Re: Whitehead on Deduction (fwd)

["Alan G. Isaac" <aisaac@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is the sad side of otherwise intelligent critiques.

>Do you think that "intelligence" is inherited?
>There is no compelling   evidence that the heritability
>of I.Q. is anything other than 0.

This is just semantic obfuscation based on problems
in documenting heritability and vagueness in the concept
of IQ. It is just short of outright dishonest.
It avoids that by carefully *not* saying that there is no
genetic basis for differences that are detected by various
``intelligence'' tests, which they cannot say because that
would be as silly as saying experiences are irrelevant.
It is the kind of precious straining for political correctness
that should make one cringe.

>Do you think the differences between men and women
>are genetically and biologically ordained?
>Read chapter 6 and think again.

This is the same kind of near dishonest talk.
Which ``differences'' are at issue?
Keep it vague and hard to discuss, or you might
say something politically incorrect!
Here are some possible differences to consider,
in order of declining obviousness.
Sex organs. Average height. Average upper body
strength. Average body fat. Likelihood of being
diagnosed with an attention deficit.
Ability to rotate an object in visual imagination.
Likelihood of scoring in the ``tails'' of math aptitude tests.
And the list goes on and on.
Although most people with children have always known
just how profound the differences are, recent brain scan
studies are hopefully laying to rest the tendency to favor
an ideological description of the world over the evidence.

Fortunately, we also live in societies that are less and less
inclined to think that the slight differences in the distribution of
attributes by gender weigh at all against individual performance
and merit.

Alan Isaac