Ⓒ Howard Gardner 2023
Cormac McCarthy Throws Down the Gauntlet
In Stella Maris, the second of Cormac McCarthy’s recently published pair of novels, protagonist Alicia Western baldly asserts:
“The Stanford Binet (IQ test) is racist—no questions about music... For instance, music doesn’t count. So here’s a black guy with a measured IQ of 85 who is by any matrix you might care to choose a musical genius. Simply off the charts. But to the IQ folks he’s little more than a half wit.”
Whether or not he’s aware of it (and we have known each other casually since the 1980s), author McCarthy is giving voice to the insight that led to MI theory— “the theory of multiple intelligences.” Put simply, the human intellect cannot be adequately assessed by a single paper-and-pencil (or computer-administered) instrument. Rather, there are various forms of intelligence—linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, interpersonal, etc., each deserves to be assessed separately and in an “intelligence-fair” way. Strength—or weakness!—in one form of intelligence does not predict strength—or weakness—in other intellectual realms.
Alicia Western goes on to ridicule other forms of psychological testing—from the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) to the Raven’s Progressive Matrices. But by no means does she equate all intelligences. Indeed, as spelled out convincingly by reviewer James Wood, Alicia embraces a definite hierarchy or ranking system for intelligences. In her view, numerical gifts are the most important—the single index of intellect by which one should judge individuals. Like mathematics, music is also a gift from the gods—and therefore has a special status. Definitely of a lower rank is language—on Alicia’s account invented far more recently, subject constantly and unpredictably to historical forces and cultural factors, lacking in precision, and inherently incapable of achieving the universality of mathematics.
Clearly, this literary creation is proposing an intellectual pecking order among humans: Mathematicians stand above all others; physicists are those who are not quite gifted enough to carry out “pure mathematics;” those restricted to ordinary language—like novelists and even poets—are not in the same league. Perhaps, as reviewer James Wood suggests, McCarthy is ranking himself well below the mathematicians and scientists with whom he has long engaged at the interdisciplinary Santa Fe Institute. But perhaps as Graeme Wood, another reviewer, points out, it is language itself which may be better equipped to attack and (unpack) the philosophical issues that undergird and motivate many of Cormac McCarthy’s searching writings.
In what follows, I step back from the sheer ranking of importance, or priority, of various forms of intellect. I seek to identify and illuminate some of the various lenses with which one can consider intellect. And I put forth my own views.
The Battle Among Psychologists
Over a century ago, French psychologist Alfred Binet created the first test for intelligence that became widely used. Binet deliberately assembled a potpourri of questions which predicted, with some accuracy, who would succeed readily in (indeed, breeze through) French public schools— and who could be expected to encounter difficulties. Developed (and successfully so) for this limited purpose, these “IQ tests” soon swept much of the Western world. They were used not only in scholastic settings but as a tool for placing individuals in putatively appropriate niches in the military; or for determining whether a person accused of a crime might be treated differently, depending on whether considered a genius, of average intelligence, or–per the lingo of the day–an imbecile.
Psychometricians (along with other psychologists) being a contentious crowd, Binet’s work (particularly as reformulated by American test-makers Louis Thurstone and Lewis Terman) has often been critiqued. As early as the 1940s, psychometrician David Wechsler articulated the need to assess “social intelligence.” And then forty years later, both Robert Sternberg and I put forth more detailed dissections of intelligence—Sternberg introducing his triarchic theory, I putting forth the theory of multiple intelligences (MI); Sternberg created measures, I largely desisted from doing so. And once a pluralistic view of intellect had been proposed, psychologists as well as psychologically-oriented pundits readily proposed other forms of intelligence—ranging from financial to sexual to emotional (the latter put forth initially by psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer, and effectively communicated to the rest of the world by science journalist Daniel Goleman.)
Intelligences Beyond Humans: Animals, Living Entities… and other forms of Matter
While tests of intelligence were initially devised for administration to students (as well as soldiers and research subjects), there is no principled reasons why they should be restricted to Homo sapiens. And indeed, while it’s scarcely feasible to administer standard tests of language or mathematics to other species, it’s certainly possible to assess the maze-running ability of rats, or the navigational capacity of pigeons. Indeed, for some capacities, one or another species may well surpass human beings—if indeed, we knew how to assess the spatial abilities of octopi or the signaling acuity of dolphins.
Further: how convincingly can we execute comparisons within and across species? Perhaps rodents or birds can display as much spatial intelligence as humans…and many species (including our close primate relatives) may be proficient in bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. But how could we ascertain their personal intelligences—or, for that matter, their existential intelligences?
