> Brett Knowlton wrote: "[big snip] Saying that there is no relation between
> income and cognitive skill is very different from saying that there is some
> fuzziness in the relationship. Cognitive abilities ...."
>
> The argument on this thread remains at a superficial (merely phenomenal) level
> as long as such mostly meaningless terms as "cognitive abilities" or [worse] IQ
> (or *g*, "general intelligence") are not subjected to critique but continue to
> be used as if the writer were naming something...<etc>
Carrol is quite right to attack IQ or "G", but attacking "cognitive abilities" in the same manner is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Just because we don't yet know nearly enough about them doesn't mean they are meaningless, useless or hopelessly ideological.
What's more the exact function of nuerotransmitters could not possibly have any bearing on such a subject matter at the level of abstraction it enters into our considerations, any more than the interactions of gluons in the nuclei of gold atoms has a bearing on monitary policy.
What IS relevent here is the various ways in which "cognitive abilities" are socially constructed in different contexts. This begins formally in grade school, if not before. Students with different class backgrounds are evaluated in different ways toward different standards. My sister has this article by Jean Anyan on this topic -- comparing how different skill sets are cultivated in different student populations, largely related to the class position of the parents.
If we follow Carrol's approach, and toss out the baby with the bathwater, then we'll have no foundation for mounting this kind of empirical critique of what's actually going on.
Of course, researchers in different fields construct differing models of "cognitive abilities", and not all of these are equal, much less compatible. But there is considerable interest in integrating and unifying these approaches. The fact that there's a history of ideological distortion should hardly be suprising. It would only be surprising if there weren't such a history.
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"