Rich Ulrich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> - Intelligence, figuring what it might be, and categorizing it, and
> measuring it... I like the topics, so I have to post more.
> On Thu, 05 Apr 2001 22:09:33 +0100, Colin Cooper
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> (2) Gould's implication is that since Spearman found one factor
>> (general ability) whilst Thurstone fornd about 9 identifiable factors,
>> then factor analysis is a method of dubious use, since it seems to
>> generate contradictory models. There are several crucial differences
> - I read Gould as being more subtle than that.
Definitely. Gould's point was that since the various forms of factor
analysis generate models that are consistent with multiple, and
contradictory, explanations of intelligence, and these models all resolve
the same amount of variance in the raw data, none of the models provide a
basis for favoring one theory over the other. Specifically, if a model is
consistent with both a theory that says that intelligence is (hereditary,
immutable) *and* with a theory that says that intelligence is
(environmental, mutable) than that model does not provide any support for
a claim that the first theory better explains reality than the second
theory (or vice versa, for that matter). In science, it's not enough to
say that you have data that's consistent with your hypothesis; you also
need to show a) that you don't have data that's inconsistent with your
hypothesis and b) that your data is *not* consistent with competing
hypotheses. And there's absolutely nothing controversial about that last
sentence, except to extreme post-modernists who would claim that it's an
inherently white male view of the world, i.e. people who are far, far, to
the left of most of Gould's critics.
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