For one person to attempt to measure another’s intelligence may be unethical. One human being’s having the right to assess and award an intelligence score to another is wrong. We cannot measure human intelligence. Each individual person is unique and capable of more than any test can show. Defining Intelligence suggests replacing IQ assessments with a Character & Abilities Profile. A broader and more comprehensive perspective taken of the person is worth examining. Less emphasis ought to be placed on measuring up to a norm, and, more emphasis should be awarded to the uniqueness of each individual person.
There is a distinction between the process and the product of thinking. Psychological assessments by and large, assess the product of thinking. The results of an IQ assessment purport to quantify a person’s intelligence which includes the depth and range of the thinking process. Products of thinking, assessed on a particular day cannot determine all that goes on in the thinking process. They may account for a moment in time in a person’s thinking and no more.
Analysis of a bucket of water taken from a flowing river will not tell us the speed of the flowing water, the depth or breath of the river or the ingredients contained in the rest of the water in that river. Similarly, the results of an intelligence test will not confirm the ability of the person to create, choose, imagine and respond to novel or unexpected situations and events.
Thinking is the main ingredient of intelligence. Thinking is a continuous stream of mental processing. An individual cannot decide not to think. Even to think about nothing is to think. We think in sleep. While sleeping we solve problems, we put order on the thoughts of the day and store those thoughts in the memory bank. We should teach the body but heed the mind. We are privileged to live in a continuous thinking mode? We are simultaneously condemned to dwell in existential torment through unending thinking. Sum res cogitans, I am a thinking being.
