The fatuity of Eliot's maundering  stems from the empty concept of
"intelligence," viewed as an individual trait, like height or eye color or
sense of smell. It simply does not exist.

I responded to Eliot's maunderings because I read them just after reading an
important post on another list:

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-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Angelus Novus
Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 1:22 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [lbo-talk] The Rise of the Evolutionary Psychology Douchebag

They believe that certain groups of people are inherently smarter than
others. They write books about how rape is a natural part of human
evolution. And now, with another scandal rocking the world of evolutionary
psychology, we can officially welcome a new breed of mad scientist into the
spotlight: evopsych douchebags. Evolutionary psychology has often been a
field whose most prominent practitioners get embroiled in controversy -
witness the 2010 case of Harvard professor Marc Hauser, whose graduate
students came forward to say he'd been faking evidence for years. Then there
was the case of Diederik Stapel, whose social psychology work shared a lot
of territory with evopsych. He came forward in late 2011 to admit that most
of his data was sheer invention.

http://io9.com/the-rise-of-the-evolutionary-psychology-douchebag-757550990

___________________________________
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk

********

The fallacy, that Intelligence is a _trait_, like eye color or fingerprints,
is as misleading in respect to individuals as to various arbitrary
groupings. And both Eliot and too many of his admirers are real suckers for
this myth. My daughter was a victim of the same myth when back in 2008 she
voted for Obama on the grounds that she wanted someone intelligent! But
intelligence, in so far as it is an intelligible concept at all, is a
function of _relations_ not of individuals. Obama is objectively less
"intelligent" than Bush, since his policies do no more than dot the I's,
cross the t's, and place italics on Bush's  policy initiatives.  Or as a
friend puts it, "Obama in form, Bush in Substance."

Now, the texts that go under the name of "Aristotle" are in fact endlessly
fascinating, but they give no evidence one way or the other of Aristotle's
"intelligence." That is a grotesque myth. Nor does the fatuity of Eliot's
quoted words give any evidence of Eliot's "intelligence" or lack of it.
They reflect a social position, not the biological "trait" of an individual.
Wherever and Whenever we find ourselves we are always already enmeshed in an
ensemble  of social relations, social relations, moreover, which are
endlessly c hanging, and which the physical properties of our brains are
only one (also endlessly changing) element. (Note: at the end of this
sentence your brain will have _physically_ changed. Touch the fabric of your
shirt: your brain has changed physically.) We may speak, crudely, of a
person's cognitive powers as expressed in a given action or  verbal
expression; crudely because the "same" cognitive power has enver existed
before and will never exist again. Change is constant. The pitter-patter of
TIAs over the last decade as well as ordinary aging is affecting my
"cognitive" power, but in a constantly changing way as I find myself in
different social relations (the preceding parts of this text already having
changed the world in which my "snynapeses" and "neurons" act. Anyone's
"intelligence" is an endlessly changing process, not a trait of the
individual as such. It is really quite ignorant to spoeak of Aristotle's
intelligence rather than of the inter4est of the texts named after hm.

Carrol


Carrol