I have no issues with noting that a mind is a compex process. I think that comparing it to a blizzatd in this way is useful... I often compare it to traffic. I don't think that it being a noun precludes it from being a complex system that may be comprised of activities. I think it being a noun precludes it from being a verb, and I think that careless misspeaking often leads to careless misthinking and false conclusions.

You're hung up on language — Agent Smith

Only because it's the only thing we can use to discuss these ideas. Maybe it's more important than you think.

Do you agree that in English, to say "I was thinking about Aristotle" is a sensible sentence, but "I was minding about Aristotle" isn't?

Or we can do it the other way. "I heard the song in my mind" is a sensible sentence, but "I heard the song in my think" is not.

Do you dispute these? These are simple demonstrations that "Mind" is a noun and not a verb in English.

Why isn't it ("mind" being a noun) open for debate. Even the great Aristotle made mistakes. — Agent Smith

Because what is or isn't a noun is a function of how billions of English speakers have historically and continue to currently speak, not a function of what makes sense to you. that's how language works.

I'm assuming that you are functionally literate person and actually know that mind is a noun, but have just committed yourself to something that if you stepped back from for a second, you'd see that as spoken what you've said is incorrect. Am I correct to assume you are fluent and at least minimally literate in English?

Look, you know that it's correct to say "a mind", and not "to mind", right? So you already know what I'm saying about nouns and verbs is true, right? So I'm not saying that whatever idea you have in your head is wrong, I'm saying that what you have said in writing is incorrect in standard English, which is what we're using to discuss the matter. The only way I'll know if what you have in your head is sensible or not is for you to find a way to say it sensibly. Get me?

I merely made explicit something that's true for everyone, including yourself unless there's someone who's omniscient. Are you omniscient? I hardly think so. — Agent Smith

But what you are claiming to be true, in the way you are claiming it, is demonstrably false. "Mind" is in no way a verb. You need to find a way to express what you're trying to say accurately and sensibly, or you will just keep saying things that are false.

I have seen your point from the beginning. I don't think you see mine.

If you want to say that minds are manifested through actions, then that's a sensible thing to say that is consistent with the English language. If you want to say that minds are activities or actions, then you are speaking nonsense. It matters that you express yourself in sensible ways, and just because what you're saying makes sense to you in your own head doesn't really mean anything.

When you speak carelessly, then you are likely to incorporate the careless propositions into your reasoning, which leads to careless reasoning and false and fallacious conclusions. I'm sure you don't want that result, so I am trying to suggest things you can do to avoid it.

Yes, and "verb" is also a noun. So?

Do you understand why I say that "Mind" being a noun isn't a matter open for debate, but a fact of the English language?

Let's start over.

For me what we call mind is an activity like walking & talking , and not an object, like legs & mouth. To think the mind is an object and not an activity is an error that's committed by many. That's about the gist of what I want to share. — Agent Smith

Look, adding "For me" doesn't fix the problem you have here. I could say "For me, radishes are berries", but all that displays is that I either don't know much about radishes, berries, or both. Minds are things, not activities, no matter how often you want to say otherwise, and the only way to change that is to change the English language... which brings me back to what I originally said: If your way of approaching the question requires you to change the English language in order for it to make sense, then I think it is a good idea to change the way you approach the question. So I acknowledge what you're saying, and I'm pretty sure I understand it, and I think it's a bad way to approach the subject for the reasons I explicated.

All I can say is you're hung up on language. — Agent Smith

Seeing as though language is virtually the only tool we have to communicate in this forum, I can't possibly imagine how you could communicate otherwise (pictures or graphs, I suppose).

I made it clear to you that language isn't the only way to understand my point. — Agent Smith

Can you point me to where you did that? I missed it, and it isn't at all clear to me.

Because I insist, perhaps dogmatically, on speaking English, and in English, the word "thinking" isn't a synonym to the word "mind". You seem to want to insist that either they are synonyms, which is blatantly and demonstrably (check any dictionary) false, or that they should be, for which you have offered no justification. Do you see what I am saying? I'm really not sure that you do.

There's no such thing as a mind which thinks. Thinking is the mind! Mind is an activity (thinking), not an actor (thinker). — Agent Smith

That is a false statement in common English. Again, not up for debate, it's a fact of the language. I will reiterate that if your method leads you to having to reinvent the English language in order to justify your views, then I think your method is flawed, and suggest you rethink it.

You're also free to just keep insisting that your new and novel use of language is the better one and hope we all adopt it, but I'm not optimistic for you if you can make no better case than just insisting it is so by fiat.

