IQ isn't a physiological characteristic. It's a measure of intelligence, which is itself a phenomenon that rests on top of cognition, which rests on top of consciousness, which somehow (we're not sure how) rests on top of the physiology of the nervous system. There may well be a genetic component to that physiology, but it's an unscientific assumption that that component is the deciding factor in race-level differences in measures of IQ. It's also not the sole example to commonly fall to this fallacy. Polygenic traits are not so simple.
> IQ isn't a physiological characteristic. It's a measure of intelligence, which is itself a phenomenon that rests on top of cognition, which rests on top of consciousness, which somehow (we're not sure how) rests on top of the physiology of the nervous system.
So... it's fundamentally physiological. We just don't know the details of how the physiology gives rise to conscious thought.
> that component is the deciding factor in race-level differences in measures of IQ
I never said that it's the deciding factor and most people don't. What irks me is when people discount it as being a factor at all. Everything in biology is a complex interaction of genetics and environment, and IQ is no different.
> IQ isn't a physiological characteristic. It's a measure of intelligence
See, this is exactly my point—your line of argument does more to support racist claims than it does to dethrone them. You're arguing a position that cannot be seriously defended while giving credence to a claim that is fundamentally flawed. The idea that there is some discrete quantity called "intelligence" that can be measured by a test and that causes some people to be more successful (whatever that means) than others is a far more vulnerable position to attack than the idea that our consciousness is influenced by our physiology, and I'm not sure why you picked that windmill to tilt at.
