This subject is but a small part of the larger issue that is waged between dualists and
materialists: whether the words used to ascribe mental qualities have a physical or
"psychological" reference. Much of the literature concerned with this broader
topic takes on the character of a general broadside against either the materialist or
dualist position. When specific qualities of our mental life are discussed, it is
discussed either in passing, or to make certain that they be assimiable to the general
thesis being propounded. When Gilbert Ryle wrote of intelligence,(1)
he was interested in making it out to be a dispositional concept (his technique for
refuting dualism). Ryle's fear seemed to have been that if any mental concepts escape such
dispositional analysis, then we may be forced to give way to dualism. The dualist's
reaction was to withdraw from the dispositional analysis and to claim that "
intelligence " can only make sense when it is ultimately linked to an alternative
concept which presumably has reference to a "process" (the existence of which
may be ascertained by a subjective avowal: intent, deliberation, reflective choice, etc.).
Whether this maneuver avoids the Rylean critique is subject to serious doubt. Each new
term may itself have a problem concerning the "metaphysical" status of its
referent: whether it is a physical or a "spiritual" process.
Another problem with this approach is that it often makes the concept of intelligence
dependent on factors that may have no more than a casual relation to its meaning: a
contextual connection, for example.
While a dispositional analysis of intelligence would effectively rescue it from
entrapment inside "the ghost in the machine" it would fail to do the concept the
justice that the dualist seeks for it, and that is to make the observation that it appears
to be more an episodic than a dispositional concept.
It is in this connection that some philosophers take a critical view of Ryle's
analysis. Peter Thomas Geach, for instance, claims that reports of mental acts are
categorical and are not hypothetical or semi-hypothetical statements about overt behavior.
He believes the dispositional account of psychological concepts to be on a level with the
statement that opium puts people to sleep because it has a dormative power, and that such
an account if it were carried over to the physical sciences would be met with impatience.
A physicist would be merely impatient if somebody said to him: "Why look for, or
postulate, an actual difference between an unmagnetized or a magnetized bit of iron? Why
not say that if certain things are done to a bit of iron certain hypotheticals become true
of it?" He would still be more impatient at being told that his enquiries were
vitiated by the logical mistake of treating " x is magnetized " as categorical,
whereas it is really hypothetical or semi-hypothetical.(2)
This is almost certainly a misrepresentation of the Rylean position. Ryle's analysis is
in keeping with the Wittgensteinian thesis that mental language has no private sense, and
while Ryle uses this thesis to undercut an ontology of mental events (a procedure resisted
by Wittgenstein), his position is not (as Geach would have us believe) incompatible with
the occurrence of physical processes that are explanatory of the hypotheticals that
constitute a part of our mental conduct language.
To say that the brittleness of glass (or the magnetism of a bit of iron) is a
dispositional concept is not to deny that the hypotheticals in which that concept is
couched may not be explicable in terms of categoricals such as a molecular substructure,
or stress and force factors. The hostility to Ryle's analysis comes less from a
scientist's impatience with hypotheticals, and more from a metaphysician's perception that
Ryle's use of the term "categorical" is sometimes a euphemism for "private,
non-physical event." The dualist then makes use of this terminology with a special
vengeance: "If categorical uses of mental-conduct concepts exist, then mental events
must exist." But of course we should be careful here, for this does not necessarily
imply that categorical mental statements are statements about nonphysical (ghostly)
processes.
An earlier and more cautiously drawn critique of Ryle occurs in Stuart review of The
Concept of Mind. He poses the question: "On what grounds does Professor Ryle decide
that there are no acts answering to such verbs as 'see,' 'hear,' 'taste,' 'deduce,' and
'recall'...?"(3)
He concludes that Ryle has mistakenly identified the meaning of a statement with the
method of its verification:
Because overt behavior often constitutes for most people the best and, in some
conditions of utterance, the sole available evidence for statements about mental
activities and states of minds, such statements can be idenified with hypothetical
statements about behavior.(4)
Ryle's position is likely to prove too elusive for this criticism. While it is true
that it looks as though Ryle's program is to re-interpret categorical statements about
"mental events" as hypothetical statements about publicly observable events, his
position is not sharply distinguishable from Wittgenstein's thesis about mental terms.
