Compare and contrast "reason" and "intellect"?

Question

Compare and contrast "reason" and "intellect"?

Answer 1

Intellect is the capacity of reason.

-or-

Glass is to intellect as reason is to water.

Answer 2

Intellect is raw proccessing power.

Reason is the ability to use that power to arrive at correct solutions.

Intellect is the "chip," Reason is the "software."

Answer 3

Sometimes it helps to get at the roots of these things.

'Reason' comes from a very old word that bascially meant 'to read'.  Not just books, but the signs of anything.  And even now a reason is a point of evidence used in an argument.  So this is probably the most core meaning of the capacity of reasoning:  to mentally perceive and understand what is there.

Intellect derives from 'inter' (between) and 'legere' (to choose). It refers to the ability of discrimination. Knowing good from bad.  It shares roots with 'lecture', which is a choice collection of facts.  So intellect is the ability to do that kind of collecting yourself.  To pick the important stuff out of everything that's there.

So you can see some of the fine differences between the two.  It takes intellect to compose a lecture, but it takes reasoning to read one and get something out of it.  An intellectual with no capacity to reason is forced to chew over data that other people collect, and a reasonable person with no appreciable intellect may know exactly what's going on but not what to make of it.  Of course, most intellectuals operate in a reasonable way - they don't usually make their choices just on instinct but through some system of understanding.  And enough reason can likewise develop a kind of intellectual system - understanding enough about a datum may tell you whether it is important or not.

It is worth mentioning, however, that these core meanings have developed enough flexibility through common use that the words are often redefined by each user in their own particular way or just used as total synonyms to each other without any concern for the fine differences.  Alas.

Answer 4

I have not quoted my favorite philosopher in a few days, so I will do it now.

On Intelligence:

"Intelligence is the ability to deal with a broad range of abstractions. Whatever a child’s natural endowment, the use of intelligence is an acquired skill.

"Intelligence is the ability to grasp the facts of reality and to deal with them long-range (i.e., conceptually). On the axiom of the primacy of existence, intelligence is man’s most precious attribute.

"Intelligence is not an exclusive monopoly of genius; it is an attribute of all men, and the differences are only a matter of degree."

On Reason:

"Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses.

"Reason integrates man’s perceptions by means of forming abstractions or conceptions, thus raising man’s knowledge from the perceptual level, which he shares with animals, to the conceptual level, which he alone can reach. The method which reason employs in this process is logic—and logic is the art of non-contradictory identification.

" Reason is the only objective means of communication and of understanding among men; when men deal with one another by means of reason, reality is their objective standard and frame of reference. "

Ayn Rand; various sources

Answer 5

reason includes the ability to use logic effectively

intellect is a capacity to apprehend reason

neither is innate

Answer 6

Reason is a process we initiate, which if by yielding correct answers places the intellect on a higher plane.