Hereditarianism

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Hereditarianism is the doctrine or school of thought that

intelligence and personality. Hereditarians believe in the power of genetics to explain human character traits and solve human social and political problems. Hereditarians adopt the view that an understanding of human evolution
can extend the understanding of human nature.

Overview

Social scientist

genetic determinism, though some scholars distinguish the two terms. When distinguished, biological determinism is used to mean that heredity is the only factor. Supporters of hereditarianism reject this sense of biological determinism for most cases. However, in some cases genetic determinism is true; for example, Matt Ridley describes Huntington's disease as "pure fatalism, undiluted by environmental variability".[2] In other cases, hereditarians would see no role for genes; for example, the condition of "not knowing a word of Chinese" has nothing to do (directly) with genes.[3]

Hereditarians point to the heritability of cognitive ability, and the outsized influence that cognitive ability has on life outcomes, as evidence in favor of the hereditarian viewpoint.

heritability of intelligence range from 20% in infancy to 80% in adulthood.[6][7]

History

Francis Galton is generally considered the father of hereditarianism.[1] In his book Hereditary Genius (1869), Galton pioneered research on the heredity of intelligence. Galton continued research into the heredity of human behavior in his later works, including "The History of Twins" (1875)[8] and Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development (1883).

cognitive elite".[9][10] Herrnstein and Murray also examined how cognitive ability predicts socially desirable behavior.[9] They also discussed the debate regarding race and intelligence, concluding that the evidence to date didn't justify an estimate on the degree of influence of genetics versus environmental causes for average differences in IQ test performance between racial groups.[11] Today the scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain such differences, and that they are rather environmental in origin.[12][13][14][15][16][17]

Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, in his book The Blank Slate (2002), argues that biology explains much more about human nature than people generally acknowledge.[18]

Competing theories

Theories opposed to hereditarianism include behaviorism, social determinism and environmental determinism.[citation needed] This disagreement and controversy is part of the nature versus nurture debate. But both are based on the assumption that genes and environment have large independent effects.[citation needed] The dominant view outside psychology among biologists and geneticists is that both of these are gross oversimplifications and that the behavioral/psychological phenotype for human beings is determined by a function of genes and environment which cannot be decomposed into a sum of functions of the two independently.[citation needed] And this especially because human behavior is uniquely plastic compared to that of other animals.[citation needed] The commonly cited heritability, h2, is meaningful only in the context of the independent effects model.[citation needed] This model may be a good approximation to the real function given that the range of genomes and the range of environments is sufficiently narrow, e.g., white upper middle class Americans living in Chicago.[citation needed] Ronald C. Bailey argues that hereditarianism is based on five fallacious assumptions. In a 1997 paper, he also wrote that "...behavior geneticists will continue to be very limited in their ability to partition the effects of genes, the environment, and their covariance and interaction on human behavior and cognitive ability."[19]

Political implications

In 1949, Nicolas Pastore claimed that hereditarians were more likely to be

leftists, that they believe economic disadvantage and structural problems in the social order were to blame for group differences.[20]

However, the historical correspondence between hereditarianism and conservatism has broken down at least among proponents of hereditarianism. Philosopher Peter Singer describes his vision of a new liberal political view that embraces hereditarianism in his 1999 book, A Darwinian Left.[21]

See also

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 978-1-118-66320-2
    , retrieved 2021-04-29
  2. ISBN 978-0-06-019497-0
    .
  3. ISBN 978-0-670-03186-3
    .
  4. ISSN 0166-4115
    .
  5. PMID 29335645
    .
  6. PMID 25224258
    .
  7. ^ "Is intelligence determined by genetics?: MedlinePlus Genetics". medlineplus.gov. Retrieved 2021-04-29.
  8. ^ ""The History of Twins, As a Criterion of the Relative Powers of Nature and Nurture" (1875), by Francis Galton | The Embryo Project Encyclopedia". embryo.asu.edu. Retrieved 2021-04-29.
  9. ^ a b "'The Bell Curve', explained: Part 1, the emergence of a cognitive elite". American Enterprise Institute - AEI. 2017-05-12. Retrieved 2021-04-29.
  10. ISBN 978-0387949864
    .
  11. ISBN 978-1-4391-3491-7
    .
  12. S2CID 205044224
    . There is an emerging consensus about racial and gender equality in genetic determinants of intelligence; most researchers, including ourselves, agree that genes do not explain between-group differences.
  13. PMID 32986847
    . [T]he claims that genetics defines racial groups and makes them different, that IQ and cultural differences among racial groups are caused by genes, and that racial inequalities within and between nations are the inevitable outcome of long evolutionary processes are neither new nor supported by science (either old or new).
  14. ISBN 978-0-521-70781-7
    .
  15. OCLC 669754008
    .
  16. PMID 22963427. Archived
    (PDF) from the original on 23 January 2015. Retrieved 22 July 2013.
  17. S2CID 85351431
    .
  18. ^ Menand, Louis (18 November 2002). "What Comes Naturally". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2021-04-29.
  19. S2CID 8553022
    .
  20. ^ a b Pastore, Nicolas (1949). The Nature-Nurture Controversy. New York: King's Crown Press.
  21. ISBN 978-0-300-08323-1
    .

External links

  • Media related to Hereditarianism at Wikimedia Commons
  • Mehler B. [1]. in Chambliss JJ, (ed.) Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland 1996.
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