Is There ‘Spiritual Intelligence’? An Evaluation of Strong and Weak Proposals
Fraser Watts, Marius Dorobantu
Religions February 24, 2023 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.3390/rel14020265 via DOAJ
Summary
The debate over spiritual intelligence is clarified by distinguishing strong and weak versions. The strong version, which posits a separate intelligence meeting Howard Gardner's criteria, lacks support from neuroscience, psychology, and psychometrics. The weak version, where general intelligence is deployed distinctively in spiritual contexts, is supported. Six marks of spiritual intelligence are identified: ineffability, embodiment, open-minded attention, pattern-seeking meaning-making, participation, and relationality. The Interacting Cognitive Subsystems framework helps model spiritual practices and may integrate with psychometric and experimental approaches.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | The strong version of spiritual intelligence as a separate faculty lacks evidence, but the weak version—where general intelligence is used distinctively in spiritual contexts—is supported. |
Abstract
The debate about whether, and in what sense, there is ‘spiritual intelligence’ remains unresolved. We suggest it will be helpful to make a distinction between strong and weak versions of the claim. The strong version proposes that there is a separate and distinct spiritual intelligence that meets the criteria set out by Howard Gardner in his ‘multiple intelligences’ framework. This involves evidence from neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, individual differences, experimental tasks, and psychometrics. We review the relevant evidence and conclude that there is no support for the strong proposal. The weak version of the claim assumes that the intelligence that is apparent in spiritual contexts is the same as is found elsewhere, but it is nevertheless deployed in a distinctive way. We suggest that the evidence supports the claim, and we review six key marks of spiritual intelligence: ineffability, embodiment, open-minded attention, pattern-seeking meaning-making, participation, and relationality. Our approach makes use of a cognitive architecture, Interacting Cognitive Subsystems (ICS), which has been proved useful in modelling spiritual practices. It will be helpful in the future to bring this approach into dialogue with other scientific approaches to spiritual intelligence from psychometrics and from experimental research.