Anthony Kenny
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780192830708
- eISBN:
- 9780191670527
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780192830708.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics/Epistemology
Everyone, at one time or another, is inclined to think of the mind as an inner landscape, a more or less mysterious region which needs to be explored and mapped. This chapter evaluates this metaphor ...
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Everyone, at one time or another, is inclined to think of the mind as an inner landscape, a more or less mysterious region which needs to be explored and mapped. This chapter evaluates this metaphor philosophically: to ask whether, in prosaic truth, there is an inner region within each of us for us to explore. It argues that the link between the mind and the behaviour that exhibits mentality is a conceptual one; the link between the mind and the brain is a contingent one discovered by empirical research. The empirical research which links intellectual performance with brain function must presuppose, and cannot therefore undermine, the behavioural criteria by which we ascertain the intellectual performance which provides one term of the correlation to be established.Less
Everyone, at one time or another, is inclined to think of the mind as an inner landscape, a more or less mysterious region which needs to be explored and mapped. This chapter evaluates this metaphor philosophically: to ask whether, in prosaic truth, there is an inner region within each of us for us to explore. It argues that the link between the mind and the behaviour that exhibits mentality is a conceptual one; the link between the mind and the brain is a contingent one discovered by empirical research. The empirical research which links intellectual performance with brain function must presuppose, and cannot therefore undermine, the behavioural criteria by which we ascertain the intellectual performance which provides one term of the correlation to be established.
Gregory M. Walton
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226012629
- eISBN:
- 9780226012933
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226012933.003.0008
- Subject:
- Education, Philosophy and Theory of Education
This chapter, which draws on recent work in psychology to demonstrate the socially situated nature of human intelligence, shows that intellectual performance is not simply lodged within individuals' ...
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This chapter, which draws on recent work in psychology to demonstrate the socially situated nature of human intelligence, shows that intellectual performance is not simply lodged within individuals' high test scores, straight As are not owned by a person alone, and poor scores or bad grades are not only the student's responsibility. Rather, intellectual performance is an emergent property of persons and social situations—an interaction between the two. These findings suggest that conceptualizing “intelligence” as a stable property of individuals and a reliable way of distinguishing between them may be inappropriate.Less
This chapter, which draws on recent work in psychology to demonstrate the socially situated nature of human intelligence, shows that intellectual performance is not simply lodged within individuals' high test scores, straight As are not owned by a person alone, and poor scores or bad grades are not only the student's responsibility. Rather, intellectual performance is an emergent property of persons and social situations—an interaction between the two. These findings suggest that conceptualizing “intelligence” as a stable property of individuals and a reliable way of distinguishing between them may be inappropriate.
