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C00002 00002	lewont[w85,jmc]		Notes for review of Lewontin
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C00009 00004	In my opinion scientists who write about social problems have the
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lewont[w85,jmc]		Notes for review of Lewontin

	I'll read the book with a hypothesis, to be confirmed or
refuted or equivocated by the experience.  The hypothesis is that
Lewontin, and the Science for the People people, are Marxist
"fundamentalists" analogous to religious fundamentalists.  Fundamentalists
according to the present idea, are people who have experienced
prolonged doctrinal defeats at the hands of reason and who
discover that they can recover all their lost ground by giving
up reason except for lawyer's reason.  Lawyer's reason is reason
in support of a cause.  It may be logical in drawing consequences
from the facts it chooses to take into account, but it selects
those facts with regard to the case to be made rather than with
a disinterested pursuit of truth.  Circumscription may be of some
help in explaining this kind of reasoning.  Perhaps it would even
be worthwhile to point out the validity of some of Lewontin's
arguments, given the facts he chooses to take into account.
READING THE BOOK REFUTES THE HYPOTHESIS.  It's certainly not
Marxist fundamentalism rather a decayed version of Marxism.

1985 Jan 2 - Lynn Scarlett says Reason will probably want the review.

mention the ideology of SftP.

	Ordinary deductive reasoning, as studied by mathematicians
and philosophers, has the following monotonic property.  Suppose
a conclusion  p  can be deduced from a collection  A  of statements,
taken as premises.
Suppose  B  is a more inclusive set of premises, i.e. includes all
the statements in  A.  Then  p  can be deduced from  B.  Indeed the
same proof that proves  p  from  A  will serve as a proof of  p
from  B.  The word monotonic, in accordance with its common use
in mathematics, refers to the fact that when the set of premises
is increased, the set of conclusions is also increased.

	What has been discovered, perhaps we should say emphasized,
in the research in artificial intelligence of the last ten years
is that human reason, and the reason required for intelligent
computer programs is not always monotonic.  We often draw a conclusion
from a set of facts that we would not draw from some more extensive
collection of facts, i.e. the conclusions we draw depends on the
facts we take into account.  What's new, and what I will spare you,
is the mathematics of how conclusions are drawn from a set of
premises that might not be drawn when additional premises are added.
However, the general idea is simple, namely to take the simplest
or the ``standard'' interpretation of the facts.

References from Cavalli-Sforza
Sandra Scarr book, Kamin reprint, Jensen
social class - 

AUTHOR:   Scarr, Sandra.
TITLE:    Race, social class, and individual differences in I.Q. / Sandra Scarr
            ; commentaries by Leon J. Kamin, Arthur R. Jensen.
IMPRINT:  Hillsdale, N.J. : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1981.
          xii, 545 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

LOCATION: BF432.A1S3: Education;
outline

	Until about the 1930s the study of the genetics of human
behavior was an ordinary scientific field.  There were the usual
research studies and the usual controversies --- sometimes polite,
sometimes acrimonious.  About then a new element entered --- the
Marxist arguments that combined substantive discussions of the issues
with attacks on the motives of the scientists who favored hereditary
explanations of one trait or another.

	In the Soviet Union the political and ideological arguments
soon resulted in the application of political authority culminating
in the famous 1948 debate in the All-Union Academy of Agricultural
Sciences.  After the debate had been going for a few days, a henchman
of Lysenko asked him the question, `` What is the opinion of the
Central Committee and Comrade Stalin?''  That settled it; the losers
lost their jobs and some died in the Gulag.  That was the high point
of Marxist vigor.  This book is one of the low points.

	The main content of the book is a criticism of the research
conclusions that various aspects of human behavior is substantially
hereditary.
In my opinion scientists who write about social problems have the
same obligation to strive for scientific objectivity as they do
when they write about natural science.

What has ai to say?  What has NMR to say?

This book is about the social science of natural science.  It
accuses many nineteenth and twentieth century biologists and
psychologists of bad science and advances sociological hypotheses
about why they did bad science.

This book argues that scientists who studied the inheritance
of intelligence and other drew conclusions for insufficient reasons.
They are held to an

This book argues that scientists who reached positive conclusions
about the inheritance of intelligence, criminality and other
behavioral characteristics had insufficient evidence
for their conclusions.  Sometimes it seems to claim that these
such characteristics are not at all inherited, but mostly it
agrees that they might be, just claiming that it isn't scientifically
established.  While the authors are somewhat guarded about their
own opinions of the extent to which intelligence differences among
people are inherited, they are quite free with conclusions about why their
opponents say what they do, i.e. about the sociology of scientific
opinion.

	Scientists who write about sociological and
psychological issues have the same obligation to try to be
objective as when they write about natural science.  It's harder,
because the social sciences are difficult and mixed up with
politics, i.e. mixed up in deciding who gets power.  Nevertheless,
we must try.
bias

	Stephen Jay Gould, a political ally of the authors, quotes them,
``Each of us has been engaged for much of this time in research, writing,
speaking, teaching, and public political activity in opposition to the
oppressive forms in which determinist ideology manifests itself.  We
share a commitment to the prospect of the creation of a more socially
just --- a socialist --- society.  And we recognize that a critical
science is an integral part of the struggle to create that society,
just as we also believe that the social function of much of today's
science is to hinder the creation of that society by acting to preserve
the interests of the dominant class, gender and race.''

	Gould then remarks, ``The traditional and unthinking response
to such frankness by scientists is outright dismissal of any subsequent
statements on grounds of {\it prima facie} bias.''  My own opinion after
a careful reading is that this ``unthinking response'' is a good first
approximation.

	...
	The authors put more effort into identifying the ``bad guys'' than
in establishing the truth.  In fact they are evasive and inconsistent
in asserting an opinion of the roles of heredity and environment.