Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 01:19:52 +0300 (EET DST)
Subject: Re: ..cat


Rahul,

here's some hasty remarks:

> Jukka, the complexity is only one reason. The relative lack of
> self-criticality and intellectual integrity is another.

Aren't they political questions?

Secondly, it's exactly these characters that cause people to
recognize problems with theories and the like they work
with. Another question is that every now and then this leads
to overstatements (sort of 'high' of new insights), but in a
time discipline corrects itself. Sooner or later, despite of
heavy 'ideological' pressures.

Thirdly, 'intellect-out-of-brains': I've learned that right
ideologues tend to use "IQ" as biologically determined. That
is, capabilities related to intelligence are supposed to be
explainable by genetics. Secondly, 'measuring' intelligence
is supposed to be neutral: supposition is that tests on the
one hand and intelligence on the other are not related. It
means that tests are supposed to be 'neutral', that there
isn't (aren't) any 'factor(s)' that has something to do both
with tests and intelligence.

However, it seems that there's no way to study 'pure'
brains, brains with no interference with culture/society.
Different tests are usually made for children (not to
mention adults) who have already intensive experiences with
other people. And these other people treat children
differently according their own culture and the sex of
child. Boys, for example, are taken more easily out of
cradle and thrown into air and the like; boys get physical
practice in a different way and more extensively than girls.
That's good practice for spatial coordination - which is
'better' or more evolved among boys than girls. And spatial
coordination is basis for some capabilities studied in IQ
tests. That's just one example. In short, skills and
capabilities needed to succeed in tests are learned in
ordinary, day-by-day life, and this education begins very,
very early. That's what I've been told by psychologists.

Statistically, if I'm not totally wrong, it is a case that
people of lower 'strata' do get weaker results in IQ tests
than people of 'middle-class' and upper-class. Why not?
Middle and upper-classes are more concerned of such things
as several statuses, economically they are in a better
position to offer their kids broader range of 'educating'
hobbies and the like, and as people of more extensive formal
education they know what it means (socio-economically) to
offer kids as much as possible different cultural goods and
training - broader cultural and educational background for
later life-struggles.

Point is not to circulate this kind of knowledge in public,
and to fight against it when it's made public. (One form of
struggle is going on in places where decicions of research
fundings are made: try to allocate resources to research
that - to put it bluntly - tries to prove inherited nature
of intelligence and try to avoid funding those other
studies.)

Now, intellectual caliber. Right-wingers usually associate
'intellect' with 'intelligence' (whatever they're supposed
to mean/be) by series of semantic shifts in their
'discourses' (writings, speeches, public discussions etc).
Result is that expression 'intellectual caliber' comes to
refer to inherited, 'biological' factors provided by
right-minded research.

Then it's easy to 'show' how people of 'negative' origin
(working-class or ethnic or some other 'negative'
background) are 'essentially' or 'ontologically' of second
class (stupid by nature).

One form of class-struggle.

Nice closed circle. Intelligence and intellect are
biological, upper-class gets better results in IQ tests and
poorer people weaker results, therefore present state of
things is justified by Nature Itself. People are at right
places in the structure of society. No need for changes.

One class defines and eternalizes intelligence, themselves,
social order and its own place in it.

However, if you mean by 'intellectual caliber' something
else - some academic standard, for example? - then please
tell us. Then again, defining academic standards is part of
struggle I mentioned above.

In late eighties one local right-winger referred to old
English arguments about declining academic and intellectual
standards. He wrote of bad example of England after WWII:
working-class students and students from Africa and Asia had
caused problems to traditional university system because of
their stupidity (low IQ's, I suppose). Universities didn't
had resources enough to teach those dummies things they
should have known already. Therefore, standards declined -
students weren't intelligent enough to grasp wisdoms of
their teachers but they had to let out as graduated,
otherwise universities had lost some of their financial
support, so it was impossible to stick good academic
standards and they had to be lowered. People of wrong
background are dummier than us, so they should be kept at
their proper place.

Funny thing is that IQ tests has been reworked and -modelled
during post-WWII era all the time. Those tests were supposed
to be eternal and universal, but all the time they continue
to appear biased according to cultural and class-background
of those who run them.

That's why I'm a bit sceptical about 'intellect' and
'intelligence' in general. I hope that clarified my point,
at least a bit.

Jukka



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