By Howard Gardner
I recently received an inquiry from an undergraduate student, Cuinn Lopes, who wanted to know whether some intelligences could be considered better than others.
He asked as follows:
“Based on what scientific evidence shows, should we believe that there are superior forms and inferior forms of intelligence; for example, should we believe that mathematical intelligence is superior to linguistic or kinesthetic intelligence? … Are there forms of intelligence that are more or less intelligent than other forms of intelligence?”
MY RESPONSE
This is a good question. My short answer is NO—there are no forms of intelligence that are crucially or essentially, more intelligent than others. Like beauty, intelligences are in the eye of the beholder.
Example: To gain admission to Harvard and other prestigious colleges in the 19th century, one had to demonstrate mastery of ancient languages—Latin, Greek, and sometimes Hebrew.
Nowadays, we smile at that because it is clear that mathematical-computation abilities are more valorized at the start of the 21st century.
But if in your lifetime, common algorithms such as ChatGPT (or its descendants) prove to be much better than we humans are at logical-mathematical operations, we may instead valorize bodily-kinesthetic intelligence or intrapersonal intelligence—no one cares about how computational systems would do on those dimensions.
Also, while we do not have validated tests for all of the intelligences, any teacher knows that excellence in one intelligence does not predict excellence (or disability) in another intelligence.
There may be some general capacities— like attention, or reflectiveness—that cut across the intelligences, but this possibility is essentially independent of the question that you raise.
I would also refer you to my previous blog post, “Are All Intelligences Equal: An Issue Raised by Cormac McCarthy’s Recent Novels” (link here). In this