Animal imagination?

About a month ago, one of my regular respondents asked me to blog about self-awareness in animals. I’m doing so now because it will be useful for an essay I’m planning to write about ethical and legal definitions of humanity.

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Mathematics versus reality

In the comments to my posting on the incoherence of Narnia, it has become apparent that some of the respondents are deeply confused about the relationship between mathematical and empirical truth. Symptoms of this confusion have included a superficially plausible but mistaken application of the Law of the Excluded Middle and an an attempt to… Continue reading Mathematics versus reality

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Out like Flynn

Renowned pychometrician Charles Murray has given us, in The Inequality Taboo, a concise summary of the most current science on group differences in IQ and other measures of capability. Most of it is not surprising to anybody who has been following the actual science rather than press accounts severely distorted by the demands of political… Continue reading Out like Flynn

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Predictability, Computability, and Free Will

I’ve been reading some philosophical discussion of the free-will/determism question recently. Quite a number of years ago I discovered a resolution of this question, but never did anything with it because I assumed I had simply reinvented a well-known position and could not really contribute anything to the debate. However, the research I’ve done recently… Continue reading Predictability, Computability, and Free Will

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Racism and group differences

At the end of my essay What good is IQ?, I suggested that taking IQ seriously might (among other things) be an important step towards banishing racism. The behavioral differences between two people who are far apart on the IQ scale are far more significant than any we can associate with racial origin. Stupidity isn’t… Continue reading Racism and group differences

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What good is IQ?

A reader asks: To clarify, while I believe natural selection explains a lot I have caveats about IQ as a tool for testing intelligence. If you can’t measure the coast of France with a single number how can you do it with human intelligence? Easily. Human intelligence is a great deal less complex than the… Continue reading What good is IQ?

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Selecting for intelligence

Mike Smith relays an interesting possible explanation for the observed statistical fact that American and European Jews have a mean IQ a standard deviation higher than Caucasian gentiles: During the period from ancient times to modern times, there was a constant phenomenon of Jews converting to Christianity (there were many social pressures to do so).… Continue reading Selecting for intelligence

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