--- Jordan Hayes <jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com> wrote:
>
> While looking for something else, I came across this
> pretty well (I say
> that as someone without a dog in this, uh, race)
> researched and
> articulated blog entry at what looks like a pretty
> decent place where
> genetics folks hang out.
>
>
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php
>
[WS:] It is an interesting posting, indeed. Thanks for the reference. However, I do not think that the author refutes the claim that there are mutiple factors incoveled in human cognitive abilities. He merely ridicules them by calling them names "mosquito dogding ability" etc.
However, if these "other" factors include, say, affective abilities such as the ability to cooperate with others, to empthize with others, to communicate with others etc. - not only the ridicule effect is lost, but is has the obscurantist effect. According to Daniel Goleman, the so-called 'emotional intelligence' is a better predictor of success in the "western defined world" (to quote from the aforementioned blog) than IQ scores.
In oher words, if one constructs the world in whhich success is defined by the ability measured on a ceratin kind of test, the predictive ability of that test scores, as well as thier correlation with ceratin types of genes is a tautology. I do not think that critcism has been answered by the quoted blog, unless of course, the author assume that the "iron cage" of "Western-defined international marketplace" is the best of all possible worlds.
To sum it up, the quoted blog argues that Watson's position is to affirm cognitive diffrences among races without asserting superiority or inferiority of these differences. So far so good - that is what the research data quoted there seems to support. But the blog also tends to assume that success in certain type of institutional settings is a sign of superiority, and that I believe is an ideological assumption unsupported by any scientific evidence.
What is more, the blog tends to assume that success in these institutions is solely determined by _individual_ characteristics tested on IQ tests, and fails to acknowldge that interprsonal abilities not measured by IQ tests may be an equally good predictor of that success (as Goleman claims). Ignoring the later is an unforgivable sin, given the social and collective (rather than individualistic) nature of any cognitive pursuit, from "western-defined international market place" to research and to artistic creativity.
Wojtek
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