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More on philosophy and alleged “innate talent”

Brian Leiter

Berkeley's Alison Gopnik, the well-known philosophically-minded psychologist, writes:

I’m attaching a link to my WSJ column taking off from the Leslie & Cimpian Science study on innate talent in philosophy. I had no room in the piece to say this but the more I’ve thought about it the odder it seems that philosophers, of all people, haven’t taken the time to see how incoherent the “innate talent” concept actually is. Maybe its because its so seductive as part of “folk psychology". In fact, when I first read the Science piece my first thought was “But that doesn’t apply to me because I’ve always known that  I had a strong innate talent for philosophy, much more than for psychology, and I made my major affiliation to psychology for all sorts of other intellectual reasons”. But literally as I was thinking this I was also preparing the very first standard lecture in my intro developmental psychology course which is about why the nature/nurture distinction for psychological traits doesn’t make sense.

What would an innate talent for philosophy actually mean? That there is some set of genetic instructions that evolved in the pleistocene which just happens to consistently lead to an "appetite for Hume” phenotype? That some newborn infants are particularly good at asking piercing questions at seminars? That by the age of twenty the vagaries of genes, motivation, environment and culture have all interacted to produce a “sit around late at night asking about the meaning of life” phenotype that is immutable from then on? That heritability estimates for ethical reasoning will be constant across all the possible environments in the past and future? 

Its weird, though certainly not unprecedented, that philosophers in their everyday life would endorse an idea that in their thoughtful professional  life they would surely see is about as useful as the medieval theory of elements.

Perhaps too much weight is being put on the idea of "innateness" (which Prof. Gopnik aptly criticizes).  What seems true in my own experience, both when I was in graduate school, then in 20 years of working with PhD students, is that some students arrive in graduate school with more "talent" for at least the styles of philosophy dominant in the Anglophone world than can be explained simply by prior education. 

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16 responses to “More on philosophy and alleged “innate talent””

  1. Alison Gopnik

    Hi Brian just to reply, of course, the same thing is true in psychology, some graduate students immediately seem to do better than others in ways that aren't just the result of where they trained. But as someone who has interacted with both groups I don't see more variability in one field than the other. The puzzle is why philosophers, irrationally, interpret this individual variability in terms of ideas of innateness and immutability and psychologists and molecular biologists don't.

    Reply
  2. Brian Leiter

    Thanks, Alison. So what do psychologists and molecular biologists attribute the differentials to? Let's agree it's not immutable traits that were present at birth.

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  3. L. BIoom

    @Alison Gopnik

    Your article is misleading. There is very strong evidence that fluid intelligence does exist and that it's influenced by genes. There is also very strong evidence that highly successful academic have higher than average g (somewhere between 120 – 140 IQ for physics nobel prize winners). You build a straw-man saying that innate talent isn't specifically suited to the study of Hume, which is obviously true. A high g helps for any intellectual activity, including the study of Hume.

    Reply
  4. SLB

    Sure, it might seem that some students have more talent than others. And I'm sure that in a number of cases, it seems that way because some students in fact have more talent than others. But it's not outrageous to think that in a number of other cases, students who have experienced more encouragement or received more positive feedback than others, seem more talented because they are more confident. In other cases yet, students who come across in ways we associate with having talent might seem more talented to us than students who don't.

    BL COMMENT: That's a plausible hypothesis about many cases, though in the cases I'm thinking of, it would not have been the explanation.

    Reply
  5. X

    @ L. BIoom,

    Given the criteria for entering most graduate programs (let along mid to top tier graduate programs) in terms of GRE and GPA, isn’t it safe to assume a majority of candidates in the program will have an above average IQ? An IQ score of roughly 120 puts one in the top 10% of the population in terms of IQ. Given most graduate students will have been in the top 1/3 of an undergraduate class and likely have scored highly on a standardized test taken, for the most part, by persons that are also in that top 1/3, isn’t it safe to assume a high IQ? (I have no idea whether your numbers are off, but suspect the argument holds no matter what the alleged raw physical talent level is.) Further, my understanding is that IQ is actually fairly fluid, so one would assume if there is a discrepancy it may not be significant.

