Two essential claims

I am amazed that even though the theory was promulgated in the early 1980s, and even though I have spoken about it hundreds of times since then, it was only around 1997 that I fully appreciated the exact nature of my two fundamental claims about multiple intelligences. This theory presents two complementary claims. First, the theory is an account of human cognition in its fullness - I put forth the intelligences as a new definition of human nature, cognitively speaking. Whereas Socrates saw man as the rational animal and Freud stressed the irrationality of human beings, I (with due tentativeness) have described human beings as those organisms who possess a basic set of seven, eight, or a dozen intelligences. Thanks to evolution, each of us is equipped with these intellectual potentials, which we can mobilize and connect according to our own inclinations and our culture's preferences.

Given this perspective, it is instructive to consider how intelligences in other species compare with our own. Rats, for example, might best us in spatial and bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, though it seems adventurous to attribute them any intrapersonal intelligence. The profiles of other primates - particularly chimpanzees - would be much closer to our own. The exercise can also be carried out with respect to artificial intelligence. While artificial-intelligence programs can no doubt trounce us logically - and may soon surpass us in many spatial and linguistic feats - I view the notion of the interpersonal intelligences of a machine as a "category error."

A specieswide definition represents one essential claim about human intelligences; the existence of individual differences in the profile of intelligences makes the other. Although we all receive these intelligences as part of our birthright, no two people have exactly the same intelligences in the same combinations. After all, intelligences arise from the combination of a person's genetic heritage and life conditions in a given culture and era. While identical twins raised in the same womb and the same home obviously share much of an environment, they still differ from one another because of the facts of their lives, which ensure that neither their psyches nor their brains are identical. Many identical twins, indeed, strive valiantly to differentiate themselves. And if human clones eventually appear, they will have somewhat different intelligences from their donors, if only because of the different environments in which they develop.

The second claim - that we each have a unique blend of intelligences - leads to the most important implication of the theory for the next millenium. We can choose to ignore this uniqueness, strive to minimize it, or revel in it. without in any sense wishing to embrace egocentrism or narcissism, I suggest that the big challenge facing the deployment of human resources is how best to take advantage of the uniqueness conferred on us as the species exhibiting several intelligences.

One final point, to which I shall return repeatedly: It is tempting to think of particular intelligences as good or bad, and it is undoubtedly better to have more of certain intelligences than to lack those intelligences largely or wholly. That said, however, I must stress that no intelligence is in itself moral or immoral. Intelligences are strictly amoral, and any intelligence can be put to a constructive or a destructive use. Both the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the propagandist Josef Goebbels were masters of the German language; however, Goethe used the language to create art, while Goebbels spawned hatred. Both Mahatma Gandhi and Niccolo Machiavelli stressed the importance of understanding other people; however, Gandhi encouraged empathetic responses, while Machiavelli directed his wit toward the manipulation of others. Clearly, we must strive to nurture both intelligences and mortality and, insofar as possible, yoke them together as virtues. But it is a grave error to confuse the two. Constructive and positive use of intelligences does not happen by accident. Deciding how to deploy one's intelligences is a question of values, not computational power.