200 A CREATIVE COGNITIONchallenged to be specifi c, psychologists and behavioral ge ne ticists usually
come up with mechanical or social meta phors, together with words like
“smart” or “bright,” and thus quietly steeped in ideology. IQ test con-
structors, in par tic u lar, have connections with cognitive theory that are
rather loose and selective, to say the least.
Th e fundamental reason for such vagueness is that psychologists in
general are not sure what cognition really is. Th ere is little agreement about
how or why it originated in evolution; what form or forms it takes in diff er-
ent animals; how it develops; why it has become so much more complex,
especially in humans; or the real nature of individual diff erences in it. A
sure sign of such uncertainty is the way that cognition is usually described
in the lit er a ture by enumerating ends rather than the means.
For example, according to Sara Shettleworth, “Cognition, broadly de-
fi ned, includes all ways in which animals take in information through the
senses, pro cess, retain and decide to act on it.” But, she goes on, this defi -
nition “is somewhat soft around the edges.”^2 In their textbook, Cognitive
Psy chol ogy (2015 edition), the fodder of thousands of psy chol ogy students,
Michael Eysenck and Mark Keane tell us that cognitive pro cesses include
“attention, perception, learning, memory, language, prob lem solving, rea-
soning and thinking.” Th ey do acknowledge that these are interdepen-
dent, without being clear how or with what consequences. But they also
mention that cognitive psy chol ogy “sometimes lacks ecological valid-
ity... and possesses theoretical vagueness.”^3 While honestly describing
challenges in the area, these do not seem fi rm grounds on which others
should be drawing very strong conclusions about people’s relative levels
of intelligence.
Th e impression from the lit er a ture is of a continuing failure to under-
stand what cognition really consists of— apart, that is, from its vari ous
manifestations in perception, thinking, learning, and so on. Instead, the
subject exists as an unintegrated collection of fi ndings, models, and ap-
proaches yearning for clear theoretical foundations. Th is is pretty much
the view of Martin Giurfa, for example, who says, in his book, Animal
Cognition, that “despite this diversity and increasing interest, a general
defi nition for the term ‘cognition’ remains elusive, prob ably because the
approaches that characterize cognitive studies are diverse and still look-
ing for a synthesis.”^4
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