More recently, artists—as well as a few bolder scientists—have even raised the possibility of intellectual achievements beyond the animal kingdom. Perhaps, there is intelligence—or wisdom—among trees and plants. Or, indeed, perhaps the earth itself constitutes an intellectual gyroscope. For elaboration of these points, see my blog post (link here).
And of course, problem-solving—and perhaps even problem-finding—are no longer restricted to the natural world. Seventy years ago, computers were already capable of impressive computation—rapid calculation, logical proofs, game playing (such as chess), prediction of election results. And with every passing year—perhaps even week or day!—computers are able to best the most proficient human beings...and to do so even in games, contests, academic feats once thought the solitary purview of Homo sapiens. As for the retort that these machines (however constituted) have been designed, programmed, operated, read by human beings: we have to concede that we members of Homo sapiens no longer know, we no longer understand how computers are achieving these amazing feats… A trend that promises to continue and presumably accelerate indefinitely.
On to… Ontology
Shortly after I published Frames of Mind, my 1983 introduction to the theory of multiple intelligences, I arrived at an important realization.
Writing as a scholar and scientist—one reasonably well-versed in psychology and neuroscience—I had thought of the intelligences as properties of the human mind, the human brain. (A contemporary, data-grounded, criteria-based variant of phrenology, if you will). We are the species that possesses linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal intelligences. (Later I added an eighth or naturalist intelligence; and I have also speculated about the possibilities of an existential intelligence (the intelligence which puts forth and tackles “big questions”) and a pedagogical intelligence (the intelligence that enables us to convey our knowledge in appropriate ways to audiences with varying degrees of knowledge and sophistication). No candidate intelligence is confirmed unless it meets the criteria that I have laid out.
But as I began to work with educators, I soon realized that they did not think primarily in terms of the computational capacities of their students. Rather, (and appropriately) most educators think in terms of curriculum—what’s appropriate for math class, physics class, English class, home economics, gym, the marching band, the art or dance studio, etc.)
Of course, there is a rough alignment between cognition and curriculum. Presumably, math class relies significantly on logical-mathematical intelligence, English class largely on linguistic intelligence, band and chorus on musical intelligence, etc.
But cognition and curricula are NOT equivalent. There are many ways to teach math; to construct and to assess mathematical assignments; to remember and draw on mathematical skills and reasoning. The same can be said with respect to almost any subject, any topic. And this realization led, in terms, to an important distinction between DOMAINS and INTELLIGENCES.
DOMAINS consist of the set of knowledge, procedures, insights that constitute a subject taught in school (or covered in a textbook or an online course); the INTELLIGENCES are the mind/brain toolkit on which learners can draw. Taking advantage of this toolkit, teachers can present materials and students can assimilate, apprehend, and display their knowledge of a specific topic. Accordingly: as an example, art history is a domain; but its mastery may call on linguistic intelligence, spatial intelligence, naturalist intelligences, and no doubt others as well. Or, to flip the example, our linguistic toolkit can be drawn on as we attempt to master domains as diverse as history, economics, or biology.
When communicating with educators, I convey this point with a simple assertion. Anything worth learning can be approached in more than one way. If you can teach a topic, or come to master a topic, in several ways, you have a well-rounded, well-textured understanding. Conversely, if you can only teach or understand a topic in one way, your grasp is limited, fragile.
This distinction also has important, indeed, crucial implications for students who exhibit learning deficits. If you teach such students in only a single conventional way, you are virtually bound to fail. The deft teacher of the dyslexic (or of the physically clumsy, or the tone deaf, or the color blind) is the teacher who is able to convey the DOMAIN’S key principles and ideas in novel but appropriate ways. As the innovative educational organization CAST maintains. It’s not the student that is disabled; it is the curriculum! Hence CAST’s call for Universal Design for Learning (UDL).
Then, there’s the opposite side of the coin: In traditional computing, everything can be expressed in bits—in 0s and 1s. Does that mean that everything that a computer can spew forth—from creating a poem to solving a differential equation to writing a fugue—is identical? Obviously not—in any helpful sense. Only if you argue that since all life contains DNA, all living material is the same; or, to switch entities, since all materials, all matter are composed of atoms, all materials, all matter are the same!
To generalize: Be wary if you have a very thin and one-dimensional view of the world(s) in which we live.
Ontology Continued
Let’s start with the extremes, just introduced:
At one horn of the extreme: there is only one form of computation (as epitomized by 0s and 1s in computation); every capacity can and should be expressed and evaluated in light of this primitive (or primary) metric.
On the opposite horn of the extreme: every computation that is not identical is distinct; accordingly, there are infinite numbers of computations—01, 10, 001, 100, 1010 etc.)
Few would be content to endorse either of these extreme positions.
