We need to consider that influences of reading on cognition are not restricted only to knowledge effects obtained from the content of what is read. Reading enhances cognitive skills that are highly relevant and useful for doing well in intelligence tests. There is robust evidence that reading massively trains and consequently improves many different perceptual and cognitive abilities: The science of how reading enhances the human mind reveals the many perks of being a bookworm.

Chapter 3 INTELLIGENCE SOCIALISM opposes two radically different views about the relation between skills and intelligence—elitism and socialism. Elitism—pervasive in popular culture as well as in psychometrics—is the view that only a particular class of skill—‘theoretical’, or ‘intellectual’ skills, versus ‘practical’ or ‘embodied’ skills—manifests intelligence. I single out the best case for the stronger socialist claim that no principled difference in intelligence can be found between theoretical, or intellectual, skills, and practical, or embodied skills.

Chapter 6 INTELLECTUALISMS distinguishes between forms of intellectualisms and lays out the main goal of the second part of the book: to defend a form of intellectualism about skills, skilled action, and intelligence that, while explaining the distinctive features of intelligence and skills in terms of knowledge, it shies away from fully identifying either intelligence or skills with knowledge states. It is a form of intellectualism that is compatible with socialism and that pertains to the kind of intelligent beings that we are; it concerns agentive intelligence but it also extends, in a qualified way, to subagentive intelligence, thereby widening the scope of traditional intellectualism. In all of these ways, it is intellectualism with a human face.

Abstract: In this chapter, Herbert explores John Dewey’s concept of impulse in Human Nature and Conduct (1922), highlighting its oft-neglected role in his theory of agency. Dewey presents impulse as a spontaneous and creative force essential for breaking rigid habits and fostering intelligent inquiry. Unlike moral theories that treat impulse as something to suppress, he sees it as crucial to moral growth and adaptation. Dewey’s naturalistic framework situates impulse within a dynamic interplay with habit and intelligence. While habit provides stability, impulse introduces novelty, enabling the reorganization of conduct when patterns fail. This aligns Dewey with Peirce’s view of inquiry as emerging from disrupted expectations and contrasts with Bergson’s élan vital, which lacks Dewey’s empirical grounding. Dewey also engages implicitly with Freud, critiquing reductionist views of instinct while endorsing the constructive redirection of impulses through sublimation. Dewey envisions ethics as a form of empirical inquiry, treating moral agency as continuous experimentation rather than rule adherence. As Herbert concludes, Dewey critiques traditional moral philosophies for their distrust of impulse, arguing that rigid norms stifle creativity. Instead, Dewey advocates an ethics that integrates impulse, habit, and intelligence into a flexible and adaptive model for human flourishing.

Abstract: In Human Nature and Conduct (1922), Dewey writes that bad habits are ones that have a “command over us” making us “do things we prefer not to do,” because as he puts it, “we are the habit.” In this chapter, Striano describes how education has a role in our understanding of the command of habit over our lives. The chapter considers how within the process of growth we can start reshaping our habits, making them increasingly intelligent so as to inform “intelligent dispositions.” Intelligent dispositions are central to helping us come to perform new, more reflective, courses of action in the world. The chapter concludes with the ideas that such intelligently reconstructed habits − ones that have been channeled through educative experiences which account for both human plasticity and the changes and “obstacles” in our environment − have the power to determine an effective transformation of our attitudes, behaviors, and understandings and, therefore, of our selves.

Journalist and historian Mark Dapin argues that ‘every stage of Australia’s Vietnam War has been misremembered and obscured by myth'. This is not unusual. Much of Australia’s military history is coloured by storytelling and the perpetuation of legends. Several myths, legends and falsehoods have also grown around the conduct of operations of the Australian Army’s intelligence personnel during the war in South Vietnam. These range from simple fabrications and ‘storytelling’ to an attempt to deflect criticism from those responsible. One of these relates to a particular allegation of torture and the mistreatment of a prisoner by Australians during the Vietnam War.

