Consciousness doesn't need a mirror for proof

Some humans as well as theoretically intelligent animals fail the psychological classic mirror test of self consciousness. With humans, the "failure" appears sociologically related. There's thoughts in this for both human and animal psychology.

There are two things we should take away from this. First, self-awareness is not a hard and fast line. Instead, it is probably a continuum. That is an especially important lesson to keep in mind with animal research. A species might have the skill, even if some individuals do not. This is true for chimpanzees, who do not all pass the mark test, and can lose the ability as they age.

A takeaway?

"Self-awareness is like gravity," Johns Hopkins's Roma says. "We can't touch it directly, so if we want to measure it, scientists must develop valid techniques to directly observe its effects. Currently, mirror mark tests are the best-known and most accepted method, but the absence of an effect does not necessarily mean the absence of the thing we're trying to measure. Ultimately, evidence from multiple techniques should converge on the truth, whatever it may be. Such is the beauty of how scientific advances turn controversy into common knowledge."

At bottom line — if the mirror test is sociologically influenced, this is a powerful, if indirect, undercutting of the universality of IQ tests, no? Take THAT, hereditarians, racialists, et al.

Prenatal pollution lowers child IQ

Boy, this is a serious story; specifically, it’s about how pregnant mothers’ exposure to air pollution can lower the IQ of their children.

It involves fairly low levels of pollution, which is one matter of concern. Here’s another.

Patrick Breysse, an environmental health specialist at Johns Hopkins' school of public health, says the effect is similar to lead pollution.

Brains pushing the envelope

Not some particular brains, but all brains. Our dura matter operates “on the edge of chaos, new studies show. And the results have some interesting self-organizational fallout.

Rich could get smarter while poor get dumbed down

Two stories this week on intelligence issues stand in jarring opposition.

First is the call by several scientists for healthy people to have the right to give themselves intellectual "steroids."

"I would be the first in line if safe and effective drugs were developed that trumped caffeine," author Michael Gazzaniga of the University of California, Santa Barbara, declared in an e-mail.

Second is the sad finding that children in poverty tend to have reduced brain activity.

Barring a VERY comprehensive national healthcare plan, it's easy to see how the income gap could become an intelligence gap as well.

Also, per the statements of Gazzaniga, et al, whether or not any of the scientists in question have any financial connection, Big PhARMA is behind this.

And, the big drugmakers certainly won't rush out to tell you about Second is the sad finding that children in poverty all the side effects of these drugs.

Let's tackle one - chemical dependency. What if the alleged brain-boost effects of Adderall lessen with more and more usage, whether through physical dependency, psychological dependency, or both? And, what if its non brain-boost effects produce good old-fashioned amphetatmine addiction?

In short, there ARE NO "safe" brain-boosters at this time. As Christpher Waljek notes, we've also never tested any of these drugs for use on healthy people for off-label reasons, other than the self-testing going on right now.

And, he adds this - the drugs of today, the Adderall and Ritalin, boost test performance, not necessarily intelligence. (There's a whole raft of sidebar arguments here, of course, on what "intelligence" is, is "intelligence" as currently defined by most U.S. social psychologists more nature or nurture, is there a thing such as "q," etc.)

Back to his main point, that these are focus enhancers and not intelligence enhancers, anyway:

Do you really want a doctor who passed his boards as a result of taking speed — and continues to depend on that for his practice?

No. No. No.

There, that was easy.

On price and related issues, he weighs in again:

How soon before the penis enlargement industry produces herbal stimulants to profit from everyone's cognitive shortcomings?

Go surfing and sharpen your brain

Brain scans with fMRIs appear to show that surfing the Internet can sharpen up middle-aged and older brains.

Good cooking, smart minds

The raw foods movement may not like to hear this, researcher Philipp Khaitovich says, but the invention of cooking may well have given us our large-sized brains. Details inside the story.

James Watson won’t back down on race and intelligence

The DNA Nobelist recently talked with black professor and historian Henry Louis Gates. In the wide-ranging interview, Watson throws all sorts of crap against the wall.

He claims the main part of his “dumb blacks” comment was a joke.

He still believes in “Jewish intelligence genes.”

And other nonsense.

Gates has a sidebar, with his assessment of Watson’s true standing on these issues, and calls him, finally, a “racialist.”

It’s a good description, a good and sad description of the hornblower of the famous DNA pair (Crick deserves more credit than he gets), who has a history of such statements on race-genetic issues long before the 2007 comments that got him in hot water.

Are Americans getting dumber? Well, perhaps more mentally lazy, yes

Susan Jacoby has just released a 1,500 page tome that answers with a definite Yes.

And, it’s drawing a lot of comment, even pushback.

That said, I’ve not read her book, but did see her appearance on Bill Moyers Now last Friday.

I think she’s overstated the thesis. I don’t think they’re dumber, in terms of reasoning skills. I do, though, STRONGLY think, as she herself said on Moyers’ program, that Americans are getting more intellectually lazy by the day. This is particularly true among various right-wing strains in America, whether neocons and military rightists blindly supporting the continued war in Iraq, religious rightists continuing to reject the firm scientific grounding of neo-Darwinianism, etc.

Nonetheless, anti-intellectualism isn’t the sole property of the right. Jacoby also talks about how separate women’s and minority history studies departments in college have effectively ghettoized these areas of study, for example.

That said, I totally agree with her. As I do with the idea that “dumber” means less knowledgeable about, as well as more intellectually lazy in, history, political science, psychology, and other social science areas.

If students are less informed in history, and the degree they are gaining in knowledge, or intelligence, is due to their own computer skills, or computer/tech type classes in public schools, I will “blame” a variety of forces.

1. Schools in being too business-conservative, not liberal, for moving public high schools in a more vo-tech direction and less focus on the value of and need for liberal arts, and similar actions.

2. Parents for being content with this. And, with many families, at least among native-born Americans, having fewer and fewer children, the “no parental time” excuse doesn’t go too far.

3. School bureaucracies for not leading the call for a school year long enough to match that in other Westernized countries. WHEN are we going to get a 200-day, or longer, school year here?

DNA co-discover puts foot in mouth over race-intelligence issue

It’s hard to believe that someone of the stature of James Watson would say this in public, just as it’s hard to grasp that someone of his learning would believe it, but the Nobel laureate and co-discoverer of DNA apparently believes in a black-white intelligence gap. And, by referencing both black Africans and African-Americans, the clear inference is that he believes this is race-based and not culture-based:

Watson, an American, sparked uproar by telling Britain's Sunday Times he was “inherently gloomy about the prospects of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really.”

The 79-year-old geneticist said he hoped that everyone was equal but countered that “people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true.”

I think “unbelievable” is the only thing to immediately come to mind.
Beyond that, the fact that Watson apparently believes there is a core, definable, and already defined “g” measure of intelligence, and that he also believes intelligence tests measure it, show that the width of his genius-level knowledge is narrow, indeed.

The first precept is hotly questioned, especially the part about whether we have defined what “g” is. The second precept is not just questioned but actually rejected by the majority of psychologists, psychiatrists and neuroscientists that study human personality testing.