    Since the actual pool of graduate students in a program has already been heavily selected, isn’t it more likely that innate physical human difference as opposed to is the factor rather than exposure? If all of your candidates were the top of a class that was already the top of a class, you’ve likely removed the vast amount of difference due to natural human variation. It seems unlikely that physical differences in such a small and selected for portion of the human population would not, for the most part, be overshadowed by variances in exposure, confidence and human biases.
    I suspect you someone could tell someone that is in the bottom quartile of IQ from someone in the top quartile; however, I doubt most people could tell someone that has an IQ of 135 from someone with an IQ of 140 absent an IQ test. (I suspect that is an overly conservative estimate.)

    Reply
  6. Olav

    X, college athletes are also heavily selected (especially at division 1 schools), and yet few of them make it in professional sports. Do you think the differences between, say, NFL athletes and your typical Ohio State football player can be largely explained by "variances in exposure, confidence and human biases"? And if not — if you think differences in talent matter even in the upper echelons of sports — then why not think differences in talent might matter in the upper echelons of academia? Moreover, don't you think graduate students are also heavily selected for those other factors you mention? What justifies singling out talent as the one factor that doesn't matter given enough prior selection?

    Reply
  7. Raistlin

    I believe this has been studied with regards to professional (classical) musicians, and, if I'm remembering correctly, innate talent seems to make the most difference (or maybe only makes a difference) at the highest levels of performance. Though how they determined innate talent escapes me at the moment … But still, even if there is innate talent, how good is good enough to be worthwhile/beneficial might well be below the level at which innate talent becomes a significant factor

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  8. Lexington

    Alison Gopnik's "argument" is just too typical of the sort of straw man arguments against inherited mental characteristics one hears from the environmental side of this debate. Snark, however, isn't a recognized form of logical inference.

    I don't really like talk of "innate abilities", though it is sometimes in its crude way accurate enough. If one is considering only fairly normal environments in a contemporary developed country, then in the case of many mental characteristics, genetics combined with pre-natal "environment" are likely quite decisive as to the level of that characteristic an individual exhibits. Twin and adoption studies have demonstrated this many times over. For what other plausible reason would identical twins (who share 100% of their genes) show far greater correlation on some of these traits than fraternal twins of the same gender (who share only 50% of their genes on average)?

    Of course, there is no particular set of genes whose exact function is tailored to the rigors of philosophical inquiry. But there may be fairly broad traits with a large inherited component which are correlated with the talent and inclination for philosophical inquiry. Talent for abstraction (typically measured with some accuracy in many IQ tests, as well as the SAT and the GRE) might be one, intellectual curiosity might be another, and ability to concentrate on abstract concepts for long periods of time might be another. It may be that these traits are themselves correlated with each other genetically — or not.

    What's key is that these traits in combination may be found in some individuals in far greater abundance than in others. Under my assumptions, individuals with a strong showing in all three would rightly, if crudely, be said to have far greater "innate" ability at philosophy.

    Reply
  9. X

    @ Olav,

    Yes, few professional athletes make it in professional sports; however, there are many reasons to doubt that “innate talent” is the key here or that the analogy fits other areas.
    First, if innate talent exists, one would expect that draft rank would matter more than it does. Further, the information available to those ranking is better, as the players are carrying on I seem to recall reading that draft rank correlated to performance, but far from perfect. If innate talent was all that mattered, one would expect draft rank to be nearly determinative of performance in the NFL, NHL, and NBA. While there is a correlation it, my understanding is it is far from determinative. I also doubt genetics and pre-natal environment, is determinative even with athletes. I doubt Tiger Woods would be Tiger Woods without years of training.

    Second, it is dubious that the analogy would fit the relevant discussion area. Universities invest far less in evaluating students and potential faculty than the NBA, NFL or NHL invests in evaluating prospects. I would suspect this would make evaluation of innate talent more difficult to detect. This is particularly problematic as the task performed by undergraduates and graduates is less like the task expected to be performed by faculty.

