We often speak of intelligence starting from its most visible manifestations: reasoning, solving a problem, memorising, understanding quickly, handling language or constructing a demonstration. These capacities are part of it, but they do not cover the whole phenomenon. An experienced musician can adjust their gesture before having formulated what they are correcting. A mechanic can recognise an anomaly in a sound while not yet identifying its cause. A researcher can perceive a relation between several observations before reconstructing the reasoning that explains it. In each of these cases, certain information takes on more weight than the rest, meets a history of learning and orients a response whose relevance depends on the situation.
Too broad a definition would nevertheless make the concept lose much of its precision. A bacterium adjusts its activity to its medium, a thermostat reacts to a change of temperature and an algorithm can modify its parameters according to the results obtained. Plasticity, learning and adaptation describe important properties, but their presence does not suffice to identify what we call human intelligence. The latter belongs within the trajectory of a person, understood as a unity that transforms itself over time while retaining a certain continuity. Experiences, learnings, bodily dispositions, representations and relations persist in variable forms and influence what that person becomes able to perceive, to understand or to do.
This continuity connects with the conception of the psyche as the dynamic unity of a trajectory. It does not require permanent coherence. A person can pass through contradictions, fragmentations or significant reorganisations while still carrying one and the same history. Intelligence takes part in this trajectory because it works from what has been inscribed, meets the limits of that organisation and can modify some of its components. It varies with situations, with the state of the body, with available resources and with present relationships. A capacity for analysis that is usually very high may become hard to mobilise under fatigue or overload. Conversely, certain conditions can bring to light possibilities that were until then barely visible.
A disposition that transforms itself
Speaking of capacity might suggest a kind of inner reserve stably available. The term disposition better describes what is at stake. A disposition corresponds to a relatively durable way of orienting attention, of recognising certain differences, of associating information, of interpreting a situation or of preparing an action. It may be perceptual, motor, affective, symbolic, or result from several of these dimensions at once. Its presence is not directly observable as an object would be. It appears through regularities in the way a person responds to different situations, transfers certain learnings and modifies their behaviour when the context changes.
A disposition remains bound to the conditions under which it can be actualised. What a person would be able to mobilise in a favourable environment does not necessarily correspond to what they manage to produce at a precise moment. Fatigue, fear, social pressure, lack of time or the absence of a tool can considerably alter the actual activity. The distinction between disposition and realisation thus avoids turning intelligence into a fixed quantity. It also makes it possible to understand why the same person can display very different levels of functioning depending on the situation, without their whole organisation having changed in the meantime.
These dispositions have a history. Learning to read progressively transforms the perception of signs. Acquiring a mathematical notation makes accessible operations that were previously far harder to organise. A distinction encountered in a book or during a conversation may become, several years later, a spontaneous way of looking at a problem. Present capacity thus carries the integrated traces of earlier relations. Even when a person reflects alone, they use a language they did not create, categories built before them and intellectual tools transmitted over the course of their path.
This relational dimension does not deprive the person of their role as a focus of integration. It rather makes it possible to understand why that focus cannot be isolated from the world that formed it. The experiences encountered are incorporated, transformed and then reused in new contexts. A disposition belongs to the personal trajectory while carrying the history of the relations that contributed to its formation.
From adjustment to reorganisation
A large part of intelligent activity rests on learnings that are already stabilised. An experienced driver simultaneously takes into account grip, visibility, their speed, the traffic and the behaviour of other vehicles without having to reconstruct each relation consciously. Their experience does not produce an identical response to an identical signal. It allows a configuration to be recognised, certain information to be selected and behaviour to be adjusted to a context that never exactly reproduces earlier situations.
This flexibility already distinguishes an intelligent adaptation from a mere conditioned repetition. Learning becomes richer when it can be transferred, modulated and combined on the basis of the particularities of the situation. The transformation can nevertheless go much further. A response can be modified locally, several relations can be reorganised, or the very way of understanding the problem can change. These levels form a continuum rather than strictly separate categories.
A mechanic who recognises the symptoms of a known fault and applies an already mastered procedure works mainly with an acquired framework. If the intervention fails, they may modify a parameter or test another hypothesis while retaining the same general representation. Several failures may then lead them to understand that symptoms treated until now as independent arise from a common interaction. The observations remain largely identical, but their function changes. Some cease to be regarded as causes, others become consequences, and the search shifts toward another set of relations.
