THE INTELLIGENT

 “The one who knows and knows that they know is a teacher, you must listen to them. The one who knows and does not know that they know is asleep, please wake them up. The one who does not know and they know that they don't know is a student and must be taught. The one who does not know and does not know that they don’t know is an idiot and must be treated like so, especially when they have a loud mouth.” Bobi Wine in his song Katala

Knowledge is facts about a particular subject while wisdom is the ability to use those facts and apply them in everyday life to yield positive results. Being wise incorporates being intelligent but takes a further step from the two. Having information and knowing how to apply it are two different things but work hand in hand.

Intelligence is the capacity to learn, understand, analyze information and solve problems. Cognitive science and psychology will give more elaborate explanation of it. A highly intelligent person can process information quickly, recognize patterns, use logic effectively and apply reasoning to solve problems. An intelligent person must be wise in order to time perfectly well.

The kinds of reasoning

There are three forms of reasoning; that is, deductive, inductive and abductive reasoning.

Deductive reasoning starts with a hypothesis, examines the facts and then reaches a logical conclusion. For example Apas students are intelligent, Benson is a student of Apas. Therefore, Benson is intelligent. Deductive reasoning applies in most mathematics challenges and common arguments. For deductive reasoning to work, the hypothesis must be correct. If you say that Apas students are intelligent it must be factually correct with evidenced information. This is the only way a correct and logical conclusion can be reached at. A conclusion can be correct but not logical only when it involves emotions and spirituality. If the hypothesis is not correct, the conclusion may be logical but will never be correct. For example, the statement that Apas students are intelligent may not be correct that means the conclusion that Benson is intelligent is not correct. Therefore a conclusion and observation may be logical but not correct.

Inductive reasoning on the other hand makes broad generalizations to specific observations. There is information and  the conclusions are drawn from that information. For example if a person was picked from a school, we may say that it is a student. If another is picked and we say the same we may conclude that whoever is picked from school is a student. Inductive reasoning gives room to falsehood in conclusions even if the premises were correct. For example a person in a school is a student but does not mean they are the only people in it; there are teachers too. Inductive reasoning does not produce absolute truths but gives an opportunity for scientists to create hypothesis. Then they use deductive reasoning to examine the data and reach a conclusion.  

Abductive reasoning is a kind of reasoning where you start with an observation and then look for the most likely explanation for it. It is neither deductive nor inductive but usually goes with the most possible explanation available. Think of a scenario where you find a person lying dead on the ground. There is a roughly dressed man with a machete covered in blood at the doorway. It is not factually established that this man is the killer but has the most possible connection to the scene. In court cases, lawyers refer to this kind of observation as circumstantial scenes. Like in inductive reasoning, further steps may be taken to establish the factual base of it.

Intelligence and reasoning

As an individual you need to equip yourself with facts about the subject matter before opening your mouth about it. That makes you wise because you know what to engage and what to avoid. When you speak too much about something you have no knowledge of you risk committing logical fallacies (bad reasoning) and giving false conclusions. This is because your talk is based on ignorance. And when you are factually correct or informed about something that means you’re knowledgeable, must apply correct reasoning to come up with a logical conclusion.

Life events are naturally logical based, there is no way a person can be logically wrong and not speaking about personal emotions or spiritual and be speaking the truth. Emotions and spirituality are revealed knowledge and they may not necessarily follow logical conclusions but anything else other than that, logical scrutiny must be applied to verify the truth. An intelligent person never fails to evaluate the above and acts accordingly.