Should scientists study race and IQ?

YES: The scientific truth must be pursued

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7231/full/457788a.html

NO: Science and society do not benefit

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7231/full/457786a.html

no

iq is a load of bullshit

except for when it comes out in my favor

Anything one lick eugenicsy creeps me the fuck out and makes me embarrassed.

It makes me feel bad as a biology-type, all this shit present & past, but I use the soft sciences as an accurate scapegoat. Ha.

Pretending the same IQ test works everywhere because you're trying to throw out cultural relativism and making a set of assumptions is a major dud.

if you accept IQ as a valid form of measurement, I can't imagine why you wouldn't want to see how it plays out against all demographics, but I say this as a guy who thinks IQ mainly measures whether you have learned to kick ass at standardized testing

It is a valid form of measurement of how well you do on IQ tests and whether you are familiar with some of the concepts therein.

the "yes" authors dont really address the major point of the "no" guy which is--how, exactly, are you going to scientifically study things (race & intelligence) that rest on such shaky scientific ground

Stating the obvious here, but there's a pretty huge difference between study and application, and the discomfort with this sort of thing is a distrust of application (despite the fact that there are presumably positive applications of any knowledge that comes from the study) -- both sides of the argument speak interestingly about the issues and mechanics and premises of the actual study, but that seems like it winds up skirting the actual issue.

Lots of major lols in that "Yes" article, like the idea that "race" is a useful enough concept that it can be studied down to the genetic level, yet encompasses categories like "black employees," "black Africans" and "white Europeans." And the idea that, contra Lysenkoism, studies that can usually be encapsulated as "Are white people smarter than black people?" are the un-politicized option.

(Max, I think that part of the "no" is probably the most compelling argument in the bunch, but I'd also note that in some perfect pure-science world that put off the issue of application or opinion, it'd be theoretically possible to study things that stand on shaky scientific ground as a means of feeling your way, shakily, onto them -- the fear is that those shaky steps and that period of knowing little and dealing in uncertainties and implications that wind up being wrong ... those would have real-world effects they weren't intended to.)

i dont doubt that--which is why im disappointed the "yes" people treat this as a question of freedom of scientific inquiry rather than, um, possibility of knowledge or whatever

I think that connecting to race, without connecting to social status or economic status or even locale, is stupid. But it is my nonscientific opinion that those factors are of more importance than however they're determining what "race" is.

the whole concept of measuring intelligence seems like a quaint old 19th-century idea to me, really, but the racist application of the concept is a major lulz-killer

"measuring intelligence" on some kind of minutely and "accurately" quantified scale may seem absurd, old fashioned, whatever. but it's nonetheless obvious that some people are MUCH better than others at using their brains for stuff. sometimes in a task- or area-specific sort of way, sometimes in a more general sense. intelligence does exist, as does stupidence.

and while this or that smart/stupid measurement instrument may be biased in this or that way, it's disingenous to suggest that therefore ALL intelligence testing is "biased" to the point of worthlessness. it's not. it's just tough to nail down and massively politicized.

that said, it's perfectly reasonable to hypothesize that certain demographic groups could be smarter, in some ways, than others. i don't know that there's good reason to suppose that this IS true, but it seems a reasonable - and more importantly, a testable - hypothesis.

but it's an absolutely TERRIBLE idea. i can't imagine what good could come of this line of inquiry, at least in the here and now. just a horrible fucking can of worms

horrible fucking can of worms

ew

worms get horny too, deal w/ it

Some of the posts here kinda reveal in themselves something that can come out of the line of inquiry, which is that ... if our understanding and definitions of things like "race" and quantifiable "intelligence" are insanely shaky and sometimes near-meaningless, it stands to reason there are things we could learn about them that would make them someone less so. If we routinely learn things about how people of different groups (usually cultural groups and class groups, but still) respond differently to different means of (allegedly) quantifying intelligence, there's probably something to be learned about why. It's just that this sort of inquiry isn't something we'd happily define as "studying race and IQ," because that makes it sound like an investigation of racist assumptions -- it's, well, studying race and IQ, themselves, as ideas (and culture, and cognitive habits, etc.). It's idiotic to try and study the correlations between two things the scientific community would have a hell of a time defining or deciding could be in any sense quantified. But it makes sense to approach the fields, separately, sometimes using reference to others, to sort out how those things do work or what they might mean, if anything

