Eugenio Proto's study says intelligent people are socially competent. If moral worth is conditional on favourable social traits, then intelligent people are morally superior
I’m merely saying that the statement “intelligent people are socially competent” is false. They are more likely to be so, but that doesn’t imply
I -> SC.
The broader implication is that smart is not sufficient for good.
On balance, I’d much rather be surrounded by very smart people. But I’d greatly prefer to surrounded by beautiful people of good character and above average intelligence.
Intelligence is one of many desirable traits in people, and our current tech-obsessed era has deranged the views of smart people to think it’s the only thing that matters, which is absurd. (They generally deny this if confronted, but once you spend some time talking with them you’ll see it’s true more often than it should be.)
Thanks for writing this response. I think we agree about a lot, while emphasising different things. I want to emphasise that intelligence is only one contributor to moral worth, which can be outweighed by other considerations. I also want to emphasise that there's nothing special about intelligence. For example, one could write similar articles on why people with higher conscientiousness or pro-sociality have greater moral worth. Meanwhile, you want to emphasise that intelligence is an important contributor to moral worth, and we shouldn't downplay that.
The idea that there's "nothing special about intelligence" is something I would disagree with. Intelligence *is* what makes us special. It's also the basis of virtually everything else that's valuable (intrinsically or instrumentally). Prosociality might be the only other trait that you could argue is comparable in importance to intelligence. But while I think that, all else being equal, more intelligence is better, I don't think that's true of prosociality. Pathological altruism isn't desirable. A psychopath like Imre Lakatos was more valuable than an average do-gooder. Traits like conscientiousness may have little or no intrinsic value at all.
Okay, so we don't agree entirely. Surely in any species whose members cooperate, harder-working individuals are more valuable? The highly intelligent alcoholic is surely less valuable than the individual of moderate intelligence who works hard to support his family. And even if you're right that more pro-sociality isn't always better, one could simply specify that intelligence has a monotonic relationship with moral worth, while pro-sociality has a non-monotonic relationship. It would still be true that, for many comparisons of individuals with different levels of pro-sociality, the one with higher pro-sociality would have greater moral worth – all else being equal.
An alcoholic, especially an intelligent one, may accomplish quite a bit. Few are drunk all the time. True such an individual would accomplish more if he didn’t drink.
I would argue that the human capacity for symbolic thought was the precursor to abstract intelligence & it's that that made us unique.
Clearly, the idea of morality is a human universal which is finessed by genetic relatedness not group selection?
I'm confused about what your overall point is. Is this an argument for top down social engineering over the invisible hand of evolution?
All things are not equal and variation is the engine of evolution. We cannot predict which individuals will be of higher value to the collective IQ of a society however - if we were into social engineering - and true genius is impossible to predict.
Aren't universal moral laws ultimate adaptations to protect kith and kin which are then proximately rationalised? Both discovered in human nature and then individually posited? Anyone?
Since many people specifically deny that intelligence correlates with human worth, in whatever sense, it makes sense to forcefully argue that this trait in particular does correlate with worth. I think the most obvious (negative) correlate is bad, violent behavior. So when I make this kind of argument, I begin with that one. No one thinks that we should save a murderer over a child if forced to choose.
"No one thinks that we should save a murderer over a child if forced to choose"
But many people do think this. It happens in war, genocide, anywhere that certain people have an opportunity to get away with it. If the culture allows, the psychopaths rise. That's the dilemma.
Wouldn't it rather be what one does with that intelligence? Which would include different traits/variables. Or are we saying just intelligence alone (how much intelligence - 1 or 2 standard deviations?) is statistically significant?
I like the part of political equality… I’ve been thinking for some time that the notion of “equality” is simply incoherent...a tautology at best. It’s a mystical doctrine like the Trinity, except it really deranges public policy and our ability to understand the world.
Equal in what quantity? Height? Weight? Intelligence? What can it mean other than “the same”? As Sowell put it, a man isn’t even equal to himself at different times in the same day.
Ok not height or IQ, but under the law. No, we do not treat people as “equal” under the law. Nor should we. A minor is not legally equal to an adult. A felon is not equal to a nonfelon. We even treat people unequally under the law on the basis of “protected characteristics” ironically in the name of equality.
It really only makes as a religious doctrine. We all have the same Buddha-nature, or God-given souls, and a soul is a soul is a soul.
