To Be a Problem-Solving Animal
By Amber Donihue Gray
What is the intellect? How is man’s rationality different from an animal?
Often in the modern understanding the idea of intellect does not go any deeper philosophically than thinking of it as human knowledge. While philosophers in the ivory tower may discuss it, the ideas of what it is and how it is formed rarely make it into a discussion of teaching methods taught in teaching schools today. Historically, however, the subject of what exactly the intellect was and how it works was more than just major philosophic controversy, it also had implications for how one should be taught.
All animals have problem solving ability, this has always been evident—but even knowing that horses and dogs could solve problems, Aristotle and his followers denied that animals have intellect.
The scientific community often will attempt to measure the problem-solving ability of an animal as a way to measure intellect, however this actually fails to be a measure of intellect. All animals have problem solving ability, this has always been evident—but even knowing that horses and dogs could solve problems, Aristotle and his followers denied that animals have intellect.1 This means that intellect must be for something other than problem solving.
Intellect is one of the five powers of the soul. More particularly it is one of two powers of the soul ordered toward the outside world. Both animals and man use the power of the soul called sensitive, which is how man and animals build a sense picture of the world around them. The sensitive shows animals and man what are the particulars around them. Intellectual power on the other hand is ordered toward the universal. Man uses the sensitive soul to know what is around him, but also to begin to apprehend the universal essence of the particulars around him. This essence is often hard to put into words. It is something abstract from the particulars, that the particulars are tied together by and participate in. However, because language has a metaphorical relationship to reality, it is often hard to boil down the essence to an exact linguistic definition and yet, humans do understand essences.
In Hard Times, Charles Dickens wrote the following interaction between a schoolmaster and a school girl:
‘‘Girl number twenty,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, ‘I don’t know that girl. Who is that girl?’
‘Sissy Jupe, sir,’ explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and curtseying.
...”What is your father[‘s business]?’
‘He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir.’
Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling with his hand.
...
‘Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.’
(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)
‘Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. ‘Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals! Some boy’s definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.’
...‘Bitzer,’ said Thomas Gradgrind. ‘Your definition of a horse.’
‘Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.’ Thus (and much more) Bitzer.
‘Now girl number twenty,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘You know what a horse is.’ (Ch. 2)
Sissy Jupe did, in fact know what a horse was and Bitzer’s definition is inadequate. It is a silly claim to think that Bitzer knows more than Sissy Jupe about horses from just this definition. Sissy has dealt with horses and so has in her intellect an understanding of horses that is hard to put into words. This is true of all intellectual matter. We understand things in our intellect of which we find hard to define the exact boundaries in words. This extends not just to material objects such as horses, but also to immaterial abstract concepts such as beauty, courage, fear, virtue, and love. Unlike animals, a human child’s primary purpose in life as he or she is growing is to abstract an understanding of both the essences of material things as well as the essences of these more abstract ideas. Children do this regarding most material things through the particulars around them. However, material things are insufficient for abstract concepts which must be learned through more complex human interactions, and by examples in stories, and through other paths by which we abstract to the universal from the particulars. Abstract concepts of virtue are primarily learned through the particulars of stories. This is why one of the primary developments of a human child in contrast to a young animal is linguistic, such that at a very young age a child enjoys not only stories, but stories being told without any visual medium. Language, however, because it never has exact unchanging definitions is only a tool to further intellectual apprehension. Such understanding is never fully retained in language.
However, material things are insufficient for abstract concepts which must be learned through more complex human interactions, and by examples in stories, and through other paths by which we abstract to the universal from the particulars.
Through learning language, children are primed to understand metaphor. They can abstract essences of things from particulars that are of themselves abstract, such as stories. This sets a foundation for more complex, rational problem solving than animals will ever be able to do. Furthermore, it allows children to see relationships between things that are not obvious; for instance in human culture we use abstraction to set up symbols for things. Peace is often symbolized by a dove and yet a dove has no real definitional overlap with peace. It is then only through abstraction of the essence of the two and our associations, that a dove, something more concrete than the idea of peace, can come to symbolize the abstract state or idea of peace.
Communication only works because each human has abstracted and understood the essence of something and that a culture as a whole shares in that understanding and has given symbols to it.
Humans do this process of abstracting and symbolizing throughout their lives. In general it is through learning agreed upon symbols in our own culture, but we ourselves often create our own associations and symbols as stand ins for things. However, it is only when a symbol becomes shared that it is useful in communication. Every part of human language is a symbol for the reality behind it. There is nothing about the word “tree” that necessitates that it picks out a particular essence, it is rather that we as English speaking humans have a shared idea of what the nature of a tree actually is, each in our own intellect and then an agreed upon auditory symbol to stand in reference for that essence. So it is with all human language and metaphor and physical symbols. Communication only works because each human has abstracted and understood the essence of something and that a culture as a whole shares in that understanding and has given symbols to it.
Just because the linguistic symbol used to represent the essences is not necessitated by the essence does not mean the essence so symbolized is a construct of the culture.
These groupings for which we give symbols are not arbitrary, as some philosophers have proposed, rather they come from an understanding of essence. Just because the linguistic symbol used to represent the essences is not necessitated by the essence does not mean the essence so symbolized is a construct of the culture. Rather it is the culture trying to instantiate something that may be immaterial into something that may be grasped and discussed. This is a never ending task of humanity as words and metaphors begin to slip away from their intended semantic range as new speakers take on these symbols, but the reality is always there. For instance as the semantic range of the word “meat” was reduced such that it came to mean in English only the flesh of animals - so the word “food” took on its old semantic range. The reality of the thing was not lost even though the word began to lose its original meaning. Thus what actually matters for an intellect is the ability to reach the essence of a thing, while what is necessary for communication in human culture is both an understanding of an essence and the symbols that are used to speak of that essence.
Intellect then, is not about understanding linguistic definitions, it is about understanding the thing that stands behind the particulars and makes the particular what it is and gives the particular its purpose. The intellect is not about problem solving, nor is it about language. It is about the relationship of essences to each other and to our world. This is something that only humans have the ability to really do. Language is a mere tool in human hands, a necessary tool, but sometimes a rough tool. If the essence of a reality is never understood, the intellect is never informed.
Aristotle, De Anima 414b32–415a22