OldScratch,
I find scoffers and mere cleverness repugnant. In my post, I couldn't help but take the piss—it's what happens when you spend time with Dostoevsky. Concerning condescension, you've laid it on rather thick yourself.
However, my "play" masks an earnest severity. When I engage in polemics it is because there is no possibility for thoughtful engagement:
"...philosophy is powerless within the region of prevailing self-evidences. Only in so far as these themselves change can philosophy have its say."
It is unfortunate that you find my posting to be essentially empty and arrogant swagger, as my concerns and proposals are in themselves quite modest. It is appropriate that I have been evoking Kant, as his "project" with the first critique is also a modest one, often grossly misinterpreted as more high flown fantasy, a luxury for "academics" who can afford to overlook concrete, self-evident reality.
Only when these dogmatic self-evidences are reigned in by a disturbed modesty can we genuinely undertake the task of thinking.
I concede, that was more cheaply critical than I might have wished.(I had just returned from a Black Metal show - Dark Funeral/Naglfar...thus was filled with intolerance...and a bit of beer:Smug
That said, I honestly find your way of "thinking" almost maddening to endure. But that, evidently is my problem not yours.
Nevertheless, which dogmatic "self-evidences" do you take issue with? Don't talk past me - talk to me. What, dare I say, in layman's terms do you find so troubling about all this? Surely, you are not suggesting that an issue as sensitive, contentious, bitterly disputed, and volatile as the relationship between race and intelligence, is going to abide all manner of in-depth Kantian critique and acedemic exploration. Insisting that the tools of measurement themsleves(IQ) are hopelessly flawed leaves us at a bit of a loss, no? What then would you suggest? What, for instance, do you believe explains the persistent and much lamented "gaps" in acedemic achievement between racial-types?
Though the measures may be perceived a nebulous or flawed, surely these "gaps" still exist in...reality! Or no?
Or what if we just dismiss the idea of broadly measuring intellectual capacity entirely. What then shall we look to as an explanation of significant differences in acedemic achievement? Of scores on standardized testing? Of non-acedemic testing for municipal occupations(Police, Fire, Corrections, etc.), including spatial-thinking, reading comprehension, chronological orientation?
I am always willing to admit that I am wrongheaded about any issue or argument. But you must show me where - you must offer alternatives beyond the idea that we are not "thinking" correctly from the outset - even if that be true! If so, then what manner of thinking would de-muddle such issues? How do we get past this mindless cave-chatter. Indeed, how do we agree upon what is real, for we live in a "real" world, no matter how polluted with illusion, folly and bad thinking that reality may be. If you simply wish to re-define the argument, set us on a proper path.
