Ronald K. Hoeflin facts for kids

Ronald K. Hoeflin (born February 23, 1944) is an American philosopher by profession, creator of the Mega and Titan intelligence tests. In 1988, Hoeflin won the American Philosophical Association's Rockefeller Prize for his article, "Theories of Truth: A Comprehensive Synthesis. His article argues for the interrelated nature of seven leading theories of truth.

Biography

Hoeflin was born on February 23, 1944, in Ochlocknee to William Eugene Hoeflin and Mary Elizabeth Dell Hoeflin. Hoeflin grew up in St Louis, Missouri. For over a decade, he has been working on a thirteen-volume treatise titled "The Encyclopedia of Categories", which has now been published online and is available for free download.

Intelligence tests and societies

For over sixty years, psychologists such as Leta Stetter Hollingworth, author of the book Children Above 180 IQ, have suggested that people with extremely high IQs are radically different from the general population. Identifying such people would require IQ tests with reliability not currently available for extreme ranges of IQ.

Ronald Hoeflin has stated to have been a member of Mensa, Intertel, the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry and the Triple Nine Society, which he co-founded, as well as the Prometheus Society and the Mega Society, both of which he founded. He claims an IQ of 164, stating his scores have ranged from 125 to 175, depending upon the cognitive abilities tapped into.

Hoeflin attempted, along with Kevin Langdon, to develop an IQ test that could measure adult IQs greater than three standard deviations from the population median, or IQ 145 (sd 15). Hoeflin's Mega Test was an unsupervised IQ test without time limit consisting of 48 questions, half verbal and half mathematical. It was published in Omni magazine, in April 1985, and the results were used to norm the test. Hoeflin standardized the test six times, using equipercentile equating with SAT and other scores, and some extrapolation at the highest level.

The Mega Test has been criticized by professional reviewers of psychological tests. In 1990, Hoeflin created the Titan Test, also published in Omni.

Societies Founded by Ronald Hoeflin

Believing that people at the highest IQ levels would be able easily to communicate with each other and have much in common, Hoeflin founded several societies for those with the highest scores. These societies are (along with year founded, percentile, and minimum IQ (sd 16)):