The Human Intellect

• Intelligence:  Issues and Controversies
• Eugenics in Alberta
• Reasoning
• Language and Thought

What is Intelligence?

• Ability to acquire knowledge?
Speed of processing
Problem solving
• Knowledge?
Language
Mathematics
• Intelligence is what intelligence tests test

Testing Intelligence

Sentence completion test

Culture and intelligence 
 
 

Nature?  Nurture?

NURTURE:  IQ changes with education, experience
NATURE:  IQ also changes with neurological damage
 

Other nature/nurture arguments...
 
 

An extreme form of nurture: Eugenics

• “The best of both sexes ought to be brought together as often as possible, the worst as seldom as possible . . . if our herd is to reach the highest perfection.” —Plato, The Republic

• North America turn of the century

• Nazi Germany early 1900s

Why Alberta?

• Selective breeding in agriculture
Based on Mendelian genetics
Positive eugenics
• Alberta = Modern agricultural centre

• Short jump from positive eugenics in agriculture to negative eugenics in society

• Emily Murphy

• John M. MacEachran

Eugenics Board of Alberta

• March 21, 1928
Sexual Sterilization Act becomes law in Alberta.
• October 25, 1929
The Eugenics Board is established.
• October, 1929 - February, 1972
2,832 people sterilized in Alberta.
• June 2, 1972
Sexual Sterilization Act repealed.

The Sterilization of Leilani Muir

• Unwanted child
• Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives
• Intelligence testing
• “Appendicitis”
• Release at 18
• Discovery
• Legal settlement

Lessons

• The human intellect is complex

• The human intellect is poorly understood

• Psychology is culturally determined

• How we use psychology depends on the zeitgeist

• Problems in generalizing beyond the data