I've enjoyed Blackburn. But it was also interesting to read about him in Neven Sesardic's _Making Sense of Heritability_; apparently Blackburn goes out of his way to say some misleading stuff about IQ, twin studies, and nature vs nurture. E.g. his entry for 'Intelligence' in the Oxford dictionary of Philosophy:
> Most generally, the capacity to deal flexibly and effectively with practical and theoretical problems. Since peoples' capacities to do this vary with the problem, it may be doubted whether there is a useful level of abstraction at which one thing, intelligence, can be thought of as equally manifested in whatever logical, theoretical, practical, mathematical, linguistic, etc. successes we achieve. Nor is there much confidence left that intelligence tests measure any such general capacity, as opposed to measuring the subject's capacity to take intelligence tests, often of very specific and culturally peculiar kinds. For the question whether humans alone possess intelligence, see animal thought, instinct.
I've enjoyed Blackburn. But it was also interesting to read about him in Neven Sesardic's _Making Sense of Heritability_; apparently Blackburn goes out of his way to say some misleading stuff about IQ, twin studies, and nature vs nurture. E.g. his entry for 'Intelligence' in the Oxford dictionary of Philosophy:
> Most generally, the capacity to deal flexibly and effectively with practical and theoretical problems. Since peoples' capacities to do this vary with the problem, it may be doubted whether there is a useful level of abstraction at which one thing, intelligence, can be thought of as equally manifested in whatever logical, theoretical, practical, mathematical, linguistic, etc. successes we achieve. Nor is there much confidence left that intelligence tests measure any such general capacity, as opposed to measuring the subject's capacity to take intelligence tests, often of very specific and culturally peculiar kinds. For the question whether humans alone possess intelligence, see animal thought, instinct.
Also, astonished to see a rec written by someone over 90, inspiring stuff.
you have higher standards than i!
we are fallen