Basically this means approaching IQ not as a quantitative measure but as an effect or a behavior, and not really examining race but possibly taking note of it as one thing in a constellation of variables (culture, class, experience, a whole human story) that might influence that effect or behavior -- it seems somewhat self-evident to me that race in the genetic sense would be vanishingly small component among those variables w/r/t anything you did learn this way

this whole thing boils down to "nature vs nurture" and I don't think anyone has a vested interest in proving that nurture is always more applicable than nature

(because of societal assumptions/prejudices that would have to be abandoned; most people can't succeed unless they can successfully "other" their competition)

a liberal/humanist sort absolutely has a vested interest in that, especially since it allows for improvement, is way less fatalistic, etc.!

bahaha Dan you are succinctly OTM.

I mean, to be fair to science, despite some crappy periods w/r/t this sort of stuff, it has been a major force -- every bit as major as personal or religious idealism -- in developing the idea that people are mostly shaped by the things around them (I mean, just think about bleeding out of hard science and into things like psychology, sociology, etc.) ... and usually because there's an idea that findings like that can be used by some actor, whether it's the state or parents or a business or whatever, to create desired outcomes with people: smarter kids, better public policy, more consumers, etc

Maybe I should have said "sincere vested interest". I think that once people start realizing that the discoveries they are making threaten their position in the social hierarchy, they back away from them.

Yeah, Black guys on the money itt

(obv nabisco I agree with you that in a perfect world, what you're describing is what should happen; I just don't trust human nature would allow that to happen and instead the research would get buried or it would be used to cement all of the old prejudices based on class)

Yeah, Black guys on the money itt

http://i561.photobucket.com/albums/ss51/tr_fudge/easy.jpg

i owe you one

^ this. no matter how the research was framed or what came of it, it would be culturally processed in terms of people's insane tribalism. i mean, what if after years of research and millions of dollars and tons of publicity, a bunch of government-funded scientists got up there and said, "well, sorry folks. although 'race' is a bullhit social construction, it seems that there IS a statistically significant corellation between imaginary race and actual intelligence. please don't shoot us." would the upshot be positive in any sense, no matter what the conclusions might have been?

CAN OF WORMS. DO NOT WANT.

Yes/no "debates" like these don't interest me in the least because there's so much ridiculous research being done in so many different fields that I can't get myself worked up over yet another ill-defined and badly thought-out conjecture about a topic of dubious scientific value. If somebody is dumb enough to fund the research, then let anyone study whatever they want. The opposite view runs contrary to academic freedom anyhow.

As a rational person I agree with this, but there is part of me that is deeply weirded out by the idea of not trying to understand things better by maybe pushing through the spots that are prone to misapplication -- not least because it seems like so much the science we take for granted and depend on could have been scuttled on something like the same grounds

(There also sometimes seems to me to be some weird faith-shaken liberal impulse in there, like OMG what if science discovers that racism is right??, whereas it seems to me that good science -- which would mean science that's not dumbly testing that assertion -- could find something better in this area, like I said)

that's an xpost to contenderizer

yeah i haven't been posting to this thread but the whole "we shouldnt study race & iq bcz the findings could justify racism" impulse is kinda... racist?

agree with NTBT's basic assertion: scientific freedom uber alles. also agree with nabisco on the same grounds: DO go there. more importantly, yeah, my lib knee-jerk response IS questionable (not wrong or tainted, necessarily, but worth questioning).

but then again, so is your sort-of-implied suggestion, nabisco: "this line of research is okay, because i already know what the truth is."

not sure where i said anything of the sort

http://www.qwantz.com/comics/comic2-1366.png

"the hardest racism not to be" always makes me think of ILX

it's not necessarily racist, and what. in it's purest form it's simple scientific neutrality: "we do not know what the answer is. therefore, all possible answers are equally (possibly) valid."

In science, you never go in saying you know what the answer is. That is why I love science!

