None of the Most Important Things in Life Can be Defined or Measured

There is no agreed upon scientific definition of consciousness. The same goes for intelligence and communication. This is likewise, famously, true for love. 

Cognitive psychologists, philosophers and other who study human consciousness call it "the hard problem." We think consciousness involves our brains, but so far this thing called the human mind cannot be explained by the operations of the brain alone. Indeed, the great, and probably insurmountable, challenge is that we are stuck using our minds to think about our minds, which means that we are probably doomed to never being able to grasp what this universal thing is, even as we continually experience it.

Intelligence is equally elusive despite tests (IQ and otherwise) that attempt to measure it, while succeeding in only, at best, demonstrating that some people are better at answering a certain, very limited, batch of questions than are others. Intelligence is, at best, a situational condition: if we're trapped on a desert island, for instance, a fisher or a carpenter is going to show up as far more intelligent than a theoretical physicist. Looked at this way, there are as many types of intelligence as there are individuals, and that has to include all living things, including plants, and probably even fungus, bacteria, and viruses.

Communication seems the most obvious, but even there we have trouble agreeing on what we're talking about. What is communication? Is it just that I say (or write) words and that you understand them? What if you misunderstand them or understand them in a way different than what I intended? Is that still communication? And what about nonverbal communication? Does communication have to be intentional or can it be inadvertent, like a nervous, telling, twitch? If we make communication mean something broad -- say we define it as any conveyance of information, thoughts or emotions between groups or individuals, intentional or not -- then we have to consider that plants and non-living things communicate. If we define it narrowly, then we leave out most things that we understand as communication, like a newborn's cry.

What we say about love is we may not be able to define it, but we know it when we see it, or feel it, or otherwise encounter it. And this is also true for consciousness, intelligence, and communication.

I love science, but at the same time it thrills me that while it seems like we know so much, we continue to know almost nothing about the most central, vital, and important aspects of this life. The more we think we understand, the more we see that we don't know, which is the magnificent space in which we get to wonder. 

Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, a man who may or may not be viewed as intelligent on our desert island, writes, "Reality is perhaps nothing other than perspectives. There is no absolute. We are limited, impermanent, and precisely for this reason, to move, to be, as we do, is so light and sweet."

Of course, life doesn't always seem light and sweet, but I wonder if that's simply because we are trapped in thinking in terms of absolutes -- this is consciousness, this is intelligence, this is communication, this is love -- oblivious to the infinite number of perspectives and possibilities. Maybe this is the natural, and unfortunate, consequence of an education that focuses on the absolute of "right answers" as opposed to the infiniteness of wonder.

Another central human concept that doesn't have any kind of agreed upon definition is play. Yet we know it when we are doing it: moving, being, and wondering.

Maybe none of the most important things in life can be defined or measured. They can only be experienced. And maybe the best way to understand play is simply as the doing part of wonder . . . That's at least one way of looking at it.

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Hi, I'm Teacher Tom and this is my podcast! If you're an early childhood educator, parent of preschoolers, or otherwise have young children in your life, I think you'll find my conversations with early childhood experts and thought-leaders useful, inspiring, and eye-opening. You might even come away transformed by the ideas and perspectives we share. Please give us a listen. You can find Teacher Tom's Podcast on the Mirasee FM Podcast Network or anywhere you download your podcasts.

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