Talk:Intellect

Change “the ability of the mind to come to correct conclusions” to “the ability of the mind to come to discrete conclusions”

It is seemingly obvious that a highly intellectual person can come to incorrect conclusions. (I.E, when that person has insufficient data)

I would instead propose we use the word “discrete”. Meaning “Individually separate, or distinct”. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TylerBarnhill (talk • contribs) 02:30, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

The article is about a specific philosophical idea which is no longer commonly accepted, but was very important in history. If I understand correctly, you are trying to correct that old idea and invent a new definition, but on Wikipedia our job is to report what others say. Perhaps it helps to try to explain that this old concept was part of a completely different way of thinking about how things go wrong, compared to how we think today. In Aristotelian philosophy, and many other types of philosophy similar to his, certain types of "natural" causation were in a sense "trying" to happen, but they could fail. So when the intellect fails, this is an "accident". Aristotle did not see "accidental" events as having "causation" in the same way that "natural" events have causation, and there are many aspects of Aristotelian philosophy which initially seem to make no sense to modern readers. For most classical and medieval philosophers, there was a constant effort to avoid describing nature as simply physical and neutral.

Coming at it from another direction, "intellect" was not intended to be seen as a physical mechanism in the brain. Aristotle and others like him saw the intellects of individuals as imperfect manifestations of intellect itself which was a bigger principle of nature and causality that humans had imperfect access to. Individual people make judgments based not only on intellect, and are often mislead - for example by trusting their senses too much. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:30, 6 May 2020 (UTC)