A bit of a hijack, but shortly after the bell Curve book came out, the late S.J.Gould attempted to refute the conclusions of TBC, with a work called “THE MISMEASURE OF MAN”. His book is even worse than TBC! It is a mixture of half-truths, misquotations, and all in all, not a work of serious scholarship at all!
Gould, for all his claimed objectivity, turned out to be just as dogmatic when protecting hisown, half-bajed ideas~
An interesting snippet
Half Bajed ideas?
In any case, Ralphie, the Mismeasure of Man was published years before The Bell Curve. A new edition was rereleased afterwards. As for mixtures of half-truths and the like, I do not recall reputable sources - i.e. folks involved in biological sciences- making such statements about Gould, in fact the only folks I recall making such statements were the ‘race science’ folks like Jensen, et al. Draw your own conclusions.
Hope to have a explication on the issues of heritability (narrow, broad, definitions and applications) this weekend. As an aside, Astro has posted the discussion I wanted to start in re the issues on twin studies, which is why I wanted primary literature.
Scylla’s link reminded me of some issues which I am trying to understand myself.
Philosophically popular now in many circles is a theory of mind called functionalism. If functionalism is true, or at least mostly correct, then whether or not TBC as a work itself is flawed, a methodology attempting to relate verifiable behavior to biological predilection should be completely sound. Indeed, it should in fact be the only sound method of examining the human condition.
Of course, the second you start to talk biology cum sociology outside of philosophy you find yourself accused of racism, implitly or explicitly.
Years of research seem, to this layman, to pinpoint more and more behavior to more and more biological conditions or sets of conditions. As I am oscillating between dualism and functionalism, free will and determinism, I seem to think I understand what’s going on behind all this talk.
It is “safe” to talk about determinism, right up until you try and investigate some of its consequences in the natural sciences. At this point your methodology is flawed. “Clearly” something like “intelligence” cannot be a part of someone’s “biological make-up”!
I would like to examine this claim.
The first method used to justify the remark is to build up the (sometimes strawman) poistion that the proponent of biological intelligence is basing this opinion on physical characteristics which, it seems, cannot support any hypothesis of intelligence. This is so totally false that it is only my respect for the posters who assert it that prevents me from usually saying anything. A physical characteristic that tells us something about intelligence? Well, how about not having a head?
Oh, I know, I’m just being silly, right? No one means that when they talk about biological components to intelligence. They mean that it isn’t a pure “nature” thing, that the “nuture” aspect is involved. Well, sure. Who is saying otherwise? But clearly we have one biological trait necessary for intelligence as we intuitively understand it: a friggin’ brain.
I use that as an extreme example intentionally. On the “nuture” side we can cite the cases of children raised in forced isolation. In this extreme case we see that biology alone is not sufficient to account for intelligence, plain and simple.
But let’s be clear. Most people aren’t saying intelligence is strictly a function of one or the other. We are talking about the “potential” for this elusive intelligence.
What disturbs me is that the “potential” for equality of “intelligence” is the null hypothesis. The possiblility of equal intelligence is such an extraordinary claim that I cannot even begin to imagine how anyone who thinks in scientific terms could even begin to put it forward.
We know people aren’t equally intelligent as a matter of fact. The first thing we should try to do is set a standard for “intelligence” and then see how people are separated. Do they have anything in common other than being stupid? For those who seek to remove biology from the picture, can you answer me how you would intend to scientifically study intelligence, then? Or will we finally have found the ghost in the machine? For here is an application of the excluded middle: either biology has something to do with intelligence (and perhaps a capacity or “potential” for it more likely than no) or it doesn’t. Before one claim is attacked by standing on the other, should not either of them require some support?
And what would support look like for saying that intelligence has nothing to do with biology? Are monkeys potentially as intelligent as humans, they just haven’t been “nurtured” properly?
“We all have more or less the same capacity for intelligence.” Sure, and we more or less all have the same appearance, all have the same “potential” to be strong, or healthy, or thin, too, right? —Well, except for a few messy biological issues like glandular problems, birth defects, problems of brain chemistry, the gender we are, and other biological traits, most of which can be an issue of nurture as well in a “more or less” sense.
If we all have the same capacity for intelligence, then intelligence is pretty fucking clearly biological in origin of its state or its “potential”, because otherwise I don’t understand what the definition of “same” means since we obviously have different levels of actualized intelligence as a matter of fact. It is only in our biological makeup that we find such startling similarity. So who wants cake?
