas but not others? These are grand inquiries, but I have some thoughts to share.
Recently, I’m taking a class on political philosophy, where we investigate the origins of western political thought. We began with Greek philosophers, like Socrates and Aristotle, who arguably were the origins of western political philosophy. Aristotle articulates his thoughts on matters concerning the polis, which is the city state, in his books of Politics. He discusses everything from who should participate in a state and in what way to what forms of rule is most suitable. One of Aristotle’s most infamous claims is that slavery is not only justified by nature, but also necessary to the operation of the state. While it must not surprise anyone that our modern world no longer agrees with Aristotle on this particular belief, we should understand that Aristotle’s work was not motivated by the profits of slavery. Like any other true philosopher, Aristotle was loyal only to his own observation of the world. Nature, as he describes, is the order in which the “telos”, which is the innate purpose, of things unfold. He argues that everything that can find its origin in nature is inherently just — “nature does nothing in vain” (Aristotle, Politics Book One, II).
Based on this understanding of nature, his doctrine of natural slavery consists of four naturally justified claims. Firstly, there exist a duality, one between the ruler and the subject, in all living creatures. It exists not only “in all things which form a composite whole,” but also “in the constitution of the universe” (Book One, V). Like the seeds to a flower and a captain to its ship, everything is progressing to its “telos” under the command of its ruling component. Secondly, Aristotle argues that man is the only animal that nature has endowed the gift of speech, or “logos”, which is the origin of word “logic”. However, while nature intends those that can “foresee by the exercise of mind” (Book One, II) to be lord and master, those ruled by their emotions and cannot apprehend rational principle is “a slave by nature”, and that “from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule” (Book One, V). These two claims only argue that slavery is just, but he makes two claims that explain why slavery is necessary. No man, he argues, can live well “unless he be provided with necessaries” (Book One, IV). Here, Aristotle considers “living well” to be a life where freemen can engage in “logos” (the exercise of the mind) and determine their collective “telos”, which Aristotle says is to achieve the “summum bonum”, the good life of the collective. To sustain the exercise of the mind and politics, necessities of life are provided by the property, alive or lifeless, of the manager of the household; like an ox or farming tools, slaves are merely another type of possession. Lastly, in pursuit of the good life, villages are united, and states come into existence to achieve collective self-sufficiency. If rudimentary forms of society are natural, states are then too. Under this doctrine, the master-slave dynamic is naturally justified and, like the soul rules the body, the rule of a slave is despotic.
A closer look at Aristotle reveals that he is indeed not loyal to slavery itself, but loyal to nature and the collective good life; slavery is just the natural means to achieve the good life. Furthermore, if we examine his doctrine from the perspective of economics, or perhaps Marxism, we can see that his claim on natural slavery is about productivity. In the times of ancient Greece, the few sciences and technologies that humans had mastered wasn’t enough for one worker to produce significantly more than he consumes. If a certain group of the population were to spend time engaging in political activities, then another group must work overtime to sustain the population. In fact, even Aristotle’s own writing reflects this. In his discussion on the natural origins of the state, he says that when families unite to form larger societies, such as villages, the “association aims at something more than the supply of daily needs” and children of different families are gathered “to be suckled ‘with the same milk’” (Book One, II). The centralized nurturing of the younglings creates centralized supply, which cuts down on transportation cost and cost of having supply point for every family. Together with centralized forced labor, states are formed to increase overall production.
It is only with the advent of industrialization that every unit of labor’s productivity dramatically surpasses its consumption. Industrialization created realities that completely refuted Aristotle’s doctrine. Firstly, the dramatic increase in productivity raised wages and standard of living, ultimately increasing the economic power of workers. This economic power is subsequently, through worker’s social movement and political involvement, translated to political power. The Chartist movement of England in 1830s and the progress in women’s rights after the 1940s are examples of how involvement in industrial production led to expansion of social rights. Secondly, the increase in resources not only allowed (some) children to be free from entering the labor force early, but also afforded mass, public education. The first modern compulsory public education system was introduced in 1763 Prussia, where, simultaneously, James Watt was developing his own steam engine in England.