"the hardest racism not to be" always makes me think of ILX

"hardest racism not to espouse" is thematically accurate but has less of a ring to it [/pedant]

obv theres a lot more worth attached to "intelligence" than like if japanese dudes sunburn faster than african dudes but honestly i dont see anything wrong with studying ppl and seeing if there could be any hard-coded cognitive differences? its not like some treacherous moral judgment to find out that maybe ppl from diff parts of the world have diff approaches to shape recognition or understanding large numbers or whatev, its interesting

love that strip nonetheless

I mean, I think my position here is better summarized as "actual GOOD research in this direction is more likely to tell us interesting things about what 'intelligence' is and how it works" -- stuff you'd need to figure out first before you even began tossing out hypotheses about racial or cultural or class differences in quantifiable raw intelligence, leave alone testing them

(And I honestly don't thing any remotely worthwhile or serious form of scientific research at present could make very firm assertions about relative intelligence of different races, which would appear to be the main thing people are worried about hearing)

I am pro-studying this stuff; I just don't know how it translates into practical real-world knowledge without getting fucked over by people too invested in maintaining the status quo.

what do yall think about opposition to research on what genetics makes ppl gay cuz it could (and i guess could = WILL) lead to folks using genetic embryo selection to decrease gay population eugnically

The only person I've heard seriously discussing race and IQ was a friend's mother, and she was an absolutely batshit-crazy racist madwoman. The upshot of that conversation was that I no longer gave a fuck about IQ tests.

^^ yes, that is the inevitable horror -- research about race and intelligence consumed and applied by people in the same manner about research as to whether eggs are good for your health or not

science, despite some crappy periods w/r/t this sort of stuff, it has been a major force ... in developing the idea that people are mostly shaped by the things around them ...

― nabisco

There also sometimes seems to me to be some weird faith-shaken liberal impulse in there, like OMG what if science discovers that racism is right??, whereas it seems to me that good science -- which would mean science that's not dumbly testing that assertion -- could find something better in this area, like I said

― nabisco

both of these seem predicated on the idea that science will not discover anything that easily/stupidly boils down to a scientific, biological justification for racism. but i have only a moderate degree of faith in science (in the short term, anyway), and a LOT of doubts about the basic validity of my own view of the world.

so i'm prepared to allow that it MIGHT be possible for science (good science or bad) to cough up something that seems like a set-in-stone justification for racism. so i'm leery of this whole field. frankly, i don't think anyone would publish or fund anything that ran even a snowball's chance of justifying racism, which means that the deck is so totally stacked against scientific objectivity that the question isn't worth bothering with in teh first place.

plus it's a fucked question, so fuck it

what do yall think about opposition to research on what genetics makes ppl gay cuz it could (and i guess could = WILL) lead to folks using genetic embryo selection to decrease gay population eugnically

I have a similar reaction; I am pro-research but I am not sure how this will be helpful knowledge in the real world, largely because I think most people are cocks looking for an in to screw over others.

in modern culture there are millions of people who think that science supports their theories about race & intelligence, not sociology or politics

you can say scientists shouldnt be interested bcz "it isnt science" but that hasnt stopped richard dawkins from being interested in religious belief, or scientists of every stripe being interested in fighting global warming myths and vaccine/autism nuts

just to run with that analogy, ppls motivation for not believing in climate change may be personal laziness or economic greed but the disbelief needs to be countered with science - ppls motivation for believing in race/iq linkage may be personal predjudice or social ambition, but it will be countered with science

Er. The concept of human intelligence cannot be divorced from human behavior and human psychology. If that makes it "sociology/politics" and consequently not "science", then I suppose we've reached our definitive answer - by defining away the question.

and what, it should be examined and studied but on a 'hard' science basis, it's unlikely to tell you anything particularly useful. You can make generalizations based on race or ethnic background and that may be useful with regard to certain genetic pre-dispositions medically but there will still be loads of exceptions to the rule. Also, what makes a black person black or a white person white? Is it likely that a Basque and a Icelandic person have more in common than either would have with a, say, Sudanese? I think one is more likely to gain insight by studying ethnicities, especially in places where they've resided for lengthy periods of time than by studying Asians or White people or Native Americans as portmanteau categories.

i agree!

Sure. I mean, Dawkins is an idiot,but I get the rest. But there is a difference between studying the phenomenon of people linking IQ and race, and studying a link between IQ and race, surely? They might overlap, and you might have to study the actual link to disprove the latter, but are you really saying scientists should be trying to alter society's conceptions rather than pursuing knowledge? Should scientists be trying to prove fairies don't exist? And would it make any difference? There's no reason to believe in lucky numbers, people know that it has been fairly comprehensively demonstrated that there is no such thing - yet people still pick birthdays/lucky numbers at lottery games.

