What does it Mean to be Intelligent?

I’ve been thinking about the definition of the word intelligence as it applies to us, as a species. I came across a very different version of a definition of intelligence a few years back. It was from F. Scott Fitzgerald, the man who wrote The Great Gatsby. Here it is, as it appears in WikiQuote as part of a collection of interpretations of the word intelligence:

The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. — F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Crack-Up”, Esquire Magazine (February 1936).

Just below Fitzgerald’s quote is a quote from Howard Gardener, the man behind the theory of multiple intelligences. Gardener’s theory breaks intelligence into a set of specific modalities. That was timely for the writing of this post.

I guess what I’m getting at is that the definition of intelligence appears to incorporate more things than many of us have considered it does. Moreover, just getting to a single succinct definition of the word intelligence is very difficult.

When I started to look online for some definitions of the word intelligence for this post, the link that caught my eye was this one. It’s a collection of definitions for the word intelligence put together by Shane Legg and Marcus Hutter from 2006.

The first eighteen definitions they provide all arise from individuals or collaborative efforts and primarily appear in dictionaries. For example, intelligence is:

The ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. — Compact Oxford English Dictionary, 2006

The next section contains 35 definitions of the word intelligence by psychologists. For example:

Intelligence is part of the internal environment that shows through at the interface between person and external environment as a function of cognitive task demands. — R. E. Snow quoted in J. Slatter. Assessment of children: Cognitive applications. Jermone M. Satler Publisher Inc., San Diego, 4th edition, 2001.

Appropriately enough for the 21st century, the final section of definitions comes from researchers in artificial intelligence. There are 18 and here’s an example. Intelligence is:

. . . the ability of a system to act appropriately in an uncertain environment, where appropriate action is that which increases the probability of success, and success is the achievement of behavioral subgoals that support the system’s ultimate goal. — J. S. Albus Outline for a theory of intelligence. IEEE Trans. Systems, Man and Cybernetics, 21(3):473–509, 1991.

Finally, Legg and Hutter summarize their efforts by suggesting that intelligence is a composite of these key attributes:

Context-Specific — Intelligence shows itself when we start to interact with our environment or environments.

Outcome-Oriented — Intelligence displays as the outcome of a goal and so can be described along a scale of successful to not successful.

Adaptability — Intelligence depends on our ability to adapt to the above two, that is, ever-changing environments and ever-changing outcomes.

And they offer the following as a definition that best incorporates those three items:

Intelligence measures an agent’s ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments.

They note that things like adaptability, understanding and learning are implicit in their definition because they help you succeed in a wide range of environments.

What do you think? A little underwhelming? That’s what I thought too. When all is said and done though, I think the important thing here is to look at the definition of intelligence in a more flexible way. In doing so, we are actually applying one of Legg and Hutter’s key attributes of intelligence — adaptability.

And if you are an instructional designer, a teacher, coach, facilitator or instructor who does modify your definition of intelligence, how does that modification influence the teaching and learning process for you?