Miles Jackson wrote:
>
>
> In the adoption studies, there is a significant correlation in IQ
> performance between biological parents and children they have put up for
> adoption and never interacted with. As enthusiastic as I am for
> sociostructural explanations, I have a hard time explaining this without
> granting that genetics has some impact on IQ performance. I rush to add
> that this is not evidence in favor of the dubious claim that
> "intelligence is genetically determined".
Part of the problem is that individualist ideology is something we all accept at some level, not matter how convinced we have become of its falsity. Thus we (some of us) know that there is no such thing as intelligence (g) and that IQ tests do not measure what does not exist, but knowing this we continue to believe that there are "individuals" and that each of these individuals has an intelligence (g) that others can detect. I don't believe it's possible for anyone in capitalist society to wholly escape this ideological trap. If (as we always spontaneously assume) individuals exist prior to and autonomous of any and all social relations, then there must be some individual essence in each to be identified and explained. Intelligence (g) is merely one of the more sophisticated forms of this vulgarity.
Carrol