The depth of such a transformation can be approached through its effects. A local modification affects little of the rest of the organisation. A more substantial reconfiguration changes several expectations, several inferences or several decisions that depended on the previous representation. A change of framework touches presuppositions that structured a significant part of the reading of the situation. Their centrality is not always conscious. A person may defend an idea they consider fundamental while it organises little of their behaviour. A discreet expectation may, on the contrary, orient numerous interpretations without ever having been explicitly formulated.
Generativity then corresponds to the depth with which the organisation can be taken up again. It becomes visible when a transformation modifies the relations enough that the problem can no longer be posed in exactly the same way. This depth remains hard to measure at the very moment it appears. Its importance often reveals itself afterwards, when the consequences of the new organisation propagate to other interpretations, decisions or possibilities of action.
This capacity for reorganisation does not require permanent awareness of what is changing. A person may progressively modify a way of perceiving a situation without being able to describe all the stages of the process. An intuition may emerge after a period of maturation while the path that led to that new configuration remains partly inaccessible. Consciousness adds another possibility when it allows certain hypotheses to be made explicit, several representations to be compared and their consequences to be imagined before acting.
Reflexivity nevertheless has limits of its own. Too hasty a formulation can lock an intuition into insufficient categories. A person can build an extremely elaborate justification in order to preserve an old conclusion. Consciousness increases the possibilities of revision without guaranteeing the quality of that revision. Its interest depends largely on the capacity to make equally revisable the criteria used to defend a representation.
Revision may bear on a local element or reach the rules that organise a wider whole. A mathematical demonstration works inside a defined system, whereas the history of mathematics also shows the possibility of building systems resting on other axioms. A person can thus reason rigorously within a given framework while retaining, at another level, the possibility of examining the framework itself. Revisability has several depths and does not require that everything remain continually open to question.
Stability, moreover, retains an indispensable function. An organisation incapable of stabilising its learnings would be condemned to rebuild endlessly what it has just acquired. The difficulty appears when a framework requires ever more corrections to remain usable. The multiplication of exceptions, the diminishing power of anticipation, the constant addition of auxiliary hypotheses and the growing effort needed to maintain an interpretation provide indices of this cost. Revision becomes more pertinent when these adjustments cease genuinely to improve understanding or action, especially when another organisation explains more with fewer workarounds.
No universal threshold can fix that moment. The consequences of an error, the quality of the available information and the possible alternatives change with the field. The capacity to maintain a framework despite a few anomalies may attest to a useful prudence. Preserving it indefinitely despite the accumulation of contradictions turns that stability into rigidity.
The body, the emotions, language and others
Intelligent activity does not unfold solely within conscious representations. The body takes part in the selection of information and in the adjustment of action. An athlete corrects their balance from signals they would be incapable of listing exhaustively. A musician perceives a variation before knowing precisely how to name it. A repeated experience can make certain cues immediately perceptible while they remain almost invisible to a beginner.
Emotions intervene in this orientation. Surprise signals a gap between an expectation and what occurs. Fear rapidly modifies the priority given to certain cues. Unease can keep attention on an inconsistency that has not yet found a formulation. Interest favours the exploration of a situation, while certain more intense affective experiences can durably overturn the way a person organises their expectations.
Their effects vary with history and context. Fear can permit a finely adjusted response to a real danger, or lock interpretation when the threat is overestimated. Surprise can open an inquiry or be immediately absorbed into an already available explanation. Emotions do not provide proof of the relevance of an interpretation. They modify what becomes salient, urgent or worthy of attention, and can sometimes destabilise an organisation enough to make a revision possible.
This relation works in both directions. An experience modifies interpretation, that interpretation progressively changes expectations, and future situations may produce other affective responses. What once triggered an alarm may lose that function when new experiences transform the anticipation associated with it. Cognition and affect then take part in one and the same trajectory of transformation rather than in two systems functioning separately.
Language adds a particular capacity to this organisation. It makes it possible to detach a representation from the immediate situation, to name a relation, to formulate a hypothesis and to compare several possibilities that are not present before us. A person can imagine what would happen if certain conditions changed, return to an old event or examine a proposal without having to put it into practice at once. Writing extends this possibility further by stabilising representations outside immediate memory.