But then, why aren’t monkeys more or less as smart as us? Isn’t their genetic makeup similar? Or is there some other standard of “similar” that is being used to promote the ghost in the machine? For if I build two machines with tight tolerances and assemble the pieces in the same fashion only a fool would say that they have different potential actions. And if we view the mind as a machine, then we must view the potential for “intelligence” as a function of its parts.
Any other definition seems to be scientifically unteneble.
To complicate matters, we can show mathematically that the number of permutations of the brain’s interconnections cannot be contained in genetic information. So genetics can’t tell the whole story, can it? But then, wouldn’t genetics have to be the theoretical ceiling for the potential for intelligence? Then the second ceiling is the actual formation of the brain itself.
Strange. How is it that we’ve already limited this “potential” capacity for intelligence purely on biological matters. The null hypothesis of equality of potential for intelligence seems more and more absurd on its face. Do we rule out labotamies in this discussion of how biological factors don’t affect the potential for intelligence?
We humans, in our uncanny ability to name things that may or may not exist, have made names for “smart” and “stupid.” We also have a knack of forming groups based on behaviors. We also have a habit of forming groups based on physical appearance. If anything, this state of existence is the null hypothesis.
I think the biological makeup of a person pretty much completely determines everything about them; I’m in a pretty deterministic phase of thinking right now. And I say this because the entire promotion of human sciences has rested on the simple “fact” (Premise? Hypothesis?) that when we alter the biological makeup of a human we alter that human. It is the motivation behind surgery, behind medicines, pharmacology, physical violence… So to those who wish to limit the consideration of biological makeup in understanding intelligence, how do we first know when to stop considering people without heads? And when we allow people to have heads, when do we stop considering what is in them and how it formed?
ERL …
Of course it should, one needs of course a rigorous methodology, and of course one has to be very rigorous about defining and testing for the behavior. Verifiable is the key. Obviously until intelligence is better understood from a biological/genetic standpoint it is terribly hard to test, and even good, rigorous definition escapes us.
Time, and data.
ERL, you have a bad habit of throwing around broad statements like this.
There is a context. A great deal of socio-biology has been badly theorized and has not adequately addressed the very real issues surrounding defining behaviors. E.g. “criminality” - a sociological term meaning different things at different times.
In the abstract it is fun to talk about this. In terms of doing practical science, good practical science it is very, very hard. And above all given the real history in using bad ‘socio-biological’ science, good scientists are justifiably highly critical of sloppiness.
Again, trying to understand this, in my opinion, in terms of philosophy is not productive, it’s bound to lead you astray.
(a) The data is not robust enough to make fundamental conclusions about a large number of points on the ranges involved in the feedback loop btw genetics, physical environment and social environment
(b) Free Will, Determinism, these are philosophical terms. I don’t see their direct connection here. Trying to tie biological issues to these grand ideas is a fundamental confusion of two different types of knowledge.
Straw man and a ridiculous over-statement. Not that this does not exist, of course, but that is -IMO- not the strongest objection to socio-biology to date.
When dealing with human behaviors we do not have good means of clealry testing them – that is many good means are off-limits for the obvious moral problems.
Further, it is very clear from a biological standpoint that humans have a highly malleable set of behaviors, indeed this is our key competitive advantage. At the same time, they are clearly bounded by underlying genetics.
The only real science question is to what extent, and then you have to be careful not to be sloppy as sloppy bad science not only gets in the way of expanding our knowledge, it also has, as history proves, very nasty real world consequences.
I would like to examine this claim.
I rather fail to see the point to this…discourse.
Neither can I, but what’s the relevance? I was unaware the argument was that all are equal in intelligence or even in potentialities.
Not sure where the beginning statement is coming from but w/o defending it, it strikes me one could reasonablely advance to opinioin that within the normal range of variation of intelligence, ex-considering enviro versus genetic, for the most part intelligence differences are rather less important than oft portrayed.
No, not in the sense you mean.
Again, your thinking is obscure to me here. The genetic heritage is clearly the underlying template for expression. Expression is conditioned by many factors, including physical and social environements. It is emperically verified that at the extreme, low stimulus environments produce actual physical differences in the brain from high stimulus.
Is this in any way in dispute anywhere here?
That’s an absurd and ridiculous overstatement.
Your strawman is of what relevance?
It strikes me there are two different threads here:
(A) Biological inputs to intelligence.
(B) The Bell Curve.
