mietla: this is an obvious crap. 4000 years ago humans have build a very sophisticated civilizations. Pyramids are older than 2000 BC.
While I do not agree with it myself, it is far from obvious and definitely not crap. Jaynes is a great writer with an unusual - for a layman - approach.
99.99% of you thinking is not concious. You have solution pop up in your mind and then you conciously explain it but that was not the way you came to it most of the time.
Consiousness - or rather "self-conciousness" is a tiny piece that does not do much other than observe things happening with the rest of the mind while it has no idea how it's operating. That consious part is really quite stupid - as bounder mentions, while the unconcious one is capable of genious.
So humans could arguably have built great things without self-consiousness.
Does Jenses frame his definition of intelligence in strict context or is he after an holistic definition that is all encompassing and does not need complicated balancing for age/ability/culture etc.?
Jencen does not try to ultimately define 'g' - but rather treats it as a discoved cathegory which is yet to be made sence of. We knew there was moon in the sky way before we knew for sure what it was. We saw it effect on light, on tides, etc. but untill telescopes were developed we just speculated.
Jencen notes that there are not abilities requiring mental activity - concious and not - that would not be positively corellated.
So the idea is that there may be an underlying cause for it. Of course correllation does not mean causality, so he comes up with biological underpinninngs and tests them and they also happen corellate with exibited abilities - any kind of them.
That is a very rough idea.
Anyway, I am not sure at all "Jencen's" outlook conflicts with any of the other guys - mental ability, wether concious or not certainly depends on the quality of hardware it is running on - neural condictivity, degree of myelination, neuron branhcing, etc.
Basically, intelligence and abilities are not pieces of software running separately from each other on a generic piece of hardware but a much more interdependent system.
Whether you agree with Jencen or not, it is the ultimate expression of "more-nature-rather-than-nurture" school for a layman.
miko