    Further, the analogy is off because we are comparing different portions of a career and different periods of time. A professional athlete’s post-college career is less than a decade (I suspect less than 5 years), and the professional athlete has likely been playing his/her sport for well over a decade. Conversely, many graduate students will have only recently started actually “doing” philosophy, and those that continue will continue to “do” philosophy for several decades. I don’t think being able to predict Brian Leiter’s publication streak for the next 5 years means you can predict a 23 year old graduate student’s career with any accuracy. If you can’t predict a 23 year old graduate student’s career, it is dubious to suggest what we are talking about is “innate” in terms of genes or biological make-up.

    Reply
  10. Richard Yetter Chappell

    I'm not sure I fully understand this dispute, partly because people seem to be arguing against positions (e.g. effort makes no difference) that I can't imagine anyone actually holds.

    Here are a couple of relevant-seeming truisms:
    (1) It takes training to fully develop one's potential (including various forms of intellectual potential).
    (2) Different people have different (intellectual/philosophical) potential.

    I trust that neither of these is in dispute. So what exactly is in dispute? Is the central question about the extent to which variation amongst top performers in an area (e.g. professional philosophers) is explained by differences in individual potential vs differences in the extent to which individuals are realizing their potential (due to variation in effort, quality of training, etc.)? That seems a wide open empirical question. Perhaps the central question is instead about how common it is (amongst undergraduate students? amongst the entire population?) to have the requisite intellectual potential to become good philosophers? Or whether this is rarer, in comparative terms, than having the requisite intellectual potential to become a good biologist or chemist?

    Maybe I'm just missing something that's obvious to everyone else, but the discourse on this topic seems of generally lower quality (less clear, less charitable, etc.) than I'd expect from philosophers. (I hope I'm not adding to the lack of charity; I'm just really confused by the whole discussion.)

    Reply
  11. X

    Richard Yetter Chappell,

    At least to me, the significant undercurrent in much of the debate in the past few years relates to innate talent. The debate about expanding the presence of women in philosophy seems to in part be a debate as to whether women with innate talent are being excluded for no good reason or whether something about the current method of selection links to innate talent. A similar comment could be made about whether the philosophical gourmet could serve to deter those with innate talent from continuing in the profession because they did not go to top graduate programs. The issue also arises because the justification for hiring male faculty or female faculty or for tolerating bad behavior is often about the need to protect and promote innate talent. We have also seen that perceptions about innate talent appear to be subject to gender bias, so perhaps innate talent is something to be re-guarded with suspicion.

    If innate talent either does not exist or simply is we are not able to predict it, that would have a drastic impact on many of these arguments. It is far harder to justify hiring a male professor over a female professor based on publications, if the publications are not a good predictor of future publication potential.

    Basically, I agree there doesn’t appear to be a very good grounding of what innate talent is, but without such grounding it is difficult to address a number of questions in the profession related to reward and merit.

    Reply
  12. AN

    Compare this question to the NYTimes link you posted today, Brian, about Rate My Professor ratings of male vs female profs, specifically the difference in how often students applied the term 'genius' to each.
    http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/02/07/upshot/is-the-professor-bossy-or-brilliant-much-depends-on-gender.html?_r=1

    The graph shows that the more a field is "genius-based" (i.e. the more the undergrads are prone to think 'genius' is a relevant descriptor for a prof in that field), the bigger the gap between how many women and how many men are called 'genius.'

    Reply
  13. SLB

    I gave two alternate hypotheses. What cases are you thinking of? Maybe you're wrong that neither hypothesis explains them.

    Reply
  14. Brian Leiter

    Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe you're wrong? I'm thinking of cases of people I've known, both when I was a student, and then since I have been a teacher.

    Reply
  15. SLB

    I'd have to know more about the cases to make the call about who's wrong.

    BL COMMENT: Yes, you would. But I am not going to discuss identifying details of particular students.

    Reply
  16. SLB

    Stalemate.

    Reply

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