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And I repeat that you have still failed to define what (human) races are, and how we distinguish one from another.

in my original post at the top of p1 of this thread, i mentioned several logical fallacies that seem to be confusing people when addressing the issue of race/iq.

judging by the replies, 2 of these appear to be particularly difficult for some to grasp. one of these is the line-drawing fallacy. some concepts are difficult or impossible to define such that all members of the domain are either included or excluded. take baldness, for example. no one knows how few hairs you have to have on your head in order to be bald, but this does not mean that the concept "baldness" is meaningless or irrelevant. it is used in medical/scientific contexts, such as the development of minoxodil or propecia. race is a similar concept in that while there are some members of the domain (human beings) who do not clearly belong to one particular race, most clearly do. thabo mbeki is clearly negroid and cassie aucamp is clearly caucasian, and the fact that trevor manuel might be in between does nothing to change this. i have also given the example of dog and horse breeds. is reded incapable of recognizing a german shepard or a clydesdale when he sees one? does he hold these terms to be arbitrary? i have also given examples of the use of the concept of race in scientific discourse, such as when tracking genetic diseases. reded claims that i have not provided a definition of race. this is plainly false. i quoted my dictionary in my post of july 27 i repeat: "race: biology: a population of organisms differing from others in the same species in the frequency of hereditary traits; a subspecies"
reded's only response to all of this is to keep repeating that i have not adequately defined race. ed: i have quoted the dictionary, given analogical examples, given examples of the use of the term, what else do you want from me? THE DEFINITION IS RIGHT THERE IN THE DICTIONARY!!!! READ IT!!!!

the responses from bmfo and eve are instances of another logical fallacy, namely the confusion between individuals and groups. the claim that i am defending here is that AVERAGE negro iq is lower than that of other groups, (caucasians and asiatics). the fact that there are many "wonderful and brilliant black people" and that "There is no shortage of intelligent, knowledgeable african men and women" does absolutely nothing to contradict my claim. (although eve should note that if by "shortage" we mean "enough to solve africa's problems", then there might very well be such a shortage) this is actually the very 1st point i made in the original post.

also in my 1st post, i noted that the fact that iq only measures one particular kind of intelligence does not mean that it is unrelated to intelligence.

i have also given access to the names of 52 phds who agree with the claim. in response, i have been given tv shows and popular magazines!

how many times do i have to explain that not all meaningfull concepts have unique and universal qualities? you still haven't given me a definition of baldness, of a bulldog, or of a lippizaner. what are the unique and universal qualities of these concepts? are they meaningless or arbitrary? if saying that a dog having short legs, a short, square muzzle, short hair, and a dense, strong musculature is a bulldog (or whatever the def is; call your local kennel association), what is wrong with saying that a human being with light to olive skin, high cheekbones, round eyelids, straight to curly hair, narrow nose, light bone density, and a large amount of "slow twitch" muscle is a caucasian; a human being with light yellow to light brown or reddish brown skin , high cheekbones, slanted eyelids, straight to wavy hair, and a medium-width nose is an asiatic, and a human being with light brown or reddish brown to black skin, low cheekbones, round eyelids, curly to kinky hair, wide nose, heavy bone density, and a large amount of "fast twitch" muscle is a negro.

just as with the dog and horse breeds, these characteristics are relative rather than absolute. there is no such thing as "absolutely short" hair. these terms are best seen as indicating ranges. and of course, again just as in the case of dogs and horses, there are crossbreeds/people of mixed race.


alternatively, we may say that a caucasian is a descendent of the original peoples of europe, an asiatic is a descendent of the original peoples of asia (with the possible exception of the indian subcontinent), and that a negro is a descendent of the original peoples of africa.

of course, not everyone will fit into these categories. i have already mentioned people of mixed race. further, many inhabitants of the indian subcontinent appear to be more closely related to caucasians than to the asiatics, and might be a mixture of the two. we should keep in mind that indian civilization was founded when invaders from the north, invariably referred to as "aryans", subjugated the subcontinent. australian aborigines are also not clearly a member
of any of the above groups. amerindians are a subset of the asiatic group. their ancestors migrated to the americas from asia over the berring straight land bridge in the relatively recent past. the existence of such problem cases does absolutely nothing to diminish the meaningfulness of the concept of race. it simply means that more (genetic, archeological, anthropological, etc.) research need to be done. all i can do in this respect, is to draw your attention, ONE MORE TIME, to the line drawing fallacy: for every concept A,and for every member of the domain x, x is either A or not A. (the law of excluded middle) the existence of some members of the domain for whom we cannot determine the appropriate category does abdolutely nothing to undermine the meaningfulness of the concept A. if the example of baldness is not good enough for you, think of height: danny devito is clearly short. yao ming is clearly tall. does the fact that robert deniro is of average height mean that these words are meaningless? of course not. it just means that they are relative, as are the racial definitions in the 1st group above (skin color, hair texture, etc.) the second grouping of definitions is closer to the absolute def that you seem to crave.

the neanderthals were not homo sapiens, so i am not including them as "people". the "original people" i am referring to are the ones who had emmigrated from africa. they did not "spring out of nowhere". i have repeated several times that, far from disputing it, the out of africa thesis is part of my argument. i explained in my last post that these are relative categories. we may take the concept of a "pure-blooded" descendent of the original inhabitants of europe, all of whose ancestors were in europe 10.000 years ago, as a regulative principle. the closest a person is to this ideal, the more likely we are to assign this person to the "caucasian" category. likewise for the negro: in theory, a "pure-blooded" negro would have had no ancestors living anywhere but subsaharan africa 10.000 years ago. the closest an actual person comes to this ideal, the more likely we are to assign this person to the "negro" category. once again, i ask you to think of this in terms of the analogies i gave earlier. a person with absolutely no hair on his head would be the theoretical ideal of baldness, and the closer a man comes to this ideal, the more likely we are to assign him to the "bald" category

if you would rather refer to eurasia, as the urals are not much of a geographical barrier, that's fine with me. in that case, we are talking about "the original people of west eurasia" and "the original people of east eurasia"

Lets get rid of your bald analogy first I have no problem with any definition as long as it is clear. For scientific purposes, there has to be a measure and I would assume that there is a clinical definition (say less than 5 hairs per square cm).

Now that we have a point in history to work from (10 000 years), we can now examine the validity of the definition. This is a nice (but arbitrary) number since it represents 333 generations and 10 to the power of 100 potential couplings amongst ones ancestors. Since most of us cannot trace our ancestry more than a hundred years, this definition by origin is of no use. All we can say is that nobody has pure blood and we can only guess at how mixed we are based on physical characteristics.

So who are the Basques descended from?
Barbary Apes?

And why would you need to distinguish between groups?