there are racial and ethnic differences in IQ

[purnell]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I like this definition of intelligence: "Intelligence is the ability to make and use tools to achieve one's desires" (interpreting "tools" to include reason, imagination, intuition, etc).

[/ QUOTE ]
This feels a little inadequate (as you have assumed desires and include reason, imagination, intuition, etc within the definition). It seems to me that you may be assuming all the factors of intelligence without making them explicit which makes the definition unobjectionable but not particularly helpful in discriminating between two cases. If I asked you whether an ant is intelligent you'd need to know beforehand whether it had desires which would mean knowing if it was intelligent (perhaps - I'm just musing here)...I wonder if you've just moved the problem a little.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll go along (Lord knows I've been wrong before [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]). What factors of intelligence have I assumed?

[Rduke55]

Good Lord, not this again.

This has been done to death in this forum recently. Here's three threads wih in the last few months where race and intelligence came up.

Linky 1

Linky 2

Linky 3

I don't know if I have the energy or patience to go through all this again. Search is your friend.

[bunny]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I like this definition of intelligence: "Intelligence is the ability to make and use tools to achieve one's desires" (interpreting "tools" to include reason, imagination, intuition, etc).

[/ QUOTE ]
This feels a little inadequate (as you have assumed desires and include reason, imagination, intuition, etc within the definition). It seems to me that you may be assuming all the factors of intelligence without making them explicit which makes the definition unobjectionable but not particularly helpful in discriminating between two cases. If I asked you whether an ant is intelligent you'd need to know beforehand whether it had desires which would mean knowing if it was intelligent (perhaps - I'm just musing here)...I wonder if you've just moved the problem a little.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll go along (Lord knows I've been wrong before [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]). What factors of intelligence have I assumed?

[/ QUOTE ]
What I meant is in order to answer the question "is so-and-so intelligent" using your definition, you need to know whether it has desires and whether it uses reason, imagination, intuition, etc. I dont think you can know that without knowing beforehand if it is intelligent or not.

Again, I dont think this is a failing on your part but an inherent problem in defining concepts like life, intelligence, consciousness, etc. I use the words and have an understanding of what I mean but I cant define them

[purnell]

[ QUOTE ]
What I meant is in order to answer the question "is so-and-so intelligent" using your definition, you need to know whether it has desires and whether it uses reason, imagination, intuition, etc. I dont think you can know that without knowing beforehand if it is intelligent or not.


[/ QUOTE ]


All forms of animal life have (at the very least) the desire to remain alive. I'll go out on a limb and say that because of that desire all forms of animal life possess intelligence. I don't think my dog is capable of using reason, but he is capable of using his senses, limbs, claws, and teeth to get food. Reason, imagination, etc are not required for intelligence, but advanced forms of intelligence can use these very powerful tools to get what they want.

edit: Maybe the most basic desire is to avoid or alleviate pain, rather than to remain alive. In order to desire survival, a being must be aware of death, and that's not something I'm willing to attribute to all forms of animal life.

[purnell]

[ QUOTE ]
Good Lord, not this again.

This has been done to death in this forum recently. Here's three threads wih in the last few months where race and intelligence came up.

Linky 1

Linky 2

Linky 3

I don't know if I have the energy or patience to go through all this again. Search is your friend.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's why I have no problem hijacking this thread. [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[moorobot]

[ QUOTE ]


As outlined in the book "The Bell Curve" there are racial and ethnic differences in IQ that cannot be sufficiently explained by environmental factors such as nutrition, social policy, or racism.

I havent read this monster of a book (yet), but does anyone care on elaborating a little more on this?


[/ QUOTE ] As has been mentioned before, this book is not scientifically credible. For an almost comprehensive demonstration of why it is a ridiculous piece of literature, See the book by one of the most distinguished thinkers of our time, Stephen Jay Gould, entitled "The Mismeasure of Man".

