A friend and I were recently talking about the rampant self-absorption that occurs among people, and we were listing off all the dumb things people do. Eventually we got around to classifying a group of people that we termed "the mentally conscious". "Mentally conscious" we defined as the quality of knowing that one does not know. Socrates, for one, was very fond of reminding people that he did not, in fact, Know. With that he gave us a basis for intelligence, rather than just knowledge or wisdom. I attempted another criterion for determining whether or not someone was intelligent, and ended up with this: intelligence is the ability to "jump" out of a system and inspect its workings from outside. We're surrounded by systems of social behavior and stigma and rank and all manner of things, and those who are capable of exiting those systems and looking at them in a different light are those who are truly mentally conscious. The two definitions arrive at the same conclusion, really. They point to the idea that intelligence lies in the desire to learn, because if you know that you don't know, then it's a pretty safe bet that you'd like to know. And if you jump out of systems often, then you know that the systems you live in don't tell you everything about the world, and you'd like to know more. So: one who has the desire to learn, due to the fact that he is aware of his lack of knowledge, is truly mentally conscious.

There's an interesting anecdote that illustrates this point pretty well. My dad once had a coworker who'd graduated from some big-name business school, and he (the coworker) was impressed as all hell by this fact, and he thought everyone else should be too. He would waste no opportunity to tell people that he had attended such-and-such school and that he was extremely highly qualified and such nonsense. He thought no one could tell him anything about how to conduct business. Of course, the moment this joker was faced with a real business situation, he had no idea what to do. So there's an example of a guy who thought he knew everything and was thus a total dumbass. Such things actually happen more often than I would like.

If you're anything like me, then you have a habit of compulsively looking up anything you talk about on Wikipedia. Okay, so maybe you're not like me. Regardless, here's the Wiki page for the topic I just talked about. There're tons of excellent theories on intelligence listed on it, so take a look.