My initial reaction to Ezra Klein and Vox repeatedly slapping down Sam Harris for openly flirting with race realism was to grab the popcorn and stay far, far away. So too with the New York Times and other publications continuing to platform writers 'just asking questions' about the social policy implications of the science of behaviourial genetics. But I decided to draw a line when the well-respected evolution blog "The Panda's Thumb" published a piece on 29 March arguing that debating the discourse of genes and IQ was 'science denialism' akin to climate change denial or fear of vaccines. This is not merely academic. Global warming denialism and refusing to vaccinate children put lives at risk: what precisely is at stake when it comes to the genetic basis of intelligence?
My primary target for today is not Charles Murray or the identarian alt-right. Instead, it's nominal liberals like Steve Pinker; atheist Sam Harris; self-avowed socialist Freddie DeBoer; rationalists like Scott Alexander; the writer of the "Stumbling and Mumbling" blog; and right-libertarian pseudo-intellectual rags such Quillette. These writers are largely white men, 'classical liberals' who attempt to rationalise social inequality that's at odds with their own sense of meritous privilege. I'm going to call such people the 'hereditarian left' (a term I'm aware was first coined by Murray and then endorsed by Pinker) who combine some personal good faith with a quixotic determination to naturalise social differences in terms of genetics and intelligence.
Note that the hereditarian left, with its focus on genes and intelligence, is not the same thing as the "Darwinian Left" (Peter Singer). Darwinian selection has wide applications to the study of culture and organisations, as my colleagues in the Cultural Evolution Society will tell you. Nor am I taking aim at all sociobiologists, evolutionary psychologists and behaviourial economists, fields that often produce valuable insight into what it is to be human without attempting to naturalise social differences between us (although not all are so innocent).
Vox's expert witness Paige Harden has proposed the following elements of a polite hereditarian consensus. Quote:
- The idea that some people are inferior to other people is abhorrent.
- The mainstream scientific consensus is that genetic differences between people (within ancestrally homogeneous populations) do predict individual differences in traits and outcomes that are highly valued in our post-industrial, capitalist society.
- Acknowledging the evidence for #2 is perfectly compatible with belief #1.
But Harden's exhortation against drawing moral conclusions (#1) on the basis of scientific findings (#2) is somewhat undermined by her own research team's explicit focus on philosophical matters and social policy. The distinction of scientific 'is' from philosophical 'ought' is important in theory but permeable in practice: as part of the current controversy, Panda's Thumb noted fascinating research that progressives are more likely to think negatively moralised social differences have a genetic origin and less likely to think positive ones do, whereas conservatives are more likely to think advantageous social traits have genetic basis. Harden makes the same point: the way people make judgements about behaviour affects how they talk and write about other genetically determined traits such as obesity or psychological disorders. The naturalist and agent biases are present in all of us: as a social species, we can't help but form judgments about social consequences based on scientific observations.
"The Argument"
I'm going to argue that even Harden's hereditarian formulation has no place in the egalitarian left. But first, we need to cover what the argument is, and is not, about. The premises of the genes and intelligence argument are routinely stated like this:
1. There are differences between individual people in their status, wealth, and power.
2. The achievement of high status, wealth, and power is a consequence of the possession of intrinsic [intellectual] ability.
3. Intellectual ability can be assessed by a set of tests loosely called “IQ tests,” which measure [general] intelligence on a one-dimensional scale.
4. IQ test performance (and therefore intrinsic intelligence) is largely inherited genetically.
Note that my source on this is a lecture by biologist Richard Lewontin in *1983* - predating Murray and "The Bell Curve" by a decade. Yet this formulation is commonly repeated by hereditarians, notably by Harris when interviewing Murray. Every one of these points is contestable to some degree or another: the biological reality of 'g' (general intelligence) is undetermined, we don't know how genes influence intelligence apart from the fact that there may be hundreds that make tiny contributions; intelligence testing only measures a particular subset of socially-valued tasks; and high IQ is no guarantee of success (just ask Malcolm Gladwell). But this is where Vox's merry band of wonks leads us astray: by focusing the debate on the scientific validity of the premises they miss the broader implications being drawn by readers. Moreover, the mainstream scientific view of these premises has evolved with the evidence and it’s not out of the realm of possibility that every one might be proven correct.