In re (A), there’s a lot of territory to examine and the data to date is incomplete, but I think deserves to be hived off from (B) which is a completely seperate discussion of a non-science book and its failings. Indeed critiquing (B) says little about debate (A).
In re debate (A) I think it is clear we have a complex and dynamic relationship between biology and environment which deserves fuller comment and deserves to be divorced from (B).
erislover: I think you’ve confused yourself unduly by assuming that those who reject The Bell Curve, on scientific and/or political grounds, insist on equality of intelligence.
I’m not sure what gave that impression. I myself wrote that not everyone could be a prodigy. Others have made similar concessions to the genetic component in individual intelligence.
To clarify my position for you: I don’t believe that there are no innate differences in intelligence; I simply believe that w/in the typical range there is no one who lacks the intelligence to earn a decent living, given the right education and opportunities.
“Years of research seem, to this layman, to pinpoint more and more behavior to more and more biological conditions or sets of conditions. As I am oscillating between dualism and functionalism, free will and determinism, I seem to think I understand what’s going on behind all this talk.”
erislover, if you wish to embrace a philosophy which holds that the material body and its functions are the only underlying reality, that’s up to you. If you wish to reject the idea that there is anything like free will–as apart from the social and biological forces that determine us–that is also up to you.
But do bear in mind that both “nature” and “nurture” are determining constructs. So I’m not really sure what you think you’re adding to this debate.
“It is “safe” to talk about determinism, right up until you try and investigate some of its consequences in the natural sciences.”
As above, you don’t seem to understand that “nurture” is a also kind of determinism. Education, culture, socialization, parenting: these all refer to the various ways in which what we are is determined by nurture. So it makes no sense to suggest, as you do, that one is in political hot water as soon as one mentions where such environmental forms of determinism have consequences “in the natural sciences.”
For example: Are babies hurt physiologically through poor pre-natal health, or through malnutrition? Of course they are. This is in fact one of the key prongs of the environmentalist argument.
“Clearly” something like “intelligence” cannot be a part of someone’s “biological make-up”!"
eris, have you read this thread? I think not–or you read it hastily. No one has made this argument.
“…They mean that it isn’t a pure “nature” thing, that the “nuture” aspect is involved. Well, sure. Who is saying otherwise? But clearly we have one biological trait necessary for intelligence as we intuitively understand it: a friggin’ brain.”
Yeah, and the same friggin’ brain happens to be the organ through which “nurture”'s effects are transmitted. You speak, you learn, you form relationships, you acquire various behaviors all because you have a brain. Let me offer you an analogy that any functionalist ought to delight in.
You could liken the brain to a computer. “Nature” provides the hardware; “nurture” the software. What/who we are, including our intelligence, is a combination of both.
I don’t love it, but I can work with it if it facilitates understanding.
“The possiblility of equal intelligence is such an extraordinary claim that I cannot even begin to imagine how anyone who thinks in scientific terms could even begin to put it forward.”
Then why are you brining it up and imputing it to others, when no one has put it forward?
*"…For those who seek to remove biology from the picture, can you answer me how you would intend to scientifically study intelligence, then? [emphasis added]"[i/]
That is, to hypothetical posters who do not exist in this thread…
“For here is an application of the excluded middle: either biology has something to do with intelligence (and perhaps a capacity or “potential” for it more likely than no) or it doesn’t.”
Once again, this excluded middle, this either/or is entirely of your own inventing. You are arguing with your own strawman, and I can’t imagine why.
“I think the biological makeup of a person pretty much completely determines everything about them; I’m in a pretty deterministic phase of thinking right now.”
Oh okay, so there is one person in this thread who’s arguing for either/or and it’s you.
You’re arguing that nature (“biological makeup”) is “pretty much” the sole and primary determinant of not only intelligence but everything else.
And you’re approach to making this argument is to shoot down the other extreme, even though nobody is arguing for that position.
This is supposed to be a logical argument?
“* [Biology] is the motivation behind surgery, behind medicines, pharmacology, physical violence… So to those who wish to limit the consideration of biological makeup in understanding intelligence, how do we first know when to stop considering people without heads? And when we allow people to have heads, when do we stop considering what is in them and how it formed? [emphasis added]” *
Well perhaps we should consider what goes on in a person’s head when they read something new, such as a new kind of philosophical position. Usually it results in enhanced understanding; but sometimes it can result in confusion. 
