Was den Menschen zum Menschen macht

Conception of Intelligence

4 Min. Lesezeit

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version: Intelligenzkonzeption

The term intelligence is used in several non-coextensive fields of meaning. An ontology that does not want to collapse the human personhood (German) into one of these fields must model the fields themselves as concepts of their own. Conception of Intelligence is the umbrella term for such definitional families.

Six conceptions are substantively load-bearing:

Empirical-Functionalist Conception

Spearman’s g (1904), the Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory (CHC), Sternberg’s triarchic model, and Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences define intelligence operationally through test performance, adaptability, and problem-solving capacity. Intelligence is here a latent construct from test correlations. Ontologically a faculty-indicator, not a faculty itself.

Computational Conception

Marr’s three explanatory levels (1982), Russell and Norvig’s Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, and Hutter’s AIXI model formulate intelligence as faculty to attain goals in complex environments — operationalized as optimization procedures or bounded rationality. Substrate-neutral, blind to who-questions.

Substance-Ontological Conception

Aristotle (De anima III), Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I, q. 79), Spaemann (Persons 1996), Pieper. Intellectus as faculty of the rational soul (German), whose act is the cognition of truth. First actuality (prote energeia / German): the faculty as habitus. Second actuality (deutera energeia / German): the performance. This conception is the guideline of the present personalist ontology.

Phenomenological Conception

Husserl (Logical Investigations VI), Edith Stein (Finite and Eternal Being), Dan Zahavi. Intelligence as intentional act-structure of an I-pole — perceiving, judging, inferring, remembering as acts from a first-person perspective.

Theological Conception

Augustine (De trinitate IX – X), Aquinas, Bonaventure. Human intelligence as finite participatio in the divine Logos. Intelligence is relationally constituted — toward truth, which is not self-generated. Connecting line for the substance-ontological-relational understanding of the person.

Consequence for the Ontology

There is no the intelligence, but intelligence-under-a-description. An ontology that wants to grasp personality precisely models the conceptions as their own classes, not as a single construct. Only on this conceptual basis can one sensibly ask which conception captures the human special status.

Ontological Classification

Sources (recension date 25 April 2026).

Further sources:

  • Spaemann, Robert (2006): Persons. The Difference between “Someone” and “Something”. Translated by Oliver O’Donovan. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Pieper, Josef (1947 / 2011): Truth of All Things. An Inquiry into the Anthropology of the High Middle Ages. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press.
  • Aristotle: De anima III (Bekker pagination).
  • Aquinas, Thomas: Summa Theologiae I, q. 79 (De potentiis intellectivis).
  • Augustine: De trinitate IX – X (CCSL 50/50A).
  • Bonaventure: Itinerarium mentis in Deum (1259); critical edition Quaracchi, Opera Omnia vol. V (1891); English: The Soul’s Journey into God, translated by Ewert Cousins. New York: Paulist 1978.
  • Spearman, Charles (1904): General intelligence, objectively determined and measured. American Journal of Psychology 15: 201 – 292.
  • McGrew, Kevin S. (2009): CHC theory and the human cognitive abilities project: Standing on the shoulders of the giants of psychometric intelligence research. Intelligence 37(1): 1 – 10.
  • Sternberg, Robert J. (1985): Beyond IQ: A Triarchic Theory of Human Intelligence. Cambridge University Press.
  • Gardner, Howard (2011): Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, 3rd ed. New York: Basic Books (orig. 1983).
  • Husserl, Edmund (2001): Logical Investigations, vol. II. Translated by J. N. Findlay. London: Routledge (orig. 1901).
  • Stein, Edith (2002): Finite and Eternal Being. Translated by Kurt F. Reinhardt. Washington, DC: ICS Publications (orig. 1950).
  • Marr, David (1982): Vision. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
  • Russell, Stuart & Norvig, Peter (2020): Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, 4th ed. Pearson.
  • Hutter, Marcus (2005): Universal Artificial Intelligence. Berlin: Springer.
  • Legg, Shane & Hutter, Marcus (2007): A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications 157: 17 – 24.

See also

Graphansicht

Backlinks