Wittgenstein did not deny that people have private thoughts or that they have feelings
they do not show, and neither does Ryle. Wittgenstein did want to deny that mental talk
could have a meaning independent of some connection with a public language that posesses
public rules of discourse. After all, Ryle does say (as even Hampshire recognizes) that
for any given statement there are an indefinite number of possible answers to the
questions: "How do you know?" or "What are the reasons for
saying?"depending on who made the statement, when and in what circumstances. Though
Ryle may be less than clear about the general thrust of his thesis, it may be too strong
for us to accuse him of covert verificationism. Ryle makes too many hedges against
reductionism to be providing us with a "general account of the logic of statements
... where 'the logic' means 'the method of establishing the truth of...'"(5)
However accurate (or inaccurate) these interpretations of Ryle's analysis may be, it is
important for us to distinguish our position from Ryle's and show whether the
aforementioned critiques have any relevance for our thesis. I am in agreement with those
critics of Ryle who insist that mental terms often (even usually) have categorical and,
therefore, episodic uses. In this respect my thesis is untouched by the criticism that
Ryle's dispositional analysis attempts to eliminate the occurrence uses of mental
concepts.
Mental terms have episodic uses, and "intelligence," derives virtually all of
its ignificance from such a use. But I do not agree that an occurrence or episodic
analysis of mental concepts opens a way toward the re-introduction of mental events as
"ghostly processes." Insofar as the concept of intelligence is concerned, the
occurrences referred to are publicly observable: the significance of " intelligence
" is predicated on outward criteria. My analysis is intended to be a corrective of
the Rylean thesis by acknowledging some of the claims of his critics but without at the
same time accepting the metaphysical dualism that such an admission is believed to yield.
We can readily see, from every-day discourse, that a large percentage of words
connected with intelligence turn out to be adverbs. This is not unusual since so much of
what we say about intelligence is not simply that so-and-so, or this-and-that is
intelligent (that someone generally does something, or that something is done) but that it
is done in a special way—whatever the verb is, it is modified. Adverbs generally have
limited ranges of application. It does not make sense to attach them to any verbs
whatsoever.(6) It will be important to determine why some
actions and the verbs describing those actions may be modified by the adverb
intelligently, and others not. Such an analysis should yield a group of verbal narratives
informative of the mechanics, as well as the "conditions" that make the use of
the concept of intelligence acceptable or unacceptable in any given context.(7)
The appropriate narrative descriptions (such as insight, flexibility, and novelty) will be
familiar to anyone who speaks the language. What may be surprising is the nature of the
conceptual link between such narrations and "intelligence." The "logical
status" of these descriptions as "conditions" for the application of the
terms "intelligent" or "intelligently " may be neither
"analytic" nor merely "synthetic.
The variety of narrative descriptions that the adverb "intelligently"
collects may be parcelled out into at least two different sets of "conditions"
for the application of the term, each with special and different contexts together with
different sets of "rules" for that application. Some concepts which were thought
to be somehow "intrinsically" linked with intelligence (such as
"intention" or "learning") will be found to be either a part of the
general context (not a condition) of application, or to have only a contingent
relationship to that concept. The result is an analysis of intelligence that is neither
dualistic nor merely dispositional, but one which hopefully captures the varieties of uses
made of the concept. The general thrust of my thesis is to support the Rylean analysis but
to also show that limits exist between the application of the concept of intelligence, and
other mental-conduct concepts.(8)
It will be necessary to demonstrate a distinct difference between the concepts of
ability, "know-how", and intelligence (as a failing in the dispositional
analysis). Also, we need to demonstrate the differences that exist between such concepts
as intention, purpose, learning, and intelligence, thereby blocking their purported
candidacy as analytic conditions for the application of intelligence terms. Examples can
be chosen from the psychological and biological literature to illustrate both technical
and commonplace uses of the words of intelligence in order to obtain a sampling that can
serve as "criteria" for the application of the words of
"intelligence." This will require a discussion of the status of such
"criteria."