There's nothing in walking that we could consider ontologically equivalent to kidney or a heart. A mind is not an 0bject like the brain, it's simply an activity that something (the brain?) conducts. — Agent Smith

You are conflating "noun" with "material". A name, and equation, traffic, an answer... none of these consist of matter, even though, like the mind, all of them can be related to matter, yet they are all nouns. They are all things. That doesn't imply

A mind is not an object (sp) like the brain, it's simply an activity that something (the brain?) conducts. — Agent Smith

In normal English the mind is a thing, not an activity. That's not a subject for debate, it's a fact of the language. Confusing the point that it is immaterial or if it is recognized and defined in terms of activities, with whether it is a noun or a verb, is simply misspeaking and asking to confuse yourself and others.

I have a feeling that we're confusing verbs with nouns here. The mind is, at the end of the day, a verb (thinking/thoughts), but we seem to mislabeling it as a noun (a mind which allegedly thinks). — Agent Smith

This is literally an explicitly false statement. The word "mind" is a noun unless it is referring to caring (a shepherd minds their flock, or "I don't mind if you smoke"). "Think" is absolutely a verb (thought is also a noun). "Think" and "mind" are not synonyms.

If one's approach leads to a need to reinvent the English language in fundamental ways in order to make sense of one's conclusions, I'd suggest that approach is flawed.

I do not mean 'not real' by "illusion"; rather I mean something seeming to be something else. — 180 Proof

:100:

Well if this is the level that conversation is going to be, then let's just not, ok?

If you don't know how to identify if you've found an acceptable answer, then how do you know that engaging in the process has worked for you in figuring things out? How could you tell that you had something figured out?

It's a process that's worked for me before when I try to figure something out. — T Clark

How do you know? Honest question.

In a previous post, I listed some of the factors I think go into deciding whether or not a particular work of art is high quality: — T Clark

Ok, but why must these things be accounted for? Or why don't we just take your list and say "That's it, let's call it a day"?

It seems to me that it's pointless to try to answer a question if we don't have any way of knowing what a satisfactory answer looks like. Don't mistake me, I'm not criticizing your attempts at answers in favor of mine, I'm criticizing the process.

Yes... well...that's what we're trying to figure out here. — T Clark

If you don't have anything by which to decide sufficiency, then how do you know that what I offered is insufficient? How do you play a game when you don't know what it means to win?

I don't really understand what you mean with this discussion where the subject concerns factual matters that anyone interested can learn simply by perusing widely available sources. Instead you are soliciting and receiving uninformed opinions, prejudices, grudges and personal anecdotes. — SophistiCat

Well hindsight is 20/20 isn't it? Obviously I overestimated the literacy of the community on the facts surrounding IQ. I'm surprised and disappointed. Having said that, I think my intent should have been pretty explicit in the last line of text:

I'm curious to hear what people think are the actual and meaningful limitations of the metric, and what benefits or value (personal or social) it provides.

Am i asking for factual information that is easily available here? If so, I'm not aware of where to find it, or I would have done so. Rather than pointing out my failure, would you be so kind as to point me to a source that will answer my request?

I've met people with 160 IQ's that I had to change a flat tire for so that they could make it home and not freeze on the side of the road at night despite the fact they were working on top secret engineering jobs that only the elite in their field qualified for. IQ is not very useful when not within the parameters and social constructs of society so in other words IQ is of no fundamental value — MAYAEL

Tell me more about this story. How do you know this person had a 160 IQ? I don't actually know the IQ of anyone I have ever met in my life, and I'm in my 50's and have met plenty of people. Also, was this person not capable of learning how to change a tire, or had they just not done it before? Was this a true story in every detail, or embellished to make a point?

This makes sense to me, but I don't think it's enough. Maybe necessary but not sufficient. — T Clark

Ok. That might be the case. So how would we know when something was sufficient? Sufficient for what purpose, or to what end?

I've thought about this from the other direction - New music often goes to outside sources to find new musical language, e.g. African music has become part of popular music in the US and Europe. As the world homogenizes, will we eventually run out of fresh sources and end up with all culture the same everywhere? — T Clark

The socio-cultural world was highly local for any individual for most of human history, and we never seemed to run out of new art then, so I expect not.

Of the two questions, I think I can offer one answer is uninteresting but pretty serviceable:

What qualifies as art?

I think it is generally of more social value to have a more inclusive conception of what qualifies as art rather than a less inclusive one. In this light, @T Clark's definition, something along the lines of "whatever is presented (solely?) for the purpose of being judged aesthetically is art" is a decent one. There just isn't much value added to the world in creating a society that says definitively "This is not art! It doesn't meet the criteria", but there are certainly cautionary tales from history about being overly authoritarian on such matters.

The next question is far more interesting to me, and partly because I don't have a fully satisfying answer, but do have some thoughts on the matter.