1) Nathan rejects moral realism in favor of the idea that morality is socially determined. He then moves on to a discussion of "human worth" without answering the charge that intelligence has no "moral worth"; I think implicitly Nathan concedes that since the median person thinks intelligence has no "moral worth" and morality is socially determined, then intelligence has no "moral worth." So we need to chalk that one up as a win for Murray and Carl.
2A) In order to operationalize the notion of "human worth," Nathan splits his definition into intrinsic and instrumental components. Part of the intrinsic component is "our superior capacity to understand, contemplate, plan, have an identity, and (as Kershnar highlights) exercise autonomy." This is just transparently begging the question! I suppose one way to win a debate about whether intelligence contributes to human worth is to just say "I (and least one other person) personally define human worth as intelligence," but it's not convincing, and in this case defies common usage.
2B) The argument is further confused because the only defense of the definition that intelligence makes humans more intrinsically valuable, we have, "The more intelligence you have, the greater your potential to manifest what is intrinsically valuable." But this is transparently only a defense of why intelligence is *instrumentally* valuable, not intrinsically valuable!
2C) If, as Nathan believes, there is no such thing as mind-independent "moral worth," there is probably no such thing as mind-independent "human worth." Nathan agrees that there is "no objective standard that tells us how to weigh different values." So we return to the subjective, which again favors Murray and Carl.
I borrow the illustrative example of the drowning people: as Nathan notes, commonsense morality says to save women, children, and parents in different scenarios, the imperative action implictly revealing their greater (subejctive) "human worth." But there is no commonsense morality rule that says to save the smarter person. Nathan simply posits that it "should" be part of our calculation. But if the way to determine human worth is subjective and not mind-independent, and the median person does not include intelligence as part of her calculation, then intelligence is not a component of "human worth."
3) I think the argument that intelligence instrumentally contributes to human worth is unassailable, but this does not imply intelligence actually *is* a component of human worth. To illustrate, suppose you come home and discover the cure for cancer taped to your refridgerator, which you excitedly share with the world. By sharing the cure and not throwing it away, you have contributed more to human welfare than any single person in history. But did possession of the cure, in and of itself, contribute to your human worth? Did it make you superior in any way? No, the only thing that made you a worthy human was the choice to share it with the world. Simply possessing the cure is certainly *instrumentally* valuable, but it does not contribute to your "human worth", in the way we would typically think about it.
Therefore, I argue that possessing something that is *instrumentally* valuable does not add to human worth unless you took actions to obtain it. Since there are basically no actions you can take to improve your general intelligence (dual n-back training?), general intelligence does not make you more worthy as a human.
Love you Nathan, but I disagree with your reasoning.
PS I agree most with the concluding message: "You were born into the natural aristocracy. You have an obligation to strive for the greatness of which you are capable." But this is not a repudiation of Christian morality, but a restatement! Jesus famously said, "To whom much is given, much will be required" (Luke 12:48). The Parable of the Talents illustrates the idea of people possessing different endowments. Saint Peter and the Apostle Paul emphasize using "gifts that differ according to the grace given to us" (Romans 12:6). The Christian notion is that inequality is natural, but each person is expected to make the most of what they have been given.
Yes -- your "PS " is important here, because it highlights one of the biggest misunderstandings afoot today -- I find it everywhere from the far left to the far right and points inbetween -- namely: that Christianity is egalitarianism. Originally, historically, it was precisely the opposite.
I think the problem here stems from the idea of *individual* moral worth.
Individual moral decisions have a way of netting each other out in large groups over long time periods. For every villain there is a hero. For everyone that uses their intelligence for evil there is one that uses it for good. For every high IQ society that goes crazy during WWII we have a post war economic miracle.
Low IQ societies by contrast just can't keep the lights on, whatever heroes or villains there might be within.
Most of the benefits (or detriments) or intelligence come from *Hive Mind*. It's the high IQ society we are striving for. That will assure that we tend to have more heroes then villains and that we tend to have more prosperous outcomes then not.
Another way of looking at it would be Gregory Clark's "The Son Also Rises". He notes that while smart families often have bad individuals within them, as an extended family unit they tend to have high value on average.
You don't deny a low IQ person citizenship because you have some complex understanding of their individual moral worth. You just know that letting in lots of low IQ people is bad for society, and that since you can't look into the soul of every applicant and all their descendants you just have to judge as a group based on broad criteria.
Charles is naturally approaching this from the libertarian individualistic perspective. It's not individual outcomes and individual morality we are debating though, but the statistical inevitabilities from large n-counts with certain characteristics.
