Intelligence between Truth and Operation: A Cultural-Philosophical Genealogy of the Concept
Abstract
The article demonstrates that the contemporary usage of the concept of “intelligence” is the result of a long cul-tural transformation, during which metaphysically and normatively rich notions of mind were partially translated into the language of operations, abilities, and measurable differences. The methodological basis of the study includes historical-philosophical reconstruction, comparative conceptual analysis, and cultural-philosophical interpretation of intellectual practices. Three interrelated dimensions of the concept of “intelligence” are identi-fied: operational, semantic-normative, and situational-distributed. Their correlation is traced in ancient philoso-phy, scholasticism, classical rationalism, German classical philosophy, psychometrics, and comparative cogni-tion. It is argued that modern understanding of intelligence represents a gradual and profiled cognitive ability whose observability depends on culturally organized situations. The scientific novelty lies in interpreting the intelligence operationalization as a cultural process of autonomy of individual cognitive actions while maintain-ing an implicit dependence on norms of truth, education, embodiment, and environment.