Think of This !

[Mossy]

Going back to the question of 'can we think independantly of thought' and the opinion that 'thought is possible without language', raises a further question of, 'Would you know if you could think if you didn't have a communication tool (such as language) to interpret that thought initially? Probably not...?

Where do basic skills and the role that they play in determining intelligence come from? Dyslexia has been mentioned a couple of times on this thread. It has a variety of forms and traits and one area that may be relevant is congnitive processing (inclusive of assimilation and recall of information). Perhaps if you are finding learning hard then it is more to do with your learning style than your capacity to learn. Are dyslexics actually silly people? No, they're not , but if the learning tools offered by society do not suit their learning style, does that mean that that individual will turn out to be thicker than a whale omlette?

...any way, I guess that's the difference between making a judgement and having a debate

 

[Robbo]

Going back to the question of 'can we think independently of thought' and the opinion that 'thought is possible without language', raises a further question of, 'Would you know if you could think if you didn't have a communication tool (such as language) to interpret that thought initially? Probably not...?

The answer to this question lies outside the confines of what you describe; a monkey has no language as such but.. it is able to think and to imagine, the monkey itself cannot rationalise its own thought processes because it has no language, nevertheless, we can conclude the monkey does actually think, and we can conclude this because we do have language.
Proof of this is when we witness a monkey problem solving.

Where do basic skills and the role that they play in determining intelligence come from?

Basic skills, or rather the ability to perform certain tasks comes from the marriage of two qualities, one's congenital and the other acquired, basically, nature and nurture; an innate ability and an experienced based skill.

Dyslexia has been mentioned a couple of times on this thread. It has a variety of forms and traits and one area that may be relevant is cognitive processing (inclusive of assimilation and recall of information). Perhaps if you are finding learning hard then it is more to do with your learning style than your capacity to learn. Are dyslexics actually silly people? No, they're not , but if the learning tools offered by society do not suit their learning style, does that mean that that individual will turn out to be thicker than a whale omlette?

I'm not sure why you have dug up dyslexia here because it won't really serve much purpose when considering the distinction being drawn between thought and language .. dyslexia is a condition whereby people have a problem in distinguishing words and has little meaningful connection with what we're discussing.
I think any discussion concerned with thought and language is maybe a few clicks below any problems the brain might have with word recognition ....

 

[rush]

I would argue that physicists are not so much the top of the intelligence tree, but that no individual topical area is number 1 for highest intelligence. Physicists are very imaginative and curious, especially the ones that make the major breakthroughs. It is because of this curiosity and WILLINGNESS to learn that they appear brighter than the average person. Granted you will always have that anomaly who is naturally gifted, but the majority of "smart" people are just curious.
If you are curious about something, you want to learn more about it, and that is the basis for the growth of intellectual ability.

A reason why Physicists may appear smarter than others is probably due to their state of work. They work in an area where "the sky's the limit", in other words they have room to be creative and imaginative.
How do they create theories? They let their imagination do the walking in an area of study they are curious about, and then they try to prove the concept with formulaic equations and finally, with evidence. It is imagination and curiosity that is the starting point in this process and therefore i would say that people with a vast imagination are the smart ones.

People who have a good grasp of the english language are usually fairly bright people, because they maintain that curiosity and willingness to learn. It is also a sign of a good education which supports the idea that they COULD be fairly intelligent people. This curiosity i have found, is usually acquired through literature. Thus sparking these individuals to use their imaginations while reading, or writing. The more they read or write, the more they learn, the more intelligent they become.


Hopefully whatever i just wrote wasn't complete crap, if so, SORRY

 

[dr.strangelove]

Would you know if you could think if you didn't have a communication tool (such as language) to interpret that thought initially? Probably not...?

