Earlier this week, I observed an e-free-for-all on the New York Times (NewYorkTimes.com) web site regarding race, intelligence and conservatism versus liberalism. Many readers were incensed by an article, “Social Scientist Sees Bias Within,” and the subsequent comments by other readers. It was quite the feeding frenzy. Unfortunately, even though I read the article before 8 AM , I was too late to join in, as the comments, having already reached the 500 mark, were closed. I joined the also-rans, sending an e-mail to the hard copy Times, which may or may not be printed. I did not join the general debate, but instead criticized the methodology of the research, mostly anecdotal, cited in the article.
But I do want to talk about intelligence here.
As you may be aware, intelligence testing has gathered itself some controversy in recent decades, with special concerns over how disparate scores often are when looked at in terms of race. Some social scientists have been caught up in this controversy as a result of their research, being demonized for the results that they compiled.
Apologists have suggested that there are different types of intelligence, by way of explaining some of the racial divides. This has caused other controversies in kind.
Personally, I think the problem is the supposed concept of "intelligence."
Intelligence is an arbitrary value. In other words, we—or some of us, somewhere, sometime—made it up. We decided what was intelligent and what was not. And whoever it was that decided those things had very specific reasons of their own for making those decisions. He or she was not handed the first IQ test on a mountain top from a burning bush. No, those people simply decided what they, and we, were going to call intelligence.
Here’s what I think: forget intelligence. I think the important factor is cognition. Cognition, the ability to receive, process and apply information, including such functions as awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment.
And people receive, process and apply information in quite a variety of ways. I’ll give you two personal examples.
I hate reading directions and instructions. My normal approach to any new task is to take a quick glance at the directions, give them a exasperated “Huh?” and then proceed to attempt the task until I run into trouble. At that point I can look at that part of the instructions and have a much clearer understanding of what the heck they’re talking about. But I know many people who can sit down and read the instruction manual and then get right down to it. I’m more of a “Help screen” type of guy. Other folks much prefer to see a diagram than written instructions. Still others do better when they see a demonstration.
I think that these are different ways of receiving and processing information. Different ways because our brains are different, though still roughly categorized because our sensory receptors are of finite variety.
Another example: My daughter can think in math—almost like it’s another language. Me, I always got good grades in math, but it was always a chore. My daughter enjoys math. Go figure. She was even considering getting a teaching degree so she could teach math, but then decided on a music major instead. Well, guess what. Turns out math and music are just two facets of the same general concept. Hey, don’t ask me to explain it; I just read it somewhere. Not surprisingly, the music my daughter likes to play on her tenor saxophone is a very technical style of jazz, unlike any that I was familiar with prior to attending her recitals. She says it is very math based. That didn’t surprise me in the least. My type of jazz is Chuck Mangione; she, however, tends not to share my enthusiam.
So my daughter and I, while both successful in school, still have some very different ways of slicing and dicing the world around us. If we were to go head-to-head in a math challenge, she’d wipe the floor with me. In social sciences, I think I might have the upper hand. Our brains are just different enough that we end up with different strengths.
But here’s the thing: she chose to become a music professional, while I spent my career mostly in various types of social, health and service industries. In other words, we did what we were good at. We found comfort zones, and success, in pursuits that took best advantage of how our brains processed information. One wasn’t better than the other, simply different.
I think that’s a key to understanding cognition as opposed to intelligence. There may be some racial differences, but I would suggest that they are differences in cognition. Further, I would suggest that these differences may have evolved, to a large degree, based on the specific demands of living in various environments or have been self-selecting due to preferences of associating with, literally, like-minded folks. This is a somewhat simplistic explanation for the actual evolutionary processes involved, but I hope you catch my drift.
Intelligence is arbitrary. Cognition is intrinsic.
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