Re: [xmca] Nobel prize talks stupid things about human intelligence

Paul,

You were the one who "smuggled" Bourdieu into this discussion: "... that
[diversity, conflicting views] isn't really how the academic practice of homo
academicus actually works according to Bourdieu, that's not the real problem
with your argument."

So I thought it would be helpful to take a look at what Bourdieu actually had
to say in that context. Bourdieu, as earlier mentioned, referred to "the
universe of prejudice, repression, and omission that everyday successful
education makes you accept, and makes you remain unaware of, tracing out that
magic circle of powerless complacency in which the elite schools imprison their
elect" (Bourdieu quoted in Reed-Danahay, Deborah. Locating Bourdieu.
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004:51).

You pointed out that this “points precisely to the absence of the open, free
discourse in institutionalized education, the presence of which I thought you
had earlier used to defend Watson's statements.”

Actually, I agree with the first part of that sentence, but it is not true that
I defended JW’s statements as such (neither their content nor form), only his
right to express his opinion, without facing social ostracism and moral panics.
You then asked the question “where is the ‘universe of prejudice, repression,
and omission’ more apparent than in the elevation of genetics to level Watson
CLEARLY claims for it?”

The relevance of Bourdieu’s statements vis-a-vis JW in this context seems to be
exactly the opposite, since JW does not represent the mainstream "universe of
prejudice, repression and omission that everyday successful education makes you
accept." One of those prejudices is (possibly, probably) that science should
march in step with the (unstable, constantly variable) Zeitgeist and its moral
sensibilities, making scientists look like Jesuitical high priests, guardians
of morals.

In Homo Academicus, Bourdieu wrote that "it is not, as is usually thought,
political stances that separate people’s stances on things academic, but their
positions in the academic field which inform the stances that they adopt on
political issues in general as well as on academic problems."

You then asked the question whether I was saying that “since Watson's politics
reflect his academic position, that I should simply accept this academic
deformation as a basis for pronouncements whose potential political
consequences are all too well known, without challenging that genetic
determinism with arguments, such as those already presented in this thread […]”

Except for the fact that my humble person is in no position to tell you what to
accept or not, I salute any challenges to JW and others with SCIENTIFIC a-r-g-u-
m-e-n-t-s, such as some of those already presented in this thread. Speculations
(“...whose potential political consequences are all too well known”),
argumentum ad hominem/ad populum etc. etc. should, however, not be counted as s-
c-i-e-n-t-i-f-i-c arguments.

Eirik

On 2007-10-23, at 07:21, Paul Dillon wrote:
>
>
> Eirik,
>
> Your first citation of Bourdieu:
>
> "the universe of prejudice,repression, and omission that everyday successful
education makes you accept, and makes you remain unaware of, tracing out that
magic circle of powerless complacency in which the elite schools imprison their
elect"
>
> points precisely to the absence of the open, free discourse in
institutionalized education, the presence of which I thought you had earlier
used to defend Watson's statements. And. where is the "universe of prejudice,
repression, and omission" more apparent than in the elevation of genetics to
level Watson CLEARLY claims for it?
>
> Later you seem to equate Durkheim's "mechanical solidarity" with the
transmission of a body of knowledge which in itself is a form of "secondary
habitus". I'm unclear as to what you mean by "body of knowledge" in this
context. Neither mechanical solidarity nor habitus can be considered bodies of
knowledge without extending the meaning of "knowledge" to such generality as
to beg the question. Bourdieu talks about dispositions, those horizons of of
discourse that function as structuring structures and for that very reason can
never be made a direct subject of that discourse.
>
> Your final Bourdieu citation:
>
> "it is not, as is usually thought, political
> stances that separate people's stances on things academic, but their
positions
> in the academic field which inform the stances that they adopt on political
> issues in general as well as on academic problems."
>
> perfectly fits Watson's behavior.
>
> So am I to take it that you are saying that since Watson's politics reflect
his academic position, that I should simply accept this academic deformation
as a basis for pronouncements whose potential political consequences are all
too well known, without challenging that genetic determinism with arguments,
such as those already presented in this thread, arguments that only find
support in Bourdieu's theoretical frameworks even when his texts are
decontextualized.
>
> Paul
>
>
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Received on Wed Oct 24 06:22 PDT 2007