Aristotle’s belief that democratic systems and the state cannot be sustained without slavery, then, is not an ethical or social “shortsightedness”, but an economic one. He believes that slavery is natural and needed because the realities of his time gave him no indication that a world like our could ever exist — a world where 87% of the entire population is literate and the existence of states is no longer contingent on slavery (though other forms of exploitation exists still).
What does this tell us about Aristotle, then? Does his inability to predict two millennia into his future disqualify his work and his status? Probably not. He did, after all, inspire western political philosophy. But does that mean he wasn’t as wise as people thought he was? Our brain is like a computer, where our cognitive functions can be separated into two major types: gathering information and processing information. For students, knowledge is a lot of times presented to us and it is our ability to process it that mostly determines our success as a student. For social scientists and philosophers, however, it is their ability to gather information, their observations of this world that informs their work. Regardless of how wrong he is about the modern world, Aristotle, at the end of the day, is an observer of nature. He did his best to summarize his reality and infer, as fundamental as possible, the laws and logics of the world. He saw that everything seems to have its own ruling component and its own purpose, so he argued the relationship between “telos” and the duality between the ruler and the ruled. He saw that not everyone was naturally capable of exercising the mind, so he determined that some must be born a master and some not.
Let’s assume, for a minute, that Aristotle is still correct about how the world works — which, indeed, for many centuries he was. What makes Aristotle wise is not his possession of knowledge (any one of us today can study his thoughts and even find his flaws), but the ability to infer and invent knowledge when there wasn’t. Similarly, understanding Newton’s laws of physics today is merely adequate for high school physics. But what makes Newton one of the most intelligent and impactful person is his ability to infer the laws of gravity from a falling apple, when similar phenomena have always existed, yet none accomplished it before him.
So, let’s return to the original question: what is intelligence? By analyzing Aristotle from this perspective, I argue that intelligence is the ability to infer beyond what is immediately obvious. It is an exercise of both types of cognitive ability: it is our ability to gather information from what exists, then infer the laws and logics behind it, and possibly, based on those laws and logics, infer what is possible.
I think this understanding of intelligence can also answer our other inquiries about intelligence quite adequately. Intelligence is an innate quality and while education does not improve one’s intelligence, accumulation of knowledge is needed to reveal the potential of one’s intelligence. Just like you’ll never know the computational power of a graphics card until you run a graphically complex game, knowledge is the matter upon which intelligence manifests. A gifted engineer cannot exercise his intelligence until he completes his education in math and physics. Furthermore, because different fields and subjects involve different types of information that requires different ways of thinking, intelligence varies across different skills and sciences. A physicist, perhaps, can conceptualizes all the forces involved in a moving object with ease, but they may be terrible at socializing because they can’t understand relationships to the same extent. We all have considerable ability to understand and infer beyond what is immediately obvious in different fields, regarding different types of information.
But, more generally, if information that is immediate available to us comes from each of our lived experience, and our lived experience is mostly separated by our time and location, then intelligence is about extending our cognitive ability beyond the limits that our time and location set. Here, my understanding of intelligence has a lot of parallel with my understanding of maturity. In “What is ‘Maturity’?”, I discussed in more detail about what our reality consist of. Fundamentally, they are both about our relationship with the realities we live in. The more we are able to separate our perspective from the limits of our experiences, the better understanding of the world we can have. While this involves our ability to understand, another significant component is acceptance of the world, especially aspect that we don’t agree with. Only with a general acceptance of the world and a genuine desire to understand, can we even begin to understand what is foreign to us and infer general principles that applies to not only ourselves, but the larger world as well.
Another word for this component is humility. It is humility that brings reverence to the ocean of knowledge. Its humility that pushes us to discover without inflicting harm upon others. Its humility that convinces us that our argument maybe flawed. Its humility that questions the validity of our confidence. Without it, we cease to appreciate the beauty and complexity of nature, we cease to explore beyond our knowledge, we cease to learn, and, coming back to the Dunning Kruger effect, we cease to appropriately estimate our abilities, regardless of the education and achievements that we boast.
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