"For every high IQ society that goes crazy during WWII". You're saying this from a position of not contemplating that you or your family could be such flotsam.
Well, there are plenty of other choices. You picked two strange ones. The Japanese at this time had been brainwashed for two generations to hate the Chinese and think it was their God given right to seize territory and commit atrocities carte blanche. They joined the Rome-Berlin axis to form the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo axis and used their youth literally as cannon fodder in the kamikaze. The Congo was a colony of Belgium in 1940 (The Belgian Congo) and was, like Belgium, neutral. It only became independent in 1960. By any standard, the Belgian Congo was a safer place to be in 1940 compared to Japan who was soon to have two atomic bombs dropped on it and surrender to the allies. Japan's high IQ (if it had it at the time) was no barrier to it being utterly stupid.
I picked an example of one of the worst times and places for a high IQ society and compared it to a low IQ society that wasn't involved in WWII.
Whatever troubles Japanese had to suffer through in the 1940s, they would soon become a first world country where people live comfortable fulfilling lives. Meanwhile, the Congo remained a third world hellhole.
High IQ societies retain the potential for improvement, and most manage to get there in time. Low IQ societies have no potential, they can never improve and their standard of living relies entirely on how much high IQ societies are willing to pay for their natural resources or tourist beaches and they usually squander what little they get from that.
Wonderful post. I always like it when someone points to something I've always taken for granted but perhaps shouldn't have. Such things remain invisible to me until someone, in this case you, point them out.
Incidentally, why has average Japanese IQ gone up in the last decades?
The Flynn effect refers to the large increase in IQ scores across the world in the 20th century. It was probably driven mostly by education, and to a lesser extent by better nutrition and medical care.
Ah, I see. I was thinking of Ed Dutton's idea that in the West we have been getting, on average, stupider since the Industrial Revolution due to the fact that pretty much everyone nowadays survives, rather than just the healthiest, and therefore the most intelligent, since health and intelligence are correlated. I was wondering how Japan had bucked that dysgenic trend but maybe I was conflating intelligence with IQ scores. Or maybe Ed Dutton is simply wrong.
I still don't get that "it's wrong to shoot random people for fun" is a truth of logic. It is a claim about what is morally right, and what is morally right is not a truth of logic, unless you are some kind of strong realist in the Platonic sense.
“Yet, when it comes to “human worth,” in my view, Motz ranks among the elites. He is far superior to Chris Langan—the conspiracy theorist and philosophy crackpot who supposedly has the highest IQ in the world.”
Or perhaps you are within one SD of Motz’s IQ, which makes him comprehensible to you, whereas Langen seems like a “crackpot” much like you’d seem like a crackpot to, say, the 77% who can’t read a bus schedule.
A provocative argument. I’m new to this debate, but think Carl has the stronger case.
It seems like you’re essentially equating worth with accomplishment. Yes, smarter people can get things done better, in the current environment. Yet, just a few thousand years ago, physical fitness mattered much more than it does now, and I wonder how many of the geniuses you cited would have been able to even survive. There’s probably a threshold level of intelligence to thrive regardless of circumstances, but I bet it’s not very far above the mean.
And you didn’t really refute the notion that “accomplishment” can be good (life-saving medicine) or bad (concentration camps). I’m interested to read the book about national IQ differences you referenced. Japan went from kamikaze pilots and the rape of Nanking to its current state of prosperity and peacefulness apparently without any changes to the country’s average IQ. China is one of the most oppressive regimes out there but has a higher average IQ. And I certainly wouldn’t want to live in Belarus, also above average. Again, countries may need a threshold level of average intelligence as a pre-condition for national success, but it doesn’t look sufficient.
I wrote: "Part of what makes humans more intrinsically valuable than other animals is our superior capacity to understand, contemplate, plan, have an identity, and (as Kershnar highlights) exercise autonomy....There can even be greatness in failure." I don't see how this is, as you say, "essentially equating worth with accomplishment."
"And you didn’t really refute the notion that 'accomplishment' can be good (life-saving medicine) or bad (concentration camps)." - I don't "refute" this because there's nothing to refute. As I say, "Any instrument can be used for bad purposes."
Incidentally, the average IQ of Japan has increased substantially over the past several decades. More important, IQ is not the only relevant factor. Communism --> bad outcomes. Check out Garett Jones's book Hive Mind.
