Genes, Brains, and Human Potential The Science and Ideology of Intelligence

282 HUMAN INTELLIGENCE

knowledge. Everyday reasoning is based on culturally specifi c knowl-

edge. For example, the logical abilities of individuals have been ques-

tioned when they have diffi culty with laboratory prob lems like:

All As are Bs.

Are all Bs As?

Yet the diffi culties evaporate when essentially the same prob lems are
presented in socially relevant contexts, such as:

All humans are mammals.

Are all mammals humans?

In other words, the idea that individual diff erences in reasoning are
ones of personal cognitive power is too narrow and mechanistic. Lambos
Malafouris is only partly correct in say ing that “the tool shapes the m i nd .”^30
In truth it is collective cognition, with the help of individual minds, that
shapes the tool that reciprocally shapes those minds.

Knowledge
It is usually assumed that intelligent systems must operate on the basis
of knowledge, as opposed to fi xed cues or signals (which is what distin-
guishes intelligence from instincts). Th e nature of knowledge, therefore, is
supposed to be at the roots of cognitive theory. Many items in standard-
ized IQ tests are based on simple knowledge questions. Yet in his book,
How the Mind Works, Steven Pinker mentions how psychologists feel
perplexed about the nature of knowledge, describing it as one of the prob-
lems that continue to baffl e the modern mind. Like other psychologists,
Pinker acknowledges that knowledge is involved in nearly all cognitive
pro cesses, but he fails to be explicit about what it is.
Again this seems to be a prob lem that stems from disregarding the way
that the human intelligence system is part and parcel of a self- organ izing
culture. It misses the point that culture extends and amplifi es human
knowledge in a way quite diff er ent from the database of a computational
machine.

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