I believe that such criteria cannot be described as either analytic or synthetic, and
that there does not exist a single criterion or single class of criteria, but rather two
groups of mutually compatible criteria, each with a different basis of use, dependent on
differences of comparison. In The Concept of Mind, Ryle makes the claim that "
intelligence " is a " determinable " disposition and that it is a species
of " knowing how," a kind of ability, competence, or skill. His argument for the
first of these claims focuses on the dispositional use of the concept expressed by the
adjective "intelligent," and makes the claim that in order for a concept to be
determinate, its exemplary (action-contents) must invariably be found in the verb
expresses its occurrence. Thus "baker" is a highly determinate dispositional
concept because there exists a specific verb that is its exemplary: "to bake."
Should a dispositional concept be lacking a verb, Ryle identifies it as highly generic or
determinable: a grocer does many different kinds of things. There is no verb answering to
an essential and specific activity of the grocer, there is no "grocing"
activity, and this latter condition holds for the concept of intelligence as well, making
it a highly generic or determinable concept.
Ryle's use of the determinate-determinable distinction leads to misconception due to an
ambiguity in that distinction. There appear to be two separable notions in the idea of the
"determinable:"
(1) a determinable concept (proper), and
(2) a polymorphous concept
To say that a concept is polymorphous is to say that there is not one unique kind of
action or occurrence associated with it, but a wide range of different kinds of actions
and occurrences. To say that a concept is determinable is to say that the totality of
actions and occurrences associated with it have never been (nor are they likely to be)
enumerated. When Ryle says that " intelligence " is determinable he means to say
that it is both polymorphous and determinable. But while he provides evidence of its
polymorphousness, he does not show it to be determinable. Showing that a concept is one of
these is not showing that it is the other. A concept may be polymorphous and determinate,
and Ryle has not shown that " intelligence " is not so.
Intelligence has an adverbial significance. Derivative from the function of the adverb,
"intelligently, " as a verb modifier, the concept has essential reference not to
specific verbs, but rather to the manner or style of proceeding of nearly any verbs
descriptive of the proceedings of an agent, so that whether the concept of intelligence is
determinable or determinate is not discoverable from grammatical features alone. The
various contexts in which agents are said to act intelligently need to be surveyed in
order to elicit the used for the application of the concept. Whether the criteria vary
without end or are invariably repeated (or something in between) can only be uncovered by
such context imbedded surveys.
Another distinction must be made for an avoidance of the Rylean error and that is the
distinction betwen exemplaries and occasions. The verb in " Aristotle reasons
logically " is not an exemplary of the tendency to be logical as the verb in "
He baked a cake " is an exemplary of the tendency to bake. " Reasons " in
this case is an occasion in which the tendency to be logical is exemplified by the manner
of reasoning that Aristotle exhibits, but the verb by itself does not do the job of
exemplification (if at all), it is the adverb "logically" that clues us in to
the disposition-type or action-contents being referred to. The exemplaries of a concept
are either analytically or " criteriologically " connected with the concept,
while occasions need not be and usually are only contingently connected. Coupling an
exemplary with the adverb of the concept leads to redundancy in a way in which the
coupling of occasions with the adverb does not. While there is no redundancy in "
Aristotle reasons logically, " there is redundancy in " Aristotle draws valid
inferences logically."