What makes art good or bad

While it's easy to just say "It's all a matter of taste" and leave it at that, I think that's letting oneself off the hook a little too easily. I would propose that an element that is common to good art, and that is still consistent with the notion that there can be differing tastes, is that good art offers us a specific experience that is similar to surprise. Good art creates expectations, and subverts them, sometimes subtly, sometimes obviously. This is interesting both because both cultural pressures and individual psychology can strongly effect how one's expectations are created and manipulated by a piece of art. It makes the world of aesthetics recursive, in that what is considered good art creates expectations that can only be subverted by "breaking the rules" of what qualifies as good.

There's an interesting phenomena that, so far as I can see has been going on since time immemorial. Every generation, what is considered good breaks the conventions set by previous traditions. The "old folks" (not always by age, but often) are derisive of the new art and often descry it is as "not art", while the new generation might see the old works as tired cliches, lacking creativity and uninteresting. Eventually the Sex Pistols become Blink 182 which becomes elevator music. I think this gives us some direction when we look at art, rather than wandering the wilds directionless, but it still leaves a lot on the table, which is probably not a bad thing.

What on earth would make you think that? — Bitter Crank

An over-active sense of nostalgia?

Suppose I'm wrong and that IQ does measure intelligence. What good could it do, absent understanding aspects of intelligence for its own sake? — Manuel

I thought I explained a very personal example of what it can do. In the case of my personal history, it altered the trajectory of my education, and in doing so might have arguably altered the trajectory of my life. Interestingly, you're asking the primary question I asked.

I'm not sure that there's much point in trying to disabuse you of the apparently negative attitude you have about this subject. I took a simple shot, and you don't seem receptive. I made this post, not to disabuse people about what IQ tests were, but in hopes that people who know more about the subject than I do could give me a better understanding. Being disabused of the myths is a necessary starting point for the discussion, just as being disabused about the earth being flat is a necessary starting point for discussing astronomy in any meaningful way.

The point about the "idiot", though rhetorical as you well point out, is that people who are fascinated by IQ tend to make these distinctions with more frequency than others. — Manuel

Are you sure about this? Or could this be your own bias? This doesn't reflect my own experience beyond the fact that sometimes people are assholes, and generally "idiot" is a derisive term.

We do things all the time that we don't understand. We don't understand art too well, yet we do it, we don't understand human psychology too well, yet we deal with people all the time. We don't understand how particles could combine to create colour experience, yet we see colour all the time.

We don't know what life is, yet we do biology. We don't know what mathematics is, yet we do extremely complicated theorems - at least some people do.

So yes, we proceed to work with what we're given and construct theories. The simpler the phenomena, the more developed the science is, hence physics is considered the star of the sciences. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of important things to work on in chemistry or biology or all the other fields.

I don't see the problem. — Manuel

The problem is that if you aren't talking about a specific deficit in our understanding, there is no apparent value in pointing to the complexity of the subject, unless you count "not loosing an argument" as value. It's just a rhetorical dodge. If you want to talk about a specific deficit that you think you can identify that the experts in the field have missed, I'm willing to hear it, as I'm sure the experts would be. Remember what this was in answer to? You said

The world's most educated experts have serious trouble accounting for the behavior of a single particle when it interacts with a receptor and a screen, in a field which is significantly more developed than psychology.

Perhaps intelligence is a bit more complex than a particle. — Manuel

The implication, if I understand you correctly, is that different subjects sit on a hierarchy of complexity, with intelligence being more complex than particle physics, and that because we have deficits in our understanding of particle physics, our understanding of intelligence must therefore have greater deficits, therefore IQ tests can't measure intelligence very accurately. Isn't that roughly the argument?

My response was made to point out that no subject has an inherent level of complexity, and any subject can be understood and dealt with at differing levels of complexity, so that your argument just doesn't fly. That's the problem. An unspoken premise was false, if you want to get clinical.

Curious that you mention an "idiot" instead of a "person." — Manuel

I was using it as a rhetorical device to note that it isn't a task that requires any special cognitive ability. I'm pretty sure it's a common figure of speech. Are you really not familiar with it? Maybe it's a generational thing.

The world's most educated experts have serious trouble accounting for the behavior of a single particle when it interacts with a receptor and a screen, in a field which is significantly more developed than psychology.

Perhaps intelligence is a bit more complex than a particle. — Manuel

Things are exactly as simple or complicated as we choose them to be. Carl Sagan had a great quote:

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe

The point being that we can use an appeal to complexity to muddy any subject, but it doesn't really answer any questions or offer much value. Making an apple pie from scratch is infinitely complex (if we choose to look at it that way), yet people manage to do it all the time. So what value is there to concerning yourself with how allegedly complex intelligence is, if it isn't just to "win a point" in this "argument"? Following that line of reasoning, we might as well all throw up our hands and say that there's no point in acquiring knowledge or figuring things out, because it will always be more complicated than we can grasp. Do you see the problem with that approach?

