Race, Intellect, & Genetics (was Re: Peter Singer & VegetarianDogs)

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Wed Mar 8 13:47:37 PST 2000


While all discussions of racial intelligence are irrational and vicious, let's separate out the key element that means they will be so independently of their specific content.

Their is no way to define the population which is to be studied as a race. Any proposition of the form, "Race X is...." is irrational and vicious. THe proposition "all races are equally intelligent" is racisty, irrational and vicious because it implies it is possible to identify some group of people as a "race."

It is impossible to compare X and Y if neither X nor Y names anything identifiable in the world. The irrationality is raised to a power when the item to be compared is "intelligence," since that cannot (as Gould and others have shown) be related with any feature of the actual world.

Perhaps if Barkley were still on the list we could shift this thread to a comparison of the relative sexual attraction of orcs and trolls from the perspective of gay hobbits.

Carrol



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