The main problem is that these premises cannot be put together to construct any sort of meaningful, much less socially and politically just, conclusion. Heritability, in particular, just doesn't do what most people thinks it does: heritability only tells us what percentage of the variation in the expression of a trait comes from its genotype. It conveys no useful information about the variance between populations and says nothing about how a trait responds to environmental intervention. Even highly heritable traits (e.g. height, disease susceptibility) can be easily modified by varying environmental conditions (e.g. diet, medical treatment). Moreover, heritability of a trait tells us nothing about the direction of the genetic influence: it's naive Progressivism (with a capital "P") to assume that environments only exert a negative influence on trait development and that genes encode the ideal (Platonic) form of a person.
And what sort of conclusions are drawn from these premises? Well largely primarily, racist, sexist and classist ones! As a socialist and a Rawlsian liberal, I prefer not to think in terms of race or ethnicity. I have written about the dispossession of native peoples (here, here, here, and here), but the construct of 'race' differs from society to society and as an Australian I'm not qualified to offer a view on the structural disadvantages faced by, for example, French Canadians, the descendants of slaves in the Americas, or Christians in Syria. All I can do, in solidarity, is to listen to and privilege the perspective of those that have such experience. It goes without saying, however, that Vox & crew are on the money in tearing apart genes as a causal factor in differential group outcomes: Klein in particular puts the issue in its historical and social context very well.
The Default Hypothesis or the "Fundamental Principle" that racist hereditarians add to points 1-4 above is that whatever factors influence intelligence differences among individuals will also influence average differences among groups. But this hypothesis is invalid and false. The division of traits that are distributed on a spectrum into categories is almost alway arbitrary and socially contingent (i.e. ethnic groups are social constructs); trait differences within any human category are almost certainly many orders of magnitude greater than differences between them; and to ignore the role of social hierarchies (and the effects of history, culture and power) in generating and perpetuating group difference is gross scientific negligence of the highest order. No one who argues a connection between race and difference does so in good faith: by choosing to actively perpetuate racial hierarchies they earn their appellation as racists.
What is equality, anyway?
I don't think the "hereditarian left" (in the sense outlined at the top of this piece) are racist. They are however, deeply misguided liberals. In positing that genes and intelligence play a causal role in constructing social hierarchies, but ruling out making judgments about individual moral responsibility for social outcomes, the 'hereditarian left' are constructing an argument within the framework of 'luck egalitalitarianism'. This is well trodden philosophical ground. Rawlsian liberals have often struggled to justify economic redistribution in the face of the choice-centred, libertarian critique. Luck egalitarians accept a 'meritocratic' framing of inequality but are more nuanced about their conclusions, and argue that arbitrarily distributed, undeserved or 'natural' disadvantage should to be compensated at the expense of those who benefit from undeserved or 'natural' advantages. Luck egalitarianism puts the 'hereditarian left', if they exist, in good in good liberal company, but it's still not a defensible philosophical position for anyone who sees themselves as a democrat or a socialist.
"[Since] the capacities needed for responsible choice—foresight, perseverance, calculative ability, strength of will, self-confidence—are partly a function of genetic endowments . . . the imprudent are entitled to special paternalistic protection by society against their poor choices. Equality of fortune says that such victims of bad luck are entitled to compensation for their defective internal assets and internal states. The chief appeal of equality of fortune to those of an egalitarian bent lies in this appearance of humanitarianism. Equality of fortune says that no one should have to suffer from undeserved misfortune and that priority in distribution should be given to those who are blamelessly worst off."
