| EQI.org Home | What Is Intelligence? I was just reading my article about what the word "ability" means. This is relevant to the field of emotional intelligence since Mayer and Salovey say that their definition of emotional intelligence is based upon a person's "ability." But as I discuss in the article about this word "abilty," it is not entirely clear whether they believe ability means something more like potential or something more like skill or expertise. Here is excerpt from that article:
This led me to write the following today:
So now I am wondering what intelligence really is, and what difference it makes. I don't want to write a lot about this now but I want to put down a few thoughts. First, a very basic question is this Is a baby born with any "intelligence", or, does baby "learn to be" intelligent? This leads to many more difficult questions, such as... - Are some babies born with the potential or the possibility of learning more than other babies, and are some babies born with more potential learning in specific areas, such as languages or math or emotions? These questions matter because they affect way we decide to allocate and invest our resources. They matter to our concept of democracy and equality. For example, if we believe that each baby has equal potential then it would make sense to try to use some kind of even distribution system for teaching skills and developing a child's innate intelligence. If, on the other hand, we believe some children naturally have more innate potential in some area, then it would make sense to try to identify those children and their individual differences and then develop them according to their own needs and potential. This is obviously not a complete discussion of this broad topic, but I wanted to put some thoughts down while it was on my mind. S.Hein
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Other EQI.org Topics: Emotional Intelligence | Empathy |
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