Thanks for responding. How is there ever greatness in failure? Usually, it's failure on the path to accomplishment, i.e. a mistake that leads to a discovery or lesson. That's not failure.
Do we have a superior capacity to understand, contemplate & plan than other animals? Identify is tricky, as is autonomy. Do we understand them sufficiently?
I'm more leaning towards our capacity for symbolic thought is the most unique element of human abstract intelligence, which leads to all other higher cognitive functions.
Very few nonhuman animals can recognize themselves in a mirror. Learning how to chew the bark off a twig and stick it in a termite mound pushes chimpanzee intelligence to the limit. Of course we can never know for sure what goes on in the mind of an animal. But I think it's clear that the capacity of the *average* human to have an identity, understand, contemplate, and plan is qualitatively different from, and superior to, that of any other species.
This conundrum over the moral worth of people is perhaps why we got the "scientific" consensus that there are no important differences between groups and the denial about the heritability of intelligence. After the horrors of the second world war, it was easier to just lie and say that all groups are exactly the same in all socially valuable traits, and that education can increase intelligence rather than tackle an issue with no easy answer, especially when the religious foundations for belief in equal human worth were quickly vanishing.
Prominent intellectuals who are normally curious about most things suddenly become very disinterested or scientifically illiterate when the discussion turns to intelligence differences, and especially groups differences. In my opinion that is because they party because don't have an answer to the question of whether smart people are superior that is palatable to them.
We should remember though that high intelligence is a trait that is advantageous in our CURRENT post-industrial environment, but environments change. AI may prove to be much more competent than humans at cognitively demanding tasks, and available to anyone with a smartphone, thus rendering that advantage moot. The future environment may reward other traits instead of intelligence (beauty, sense of humor, work ethic). Perhaps in a few years I will be unemployed and my plumber will be making a fortune.
The only WW2 combatant that denied genetic intelligence difference was Stalin. This denial did nothing to limit his murdering.
Even the most famous example, Hitler, didn’t actually know much about intelligence (or much else). It’s not clear that the Nazies even prized intelligence all that much. The Nazi eugenics programs didn’t mention intelligence outside the elimination of clinically retarded individuals, where is was one among many disabilities. The ideal Nazi man doesn’t appear to emphasize intelligence in any way. If anything within the Volk Nazi-ism took on a rather egalitarian nature that valorized the average man quite a bit. The nazies didn’t say that intelligent Germans were “worth” more then less intelligent Germans.
P.S. if you ever became unemployed due to AI you would simply learn to become a plumber and probably outcompete your current plumber. Smart people can learn to do plumbing, it’s not rocket science.
1. Being smart is better than not being smart, all else equal. Everyone acknowledges this and we support education because we want smart children.
2. If we strip people of all other aspects of their character and then compare two people with the only attribute known being IQ, then we prefer the higher IQ person. This is socially undesirable to say and this is where the debate stems from. I think you're correct though, it's just highly unpalatable with this framing. I am a moral realist though.
As you mentioned, there is a similar debate with embryo selection. We don't know what embryo A and embryo B are like, so we are simply left with their genome. Everyone acknowledges having a horrible genetic disorder is terrible, but once you have actual people that you are making comparisons about, it's offensive. But in the context of embryo selection, all we have is the genome, so it's fine to pick on the basis of genes. Comparisons are necessary. (https://www.parrhesia.co/p/comparisons-are-necessary). The cost to denying this will soon be high as genetic enhancement improves.
This is an excellent piece, but I would take this argument even further. Without touching free will, if we accept hereditarianism, we necessarily abandon at least some of our belief in choice. Extreme examples illustrate this best, so consider Ted Bundy. No one would choose his mind, and even if he might otherwise have restrained himself out of moral obligation, he never choose to be a psychopath. We might balk at the idea that some people are innately morally worthless for reasons outside of their control, but the alternative—that Ted Bundy did nothing wrong insofar as he had no control over his psychopathy or impulses—is even less agreeable.
I simply cannot agree that moral worth comes to down to self-control. Imagine a man that fantasises about murder day and night, and cannot help that, but restrains himself. Has he greater moral worth than all other non-murderers? There is no objective way to decide this, but I feel that such a man has less, not more, moral worth than those with a healthy mind.