I base my conclusion on the observation of what the test does. It asks questions pertaining to two domain within belong to what we tend to call "intelligence": verbal and mathematical.

Perhaps they've expanded recently and put in reading comprehension and some other things. — Manuel

You are factually mistaken. The most commonly used IQ test (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale) measures aptitude in four domains:

• Verbal Comprehension
• Perceptual Reasoning
• Working Memory
• Processing Speed

With each of these having multiple subcategories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wechsler_Adult_Intelligence_Scale

But I think it is evident that such a constraining circumstance can only account for a small fragment of what is called "intelligence". Street smarts, intuition, psychological acuity, insight, novelty, depth and a bunch of other factors are excluded. — Manuel

To the degree that these are notions that can be formalized, and when formalized actually reflect what we normally mean when talking about intelligence, I think that they can absolutely be generalized from IQ tests. Those caveats matter though. If you can tell me what intuition is and how it can be recognized, it should be testable. Same goes for "street smarts" . I'm not sure that novelty by itself is something we usually associate with intelligence (any idiot can make a tuna fish and pineapple sandwich, that doesn't require intelligence, but it is novel).

The thing that responses like this seem to fail to consider is that the world's best educated experts have spent entire careers on the subject of functional intelligence and over generations have crafted these tests to do exactly what you seem to think they can't - and your view appears to be based on a very passing familiarity with the subject. Why wouldn't someone who's spent their whole life on this subject have considered the objections you bring up?

Edit: Consider this analogy. If I were to say that you could test hockey players in the following areas:

• Skating
• Shooting
• Passing
• Checking

If I told you that you could get a very accurate reflection of a hockey player's ability by measuring these foundational categories of skills, would that seem reasonable? The list certainly doesn't describe the intricacies of what hockey is, or even what it is to be good at hockey, but I don't see (at least for the sake of argument, I'm not a hockey expert) why it wouldn't be a decent measure of hockey acuity without having to measure every conceivable element or situation that could occur during a hockey game. That's the value of tests. They let us generalize bigger things from smaller amounts of data.

But to equate these two to something as complex as multi-faceted as intelligence is a stretch. — Manuel

This is an example of one of the myths I mentioned. Why is it that you think this is the case? Are you sure you aren't mistaken?

Been taking a deep dive into Arctic Monkeys recently.

Let us be as positive as we can be, for those finds are rare to come across. — PoeticUniverse

Sadly, claims to such finds are not rare at all, and to date all I have encountered have be vacuous.

One of the most important things to do when dealing with abused children is to provide a world which is predictable. Perhaps the ability to see the world in an orderly fashion relies on a nice middle-class upbringing. — Banno

I suspect your tongue was firmly seated in cheek, but FWIW, as a child my step-father had a volatile and unpredictable temper, and yet here I am. I don't know that I can tease out actual psychological causes, but my post-hoc narrative is that the lack of predictability in childhood made me more strongly crave to find such predictability in the larger world. Or genes, maybe it's that.

I'm torn here. On the one hand, I want to suggest that before you run a victory lap for having solved metaphysics, maybe you want to present your idea for criticism. On the other hand, while it's an inference based on a small amount of information, I suspect that what you have to say will be entirely uninteresting and unconvincing to me. I guess I'll leave it up to you while letting you know that your post comes across as lacking not just the social humility that be a turn off to people (I sometimes lack that), but more importantly the intellectual humility that allows people to take you seriously as a thinker. Leastways, that's how it looks to me.

If the world were unpredictable, this would undermines not just science, but the capacity to describe the world in a consistent fashion. — Banno

This could be restated as "If the world were unpredictable, this would undermine not just science, but the notion of a world that can be made sense of". I suppose one is free to engage with the world as an inherently chaotic and arbitrary place, but one shouldn't be surprised if they get treated as a lunatic if they do.

Gotta say, you have very definitive opinions about the responses to a very vague and open ended question. Personally I'd find it more interesting if you put the effort into your original question that you put into your responses.

No, it was Peirce alright. — Ciceronianus

Cool. I love the notion and phrase "sham doubt", but often think it was one any one of Pierce, Quine or Russell, and can never seem to find an easy reference, so I'm sometimes hesitant to bring it up for fear of getting the attribution wrong.

I am sympathetic to this line of thought, although I think that ground - ground of all being, or ground of all knowledge - would be a more appropriate word here than certainty. (Of course, those who plump for some such ground will disagree, like Joshs with his phenomenology.) — SophistiCat

Not quite sure I'm understanding the distinction you're trying to make. Can you expand?