Read on, erislover. You’re still a young man, with a good head on your shoulders–if you’ll pardon my biologism–and there’s plenty of opportunity for you to acquire a better understanding of philosophy, functionalist or otherwise.
And if that sounds unkind, let me add that I’m pretty certain that most of the problem here was you’re having leaped into a thread midstream.
You follow the first statement I quoted with a reference to strawmen, but the strawman would seem to be yours, as no one that I have seen in the thread has argued that position.
As to the second quoted statement: that is the specific nub of the discussion. First, that we probably should set a “standard” for measuring intelligence, but that despite the claims of reputable people like Arthur Jensen and political pundits such as Murray, we have not yet achieved a definition that is definitive. Until we actually identify “intelligence” in a manner that can be accepted by all analysts (a point we are nowhere near reaching), then discussions of that “intelligence” are always going to involve denying the other guy’s major thesis without ever finding resolution.
As to the specific charges against The Bell Curve, they revolve about the inadequacy and errors of the methodology of Murray and Herrnstein. Note that while several of us probably are in firm opposition to Jensen’s beliefs on the subject, no one has dismissed his contributions to the field.
I wasn’t arguing with anyone in this thread. I was trying to work out the absurdity of critiquing IQ based on exclusive appeal to biology or environment as nonsensical.
tom
Of course not, because any time someone tries to look for a biological definition the relativists jump in, and any time someone tries to work within relativism they are accused of cultural bias.
You want your cake or are you eating it? —you see what I mean?
I referenced TBC in one paragraph offhandedly in trying to understand how we could test the hypothesis that social organization is a function of intelligence while simultaneously creating it (a self-sustaining structure, and hence “inherited” though not strictly genetic… I had never heard anyone suggest that TBC suggested there was a “stupid” gene!).
It is all well and good to say that someone (such as the authors of TBC) improperly linked data from otherwise disparate tests. It is another to say that the actual intent or method was flawed by saying that these tests do not indicate anything like intelligence.
I trust this person makes that judgment because they already have a definition for intelligence and this fails it? You see what I mean?
It never left my mind. It was my point. 
Something I didn’t state which I thought was clear: associating intelligence with social groups instantly puts one in hot water because measures of intelligence are considered to be value judgments.
Agreement on a standard of intelligence and how it affects social groups across political lines will be well-nigh impossible to put forward because of this and the transitivity of normal thought process. The whole experiment is useless before you even attempt to get started. No conclusion will ever be accepted.
No one wants to be stupid.
Sorry, after the first quote it was Mandelstam to which I was replying.
No. Because even among the biological determinists and even within the cultural relativists we cannot get a clear answer. The two groups cannot agree within themselves well enough to oppose the other because there are too many contradicting tests and theories. We are a long way from finding a “scientific” definition of what “intelligence” means.
eris:
“Something I didn’t state which I thought was clear: associating intelligence with social groups instantly puts one in hot water because measures of intelligence are considered to be value judgments.”
That did come across in your post, and I do agree that “associating intelligence with social groups” is ticklish some of the time. But not always.
For example, I think that a study that linked below average IQ to poor pre-natal healthcare, poor diet, or poverty would not put one into hot water. Although IQ might still provide a questionable measure of intelligence, the linkage between it and a social group defined in such terms is not likely to raise hackles (except perhaps amongst die-hard racial or genetic determinists).
“Agreement on a standard of intelligence and how it affects social groups across political lines will be well-nigh impossible to put forward because of this and the transitivity of normal thought process. …No conclusion will ever be accepted.”
How can that be when so much data has already been collected correlating some social factor to IQ or some other standardized test? To hear you one would think that none of this work goes on. Whether one likes it or not, certain kinds of tests count provisionally as measures of “intelligence” in the world that we live in. Hence, SAT scores help one get into college, etc. etc.
Now as to the related debate on standaradizing intelligence (a hijack of sorts, really). Doesn’t it seem likely to you that “intelligence” is probably too complicated to be measured by an single standard?
I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person. And yet I’m pretty sure that no matter how hard I tried, at least at this stage of my life, I would make a lousy computer programmer or physicist. What about a person who is a gifted musician or artist but who is not very verbal?
There are also many different ways to define a “social group.” What kind of social classification are you so eager to standardize and measure intelligence on behalf of?
And what’s the purpose?
Are you really eager to live in a world in which Alphas are clearly marked off from Betas and Deltas and Gammas?
