The Flew-Jensen Uproar

Abstract

Professor Flew must be applauded for attempting in his recent article on 'The Jensen Uproar'l to make use of 'philosophical' distinctions in regard to the important debate being fought about race, intelligence, and education. Flew's discussion, however, is bound to add as much to the uproar and the dogmatism which he deplores as it will help clarify the issues. To my mind, this would be an extremely unfortunate consequence if-as one hopes-Philosophy's policies are successful, and non-philosophers are reading relevant pieces. There is, in the first place, the very tone of his discussion. It is angry and at times insulting. What 'philosophical' clarification can we hope to get from the following: 'It is monstrous that a man should have been thus pilloried by academic colleagues, and harassed by the stormtroopers of the Students for a Democratic Society' ?2 Flew thinks the work edited by Richardson and Spears3 was 'nasty and shoddy'. Personally, I thought it was an excellent first attempt to put together a collection of essays on the topic, despite its drawbacks, many of which Flew emphasizes. But what good is Flew's added comment: 'This is, I suppose, on recent fo. m, exactly what Penguin Education will have wanted'? Are we being exposed to some in-fighting among editors and publishing companies? Are we interested? One is tempted to retort in kind with: 'Flew's article, I suppose, is exactly, on recent form, what Philosophy would have wanted'. The second criticism of Flew's attack is that it is (like the very people he scorns) much too dogmatic. Political allusions aside (the article is filled with these), it is more than extremely misleading to use a far from clear 'is-ought' distinction to prove the perversity of the environmentalists, and establish the purity of Jensen's thesis. The only suggestion in the article that Flew's 'philosophical' position is not the accepted (Establishment?) one is in a one-sentence challenge to other philosophers: 'It would be a salutary exercise in relevance and social responsibility for those who have recently challenged Humean claims about this fundamental distinction to relate their position on that issue to the present controversy'.4 Perhaps this statement is not too unfortunate for those psychologists who are