The nature of intelligence

At our first moment of self awareness we may begin to define and catalogue based upon what is already known by the collective unconscious. In which case nothing would be original, they'd be imprinted images and ideas, archetypes and the like.

 

You are quickly becoming a favorite.

The paramecium on my microscope slide is doing cartwheels in protest of that statement. Come to think of it, the very rocks are threatening to cry out.

 

Which is why I am presenting you with a functional definition for the term original thought.

I do not know what you mean by the collective unconscious.

 

The human brain is basically a back propagating neural net, we learn by pattern matching and repetition.

Its interesting reading up on neural nets, fuzzy systems, all the different ways computers learn, helps to understand how we work

Our eyeballs twitch every so slightly at a very fast rate, a rate we cant really see, but thats how we judge distances by viewing at a very slightly different angle every microsecond. Hearing is more sensitive to frequency rather than volume. The hippocampus regulates some bodily functions, and is very sensitive to temperature thus works differently in bigger people than smaller ones, and we all have different responses to different pherimones.

All these differences trained over time means people are different, have different parts of the brain working better or worse than others.

Really trippy shit when you work out that some guys cant hear all the frequency ranges emitted by girls, and vice versa. Or that your soulmate might simply be your soulmate cos they emit the exact right pheremones your body says is a perfect match.

Or that some are a lot better at facial recognition than others, like with cops who spend a decade or two training to detect deception, do end up being far better lie detectors than the average joe.

And girls have a better range of vision than guys, is that genetics preprogrammed in, or does the shape of the face evolve over time as a result of being smaller and more wary of the rest of the population

 

You're contemplating all this right now, no? Your mind, while wandering, started to wonder about this and you composed an argument based on things that were apparent to you. That is an example of thought. All creatures make observations and store them mentally as well as they are able; intelligent beings can take those observations and capitalize on them. A painter doesn't create a new color when he goes to paint, and yet he has created something: a painting from the colors already around him. The same could be applied to writers (except Dr. Seuss, that slick bastard) and to thinkers. As infants, we gather observations about the world around us for months until the magic of curiosity births an idea, leading to, for instance, our first steps.

 

It's the idea that all of mankind, and perhaps the universe share something called "the collective unconscious" as developed by Freud by heavily adapted by Carl Jung. It's a sort of metaphysical shopping cart where everything that is exists in pure form, images, and everything that exists in the extrnal world is a copy, a print of all those pure archetypes.

I appreciate your idea of an original thought but unfortunately there's a failure to understand it on my behalf.

 

That's all very interesting. I am always so pleased to hear of the brand new and mind blowing theories and discoveries offered my physics. It's such an exciting field and it never ceases to amaze people. I look very forward to its expansion in the future and the future of philosophic physics. Thanks for sharing.

 

Yes, I understand this. But I still think that no one is any more intelligent than the next. As you said, some just arrange their thoughts in a certain manner thus giving them the appearance of being more intelligent.

 

So our visual field is a new construction in every moment.

We all have our peculiar, "temperate zone", I don't think that speaks to superiority or inferiority.

We have varying measures of dexterity over our own processes.

 

What is unconscious about it?

 

Well, those things lie outside of our conscious mind. There is a conscious mind (mind right now), then there is my personal unconscious mind (what has happened in my life, where I've been, what I use to think, ideas I've had) are all stored there. Then beyond that (the first two reside in my organic brain) there is the collective unconscious. It is unconscious because it is always just there (such as there is always love even when we don't realise it because we are at war). It is what lies beyond our organic form here on plante earth. It consists of all of mankinds (and maybe beyonds) symbols, ideas, thoughts, colours, etc. For example in Jung's book, "Man and his symbols" he proposes very convincing arguments about symbols and how they have always been related throughout time. Say for example why can I see or know what a lion is? Because althought it doesn't yet exist as an image in my brain, it exists in the collective unconscious as others have already seen and experienced it, therefore I am able to be aware and conscious of it. He wrote in a way that was so palatable and relevant to other things that it makes for some very convincing ideas. Basically it is unconscious because it contains everything that will and has existed and lies outside of organic materical, therefore it is metaphysical and we are not always aware of its influence on the world and in our lives.


http://books.google.ca/books?id=6qP...&resnum=1&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

No. A highly intelligent person can come up with new ideas that are high in quality. You can't remember something that has never existed before.

Let me give you an example of a test of intelligence. Let's say that two people are given all the clues necessary to figure out a very complicated puzzle, riddle, or mystery, and neither person has had any special training or education that is related to the subject at hand, so there is nothing for them to remember that will help them come up with the right answer. One person will most likely come up with the correct answer faster than the other person. He or she is the more intelligent of the two.

