Volume V (2022)
scores on the IQ, SAT, ACT, and other tests of “cognitive ability” that social scientists have been
observing for years is partially causally explained by nontrivial genetic differences in intelligence.
Like many people at the time, I didn’t like the authors’ move to include genetic racial differences
in intelligence in the explanation for this phenomenon. But I found myself ill-equipped to critique
it. I was a science lover, and I didn’t know how to productively critique science. So, reading The
Bell Curve in PHIL 481 and learning how to ask serious philosophical questions about the science
in the text was a dream come true. I especially found the metaphysical and epistemological
critiques to be eye-opening. We asked deep metaphysical questions like whether the groups called
“races” in The Bell Curve were natural kinds in biology, and deep epistemological questions like
whether we have any good evidence for the existence of so-called general intelligence, and, if so,
whether we have any good evidence that IQ tests and the like reliably measure general intelligence.
Seeing first-hand how philosophy can make valuable contributions to current science did it for me.
I was hooked. That course changed my life. I set out to pursue a PhD in philosophy on the last day
of the course.
MJ: Do you see parallels between philosophy and science with respect to how the disciplines investigate problems and theories?
QS : I do. Philosophy is a diverse discipline. There are subfields of philosophy that obtain
knowledge entirely a priori, like symbolic logic, but there are others that obtain knowledge
empirically, like philosophy of science. Science and the empirical subfields in philosophy have a
lot of parallels. They start by observing the world, usually with the help of previous theories to help
turn data into meaningful observations. Scientists tend to observe the world with fancy technology
like telescopes, microscopes, and MRI machines. Empirical philosophers tend to do this by
reading, listening, and talking to others. All that observation inevitably leads to an interesting
question about the world. For example, after observing bacteria suck up genetic material left
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