A Rejoinder to Mackintosh and some Remarks on the Concept of General Intelligence

Abstract

In 2000 Nicholas J. Mackintosh (2000) published an article in "Nature" referring to the concept of general intelligence ("g") claiming that there is clear empirical evidence for the existence of the g factor and psychologists are "united in their support of g". Surprisingly, his view remained yet unchallenged although this issue is by no means as clear-cut as Mackintosh argues. Let us therefore attempt to clarify some common but unfortunately major misconceptions about g, which Mackintosh, following Jensen's (1998) precedent, recounted in his "Nature" article. The bottom line is that Spearman's g does not exist, that this has been known and acknowledged by leading scholars (Guttman, 1992; Thurstone, 1947) of factor analysis for decades so that the task of objectively defining human intelligence remains unfinished.