Now consider a very rough analogue in the study of intelligence: There is only one form of intelligence, only one form of computation; and we can align individuals, tasks, programs, computational systems in term of degree or amount of computational power.
One can actually locate a statement to this effect—indeed, two such utterances—in Cormac’s McCarthy recently published novels. We encounter the claim that, for many individuals, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was “the smartest person man they’d ever met”—or, indeed, that the world had ever known. Roughly speaking, here’s the assertion: Oppenheimer could compute better or faster or both than any other human being—known or even imaginable.
However, this remarkable claim leaves questions unanswered. Were the evaluators actually taking into account all of Oppenheimer’s skills and capacities, disabilities, frailties, weaknesses as well as his clear prowess?
Consider the evidence. Let’s concede that Oppenheimer was a brilliant physicist and an excellent leader of the Manhattan Project. But it is also known that Oppenheimer did an inadequate job defending himself at the 1954 hearings of the Atomic Energy Commission. He did not demonstrate his capacity to be entrusted with secrets, and hence lost his security clearance. (It was restored in 2022, 68 years later)! Also, his own family life was troubled; as a young adult, he sought to poison one of his preceptors; and he never recovered psychologically from his role in the Manhattan project and the carnage in its aftermath. Nor, reverting to Alison’s hypothetical musical genius who was black, is there evidence that he was unusually gifted in music. Whatever it encompassed, Oppenheimer’s genius was clearly limited.
Back to Alicia, as portrayed in McCarthy’s books. On the one hand, she is willing to credit intelligence to the black musician—enough to undermine the usual psychometric assessments of intelligence, which tap logical-mathematical, linguistic, and perhaps spatial intelligence, but not the several remaining ones.
But there are less generous readings of Alicia’s position—which, Cormac McCarthy implies, would be found in those who populate centers like the Santa Fe Institute, the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, or similar “think tanks” in Europe.
Consider her critique of standard intelligence testing:
“I’ve never met anyone in the (IQ test) business who had any grasp at all of mathematics. And intelligence is numbers, it is not words. Words are things we’ve made up. Mathematics is not. The math and logic questions on the IQ tests are a joke.”
Or as she puts it elsewhere:When you are talking about intelligence, you’re talking about numbers. Verbal intelligence will take you only so far. There is a wall there… if you don’t understand numbers, you won’t even see the wall”
On reading 1, there may be other “lesser” intelligences—like musical or linguistic—but numerical, mathematical, or perhaps logical-mathematical stands indisputably at the top.
On reading 2, numerical intelligence—and, just possibly musical intelligence—may reflect the way that the universe is—indeed, the way that the universe has to be.
Let me put it in lay terms—the only ones that I (as a non-mathematician) can understand and articulate: Alicia is arguing: The universe is inherently numerical—it cannot be any other way—and mathematicians are the ones—for better or worse, the only ones—capable of decoding, understanding and explicating that reality.
Three apparent codicils:
Physics is secondary to math. More human beings can “do” physics than can “do” math. And mathematicians are the only human beings who can grasp—or can even attempt to grasp—the nature of the universe.
Just possibly, music is analogous, akin to math—perhaps there is only one music, and (as the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer claimed), it is a privileged part of the mysterious nature of the universe.
Language is definitely secondary in importance and profundity. There are many languages, they have undergone—and continue to undergo—historical developments and unpredictable changes. They are influenced by culture; they are inherently imperfect; they lack the precision and the finality of mathematics, and, perhaps, of music.
Back to Psychology, Sociology, Brain science
With due respect to Alicia, and the author who created her, there’s a quite different way of conceptualizing this space—an entirely distinct ontology, so to speak.
On this account, over millennia, the brains (and minds) of the hominid species have evolved in numerous ways. Our species has different neurological organization and psychological capacities, developed to ensure our survival on the planet—and, accordingly, different ways of knowing the world. At various times, and under various circumstances, certain “ways of knowing” and “ways of expressing” come to the fore. (Small but timely example: until the 20th century, linguistic capacities were particularly valued in higher education; but that has radically changed in the last century, when logical-mathematical capacities are now valued far more). And it’s possible that in the 21st century, with machine computational capacities far outflanking those of human beings, that the personal intelligences (sometimes dubbed “soft skills”) will be ever more valorized.
And of course, the brain and the mind might have evolved quite differently. That’s an essential element of Darwinian evolutionary theory and the one that most disconcerts religious fundamentalists who adhere to a literal version of the account presented in Genesis.