Secondly,as has already been mentioned, race is not a biological fact. It does not really exist except in our minds, much like god (an atheist like myself would say). However, because it is real in our minds it has real consequences for us and hence is important: falsehoods can be as pragmatic as truths.

[moorobot]

[ QUOTE ]
All forms of animal life have (at the very least) the desire to remain alive. I'll go out on a limb and say that because of that desire all forms of animal life possess intelligence. I don't think my dog is capable of using reason, but he is capable of using his senses, limbs, claws, and teeth to get food. Reason, imagination, etc are not required for intelligence, but advanced forms of intelligence can use these very powerful tools to get what they want.

edit: Maybe the most basic desire is to avoid or alleviate pain, rather than to remain alive. In order to desire survival, a being must be aware of death, and that's not something I'm willing to attribute to all forms of animal life.

[/ QUOTE ] The most basic desire is to ensure the survival and fitness of our genes, hence Richard Dawkins called his book 'the selfish gene': humans are not self-interested in terms of themselves as an individual, they are self-interested in terms of ensuring the existensce and success of the genes in their body.

They aren't usually conscious of this e.g. a man doesn't realize that why he is attracted to a beautiful woman is because beauty is a sign of genetic fitness and hence children they have together would tend to be evolutionarily sucessful, also we might say that we have sex because it is pleasurable, but it is pleasurable because that is how our genes replicate themselves, so we can more accurately say that the cause of sex amongst humans is the fact that natural selection would pick a creature who enjoyed engaging in potentially reproductive activities.

[MidGe]

[ QUOTE ]
Secondly,as has already been mentioned, race is not a biological fact. It does not really exist except in our minds, much like god (an atheist like myself would say). However, because it is real in our minds it has real consequences for us and hence is important: falsehoods can be as pragmatic as truths.

[/ QUOTE ]

I really like that. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

OTOH, I would not rate SJ Gould as highly as you do, not that I would diminish the value of "The Mismeasure of Man" in particular. Ah well! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[moorobot]

[ QUOTE ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They've already shown that IQ doesn't mean much. It's not at all a determinant to success, happiness, achievement,academic achievement , anything, etc.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Surely you are joking

[/ QUOTE ] IQ is not a good determinant/predictor of the things you two are talking about, it is correlated with those things but seems not to be the cause. See the paper by Sam Bowles and Herbert Gintis called the 'Inheritance of Inequality' as well as a recent book they wrote on the determinants of economic success in a capitialistic economy for more but here is a quote of myself from the politics forum:

[ QUOTE ]

Recent studies have shown IQ to be a poor predictor of future economic 'success'; I think the following is the main reason, even though it is somewhat correlated (remember, correlation is not causation or a predictor in itself).

Because of luck in the natural and social lottery (better schooling, more and better time spent with parents, better genes, don't have to work etc.) people who are born to wealthy parents are more likely to have a high IQ than people born to poor parents

People with a high IQ who are born to wealthy parents tend to be wealthy. People born to a wealthy family who have a low IQ tend to be wealthy as well.

However, people born to poor parents tend to be poor regardless of their IQ; A person with a high IQ born to impoverished parents is less likely to be productive or wealthy, in the U.S., then someone with a low IQ born to wealthy families.


So in other words, parents economic status is an intervening variable that explains away most of the correlation between IQ and economic sucess/productivity. People tend to be wealthy if their parents were wealthy; the single best predictor of one's sucess in the economic realm in the United States is socioeconomic status of one's parents.


[/ QUOTE ]

[purnell]

[ QUOTE ]
The most basic desire is to ensure the survival and fitness of our genes, hence Richard Dawkins called his book 'the selfish gene': humans are not self-interested in terms of themselves as an individual, they are self-interested in terms of ensuring the existensce and success of the genes in their body.

[/ QUOTE ]

Your point is valid (and Dawkins' book is well worth reading), but we were talking about the definition of intelligence. The existence of motivation is all that is required.