I was curious to note at least one reactionary commentator citing Elizabeth Anderson's "What's the Point of Equality?" to peg Harden [accurately] as a luck egalitarian (Anderson's definition is the one used above). As a fan of Anderson, I don't recognise the version of her views presented in that blog. Anderson is strongly critical of luck egalitarianism and its paternalistic and disrespectful approach to the worst off in society. Anderson argues that to require the disadvantaged to display evidence of blamelessness and personal genetic inferiority in order to receive assistance reduces them to grovelling at the feet of their 'betters' and involves the state making judgements about the moral and genetic qualities of its citizen that are deeply disturbing, to say the least:
"Suppose their compensation checks arrived in the mail along with a letter signed by the State Equality Board explaining the reasons for their compensation:
To the stupid and untalented: Unfortunately, other people don’t value what little you have to offer in the system of production. Your talents are too meager to command much market value. Because of the misfortune that you were born so poorly endowed with talents, we productive ones will make it up to you: we’ll let you share in the bounty of what we have produced with our vastly superior and highly valued abilities." [Hey look, it's a UBI!]
Anderson's objections, however, are not merely consequentialist (i.e. expressed in terms of reducing the happiness of the worse-off). Rather, Anderson identifies the defect with luck egalitarianism as its failure to uphold equal respect for the dignity of all citizens. Meritocratic liberalism bases its distributionary principles on the pity elites feel for the less fortunate and their fear of the envy of the latter of the success of the former - a pattern of noblesse oblige that has a familiar stench to any progressive. People lay claim to the redistribution of resources in virtue of their inferiority, not in virtue of their equal rights and dignity. She argues:
"Egalitarianism ought to reflect a generous, humane, cosmopolitan vision of a society that recognizes individuals as equals in all their diversity. It should promote institutional arrangements that enable the diversity of people’s talents, aspirations, roles, and cultures to benefit everyone and to be recognized as mutually beneficial. Instead, the hybrid of capitalism and socialism envisioned by luck egalitarians reflects the mean-spirited, contemptuous, parochial vision of a society that represents human diversity hierarchically, moralistically contrasting the responsible and irresponsible, the innately superior and the innately inferior, the independent and the dependent.""
Anderson's view (one I share) is that the preferable position is 'democratic egalitarianism' in which everyone stands in a relationship of equality with everyone else. She writes that this means everyone is entitled to participate in decision-making, to be recognized an someone to be listened to respectfully, and that no one need bow and scrape before others or represent themselves as inferior as a condition of having their voice heard. Anderson's vision of equality is compatible with democratic socialism but not luck egalitarianism: it aims to equalise all those social goods necessary for one to be recognised as fully equal (this is where human rights are derived). Democratic equality is what Anderson calls a relational theory of justice: it is fundamentally concerned with the relationships within which goods are distributed, not only with the distribution of goods themselves. Justice, in this view, is a property of a society and its structures, not the moral desserts of individuals.
"Equality of fortune would offer compensation to those with low talents, precisely because their innate inferiority makes their labor so relatively worthless to others, as judged by the market. Democratic equality calls into question the very idea that inferior native endowments have much to do with observed income inequalities in capitalist economies. The biggest fortunes are made not by those [with the most merit] but by those who own the means of production."
Anderson concludes that the distribution of natural endowments is not a matter of justice, what society does in response is. We cannot make genetic differences the basis for continuing to exclude the worst-off from recognition as full participants in the economic and political life of society. Drawing an analogy with physical impairment, Anderson points out that what the disabled find objectionable is not their different abilities, but that everyone else has rigged the system in ways that leave them with no place in it. People, not nature, are responsible for transforming the diversity of human beings into oppressive hierarchies.
Conclusion
I am sympathetic to the attempts of these liberal men and women to understand the causes of inequality, and to work to ameliorate the discomfort I'm sure it makes them feel. The policy prescriptions of luck egalitarians may be misguided and counter productive, but at least their heart is in the right place. What I cannot abide, however, is statements such as that by Freddie DeBoer that genetic variance in intelligence creates the 'strongest possible argument' for socialism. Democratic equality cannot be constructed on the basis of luck egalitarianism - whether of genes, race, sex or any other grounds used categorise and divide us. Drawing social conclusions from the science of intelligence, in any form, is just not OK.