Howard Gardner : the myth of Multiple Intelligences

important in human cultures.

Are we talking about all human cultures, most, or only some of them? Gardner is not
clear on this.

Neither is there any evidence that he has surveyed a great number of human societies
in order to reach this conclusion.

There is a mystery about this „first cut’. How is it that recognizing faces fails, but
musical ability passes? Gardner does not give us any clear indication.

What he has in mind, I think, is that the ability to recognize faces is not an intellectual
area that is culturally valued. It’s not like mathematics or music or the visual arts. If
this is so - and I give further evidence below that it is - then for something to count as
an intelligence it has to be a subdivision of the realm of the intellect. It has to be
something like a form of knowledge or understanding in the sense used by Paul Hirst
in his well-known theory of „forms of knowledge’ (1974).

If this is right, then the first thing you have to do to pick out an intelligence - as a
prerequisite - has nothing to do with empirical investigations of individuals and seeing
how their minds or their brains work. It has all to do with reflecting on the social
world - specifically that part of the social world concerned with intellectual activities
and achievements. To be an intelligence is - so far - the same as being an important
realm of understanding. MI theory is rooted not in psychological but in ethical
judgements.

I will come back to the „prerequisites’ later. As we shall see, they are of pivotal
importance.

Criteria

Once a candidate intelligence has satisfied the prerequisites, it has to meet various
criteria. These comprise (1983:62-9):

• potential isolation of the area by brain damage

• the existence in it of idiots savants, prodigies and other exceptional individuals

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