Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences: A Reduction to Seven Types, Study notes of Medicine

Download Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences: A Reduction to Seven Types and more Study notes Medicine in PDF only on Docsity! Joe L. Green Louisiana State University (Shreveport) Frames, Minds, and Ruman Intelligence: A review essay Howard Gardner. FRAMES OF MIND: THE THEORY OF MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1983. xvi 440 pp. $23.50 hardcover; $11.95 paper. Intelligence is one of those elusive words whieh for centuries has plagued efforts to speak precisely about hum an achievement. While observers have long recognized the complex nature of intelligence, progress towards meaningful discourse has suffered from the failure to develop an adequate theoretical basis for the concept's employment in the language. Howard Gardner's Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences is a significant advancement in the direction of such a theory. Frames of Mind is Gardner's seventh book since the appearance of his The Quest for Mind in 1973. While in many respects a synthesis of Gardner's work, it is also seminal in its multidisciplinary and macrocosmic approach to the problem it treats: the question of how the human mind works. Gardner, a MacArthur Prize Fellow associated with Harvard University, the Boston University School of Medicine, and the Boston Veterans Administration Medieal Center, draws upon several domains of knowledge, particularly psychology, biology, and anthropology, in his treatment of this mysterium tremendum called intelligence. This he does in a non-technical, highly readable argument whieh advances the debate over the nature of intelligence considerably beyond the conventional issues of information-processing, psychometrie theory, symbol systems, and I.Q. The result is a reduction of intelligence to seven possible types, which he classifies as "hum an intelligences". These categories, which he takes to be logically exclusive of each other except, with qualification, in the cases of the last two, include linguistie McGill Journal of Education, Vol.20 No.3 (Fall 1985) 293 294 Review Essay intelligence, musical intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, spatial intelligence, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, and two kinds of personal intelligence: intrapersonal and interpersonal. Each type is characterized through the utilization of evidence and examples drawn from a range of diverse fields of knowledge. The book, like Gaul, is divided into three parts: Background (four chapters), The Theory (eight chapters), and Implications and Applications (two chapters). Gardner's theory falls generally within a two-hundred year tradition (notwithstanding such religio-classical statements as the seven knowledges of the Upanishads or the Apostle Paul's elaboration of God's gifts to man as outlined in 1 Corinthians 12, verses 8-11) -traceable to Franz Joseph Gall and Joseph Spurzheim, the phrenologists who based the ostensible differences in human potential on certain suppositions about the size and shape of the brain as discerned through differences in human skulls. In this same tradition were the theories of L.L. Thurstone, the psychometrician, who argued in favour of a "family" of sorne seven primary mental abilities, and J.P. Guilford, who identified 120 "vectors" of the mind. Against such models is that of the British psychologist, Charles Spearman, who postulated an overriding, general "g" factor generic to aU forms of intelligence and measurable through the use of tests. In retrospect, it is not surprising that such blindly empirical and decidedly microscopic views would give way to a broader notion of intelligence, as they did to the "structuralist" model of the Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget. It was Piaget who illustrated the inadequacies of the Binet-Simon program through his theory of general structures of the mind explainable through a concept of cognitive development operating under the control of stage theory. Interestingly, Gardner argues that, Piaget's model of development assumes relatively less importance in non-Western and pre-literate contexts, and may, in fact, be applicable only to a minority of individuals, even in the West. The steps entailed in achieving other forms of competence -- those of an artist, a lawyer, an athlete, or a political leader -- are ignored in Piaget's monolithic emphasis upon a certain form of thinking". (p.20) Indeed, con tends Gardner, only through a broadly anthropological perspective do the employment of psychology and biology yield a meaningful theory of mind. From the popular quarter, no doubt, the immediate interest in Gardner's book will be in his choice of intelligences and in the anthropological data utilized in their support. For example, one cannot help but find intriguing his argument for spatial intelligence, in which Gardner discusses a number of loosely Review Essay 297 simplicity, "Sitting Bull is 'big medicine'." The point is sim ply that Gardner cannot a priori ru le out as an intelligence those abilities associated with political and religious leadership if he is to argue the necessity of a cultural prerequisite or condition for the presence and meaning of an intelligence. Gardner makes passing rèference to other "efforts to nominate and detail essential intelligences, ranging from the medieval trivium and quadrivium to psychologist Larry Gross's list of fi ve modes of communication (lexical, social-gestural, iconic, logico-mathematical, and musical) ••• " (p.6l). Surprisingly, he includes Paul Hirst's list of forms of knowledge as such an effort, contending that on an a priori basis, Hirst's forms and the other aforementioned efforts constitute acceptable classifications which indeed may prove crucial for certain pur poses. But as a priori schemes, Gardner asserts, they faU the essential test for an empirically grounded set of faculties of intelligence. WhUe neither Hirst nor his critics would wish to claim that his forms of knowledge are intended as intelligences by any stretch of their meaning, Gardner is mistaken in his understanding of them as