Because you continue to want to pit yourself against an absurd position that nobody holds, it remains unclear what your commitment to biological determinism is supposed to be in the service of.
Do you just want positive knowledge for its own sake?
Fair enough; but, if so, be patient.
Don’t be in such a hurry to classify entire groups of people as “stupid” (an unscientific classification if ever there was one) until such time as the adequate science is there.
I think I’ll hold my fire until Collounsbury’s had a chance to critique the argument I laid out, especially with respect to heritability. C, while you’re at it, could you toss in an explanation of “Jensen’s error?”
**
Indeed. In fact, one of the goals of civilization ought to be ensuring that this is true.
As I pointed out above, The differences here are meaningless with respect to any particular individual and aren’t even very significant with respect to the vast majority of people near the center of the curve. This effect, if it exists, only becomes obvious at the extreme ends of the curve. Even there, all it really is, is cautionary. It would mean that you can’t simply look to the raw numbers of people in prison or people with Ph.Ds or whatever to determine whether there is evidence of racism. Yes (hypothetically), people with a Jewish ancestry are disproportionately represented in the ranks of high-powered investment bankers. Is this evidence of a Jewish conspiracy? Well, no, it’s not. It’s just evidence of another factor (ability to do well on this particular set of standardized tests) that needs to be controlled for.
If I understand the comments in this thread directed to TBC, this comment is as useless as TBC. The whole issue is that all these correlations are not clear, isn’t it? Or have I really misread everything here?
No. I think clearing up the conceptual confusion by not considering “intelligence” to scientifically mean all the things it does in everyday use. We aren’t looking for a comeplete and scientific definition of all the uses of the word “intelligent.”
As to your first question, eris, I think you’ve misread some things, yes. The criticism of BC doesn’t rest entirely on the questionable value of any one type of IQ assessment. As the nature of the criticism is quite complicated, and wasn’t generated by me in the first place, I suggest you look over prior posts on the subject by Tom, Collounsbury and some others.
In your second paragraph, the sentence following “No” is missing a verb, so I can’t follow your meaning.
Of course it doesn’t rest on any one type of assessment; this is just the plurality that is the issue here. You (one, not you, Mandelstam per se) want to call all these different assessment tests “intelligent” in different contexts, but then turn to say that this is too big for a single standard. Conceptual clarity not being a strong suit there, I suppose (not a dig on you).
Second sentence should be: I think clearing up the conceptual confusion by not considering “intelligence” to scientifically mean all the things it does in everyday use is the way to go.
“You (one, not you, Mandelstam per se) want to call all these different assessment tests “intelligent” in different contexts, but then turn to say that this is too big for a single standard.”
But that’s not all the criticism is saying, eris. Here, at random, is a snippet from one of Tom’s earlier posts.
"*Using Murray and Herrnstein’s own figures, Christopher Winship of Harvard University and Sanders Korenman of Baruch College tried to replicate the results and found multiple errors. In other words, M&H were simply fudging the numbers in their core tool to extrapolate to the general population as noted in
http://slate.msn.com/default.aspx?id=2416&sidebar=50884
Claudia Krenz ( http://www.srv.net/~msdata/bell.html ) has also run an analysis of many of the statistical portrayals found in The Bell Curve. Interestingly, when she ran the tests on the AFQT, she also found that the numbers M&H produced were not reproducible, especially when applied to people living in poverty: http://www.srv.net/~msdata/analysis.html
This is not about making small errors among hundreds of examples as december would like to characterize it. Once they have completed their survey of the history of psychometry in the first half of the book (which is acknowledged even by detractors to be a lucid and even-handed exposition) in the second half of the book their central thesis requires that the NLSY be an accurate measure of IQ or g and that the figures they draw from that test can be expanded by the magic of the AFQT. Serious errors in their application of the AFQT pretty well demolishes the conclusions they draw from their extrapolations.*
"I think clearing up the conceptual confusion by not considering “intelligence” to scientifically mean all the things it does in everyday use is the way to go.
"
The way to go towards what?
It is important in this criticism to delineate between what the authors’ method meant and how they applied it. In less than ten posts I figure the latter topic was a dead horse. I certainly haven’t tried to bring it up.
But trying to link all these separate studies together in a fashion TBC failed to is interesting.
I cannot say it any more clearly than that. This is why I entered the thread. If this post fails to make that point, then I wil lexit it as smoothly with an apology for all.
**
Just bumping this to bring it back to Collounsbury’s attention.