The Human Intellect

juvyjabian (72)in #human-intellect • 7 years ago

The Human Intellect

Intellect has been characterized as the faculty of the human mind by which it knows, as recognized from the power to feel and to will, the thinking faculty, the seeing, likewise as that faculty of the human mind by which it gets or appreciates the ideas conveyed to it by the senses or the perception, or different means, as recognized from the power to feel and to will, the power or faculty to see objects in their relations, the power to judge and understand, additionally the limit with respect to higher forms of learning, as recognized from the power to see and imagine.

We have seen that the individual can experience sensations in consciousness, and that he can see them mentally, the last being the first step in intellectual activity. We have additionally observed that a man can repeat the perception by methods for memory and imagination, and that by methods for the last he can recombine and rework the objects of perception.

We have additionally observed that a man has what are known as feelings, which rely on his past experience and that of his forebears. So far the mind has been viewed as simply as an accepting and imitating instrument, with the additional connection of the recombining power of the imagination. As yet the mind might be contrasted with the phonographic cylinder, with a connection equipped for recombining its recorded impressions.

The impressions are received and perceived, are put away, are duplicated, and by the utilization of the imagination are recombined. As yet the mind supposedly is pretty much of a programmed, instinctive faculty. It might be traced from the simply reflex activity of the lowest forms of life up through the lower animals, well ordered, until the point when a high level of mental power is perceived in animals like the dog, horse, and elephant.

In any case, there is absent in that impossible to miss power of thinking in symbols and abstract conceptions which recognizes the human race and which is firmly bound up with the faculty of language or communicating musings in words. The nearly high mental process of the lower animals is predominated by the human faculty of thinking. What's more, thinking is the manifestation of the intellect.

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What is it to think?

Interesting to state, not very many people can answer this inquiry effectively at first. They get themselves inclined to answer the request in the words of the child: "Why, to think is to think?" The dictionary definition is excessively specialized to be of much use to the amateur, however here it is: "To employ any of the intellectual powers aside from that of basic perception through the senses." But what are the intellectual powers so employed, and how are they employed?

Thinking is the mental process of:

Comparing our perceptions of things with each other, taking note of the purposes of likeness and of difference.
Classifying them as per the discovered likeness or difference, and subsequently tying them up in mental bundles with each set of things of a kind in its own particular bundle.
Forming the abstract, concept of each class of things, so assembled, which we may a short time later use as we utilize figures in mathematical calculations.
Using these concepts in order to form derivations, that is, to reason from the known to the unknown, and to form judgments with respect to things.
Comparing these judgments and deriving higher judgments from them.

Without thinking, man would be reliant upon every specific experience for his insight, aside from so far as memory and imagination could instinctively help him. By manners of thinking he is empowered to construe that if certain things be valid for one of a specific kind of things, a similar thing might be normal from others of a similar class. As he can note purposes of likeness or difference, he can form clearer and more genuine deductions.

What's more, he can apply his constructive imagination to the adjustment and recombination of things whose nature he has found, and accordingly advance along the line of material accomplishment and of learning. It must be recalled, nonetheless, that the intellect depends completely for its material upon the perception, which thus gets its raw material from the senses.

The intellect only gatherings together the material of perception, makes derivations, draws conclusions from, and forms conclusions with respect to, them, and on account of constructive imagination recombines them in compelling forms and plan. The intellect is the toward the end in order throughout mental evolution. It seems toward the end in order in the mind of the child, however it regularly perseveres in old age after the feelings have become diminish and the memory frail.