a priori. Hirst is quite careful to explicate his forms as a posteriori lest they be taken in sorne Platonic or Kantian sense. Indeed, it is not at aU clear why Gardner even brings up such knowledge classifications as the trivium and quadrivium, or Hirst's forms, since their object is knowledge, not intelligence. Basic to Gardner's thesis is what he terms the criteria of an intelligence, which he presents in unordered fashion as the eight "signs" of an intelligence. In his words, Here 1 outline those considerations that have weighed most heavUy in the present effort, those desiderata on which 1 have come to rely in an effort to nominate a set of intelligences which seems general and genuinely useful. The very use of the work signs signaIs that this undertaking must be provisional: 1 do not include something merely because it exhibits one or two of the signs, nor do 1 exclude a candidate intelligence just because it faUs to qualify on each and every account. Rather, the effort is to sample as widely as possible among the various criteria and to include within the ranks of the chosen intelligences those candidates that fare the best. FoUowing the suggestive model of the computer scientist Oliver Selfridge, we might think of these signs as a group of demons, each of which will hoUer when an intelligence resonates with that demon's "demand characteristics". When enough demons hoUer, an intelligence is included; when enough of them withhold approbation, the intelligence is, if regrettably, banished from consideration. (p.62) These criteria include potential isolation by brain damage; 298 Review Essay the existence of idiot savants, prodigies, and other exception al individuals; an identifiable core operation or set of operations; a distinctive developmental history, along with a definable set of "end-state" performances; an evolutionary history and evolutionary plausibility; support from experimental psychological tasks; support from pyschometr ic findings; and susceptibili ty to encoding in a symbol system. Unfortunately, Gardner is unable to offer a satisfactory model for the utilization of these criteria. As he admits, their employment is quite subjective in that we do not know how to bring them to any clear and objective use. Moreover, the criteria are insufficiently differentiated, sorne a function of purely biological consideration, others a function of the social sciences. Questions loom, such as, "Are the criteria of equal weight in determining an intelligence?" Stated differently, "Are they only nominally different, or are they hierarchical in their interrelationships?" Finally, even if we were able to agree that, say, three or four of them are sufficient to justify an intelligence, "How are these to be used as instruments of measure?" At best, Gardner offers what amounts to a general hypothesis about multiple intelligences rather than a useful theory, even one of description. While he takes intelligences to be derived a posteriori through the prism of culture, Gardner is remarkably Aristotelian in his notion that "intelligences should be thought of as entities at a certain level of generality, broader than highly specifie computational mechanisms (like line detection) while narrower than the most general capacities, like analysis, synthesis, or a sense of self (if any of these can be shown to exist apart from combinations of specifie intelligence). • •• It is thus a mistake to try to compare intelligences on aU particulars; each must be thought of as its own system with its own rules" (p.68). All of this is conceptually quite unsettling, for Gardner seems to be posi ting something akin to a structuralist explanation for any intelligence while rejecting the proposition that "particulars" are either logically or ontologically prior to an intelligence. If the structuralist assumption may be said to suffer with the assignation of (say) musical intelligence to an idiot savant, it is also logically inappropriate if one is to assign to an intelligence the conceptual status of an entity apart from the assemblage of particulars that constitute its basis. Linguistically, at least, Ockham's Razor would seem to be a most helpful tool in resolving this issue. Yet, Gardner's concern is not so much with the ways that words like intelligence, giftedness, creativity, knowledge, abilities, skills, and other cognates function in any culturo-linguistic context, but is instead concerned with " ••• the various intelligences chiefly as 'sets of know-how' -- procedures for doing things" (p.69). Howard Gardner's thesis that intelligence is a multi-faceted concept is prima fade valid, and his book is a most valuable Review Essay 299 hypothesis, but a hypothesis at best. The overriding problem involved in understanding this hypothesis as it is presented is, however, not an empirical one, but is clearly philosophical, requiring an adjustment in the basic construct. Gardner's thesis breaks down at the point of his (correct) identification of culture with problem identification and problem solving. These are necessary con di tions for the presence of an intelligence. Ostensibly, cultures, which include very different languages, are so entirely divergent at any point in time that it becomes necessary to examine the meanings of intelligence as they are culturally couched in language. Failing this, assumptions surrounding the idea of intelligence in one cultural context, however liberal and enlightened, will inevitably find their way, however tacitly, into the search for intelligence's meaning(s) in other cultures. Anthropology and language study are essential tools in the resolution of this problem, but they must be philosophically employed. Until this is done, we cannot attach meaning to such statements as that of the Hunkpapa Sioux tribesman who noted that "Sitting Bull is 'big medicine'." Nonetheless, Frames of Mmd stands as a new benchmark from which discussions of human intelligence must proceed. Howard Gardner is to be applauded for planting the seeds of an original theory of the hum an mind, one which is certain to elevate future dialogue considerably beyond the level that has hitherto characterized so much of the debate surrounding intelligence.