Also, yes, what is 'intelligence' is arbitrary and incapable of measurement.

I think everyone here is willing to stipulate that IQ tests measure something, insofar as they do not spit back random results at people. But "IQ tests measure something" is near-meaningless, as statements go.

Some looseness in this statement, too:

IQ tests aren't just practically meaningless tests of obscure puzzle-solving ability, but are actually pretty good predictors of far-flung life outcomes like health, wealth, and job performance

I mean, note that this is a wildly different claim from saying that, let's say, IQ tests measure some kind of innate biological capability that is then responsible for those far-flung outcomes.

I'm not sure all that many people are claiming the tests get at nothing beyond obscure puzzle-solving -- I think the claim is that the things that contribute to high performance on such tests might be every bit as complex, multi-variabled, culturally mutable, environmental, etc. as any of the things that contribute to plenty of those other far-flung outcomes.

We could argue this with different emphases forever, but I feel like we should be able to agree that there's not exactly much in the way of firm answers on this point, on how much things like IQ tests reliably and universally measure some kind of innate human ability versus how much they measure, like I said, more of an "effect" influenced by a large constellation of factors, many of them non-genetic. (The second part of that, at least, seems totally beyond dispute, since performance on IQ tests as children age seems pretty clearly affected by a variety of environmental factors.)

It also seems that unless you can define the 'something' IQ measures, you can't say it measures anything. I guess the whole question doesn't interest me that much, so if the state (I live in the UK, so lots of sci research is effectively state funded, through universities) pays for it, it would piss me off.

What if the research actually did come closer to defining what that "something" is?

xpost

"IQ tests measure something" is near-meaningless, as statements go.

I agree. And until this can be settled, I submit that the only valid question a scientist could reasonably study in regard to IQ testing is "what does it measure?" Which has been my underlying position throughout this thread.

Yeah, I think we agree on that! Something I'm not sure I've been articulating well is that research about IQ among different populations -- culturally, racially, economically, whatever -- well, whatever other problems it poses that we're discussing here, it actually can help figure out what IQ is testing. It just means you don't just wash your hands and say "okay, this population is 'smarter' than this one" -- you actually use that to try and sort out the mechanics of the effect you're seeing.

^^^ this. studying race and IQ is interesting insofar as it helps us examine what exactly what we mean by those terms

But isn't 'what is intelligence?' (and probably 'what is race?') a philosophical question rather than a scientific one?

Philosophical and scientific aren't mutually exclusive

i still think a lot of people are hedging here. basic questions, as i see em:

1) does what we perceive as "race" have any real biological/genetic significance?

i dunno. it's PC to say "no", but this seems based more on what we want to think & what we don't yet know than really solid evidence. jury's out.

2) what is intelligence, and can human intellectual ability/capacity be accurately measured?

first part is a good question, but not as completely unexamined and new-land as some here seem to suggest. answer to the second part i'd say is "yes" -- with strong caveats. our measurements are imperfect, subject to observer error, clouded by factors known and unknows, etc. but in a general sense, i'd say that it's possible to measure smarts, and that we'll get better at it as time goes along.

3) finally, whether or not perceived race is biologically/genetically meaningful, does it correlate with intellectual ability?

who the fuck knows? i mean, i wanna say no, cuz that's what i believe and it squares with what i've observed and otherwise learned about the world, but who the fuck knows? it's an open question. putting aside my prejudices and opinions, i have no scientifically compelling reason to say anything at all about the subject.

^ this, plus the ridiculously charged atmosphere in which research would takes place inclines me to say no, it's not useful at this time to directly study the "direct link" beween race and intelligence. as others have said, do the background work first. nail down the biology and the measurement instrumentation. clearly define the terms. investigate other contributing factors. allow society to continue processing "race" for a while...

