From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat Sep 14 2002 - 12:26:50 MDT
Damien writes
> However, from my fairly extensive reading I'd suggest that
> Lee's statement of the `left' position (when it is of a
> scientific and informed kind) is badly wrong.
Certainly, if the shoe doesn't fit, then don't wear it.
I was indeed specifically addressing the *extreme* positions,
and I'm happy to hear that parts of the far left do not hold
as axiomatic that genetics plays no part in intelligence.
(Please correct me if I have misinterpreted your claim.)
> Scientists such as Richard Lewontin do not assert, absurdly, that each
> human genome has or could have identical phenotypic effects. What they
> *do* say, I think, is that certain complex traits such as IQ are so
> fantastically multifactorial and polygenic, based on interactions between
> the protein expressions of perhaps eight or ten thousand brain-making and
> -running genes, that inherited alleles in those genes are ceaselessly and
> unknowably mix-mastered by human reproduction, even when it's restricted
> and funneled by racist policies.
No offence, but I'm always amused the way that many academics who
lean towards the left (this time I do mean you) have their long
sentences often in the last phrase or two swerve unexpectedly into
a denunciation of capitalism, or racism, or some other hot topic.
Dropping that last phrase, the verb and object remaining assert
that the genes get so thoroughly "mix-mastered" that parent's
and children's IQs couldn't possibly be correlated. But then,
surely you know that this isn't so: they're in fact *strongly*
correlated.
> In other words, the presumption of rough-and-ready equality
> is a prediction from *epistemological uncertainty*, not an
> assertion of *ontological reality*.
I'm not sure whether to agree. If your statement is about
judging individuals, then I agree: it doesn't make sense to
judge individuals by who their parents were, or by the color
of their skins on the relevant traits because the spread is
too wide. (We do judge animals by their ilk, but that's
because the spread isn't too wide, and you can expect a
horse to behave in stereotypic horse fashion.)
But if your statement means that groups must be presumed
"equal" in terms of statistical parameters---as though some
judgment or finding like that of guilt or innocents in a
trial were at stake---then I don't agree.
But anyway, it's *ontology* that most concerns everyone on
this issue, right? Why is epistemology relevant?
> If this account is correct, the new genomics and proteomics and homeotics
> will (or could or perhaps should) change the politics of IQ to a marked
> extent. Once we learn what all the salient genes are, how they typically
> and atypically interact, how they are damaged, silenced or optimally
> expressed by environmental triggers, etc, we will suddenly have a full
> ontological understanding rather than an indirect epistemological hunch
> (something readily confounded by stupid culturally contaminated feature
> detectors and generalization rules: `Whites can't click!')
The "new genomics and proteomics"? It seems to me that the
old errors of attributing to individuals generalities only
true of groups will always be with us, and advances in academic
understanding won't change anything. Racism and sexism
stem from these errors, and also IMO from deeper issues about
group identity and our instincts to be a part of a collective.
(The tribes will always be at each other's throats until their
time and energy is taken up by something more interesting,
like making money, pursuing research, exploring the galaxy,
watching big screen TV, or participating in a Singularity.)
> That should return the emphasis where it belongs, and where
> I think most list members assume it should stay: with the
> individual and his or her idiosyncratic range of opportunities
> and deficits...
Yes, just so. We agree on the goal, but not on how most people
do in fact get there.
Lee
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:17:02 MST