By failing to distinguish between exemplaries and occasions Ryle erroneously assumes
that the action-contents of a disposition (that is , its exemplaries) can only be
expressed by its verb, otherwise the concept must be indeterminate. If there are no unique
action-contents (as expressed by a verb) that serve as necessary and sufficient conditions
(criteria) for the application of that concept, then it has no " essential "
characterisitics. This it appears to Ryle is the case with " intelligent " for
there is no unique verb of intelligence such as "intelligenting." However,
contrary to this claim, intelligence words (when they express dispositions) are
descriptive of the tendency to proceed in a special way, and are not descriptive of any of
an innumerable variety of proceedings, no matter how innumerable the occasions in which
that way of proceeding may be exemplified. Intelligence words find their exemplaries
(action-contents) not in those occasions which are described by the verbs of sentence, but
in the episode-qualifying narratives that the adverb of a sentence collects. To put this
another way, the disposition to intelligence as expressed by the adjective 'intelligent'
finds its exemplaries (action-contents) in those process-fashions or episode-manners that
'intelligently' (the adverb) names. There does not exist a unique verb of intelligence,but
this does not mean that intelligence is determinable, it may well be polymorphous and
determinate.
Ryle's claim that intelligence is a species of " knowing-how " runs afoul of
the fact that abilities can be exercised unintelligently whereas liabilities may be
exercised intelligently.
The position that intelligence and know-how are more or less the same thing lends
credence to the supposition that intelligence is an indeterminate concept, for the number
of things we may know how to do are indefinite, and so if intelligence is a kind of
ability, then it too is indeterminate. But since intelligence is not an ability at all but
rather a capacity (something that cannot be acquired) this support for the indeterminacy
thesis fails.
The insistence that unless a concept has exemplaries that are both necessary and
sufficient conditions of its application, then it is determinable, is overly-stringent.
Wittgenstein has shown us how it is possible in ordinary language to obtain conditions for
the application of a concept that are not so sharply drawn as is analyticity, but which
nevertheless permits us to obtain a disjunction of criteria that are stronger than
synthetic but weaker than analytic. This opens the way for the possibility that the
characteristic components of the concept in question (even if it be polymorphous) form a
closed list (that is the list of disjuncts are not indeterminate but finite).
J. Holoway's analysis of the concept of intelligence suggests that aside from criteria
of intelligence, there may also be criteria that focus on the antitheses of intelligence,
or on intelligence-contrasts, that would allow us to recognize the intelligence of
specific acts in specific contexts. On this account, an act would be judged intelligent
once such other possibilities as chance, instinct, and habit are ruled out of
consideration. It appears then that, depending on context, the criteria of intelligence
may sometimes " describe " action-contents (exemplaries) characteristic of
intelligent behavior, or provide us with a denial that the action-contents in question are
characteristic of instinct, or habit, or reflex, or chance, and so on.
Such a listing of disjuncts may be called contrast-criteria, for these are contrasts
between different kinds of process-fashions or styles of proceeding. Both sets of criteria
for intelligence operate within a context that this concept has in common with such
concepts ashabits, tropisms, and instincts, and this is a means to ends context. They are
all purpose-adapted styles of proceeding, and this may be one reason why some of these are
confused for one another.
I conclude that intelligence-words are expressive of a manner of doing things that may
be narrated in one of two ways. The first of these narrations takes the form of a series
of contrasts, which when put together as a list of disjuncts may be called the
contrast-criteria of intelligence:
i. If I, then—(C v R v T v H v N)
ii. If—(C v R v T v H v N), then I
where C is chance, R is reflex, T is tropism, H is habit, and N is instinct. Quite
possibly R, T, H, and N might be reduced to A: automatism, in which case the
contrast—criteria could be represented as:
iii. If I, then—(C v A)
iv. If—(C v A), then I
Another descriptive narration of intelligence may take the form not of contrasts but of
characteristic activities, the criteria of intelligence:
v. If I, then (Fs v Fn v M v T v P)
vi If (Fs v Fn v M v T v P), then I
Where Fs is self-corrective flexibility, Fn is inventive flexibility, M is multiplexity
of routines, T is transference of acquired routines and P is " a sudden change in the
learning curve " or (less technically) probable success.
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