If we want a hereditarian revolution, we should toss the idea that choice has anything to do with moral worth out completely. I find free will as absurd as you find moral realism, but even if you disagree, a hereditarian must concede that moral worth is largely not a choice. The idea that we shouldn't judge another for things outside of their control is a backwards superstition. I would extend this even into the law. Courts already consider things like background when sentencing. Had I my way, those that show innately criminal tendencies, or have a family history of them, ought to be locked away forever, and second-chances reserved for those with clean minds and backgrounds.
Moral revolutionaries should not run away from the necessarily 'racist' and 'sexist' implications. Singer is correct that speciesism is no different from racism, and if races differ in intelligence and predilection to crime, some of them ought to be considered more valuable than others, and I would apply your argument about von Neumann to groups too. It is perfectly healthy to value our own group more than others. We should also listen to the same conservationist impulse that makes us sad that there are no more dodos. Even if bushmen or pygmies have not contributed much to human civilisation and likely never will, it would still be tragic if they died out.
If this seems radical, it is not so different from how our pre-Christian ancestors, whether Jewish or Pagan, saw the world. The Greeks and Romans were fascinated by heredity, and even practiced primitive forms of eugenics. They never hesitated to judge others by the reputation of their relatives. The modern superstition that we must not judge another for anything outside of their control would have utterly bewildered them.
The sociopath that dreams about murder all day but somehow restrains himself is a moral exemplar and we should praise his restraint!
But he also should be commited to an institution and not allowed to walk free on then street because that willpower might fail at any moment.
And if we knew for a fact that any children he had would have the same condition he shouldn’t be allowed to have children.
And if there were so many people with his condition that the state couldn’t possibly institutionalize them all they should be removed from society completely.
Simply put, the question of “moral worth” just doesn’t tell us enough about how we should treat people. The traits of the individual (including those they can’t control) and the context of the situation vary.
It’s probably good that we praise morally worthy decisions, and praise those that require more willpower even more. But that praiseworthiness is just one factor in how a society should act.
Very interesting article. Throughout it, I kept wondering if the only absolute standard for moral worth that could be applied would be related to evolution, somehow. Through the lens of "survival of the tribe/species" one could define "worth" in economic terms such that productivity produces good and services that continue the functions of life. This resolves the question about why we'd choose ourselves over John von Neumann, but we'd choose von Neumann over an average person in hopes our offspring would reproduce with his offspring, thus, improving the probability of propagating our genetic code.
Also, it reinforces an idea I've held for decades: namely, that morality is a function of technology. Hanging horse thieves is eminently moral in a society where stealing a man's horse is effectively a death sentence because of limitations of transportation technology; it is patently immoral in a society where you can pull out your cell phone and call an Uber. Just as the pully and fulcrum amplified the advantages of strength, computers amplify the advantage of intelligence. It seems addressing the question of whether mortal worth is correlated to intelligence has never been more pressing.
"With the current technology, when choosing among ten embryos, there will be an expected difference of about 12 IQ points between the lowest and the highest."
I haven't heard a gain that large proposed before. Could you provide the source? Thanks
Eugenio Proto's study says intelligent people are socially competent. If moral worth is conditional on favourable social traits, then intelligent people are morally superior
Never met a smart liar? Or a clever sociopath? Intelligence is correlated with favorable social traits, not indicative of them.
For every smart person that uses their intelligence for ill there are more that use it for good. Do you not think there are sociopaths in the ghetto?
I’m merely saying that the statement “intelligent people are socially competent” is false. They are more likely to be so, but that doesn’t imply
I -> SC.
The broader implication is that smart is not sufficient for good.
On balance, I’d much rather be surrounded by very smart people. But I’d greatly prefer to surrounded by beautiful people of good character and above average intelligence.
Intelligence is one of many desirable traits in people, and our current tech-obsessed era has deranged the views of smart people to think it’s the only thing that matters, which is absurd. (They generally deny this if confronted, but once you spend some time talking with them you’ll see it’s true more often than it should be.)
Reject nerd supremacy.
Depends how intelligent you are. At a certain level it becomes extremely hard to socialize with average people.
Thanks for writing this response. I think we agree about a lot, while emphasising different things. I want to emphasise that intelligence is only one contributor to moral worth, which can be outweighed by other considerations. I also want to emphasise that there's nothing special about intelligence. For example, one could write similar articles on why people with higher conscientiousness or pro-sociality have greater moral worth. Meanwhile, you want to emphasise that intelligence is an important contributor to moral worth, and we shouldn't downplay that.