Not really -- there's a philosophical approach and there's a semantic approach, but the scientific approach would mean gathering facts that informed the others. I mean, just e.g., our superficial semantic/philosophical idea of what "race" is has been clarified a whole lot by getting a better understanding of genetics, hasn't it?

xpost - contendo, I think what some of us are getting at here is that by saying the first part of 2 is "a good question," you are somewhat weakening your agreement with the second part -- you are saying "yes, we have imperfect measurements of something where it's actually a good question what it even is." That's not incoherent, it'd just appear to be something where learning more might completely revise what we think we've learned so far.

Philosophical and scientific aren't mutually exclusive

No, of course not. But could science ever tell us what 'intelligence' is? It's not composed of matter or energy etc. It's defined culturally, and based on properties that our society deems desirable. A guy may be able to memorise pi to 1000 places, calculate factors of any any given number, name the day of the week that any given date falls on, get a 175 iq, but be completely incapable of functioning in society. Until we answer the question of what intelligence is, why we think these values are important rather than others (ie EQ, and why there should be a difference) this study remains outside of the realms of science. It's like trying to track race vs musical ability - until we defined whathe latter meant, it would be pointless.

(x-post that's why I put race in brackets)

1) does what we perceive as "race" have any real biological/genetic significance?

i dunno. it's PC to say "no", but this seems based more on what we want to think & what we don't yet know than really solid evidence. jury's out.

^^^ would disagree. the only jury that's out is the one that has a vested interest in preserving the idea of inborn genetic differences between social groups.

are there genetic differences between people, or, more pertinently, between populations of people? sure. do the fault lines of these differences map in any way to those that delineate "race"? maybe, sometimes, but not as often as we'd expect, and not in the ways that we'd imagine. perceived "race," as has been repeated over and over on this thread and countless others, is a social construct, and is by and large a product of how we observe other peoples customs/language/blah blah blah. most of that stuff can only tenuously be linked to genetics, if at all.

xpostsssss

i guess i don't know what you mean about "significance." sort of a weird word to use, in this context?

But isn't 'what is intelligence?' (and probably 'what is race?') a philosophical question rather than a scientific one?

Well, factor analysis was created to try to answer the first question ... and that was, what, 1904? So in 100-odd years we're basically no nearer an agreed definition, and we've got a shitload of shiny new theories to deal with too. (A hardcore g-theorist such as Jensen would say: fuck 'em, they all come back to the same hierarchic model in the end; and the evidence for that is compelling. Not, however, anything like compelling enough to silence the debate, or -- more importantly -- to mean it's not worth studying.)

do the background work first. nail down the biology and the measurement instrumentation. clearly define the terms. investigate other contributing factors

This is not going to happen any time soon, though: really, I'd be astonished if there's anything even approaching resolution/agreement in my lifetime. And the problem is that, ill-advised though it might be, there's always going to be someone who thinks, hmm, how can I get a bit of publicity for my differential-psychology research. Ooh, I know ...

you are somewhat weakening your agreement with the second part -- you are saying "yes, we have imperfect measurements of something where it's actually a good question what it even is." That's not incoherent, it'd just appear to be something where learning more might completely revise what we think we've learned so far.

― nabisco

i agree, but only to a limited extent. i don't think the question is quite as entirely open as you suggest. just a bit open, if you'll allow the hedge. like, i'd agree with yr closing sentence if if it were a bit more circumpspect:

...the study of human intelligence is a field where new info will will probably continue to revise what we think we've learned so farm, but probably won't completely upend present understandings.

something like that

the only jury that's out is the one that has a vested interest in preserving the idea of inborn genetic differences between social groups.

― gbx

disagree entirely. i think you've provided a political argument rather than a scientific one (bit about "vested interests" being something of a giveaway in this regard). the genetic significance of perceived race is not a settled issue.

Until we answer the question of what intelligence is, why we think these values are important rather than others

no no no. science has a pretty good -- though by no means an absolute, fixed, settled -- idea of what "intelligence" is. and it should absolutely NOT concern itself with whether or not intelligence is important. science should (and will) concern itself solely with that which can be observed and measured. and that's as it should be.

value judgements about intelligence vs. other things are best left with yr shoes at the doorway to science.

Contenderizer I am kind of impressed, given the history of the world, that you're confident we won't be upended on anything having anything to do with the human brain! I dunno.

It's defined culturally, and based on properties that our society deems desirable. A guy may be able to memorise pi to 1000 places, calculate factors of any any given number, name the day of the week that any given date falls on, get a 175 iq, but be completely incapable of functioning in society.