This symbolic movement also transforms the body. A verbal instruction can draw attention to a precise component of a gesture. The person acts, receives sensory feedback, corrects and repeats. Certain coordinations eventually stabilise and the initial instruction progressively becomes unnecessary. The symbolic content has modified perception and action to the point of producing a disposition that can function without constant verbal formulation. Part of what was consciously learned thus becomes procedural.
The reverse movement remains possible. A largely implicit competence can become an object of analysis when a problem appears or when it must be transmitted. An experienced musician can break down a gesture they used to perform without thinking, in order to understand a difficulty or explain it to someone else. Human intelligence thus circulates between the bodily, the affective, the implicit and the symbolic, with passages that transform each of these registers.
Others take part in this circulation. An objection sometimes obliges us to make explicit a premise we had never formulated. A person with a different competence may bring the problem closer to a field that seemed unrelated. A reformulation can make visible a relation that solitary reasoning kept in shadow. Otherness then intervenes directly in the revision of frameworks by introducing resistances and distinctions absent from the individual trajectory.
Collective exchanges can produce configurations that do not correspond to a simple addition of the knowledge present at the outset. An idea provokes an objection, that objection obliges a hypothesis to be reformulated, the reformulation opens a new relation which in turn modifies the position of the first participant. Intelligence appears here in the organisation of the interaction. The persons remain the places where experiences and representations are integrated, while the relation creates constraints and possibilities that none of them possessed alone.
This collective organisation can itself preserve or revise certain frameworks. A team, an institution or a scientific community has procedures, memories, categories and validation rules that orient what can be said or accepted. The circulation of information, the possibility of contradiction, the preservation of results and the capacity to modify the rules of coordination determine part of its collective intelligence. Highly competent individuals can together produce mediocre decisions when the organisation prevents contradictory information from reaching the places where it could modify the choices.
An intelligence that meets its limits
The relevance of a response finally depends on what it is actually seeking to accomplish. A technical solution may work while resting on an incomplete understanding. A theory may be coherent without corresponding sufficiently to observations. A work of art may profoundly alter a perception without claiming to describe the world factually. The criteria change with the function of the representation or the action.
That function may be declared by its author, but its actual use counts just as much. A statement presented as an opinion may concretely serve to describe a phenomenon, justify a decision or orient other people's behaviour. Its evaluation must then take account of that role. A proposition used to describe the world must accept confrontation with the available observations. A method employed to reach an objective must also be judged by its efficacy, its robustness and its consequences. An artistic creation answers other requirements, bound up notably with its coherence, its expressive power or the possibilities it opens.
Uses can also overlap. A personal decision often mobilises information about probable consequences, an appraisal of available means and a relation to what the person wishes to preserve or transform in their trajectory. A theory elaborated without immediate practical application may become instrumental later. The nature of the criteria must follow what the representation actually does in the context in which it is mobilised.
Revisability finds its central function here. It does not require that all convictions be fragile or continually called into question. It describes the possibility that a framework may be taken up again when its limits become significant enough. That resumption may remain implicit or become conscious, be prompted by experience or by others, touch a local response or transform a presupposition that organised a much wider part of one's functioning.
Human intelligence may then be defined as a dynamic disposition, built over the course of a bodily, psychic, symbolic and relational trajectory, which makes it possible to produce responses or representations relevant to a situation and to reorganise the frameworks that make them possible when their limits become significant.
Learning, transfer, intuition, language, emotions and cooperation all take part in this disposition without separately sufficing to define it. Its depth appears in the capacity to preserve what remains operative while letting experience modify what no longer is. An intelligent person does not need to revise their frameworks constantly. They must be able to do so when maintaining them demands ever more effort, exceptions or workarounds, and when another organisation makes the situation more intelligible or the action better adapted.
This conception remains centred on human intelligence without claiming to draw a definitive boundary with the animal or the machine. Forms of learning, transfer and reorganisation exist elsewhere to different degrees. Comparing them would require examining the depth of those transformations, their capacity for generalisation and the way they fit into the continuity proper to the system under study.
Intelligence then appears within a trajectory able to use its history without becoming entirely its prisoner. When a response ceases to work, several possibilities remain open. It may be adjusted, replaced or rebuilt from another understanding of the situation. In the deepest transformations, what changes is no longer only the solution sought. The relations that previously defined the problem are themselves reorganised.