Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!jqb
From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: RACE and IQ
Message-ID: <jqbCzKCuM.JII@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <CyxswC.B4M@festival.ed.ac.uk> <jqbCyzE3w.6J9@netcom.com> <jqbCz0Lpz.KpF@netcom.com> <CzDHyD.FJr@festival.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Sun, 20 Nov 1994 11:20:46 GMT
Lines: 63

In article <CzDHyD.FJr@festival.ed.ac.uk>,
Chris Malcolm <cam@castle.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>I wondered a while back why people got so illogically steamed up about
>this question, when it would be rather surprising if different races
>did not have have different distributions of mental capabilities,
>since they do differ in lots of physiological details. I recently
>heard part of a radio programme which made it horribly clear that I
>was very naive.
>
>A professor of psychology, and some other academic big-wigs, were
>asked to comment on the recent claim by some researcher that different
>races were differently mentally endowed. *Everyone* agreed that:-

Perhaps you could identify this handful of people that you found so impressive.
Or would you just like to imply that their opinions are identical with those
of the entire community of critics?

>	a) Intelligence is a matter of practice, experience, and
>culture, and all human beings of all races start out equal in the
>cognitive skills race.

You may have misunderstood, since this opinion, as you have expressed it,
is not widely held.  There are definite genotypical differences among
individuals, obvious when considering extremes such as Down's syndrome.
But when talking about races, people are looking at phenotypes, not genotypes.
There is currently no way to translate statistical differences in behavior
among races or other social groups into genetic differences.  So claims of
genetically produced differences in cognitive skills between such groups are
unsupportable.

>	b) All the scientists who have ever asserted differently have
>been grinding right wing political axes, and their research has very
>easily been shown to be flawed, or even, in some cases, fraud.

Can you rebut the claim?  Certainly many, if not most, such instances have
been documented.  See Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man" and Lewontin et. al.'s
"Not in Our Genes".

>	c) These facts have been so well established by so much
>authoritative research that anyone who now claims racial differences
>in IQ obviously hasn't done their scientific homework and immediately
>labels themselves as both ignorant and politically motivated.

True, as to ignorance, of genotypical, as opposed to phenotypical, differences.
"The Bell Curve" mostly addresses behavior, not genetics, although
I don't think it is careful to make the distinction.

>Since there are definite differences in brain quality between
>different people, this clearly means that intelligence has nothing to
>do with quality of brain. Which means that artificial intelligence is
>barking up the wrong tree, since AI depends a lot on quality of
>computer.

Well, only if you accept as true a position that you don't believe to
be true.  So what's your point?  That some people you heard on the radio
said something that, ad reductio, is absurd?  Gee, how novel.

The bottom line of "The Bell Curve" is that people are victimized for
not being at the right spot on the bell curve, and that this is unjustified
and bad social policy.  Unfortunately, this conclusion is being ignored
by both the left and the right.
-- 
<J Q B>
