On Fri, 2007-10-26 at 15:30 -0700, Jim Devine wrote: > eight criteria or 'signs' of > an intelligence: > > Potential isolation by brain damage. > The existence of idiots savants, prodigies and other exceptional > individuals. > An identifiable core operation or set of operations. > A distinctive development history, along with a definable set of > 'end-state' performances. > An evolutionary history and evolutionary plausibility. > Support from experimental psychological tasks. > Support from psychometric findings. > Susceptibility to encoding in a symbol system.
Yeah, but what's the basis for all these "criteria"? Isn't it just a way of ginning up an apparent general faculty or faculties whether or not they actually exist? Posing the question in this elaborately way guarantees the answer. Have you stopped beating your wife? Yes or no! > If one is teaching, it's good to have > some guidance for the different dimensions of human skills. It's not good enough for a teacher to know what his inmates, er students, are good at, and what not? How does the teacher gain from this "dimensionalization" of skills? Is there any real pedagogical payoff here?
