When people say things like “intelligence doesn’t exist” or “race doesn’t exist”, charitably, they don’t mean that the folk concepts of “intelligence” or “race” are utterly meaningless. I’d bet they still use the words, or synonyms for it, in informal contexts, analogously to how we use informally “strength”. (E.g. “He’s very smart”; “They are an interrracial couple”; “She’s stronger than she looks”). What they object to is to treating them as a scientifically precise concepts that denote intrinsic, context-independent characteristics. I agree with gjm that your parody arguments against “strength” seem at least superficially plausible if read in the same way than the opponents of “race” and “intelligence” intend theirs.
When people say things like “intelligence doesn’t exist” or “race doesn’t exist”, they are often using what on SSC is referred to as “motte and bailey”—that is, their claims that they don’t exist are true based on narrow definitions, but they then apply those claims when much broader definitions are not in use.
When people say “race is a social construct”, for the most part, what they mean is that racial categories are divided in ways that are ambiguous and that tend to change over time. Obviously people have different physical features and genetics, but what physical features make one a member of one race or another, where you draw those lines, and what racial distinctions are “important” and which aren’t, are all social constructs.
To someone without any that social context (say, an Australian aborigine living in the year 1500 who had never met anyone outside of his own ethnic group previously) it wouldn’t immediately be obvious to him that someone from Norway and someone from Greece are both “the same race”, but that someone from Greece and someone from northern Africa are “different races”.
There was also an interesting study that demonstrated that people’s perception of what race someone else was, or even what their own race is, sometimes tends to change over time based on social circumstances.
A. I think at least some people do mean that concepts of intelligence and race are, in some sense, inherently meaningless.
When people say
“race does not exist because it is a social construct”
or that race does not exist because
“amount of variation within races is much larger than the amount of variation between races,”
I think it is being overly charitable to read that as saying
“race is not a scientifically precise concept that denotes intrinsic, context-independent characteristics.”
B. Along the same lines, I believe I am justified in taking people at their word. If people want to say “race is not a scientifically precise concept” then they should just say that. They should not say that race does not exist, and if they do say the latter, I think that opens them up to justifiable criticism.
It is true that normally, taking people at their word is charitable. But if someone says that a concept is meaningless (when discussing it in a theoretical fashion), and then proceeds to use informally in ordinary conversation (as I conjectured that most people do with race and intelligence) then we cannot take them literally at their word. I think that something like my interpretation is the most charitable in this case.
First, I’m not so sure: if someone is actually inconsistent, then pointing out the inconsistency may be the better (more charitable?) thing to do rather than pretending the person had made the closest consistent argument.
For example: there are a lot of academics who attack reason itself as fundamentally racist, imperialistic, etc. They back this up with something that looks like an argument. I think they are simply being inconsistent and contradictory, rather than meaning something deep not apparent at first glance.
More importantly, I think your conjecture is wrong.
On intelligence, I believe that many of the people who think intelligence does not exist would further object to a statement like “A is smarter than B,” thinking it a form of ableism.
On race, the situation is more complicated: the “official line” is that race does not exist, but racism does. That is, people who say race does not exist also believe that people classify humans in terms of perceived race, even though the concept itself has no meaning (no “realness in a genetic sense” as one of the authors I cited in this thread puts it) . It is only in this sense that they would accept statements of the form “A and B are an interracial couple.”
When people say things like “intelligence doesn’t exist” or “race doesn’t exist”, charitably, they don’t mean that the folk concepts of “intelligence” or “race” are utterly meaningless. I’d bet they still use the words, or synonyms for it, in informal contexts, analogously to how we use informally “strength”. (E.g. “He’s very smart”; “They are an interrracial couple”; “She’s stronger than she looks”). What they object to is to treating them as a scientifically precise concepts that denote intrinsic, context-independent characteristics. I agree with gjm that your parody arguments against “strength” seem at least superficially plausible if read in the same way than the opponents of “race” and “intelligence” intend theirs.
When people say things like “intelligence doesn’t exist” or “race doesn’t exist”, they are often using what on SSC is referred to as “motte and bailey”—that is, their claims that they don’t exist are true based on narrow definitions, but they then apply those claims when much broader definitions are not in use.
When people say “race is a social construct”, for the most part, what they mean is that racial categories are divided in ways that are ambiguous and that tend to change over time. Obviously people have different physical features and genetics, but what physical features make one a member of one race or another, where you draw those lines, and what racial distinctions are “important” and which aren’t, are all social constructs.
To someone without any that social context (say, an Australian aborigine living in the year 1500 who had never met anyone outside of his own ethnic group previously) it wouldn’t immediately be obvious to him that someone from Norway and someone from Greece are both “the same race”, but that someone from Greece and someone from northern Africa are “different races”.
There was also an interesting study that demonstrated that people’s perception of what race someone else was, or even what their own race is, sometimes tends to change over time based on social circumstances.
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/02/11/275087586/study-stereotypes-drive-perceptions-of-race
A. I think at least some people do mean that concepts of intelligence and race are, in some sense, inherently meaningless.
When people say
“race does not exist because it is a social construct”
or that race does not exist because
“amount of variation within races is much larger than the amount of variation between races,”
I think it is being overly charitable to read that as saying
“race is not a scientifically precise concept that denotes intrinsic, context-independent characteristics.”
B. Along the same lines, I believe I am justified in taking people at their word. If people want to say “race is not a scientifically precise concept” then they should just say that. They should not say that race does not exist, and if they do say the latter, I think that opens them up to justifiable criticism.
It is true that normally, taking people at their word is charitable. But if someone says that a concept is meaningless (when discussing it in a theoretical fashion), and then proceeds to use informally in ordinary conversation (as I conjectured that most people do with race and intelligence) then we cannot take them literally at their word. I think that something like my interpretation is the most charitable in this case.
First, I’m not so sure: if someone is actually inconsistent, then pointing out the inconsistency may be the better (more charitable?) thing to do rather than pretending the person had made the closest consistent argument.
For example: there are a lot of academics who attack reason itself as fundamentally racist, imperialistic, etc. They back this up with something that looks like an argument. I think they are simply being inconsistent and contradictory, rather than meaning something deep not apparent at first glance.
More importantly, I think your conjecture is wrong.
On intelligence, I believe that many of the people who think intelligence does not exist would further object to a statement like “A is smarter than B,” thinking it a form of ableism.
One example, just to show what I mean:
http://disabledfeminists.com/2009/10/23/ableist-word-profile-intelligence/
On race, the situation is more complicated: the “official line” is that race does not exist, but racism does. That is, people who say race does not exist also believe that people classify humans in terms of perceived race, even though the concept itself has no meaning (no “realness in a genetic sense” as one of the authors I cited in this thread puts it) . It is only in this sense that they would accept statements of the form “A and B are an interracial couple.”
Ableism is a lot more recent (or at least more recently popular) than the idea that intelligence does not exist. I don’t think it’s very relevant
Yes, I suppose that is true when people say such things charitably. But usually when they say such things, they are not being charitable.