Language,thought,...

[Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.]

At 08:25 PM 12/19/97 -1000, Ramin Akbari wrote:
>For a research proposal, I am suggesting the following hierarchy:
>1-Mind
>2-Thought
>3-Intelligence
>4-Cognition
>Do you think that this hierarchy is valid ?Is intelligence part of thought
>or vice versa?Do you believe that cognition is part of intelligence?
>I will be glad to receive your comments.

Just as a casual observer it would seem to me that your order should be
1,3,2,4:  where four, mind, is the basic faculty common to all and could
not be quantified; three, intelligence, depends on individual endowment
and is quantifiable; two, thought, is a general product or activity of
mind as limited by intelligence; and four refers to directed activity
of the thoughts.  That is, cognition would be differentiated from
thoughts in that the former was focused and directed while the latter
were random and, though potentially directed, were not inherently so.
Mind would also be both the source of the thoughts and the potential
director of those thoughts and intelligence is the boundary of the
quantity and quality of the thoughts and the direction of the thoughts.

The environment then would be the source of input that determined which
thoughts the mind would generate giving the equation of MIND + ENVIRONMENT
over INTELLIGENCE = THOUGHT as well as THOUGHT + MIND +
ENVIRONMENT over INTELLIGENCE = COGNITION

Of course, the thoughts we have about our environment plus our
intelligence will cause us to cognize in various ways and then react to
the environment in ways that change the environment leading to the
overall flow of intellegent interaction with the ever changing
environment.

Phil Bralich


Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.
President and CEO
Ergo Linguistic Technologies
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