At the end of January 1968, the VC and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) launched their Tet Offensive, a series of coordinated attacks on more than one hundred towns and outposts in South Vietnam. These attacks aimed to foment rebellion among the South Vietnamese population so that they would revolt against the corrupt South Vietnamese regime and break the United States’ resolve before peace talks. In response to this offensive, the US and South Vietnamese forces commenced a massive operation, Toan Thang (Complete Victory), which aimed to destroy the remaining enemy involved in the Tet Offensive and prevent fresh enemy forces from moving towards the capital, Saigon. In these objectives neither side obtained complete success. In April 1ATF became part of this operation with its infantry battalions conducting ‘reconnaissance-in-force’ operations to block enemy infiltration routes. In May, the task force changed its concept of operations by deploying several units outside Phuoc Tuy province into Area of Operations (AO) Surfers, which had been sub-divided into battalion areas of operation Manly, Newport and Bondi. Artillery located at Fire Support Bases Coral and Balmoral would support these tactical areas.

The action at the Long Tan plantation on 18 August 1966, about six kilometres east of the Australian base at Nui Dat, was the Australian Army’s most significant and costliest single-day battle during the Vietnam War. Eighteen Australians died in action, and 24 were wounded. Over the years, several myths and accusations have emerged about the battle. This includes the role of some senior officers, the number of enemies that faced the Australians and the number killed, and even the timings of the battle. Some of these myths were reinforced, and new ones were created through the Danger Close feature film. Among the myths and accusations are claims of an ‘intelligence failure’ and post-war statements by the task force commander, Brigadier Oliver Jackson, that he did not have good intelligence. From an intelligence perspective, the various claims related to how a large enemy force could have approached within a few kilometres of the 1ATF base at Nui Dat without the task force’s intelligence detecting it.

After the Second World War, the Australian Army changed from one mainly comprising part-time citizen soldiers to a new generation of Royal Military College-trained officers and professional soldiers, and it witnessed the reraising of the Australian Intelligence Corps. As such, it became part of the army’s first combat deployment of the new Australian Regular Army and its transition from jungle warfare to occupation duties in Japan, to conventional action in Korea (1950–53), and then back to jungle warfare and counterinsurgency operations with the Malayan Emergency, Konfrontasi with Indonesia and the Vietnam War. The Cold War was also dominated by Australian Army operations in a combined arms and joint environment, operating as part of a multinational force and often within a multinational command organisation.

There can be little doubt, and it is arguably conventional wisdom, that the role of intelligence in the Malayan Emergency was critical to the success of the British counterinsurgency campaign against the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). Indeed, according to the author and unaccredited ‘official historian’ for the Emergency, Anthony Short, ‘intelligence was the key that locked counterinsurgency in place’. This view is endorsed by Lieutenant-General Harold Briggs, the Director of Operations (1950–51). He emphasised the importance of intelligence in his plan for the counterinsurgency in Malaya, known as the Briggs Plan. Briggs’s replacement was General Sir Gerald Templer, a former British Army Director of Military Intelligence (1946–48). Templer was well versed in intelligence processes and understood that an integrated and efficient intelligence system was ‘undoubtedly one of the greatest battle-winning factors in counterinsurgency warfare’. More recent authors argued that the Emergency had a far-reaching influence on the development of military intelligence. Historian Rory Cormac, for example, concluded that the Malayan experience marked the beginning of the need for coordinated intelligence assessment by integrating all intelligence resources, civil and military, and ensuring all sources were exploited.

The Korean War has been called the quiet war fought by a silent generation. Perhaps, more correctly, it should be described as the most remembered ‘forgotten’ war in history, with Google listing about 18,600,000 results. Indeed, aspects of the conflict have been forgotten. Even 70 years on, the literature is quiet on intelligence, with few historians or authors even discussing intelligence's role. Battlefield intelligence has been almost entirely neglected, except for the occasional mention in some American and British regimental histories. As Australia played a minor role in the Korean War, it is unsurprising that the part played by the Australian Army’s battlefield intelligence has hardly been mentioned.

