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20 - Implications of Biological Research on Intelligence for Education and Public Policy

from Part V - Translating Research on the Neuroscience of Intelligence into Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2021

By
Kathryn Asbury  and
Diana Fields
Edited by
Aron K. Barbey ,
Sherif Karama  and
Richard J. Haier
Aron K. Barbey
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Sherif Karama
Affiliation:
McGill University, Montréal
Richard J. Haier
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
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Summary

In his 2011 book, Incognito, Stanford neuroscientist David Eagleman asked us to:

Imagine for a moment that we are nothing but the product of billions of years of molecules coming together and ratcheting up through natural selection, that we are composed only of highways of fluids and chemicals sliding along roadways within billions of dancing cells, that trillions of synaptic conversations hum in parallel, that this vast egglike fabric of micron-thin circuitry runs algorithms undreamt of in modern science, and that these neural programs give rise to our decision making, loves, desires, fears, and aspirations.

(Eagleman, 2011, p. 223)
Eagleman makes a case for the inherent loveliness of this materialist daydream. He says:

To me, that understanding would be a numinous experience, better than anything ever proposed in anyone’s holy text.

(p. 224)

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence and Cognitive Neuroscience , pp. 399 - 415
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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