^^ This is the semantic discussion of intelligence. To my mind, the scientific discussion of intelligence revolves around figuring out how the brain does any of those individual things, what else it can do and how it does those things, whether people have different aggregate capabilities to do various things, what that means, why that is, etc. etc. etc. All of which findings would presumably inform our semantic discussion of what "intelligence" is

nabisco, man, i'm not "confident" about any of this shit. i'm just talking about reasonable suppositions based on what we know and don't know. sure, given a sufficiently long-term view (assuming the human race survives over the sufficient long term), i assume that pretty much EVERYTHING we know will be upended. i was talking more about the shorter-term here and now -- next 10 years or so, the "present reality" framework i assume this discussion is taking place in.

from my prev post:

genetic significance of perceived race

bad choice of words on my part. "measurable genetic correspondences to perceived race" might be a better way to phrase it.

disagree entirely. i think you've provided a political argument rather than a scientific one (bit about "vested interests" being something of a giveaway in this regard). the genetic significance of perceived race is not a settled issue.

you didn't answer my question: what do you mean by significance? clarifying that would help me understand your point a lot more. because it was, as I read it: the jury is out as to whether there is some genetic underpinning to what we, as a society, perceive as "race." to which I would say: no, the jury is not out. scientifically. unless you mean boring stuff like skin color and who's taller and who's immune to what. but what society perceives as "race" has a lot more to do with cultural practices and people being "smarter" or "savage" or what have you, and scientific evidence supporting shit like that is pretty thin on the ground, as far as i know

xpostsss

This is the semantic discussion of intelligence

I guess you're right on that, Nabisco - my degree was in philosophy of language, though I did a year of educational studies (though just for the credits), so it's probably not that surprising that I focus on the semantics of intelligence. I guess I just find the idea of IQ, a measurement which claims, by it's nature, to measure intelligence, can't provide a definition of intelligence. If it's just speed of processing, like comparing a 486 to a 386 processor, it misses out a huge chunk of what people mean when they say 'intelligence'. And that comes back to language again, in that ordinary people use intelligence to mean more than just processing power, and will interpret any findings from such studies to mean more than that too. Ultimately, anyone can explore any field/correlation they feel like it. I just can't imagine anything interesting will come of such studies. I see no reason for it to be taboo, however, as the market will provide it's own taboos in our current society. I don't think anyone is being blocked from studies because of 'PC thought police' or the like, it's just that it's not likely to yield any valuable knowledge.

what do you mean by significance?

― gbx

i tried to clarify in my last post, but maybe it got lost in the shuffle. a better choice of words would have been, "measurable genetic correspondences to what we perceive as race".

and when talking about race in a scientific context, i'm putting aside EVERYTHING except that which can be measured. Dan I linked a paper way upthread that found an exact corellation between markers for hypertension and self-identified "race" in a large group study. i.e., the people who self-identified as RACE A had a distinct cluster of markers, and the group identifying as RACE B had an equally distinct but significantly different set of markers (using "significantly" in the statistical sense here).

in other words, fuck all that shit about smarter and savager and what have you. just use rigorously controlled studies to investigate the existence (or non-existence) of correspondences between genetics and what people perceive as race.

^^ This is the semantic discussion of intelligence. To my mind, the scientific discussion of intelligence revolves around figuring out how the brain does any of those individual things, what else it can do and how it does those things, whether people have different aggregate capabilities to do various things, what that means, why that is, etc. etc. etc. All of which findings would presumably inform our semantic discussion of what "intelligence" is

― nabisco, Thursday, February 19, 2009 3:37 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

THIS. The brain *does* do most things ("see," "smell," etc) in a way that is pretty uniform across the board. That is, most people's brain process, like, visual information using the same basic machinery. How, then, that sort of information is integrated with other stimuli is likely to vary wildly. But I won't disallow the possibility that there might be patterns to that variation. the question though is: what underwrites those patterns? is it culture (that is, does someone born and raised in China process language differently from someone in England?)? is it genetics (does someone adopted from china but raised in America process english differently from a native-born american?)?

xposts once again: i saw yr clarification, but the die had been cast w/that post of mine!

I guess I just find the idea of IQ, a measurement which claims, by it's nature, to measure intelligence, can't provide a definition of intelligence.