That is basically the distinction between a so-called "natural language" of thought and the constructed languages that we use to express it among one another. But which came first? Chicken or egg? It is obviously implausible that an arbitrary system of expression preceded the cognitive ability to actually use it, so it would be absurd to say that any form of abstract language came before thought. So the only alternative if you believe that language and thought are inseparable is that they are one and the same, or that they both emerged simultaneously. The original example I used of the ape and the infant child, to say nothing of a thousand other examples one could undoubtedly make from the animal kingdom, seems an indication to me that thought is most certainly possible without expression in an abstract language. But very possibly there is a "natural language" that animals use to interpret thought. Think of it as the difference between programming languages, like C+, and the actual binary machine code that they represent. Thought takes place at the binary machine code level, and constructed, abstract language is the representation of it that we use to access it in some universally understandable way.

All of that having been said, I would tend to think that it is possible to be conscious of ones own thought without necessarily having the ability to construct an abstract language to express it with. I believe it is certainly true of the higher primates, as a practical example.

 

[zendeejay]

Sorry to butt into this conversation but it appear from a brief scan of all the arguments posed so far that no one has really defined what intelligence is, i personally have had this conversation on another forum which i am a member of, everyone blatantly assumes intelligence in one form but it can be measured on many different levels. There are people who are great at relaying and remembering information, acing tests and the like but put them infront of a machine and say take it apart and they wouldn't have a clue of what to do. On the other hand there are many people in this world who can sit infront of a pc full of 01110001010111000101's and to them it'salanguage and without thinking can see exactly what it is infront of them which is forming. I apologise now for my lack of grammer and punctuation but my mind relays my thought to my hands far to quick for me to even consider placing random ' and , in the correct places i just try placing them where they feel natural.

 

[M600]

Sorry to butt into this conversation but it appear from a brief scan of all the arguments posed so far that no one has really defined what intelligence is, i personally have had this conversation on another forum which i am a member of, everyone blatantly assumes intelligence in one form but it can be measured on many different levels. There are people who are great at relaying and remembering information, acing tests and the like but put them infront of a machine and say take it apart and they wouldn't have a clue of what to do. On the other hand there are many people in this world who can sit infront of a pc full of 01110001010111000101's and to them it'salanguage and without thinking can see exactly what it is infront of them which is forming. I apologise now for my lack of grammer and punctuation but my mind relays my thought to my hands far to quick for me to even consider placing random ' and , in the correct places i just try placing them where they feel natural.

i think i understand what you are saying, knowledge and intelligence are two different things, for example anybody can remember pie to 20 decimal places but understanding where it came from and what it means is a different thing. its understanding how things work makes someone intelligent, not remembering facts and applying them.

thats my opinion

 

[Robbo]

i think i understand what you are saying, knowledge and intelligence are two different things, for example anybody can remember pie to 20 decimal places but understanding where it came from and what it means is a different thing. its understanding how things work makes someone intelligent, not remembering facts and applying them.

thats my opinion

I think it maybe better understood as thinking that knowledge is the assemblage and recollection of data [facts] whereas intelligence is the ability to use that knowledge as a tool to understanding and propagation.

This is a somewhat grey area unless we get our cerebral ass into 'concise' gear.
One of the problems with language is, that in some cases, it fails to represent the real world as accurately as is needed.
And this is why mathematics is hi-jacked and used to unlock things like the secrets of the universe. Even then, there are still some areas where maths falls short of representing the world as it really is; this ambiguity has to be overcome before we move forward and so this job is left to the mathematicians and physicists to work together to create a concise enough language so their calculations can properly parallel what's going on.

 

[Devrij]

This is a bit of a gravedigger post, for which I apologise, but having been away from the forum for a while I thought I'd have a catch up and saw that the brain box has died a death! I think this is quite a positive thread in what could be construed as an elitist and potentially pretentious fart box, so here's my deranged attempt at getting it rolling again.

We've covered the debate between knowledge and intelligence reasonably well so far in this thread, and the concept of multiple intelligences has been mentioned already. I think the focus has been on a more technical intelligence (what we might equate with logic), and wondered about your thoughts on where emotional intelligence factors in. How do we feel maturity fits in with our estimation of intelligence? Or is technical intelligence of any use without an emotional intelligence to guide it? Hope this might bring back some interest (if only for the need to give one's 2p worth ) to this section of the forum and provide some interesting insights from some of the greater minds on the forum. If not, it's 2:30 in the morning and I should have listened when my gf told me to go to bed an hour ago!