Solving the world's big problems requires intelligence more than the knowledge of facts. We are always facing new problems, so the "correct" answer can't be memorized and repeated on cue. Anybody can learn more facts. Enhancing your reasoning skills is much more challenging. People who can only repeat learned facts will never come up with anything new and better.

 

How about the lion exists. It seems that you are describing the real world in juxtaposition to our ideas about it. Regardless of hypothesis, I still do not see an "unconscious"

 

Intelligence is the measure of a persons ability to creative problem solve.
It is not related to education or the amount of knowledge a person has attained. The reason it appears so is because as more knowledge is acquired, then there are more resources available to apply to a problem.

Physiologically intelligence is determined by mainly two factors in the brain;
The amount of surface area as determined by the amount of convolutions in the surface of the brain. People labeled as morons and Cretans (real terms in the spectrum of intelligence assessment) very very often have brains that have few convolutions in them, with some areas actually being smooth. There is a limit to that aspect though, as brains of very high IQ individuals show about the same amount of surface area as a person of "normal" IQ.
That is where the other factor comes into play, synaptic connections.
The more interconnected the different areas of the brain are, the more processing power is available to apply to a problem. This is a trait that is governed by both genetic predisposition and early infancy stimulation. The more enriched and informational an infants environment is, the more the brain is literally forced to develop new neural connections. That is the whole theory behind playing classical music, especially Mozart, to infants. The complexity of the music forces the brain to develop more synaptic connections to process the information.
I remember in college in experimental psychology reading about a study in which kittens were raised in an environment in which as much as possible the kittens only experienced things that were horizontal, bars on the cage, orientation of food dishes and other items.
After weeks in this environment they were put into cages with vertical bars and vertical elements. The cats would run into the bars because they literally could not see things that were vertical. the claim was that the neural pathways that perceived and transmitted "vertical" had atrophied due to lack of use.

This is my opinion on the subject, but opinion based on scientific fact as we understand it today.



Lunaverse sounds as if you have just finished a psyche course or are reading Jung currently. Just keep in mind those are just ideas those guys had and as such are no more valid than any one else's and are NOT necessarily how it really is. Always take any philosophy, religious thought, or psychological theory with a bit of skepticism.

 

All that being said, it is a proven fact that you will fit in better in America and have more friends if you are a fucking redneck moron.

 

Intelligence is actually a variety of things.

It has to do with memory, as you stated. Intelligence is related to individual capacity to retain memories and draw them up easily. This is something that varies from individual to individual.

Intelligence is related to multi-tasking. The ability to handle multiple mental functions concurrently, and hold multiple facts in active memory. The number varies from individual to individual.

Intelligence is related to speed and accuracy of memory retrieval, and of deductive ability(which is distinctly separate from simple memory). This varies by individual.

Intelligence is related to skill at -inductive- reasoning, the ability to take incomplete data and surmise a possible solution/model. This is where 'original thought' comes in. This skill is related to the frequency this activity is performed, the speed it is done at, and the accuracy of the models invented. These skills vary.

Intelligence is often considered related to ones ability to read and understand complex and novel circumstances(ones that are new, not in memory), and handle them effectively. Wit and ingenuity are aspects of intelligence that vary by individual.

Specific knowledge is occasionally consider an aspect of intelligence, but it tends more to be a sign of intelligence, a by-product, rather than an integral element. Intelligent people tend to gain more knowledge, but knowledge itself is separate from intelligence.

All that said, intelligence itself is a very, very fuzzy concept. Impossible to ever really test or measure, and comprised of so many disparate elements, it's really nearly a meaningless concept.

 

This is really funny. Usually when I want to know the meaning of a word, I refer to the dictionary because it contains the catalog of meaning and contexts for the word and is constantly updated to account for emerging usage. It really tends to reduce the "vagueness of meaning".

The word intelligence comes from a Latin root meaning perceive or discern, a derivative of inter, "between" and legere, "choose, or read".

Intelligence could also be, "secret information".

 

This has not been my observation.

 

As an interesting note PB:

It was once believed that the number of synaptic connections in the brain was affected solely by genetics and stimulation during infancy. It was also believed that neural tissue stopped replacing after a certain age.

More recent studies show that neural tissue growth simply slows down as one ages, as do creation of new synaptic connections. It's also been shown that the growth of new connections, and new neural tissue, seems -directly- proportional to the amount of novelty in one's life. An adult who goes back to school will often begin a new phase of neural growth. As will one who goes through extreme environment change, like moving to a new country.

I also have this personal notion that psychedelics tend to foster this effect, though I currently have no solid evidence for it.

 

You're lucky.