― dowd

absolutely, but only because you're talking about two different kinds of intelligence. semantics. science concentrates itself in a very narrow way on the observable, the testable, the quantifiable. that's what science is: the objective study of the material world.

people, in conceiving "human intelligence" rope in a much bigger world, as they should. science, given it's nature, can't say much about the bigger, fuzzier, more subjective world in which that conception takes place. but it can say a LOT about the narrower, more objective intelligence with which it concerns itself.

absolutely, but only because you're talking about two different kinds of intelligence. semantics. science concentrates itself in a very narrow way on the observable, the testable, the quantifiable. that's what science is: the objective study of the material world

Umm ... but the science that's fundamentally involved with the "what's the nature of intelligence?" question is psychology, which a) you might argue is more of a pseudo-science than a science (I certainly would, although I know a couple of my tutors would chin me for it); b) has always been, and remains, very much interested in defining intelligence in the non-circular way that Dowd is talking about.

A neuroscientific explanation of intelligence is a) a long, long, long way off and b) would arguably look to psychology to present a "human" explanation.

the conclusion of the paper (skimmed):

This result indicates that studies using genetic clusters instead of racial/ethnic labels are likely to simply reproduce racial/ethnic differences, which may or may not be genetic. On the other hand, in the absence of racial/ethnic information, it is tempting to attribute any observed difference between derived genetic clusters to a genetic etiology. Therefore, researchers performing studies without racial/ethnic labels should be wary of characterizing difference between genetically defined clusters as genetic in origin, since social, cultural, economic, behavioral, and other environmental factors may result in extreme confounding (Risch et al. 2002).

grimly: you're using "psychology" in too broad a sense. intelligence testing (as a field) is not pseudo-scientific in the sense that, say, psychological counseling is. and there's a wide variety of approaches to yr point b) within that field.

the neurology of intelligence belongs to a different debate. i don't accept that the performance-based measurement of human cognitive ability is inherently pseudo scientific.

I guess the difference between the 'yes' and 'no' to this question is semantics (I guess Wittgenstein might have thought so), with one side seeing this as a way to understand the human brain more, with potential benefits for those with learning problems, mental illness, and just education in general. The other side is perhaps the more colloquial side, which sees such tests (and most tests) as ways of sorting people into 'smart' and 'dumb'. This is the side people encounter in their day to day lives, where job interviews can depend on IQ tests, with all of the economic, social and political consequences that can have, especially if such tests are biased or inaccurate. In reality, of course, the two sections are only artificially segregated, but trying to understand how they are linked is probably incredibly complicated - but we shouldn't pretend that the scientific is immune from the political, or vice versa (not that I think anyone is doing that). Anyway, early start tomorrow.

im wondering why contenderizer seems so convinced science can measure intelligence - what the method is - and how it relates to what nabisco is calling the semantic aspect of our discussion

GBX: the portion of the conclusion you quote merely underlines the fact that there is no scientifically established correspondence between perceived race and genetics. therefore the warning: when analyzing genetic cluster data, you need to make sure that the "genetic" differences between clusters you observe aren't simple artifacts of secondary factors, such as race. (secondary factors which we can't say are genetic in themselves, but might be.)

doesn't take anything away from the fact that the paper DOES provide some support for the hypothesis that perceived race might be reflected in genetics. i.e., if there were enough papers like this floating around, the caveat you quote would be worded differently.

ice cr?m: i think it's likely that science can measure intelligence of the narrow sort with which science is concerned for a number of reasons:

1) there seems to be a strong scientific consensus that this is possible
2) there seems to be a strong correspondence between measured intelligence and the ability to peform a wide variety of cognitive tasks
3) anecdotal: most of the smart-seeming people i've known have had high measured IQs, and the dumb-seeming ones, lower IQs

2 and 3 seem to be the same answer and do u really go around asking people what their iqs are - ive never done that and i dont know what mine is - also plz point to some evidence of this scientific consensus

^^ that's actually circular, but your argument's still clear

hahaha there are actually multiple circularities in there, perhaps

icy cr?m: there are TONS of scientists engaged in the study of intelligence, and very few running around saying that it's impossible, futile, a waste of time. i've read a fair amount human intelligence (and the study of such) and haven't seen any good support for that idea. i mean, where is the science that repudiates or invalidates the field?