A PeEk at Epistemological Ontology
Based on my glancing knowledge of intellectual history, philosophers René Descartes and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz were engaged in a deep effort to identify the most fundamental forms of thought—which they deemed as logical. Centuries later, Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead concluded that the basics of mathematics, the realm of number, could be expressed in symbolic logic. Mathematician Kurt Gödel demonstrated the limitations—indeed the inherent incompleteness—of this mode of analysis. And pioneering computer scientists like Herbert Simon and Allan Newell used symbolic logic as the basis of their computing system; linguist Noam Chomsky (who aligned himself with the program of Cartesian Linguistics) was searching for universal principles of grammar or syntax that underlay superficial differences across spoken languages. Following in the footsteps of their physicist father, who had worked on the Manhattan Project, both Alicia Western and her brother Bobby Western valorized this strand of thinking; author Cormac McCarthy seems to endorse—or at least give voice to—that valorization.
However: In his penetrating (though positive) evaluation of the two McCarthy books, reviewer Graeme Wood points out that across his oeuvre, Cormac McCarthy actually wrestles with the most fundamental human issues—life, death, love, hatred, war, peace, choice, fate, destiny. These are not susceptible to conclusive mathematical analyses (as both Western children ultimately if regretfully came to acknowledge). However much one might wish it were the case, such vexing human concerns can’t lead to a convincing, slam-dunk conclusion—the vicissitudes of life do not yield a neat quod erat demonstrandum. Rather they call for—indeed require—unending reflection, debate, uncertainty—all serving as a stimulus to yet further discussion reading, writing, philosophizing. And this endless dialog, dialectic, deconstruction—far more than strings of 0s and1a, or Compu-chat—may continue to dominate, indeed may constitute, human destiny.
Coda: Two Ways to Construe this Epistemological Puzzle—A Personal Apologia
By inclination, perhaps by nature, I am a synthesizer. I like to lay out a puzzle; reflect on its various dimensions (including promising pathways but also dead ends); and then assemble the pieces in ways that make sense to me—and, perhaps, to others. Here are two guiding principles:
The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms
As laid out by philosopher Susanne Langer, there are two basic forms of symbolization. One is rooted in math, logic, and ordinary language—these discursive forms have essentially the same meanings across usages and can be combined in various ways (as in this essay). The second is Presentational Symbols. Encountered in myth, religion, rituals—and especially in works of art—these symbols cannot be decomposed meaningfully. Change even one feature, one line, one beat, one note, and the work, the presentation as a whole is necessarily, if inexplicably, altered.
My teacher, Nelson Goodman, expressed this distinction in a more formal stricture. He contrasted notational with non-notational symbols. The arts are the playground of non-notational symbols. A forgery can never be conflated with the original because it is always possible in principle to find differences between two superficially identical symbolic representations.
Adopting this perspective, we can say that Cormac McCarthy (and other artists in other media) are mining the realm of non-notational symbolization, while the Western siblings valorize only the terrain of notational (or discursive) symbols.The World of Organic Evolution
The universe has existed for perhaps 13 billion years; our solar system (and presumably our planet) for 4.5 billion years; the first living entities go back 3.7 billion years; animals perhaps 800 million years. The first hominids appeared perhaps 250 million years ago; Homo sapiens perhaps 50,000 to 100,000 years ago.We can attribute certain capacities and potentials to each of these layers of existence: presumably the several intelligences that I have delineated only flowered in the last few hundreds of thousands of years. It does not make sense to apply “IQ” or “MI” ways of analyses to earlier strata of life.
But when it comes to our understanding of the universe, the tools are different. Perhaps the Western siblings are correct: mathematical thinking can illuminate the nature of the physical universe, with musical thought queued up somewhere close by; in contrast, natural language—whether discursive or presentational—is a recent arrival, so to speak. And just perhaps, music may occupy an intermediate spot—with its Platonic features suspended somewhere between word and number. But for that very reason, if we want to understand all of matter—and especially life, living, growing, declining, dying—we will need to draw on the very verbal features that Cormac McCarthy’s characters may denigrate; —but that constitute sense making in its most capacious —Eastern as well as Western—sense.
For very helpful comments on earlier versions of this essay, I thank Shinri Furuzawa, Mindy Kornhaber, Donald Richard, and Ellen Winner.
References
Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books.
Gardner, H. (2006). Multiple intelligences: New horizons. New York: Basic Books: New York.
Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. New York: Bantam Books.
Goodman, N. (1968). Languages of art. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Langer, S. K. (1942). Philosophy in a new key. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, cognition and
personality, 9(3), 185-211.
McCarthy, C. (2022). The passenger. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
McCarthy, C. (2022). Stella Maris. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Sternberg, R. J. (1988). The triarchic mind. New York: Viking.
Wood, G. (2022). Cormac McCarthy has never been better. The Atlantic, (January-February), 78-81.
Wood, J. (2022). The numbers game. The New Yorker, (December 19), 60-65.
Photo by Stefan Cosma on Unsplash
