Morissette just reissued her Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie album as a 25th anniversary edition
In a recent interview with The New York Times link here, singer and songwriter, Alanis Morissette mentioned Howard Gardner and the theory of multiple intelligences. She suggested that financial intelligence should be part of his theory, saying:
I had the pleasure of interviewing Howard Gardner, who came up with the multiple intelligence theory, for my podcast, and I asked him if I could add some intelligences. I think financial intelligence is an intelligence. It feels like activism to be a female empowered around money and knowledgeable around it, and to be entering into the seat of entrepreneurialism.
Howard Gardner’s response would be that it is easy to think of other possible intelligences – whether financial, cooking, or technological, it’s a parlor game. The challenge is to show that the existing set of intelligences in MI theory, which have years of research to corroborate them, is incapable of explaining a significant human behavior.
What Alanis Morrissette might describe as “financial intelligence” is actually a combination of other existing intelligences. For example, having good knowledge her own financial situation and understanding how to invest, budget, etc. would come under logical-mathematical intelligence. If Morrissette is mainly talking about being a successful entrepreneur, then other intelligences might come into play. For example, this might also require intrapersonal intelligence to understand one’s own financial goals, needs, and priorities, or linguistic intelligence when marketing her business and communicating well with others, or understanding the market and various laws.
Gardner’s list of intelligences represents a serious scholarly effort to ascertain and delineate cognitive capacities. Anyone is free to nominate candidate intelligences, from humor intelligence to sexual intelligence, to cooking intelligence, as have been suggested to him in the past. But to be taken seriously, Gardner argues that the nomination needs to fulfill two criteria:
Have a set of criteria for what is, and what is not, an intelligence, as laid out, for example, in Frames of Mind.
Be sure not to confuse DESCRIPTION (how an intelligence works) with PRESCRIPTION (how we would like individuals to act, to use those intelligences). His delineation of intelligences is strictly amoral: any intelligence can be used benevolently or malevolently. How those intelligences are used is very important; he and his team have devoted twenty years to studying Good Workers, Good Persons, and Good Citizens as part of The Good Project. But the use of an intelligence is a different question than the nature and operation of that intelligence.
The Alanis Morissette podcast episode in which Howard Gardner appeared, is here.