Posted on 06/11/2011 4:54:29 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell
I’m not talking about mechanical abilities. I’m saying that our brain works the same way, the same neuron transmitters, mostly the same chemistry, right brain/left brain, frontal lobe.
Mechanical abilities are visionary, which is just what my point was. Mechanical abilities encarnates problem-solving skills, logic. My husband was the same way. He could look at something once, take it apart, and put it back together and/or repair it. But learning theory from a book was not possible for him.
Unless of course we’re born with a disability, like dyslexia, chemical imbalance, et al.
Not to be argumentative but tests measuring IQ are culturally sensitive. They are not typically useful in divergent cultures.
Socialist thinking (Cultural Marxism) has been greatly influenced by the relativism of post modernism. Almost every post modern thinker (mostly Frenchmen) have been a socialist or a communist. With relativistic thought there is no pursuit of truth because objective truth — truth that transcends culture (ahistorical truth) — doesn’t exist. For the post modern/socialist truth is culturally bound, that is, true for that culture at that time in its history. The emphasis placed on language (truth is a mental construct determined by the language of the culture) and radical equality (all cultures and cultural values are equal) erodes the belief that there is a universal, objective truth that can be discovered independent of cultural biases. So the pursuit of truth becomes a moot point, a quaint anachronism from a bygone day (or dark past). What’s left is activism.
Well, guess we are going to rehash the old running argument between the genetic crowd and the environmental crowd. It was going on when I was in college back in the late 60’s and the early 70’s and apparently it's still going on? While this is not my field of expertise by any stretch I do find this interesting and thereby read most articles that I come across about the subject. It seems to me that research has been increasingly tilting in favor of genetics and inheritence as the dominate factors in determining a person's traits, both physical and mental. Most articles that I have read recently suggests that's the split between genetics and environmental is about 75/25 +/-%. But, hey, I am a Business major who only took a few psych courses as electives out of curiosity. So, what do I know :)
Touchy. Touchy. So what are you, the emotional implication police?
I agree that a dialogue about nature and nurture is pointless. My interest on this thread is to posit the position that critical thinking is the product of intellectual discipline as differentiated from dogmatic indoctrination. We have gotten a bit afield of that narrow concern. My bad.
ping
“I’m not talking about mechanical abilities.”
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Then please say what you do mean in the future. I was well aware that you did not mean mechanical abilities in the sense of being an auto mechanic. The sentence made no sense to me and we don’t all have the same ability to visualize or the same problem solving skills or logic. I am not a brain surgeon but from what I have read I am not at all sure that our brains all even work the same way. I have the ability to visualize a structure almost as if it is on a movie screen, I can then make changes to it when I see where certain things can be improved on and determine mentally what the effect of the changes will be but I have a difficult time trying to draw what I see in my mind. Most people I know say that they cannot see things this way. I spent thirty years repairing printing equipment and I can still see some of that machinery in my mind and am able to section through the image mentally, see the moving parts and know what is rotating clockwise and what is rotating counterclockwise etc. I was able to diagnose many problems by telephone if there was someone on the other end who could give a coherent description of the malfunction. Yet I cannot draw a decent outline drawing of a piece of machinery. I sold roofing service for a while and was good at it but the hardest part for me was drawing a simple schematic outline of a roof, I had to approach it from a purely technical standpoint, using a scale to measure each line and get it straight. Others who were far less able than I in other ways could simply do a freehand sketch and it would look great. If I did that it would look as if a small child had done it. I block print anything that I have to write by hand because my handwriting is undecipherable, I have to be very careful even with the block printing or the size will vary up and down and everything will look childish. On the other hand I can do a lot of math problems mentally in a shorter time than others can with a calculator.
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