There were two fundamental problems that the commander of 1ATF, Brigadier Oliver Jackson, had to deal with when the task force was established at Nui Dat. The first was the presence of main force enemy in Phuoc Tuy province. The second was the VCI: ‘the extortionists, the terrorists, the standover men, [and] the tax men’. This infrastructure provided a shadow government and support network for the North Vietnamese military and VC local forces in the south. Most villages and towns had representatives of this network – men, women, and children – who provided a recruitment base for the VC, an intelligence network, a supply service and various other forms of support. The VCI enabled the enemy to conduct operations in the south. While it was the National Police, ARVN and associated paramilitary forces that were responsible for its destruction, this proved to be beyond the capability of the Saigon government.

Psychological and civil affairs operations in Vietnam, while very different in scope, resource requirements and primary objectives, were also of specific interest to the intelligence staff of 1ATF. The former had the dual aims of countering VC propaganda while appealing to the ‘attitudes, vulnerabilities and susceptibilities’ of the local population to persuade them to accept and assist the South Vietnamese authorities and Australian forces. In this way, it aimed to attack the enemy’s morale and induce them to surrender. The latter sought to complement the former and support the Australian Government’s foreign policy objectives in Vietnam. From an intelligence perspective, both aided in what is now called the Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace, which built an extensive database on each operational area’s environment, including people, terrain, infrastructure and the level of VC support in each village. The information collected also covered ‘sociological, political and economic aspects which when related to the enemy can indicate his strengths and weaknesses’.

Historians, academics and military officers have viewed the Malayan Emergency as an exemplar of how counterinsurgency warfare should be conducted. Numerous studies and authors dissected British operations in Malaya during and in the aftermath of the war in South Vietnam. They looked for parallels with Vietnam and why Vietnam failed while Malaya was a success. In recent years, some authors have compared the Emergency with British and American operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed, British troops studied the Malayan insurgency of the 1950s before deploying to Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in 2006. According to Australian historian Professor David Horner, the Confrontation with Indonesia was ‘one of the most successful applications of military force in a low-level conflict since the Second World War’ but has been largely ignored and has attracted a dearth of scholarly interest. This has been particularly evident in the role of the Australian forces generally, and especially the Australian Army’s intelligence services.

This book evaluates and defines the contribution made by the Australian Army’s combat intelligence services in supporting the force commander during operations in the Cold War (1945–1975). Its primary focus is on the Australian Intelligence Corps, with a secondary emphasis on the intelligence teams and staff attached to the infantry battalions and on the headquarters of deployed army formations. It focuses on the roles, organisation, administration, training, doctrine and performance of the army’s tactical intelligence in the field to achieve this. It also explores the ability of intelligence systems to mature, adapt to technological change, and work within a coalition force. It also examines some of the more prevalent myths and criticisms of battlefield intelligence services during service in South Vietnam. It argues and explains why the various intelligence teams and systems were imperfect. Their members made mistakes, and, at times, their prejudices and biases unduly influenced their analysis. They were also generally understaffed, poorly prepared, trained and equipped for their duties. However, this study shows how they proved resilient, adaptable and capable of providing a high level of support to the force commander, whether the commanding officers of the Australian battalions in Korea, Malaya or Borneo or the task force commanders in South Vietnam.

From 1945 to 1975, the Australian Army always served overseas as a junior partner in a coalition, usually as part of a British Commonwealth force. This was the case during the occupation of Japan and the Korean War and under British command in Malaya and Borneo. However, the Vietnam War highlighted several problems for the junior partner in an American-dominated alliance. Relations remained cordial throughout the war in South Vietnam, especially at the individual level. However, stress points soon emerged that had the potential to damage the relationship and adversely affect intelligence collection, analysis and sharing.