2 & 3 aren't the same. 2 describes scientific measurements, 3 my own observations based on life. i've done some work with people and their measured intelligences (not as a measurer tho)

lots of researchers studying intelligence =/ a strong scientific consensus that measuring intelligence is possible

fine then 1 and 2 are the same whatever

circularities:

1) scientists find value in what they are doing. well yeah. but my point was more that there aren't a bunch of other scientists making bones by undermining the 1st group. and there would be, if the consensus weren't well-established.

2) intelligence testing accurately predicts performance of the specific tasks it measures performance of. again, yes, but measured intelligence also predicts cognitive ability across a wide variety of tasks not measured for. this point made very well by others in this thread.

3) anecdotal bit: not especially circular, but of little scientific value

aaaaand 1 & 2 are not the same because 1 speaks to the integrity and cohesiveness of the field and a set of general understandings shared by people working in it, while 2 speaks to the applied results of work in that field.

intelligence testing (as a field) is not pseudo-scientific in the sense that, say, psychological counseling is. and there's a wide variety of approaches to yr point b) within that field

Well, it's had its share of pseudo-scientific or even non-scientific approaches in the past, eg Guilford (roughly: "here's a theory I've come up with based on no empirical evidence whatsoever"); also, any factor-analysis-based approach by definition involves subjective interpretation of the factors by whomever is carrying out the research. I guess I'm not convinced that the field of intelligence-testing benefits yet from enough of a unified approach/theoretical basis for agreement for there to be any great breakthroughs in the forseeable future.

1) there seems to be a strong scientific consensus that this is possible
2) there seems to be a strong correspondence between measured intelligence and the ability to peform a wide variety of cognitive tasks
3) anecdotal: most of the smart-seeming people i've known have had high measured IQs, and the dumb-seeming ones, lower IQs

But these observations have been made by all sorts of folk for decades now, and we're still all at loggerheads! I put my faith in neuroimaging to shed more light (psychologist's default cop-out) but I can't even begin to imagine the scope of the breakthrough that'd be needed in order to shut everyone up and have them nodding their heads in agreement.

they think 1 because of 2 and 3 is yr own informal version

my point was more that there aren't a bunch of other scientists making bones by undermining the 1st group

I give you -- to pluck two from my notes -- the Howe article I mentioned above; or Richardson (2000). OK, so these are 10/20 years old but the argument is still ongoing. (Hellfire: in an unrelated aside, a tutor tonight said something like "g doesn't really exist"; in quite what sense he meant I didn't have time to find out as he was trying to cram about three hours' worth of material into 45 minutes.)

agree w/ all of that grimly. i do think, however, that even absent the sort of unified approach/theoretical basis yr. talking about, we presently do an adequate job of measuring certain sorts of cognitive ability.

ice cr?m: the points are related, but not quite the same as one another. mutually supportive, i'd say.

i do think, however, that even absent the sort of unified approach/theoretical basis yr. talking about, we presently do an adequate job of measuring certain sorts of cognitive ability

And yes, fundamentally, I agree with you there. There are some hellish gaps in my knowledge, but I don't think they'll change my point of view once they're filled in.

Also, looking back at my last couple of posts, I'm maybe being a bit too devil's-advocate-y for my own good. I categorically accept that a majority of researchers subscribe to the model you suggest; I guess I just don't hold out much hope for any observations or clarifications of note in the forseeable future.

howe's primary argument is interesting, but it isn't in itself a scientific critique of the measure of human intelligence. it's more a logical critique of the philosophical underpinnings of "intelligence = psychometric g", supported by methodological critiques of scientific studies.

richardson also concerns himself primarily with undoing unitary g. i'm not an expert by any means, but as far as i know, he's not refuting the validity of intelligence testing WR2 what it purports to measure. instead, he's arguing that other sorts of intelligence exist, and that they may not have anything to do with supposed g.

* if not terribly compelling from where i stand. independent of the assumed existence of psychometric g, measured intelligence can predict performance across a wide variety of cognitive tasks, therefore the explanatory function of "intelligence" continues to hold up to testing, at least partially refuting howe's basic logical objection.

asterisk applies to "interesting" (or was meant to). missed yr. last post. in light of that, we basically agree!