The idea that there's "nothing special about intelligence" is something I would disagree with. Intelligence *is* what makes us special. It's also the basis of virtually everything else that's valuable (intrinsically or instrumentally). Prosociality might be the only other trait that you could argue is comparable in importance to intelligence. But while I think that, all else being equal, more intelligence is better, I don't think that's true of prosociality. Pathological altruism isn't desirable. A psychopath like Imre Lakatos was more valuable than an average do-gooder. Traits like conscientiousness may have little or no intrinsic value at all.
Okay, so we don't agree entirely. Surely in any species whose members cooperate, harder-working individuals are more valuable? The highly intelligent alcoholic is surely less valuable than the individual of moderate intelligence who works hard to support his family. And even if you're right that more pro-sociality isn't always better, one could simply specify that intelligence has a monotonic relationship with moral worth, while pro-sociality has a non-monotonic relationship. It would still be true that, for many comparisons of individuals with different levels of pro-sociality, the one with higher pro-sociality would have greater moral worth – all else being equal.
An alcoholic, especially an intelligent one, may accomplish quite a bit. Few are drunk all the time. True such an individual would accomplish more if he didn’t drink.
I would argue that the human capacity for symbolic thought was the precursor to abstract intelligence & it's that that made us unique.
Clearly, the idea of morality is a human universal which is finessed by genetic relatedness not group selection?
I'm confused about what your overall point is. Is this an argument for top down social engineering over the invisible hand of evolution?
All things are not equal and variation is the engine of evolution. We cannot predict which individuals will be of higher value to the collective IQ of a society however - if we were into social engineering - and true genius is impossible to predict.
Aren't universal moral laws ultimate adaptations to protect kith and kin which are then proximately rationalised? Both discovered in human nature and then individually posited? Anyone?
Since many people specifically deny that intelligence correlates with human worth, in whatever sense, it makes sense to forcefully argue that this trait in particular does correlate with worth. I think the most obvious (negative) correlate is bad, violent behavior. So when I make this kind of argument, I begin with that one. No one thinks that we should save a murderer over a child if forced to choose.
"No one thinks that we should save a murderer over a child if forced to choose"
But many people do think this. It happens in war, genocide, anywhere that certain people have an opportunity to get away with it. If the culture allows, the psychopaths rise. That's the dilemma.
Wouldn't it rather be what one does with that intelligence? Which would include different traits/variables. Or are we saying just intelligence alone (how much intelligence - 1 or 2 standard deviations?) is statistically significant?
Where does wisdom come into it?
I like the part of political equality… I’ve been thinking for some time that the notion of “equality” is simply incoherent...a tautology at best. It’s a mystical doctrine like the Trinity, except it really deranges public policy and our ability to understand the world.
Equal in what quantity? Height? Weight? Intelligence? What can it mean other than “the same”? As Sowell put it, a man isn’t even equal to himself at different times in the same day.
Ok not height or IQ, but under the law. No, we do not treat people as “equal” under the law. Nor should we. A minor is not legally equal to an adult. A felon is not equal to a nonfelon. We even treat people unequally under the law on the basis of “protected characteristics” ironically in the name of equality.
It really only makes as a religious doctrine. We all have the same Buddha-nature, or God-given souls, and a soul is a soul is a soul.
I think that - although slightly tangential to your thoughts here - you might find this essay interesting: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/love-of-the-people
In defense of Murray and Carl:
1) Nathan rejects moral realism in favor of the idea that morality is socially determined. He then moves on to a discussion of "human worth" without answering the charge that intelligence has no "moral worth"; I think implicitly Nathan concedes that since the median person thinks intelligence has no "moral worth" and morality is socially determined, then intelligence has no "moral worth." So we need to chalk that one up as a win for Murray and Carl.
2A) In order to operationalize the notion of "human worth," Nathan splits his definition into intrinsic and instrumental components. Part of the intrinsic component is "our superior capacity to understand, contemplate, plan, have an identity, and (as Kershnar highlights) exercise autonomy." This is just transparently begging the question! I suppose one way to win a debate about whether intelligence contributes to human worth is to just say "I (and least one other person) personally define human worth as intelligence," but it's not convincing, and in this case defies common usage.
2B) The argument is further confused because the only defense of the definition that intelligence makes humans more intrinsically valuable, we have, "The more intelligence you have, the greater your potential to manifest what is intrinsically valuable." But this is transparently only a defense of why intelligence is *instrumentally* valuable, not intrinsically valuable!
2C) If, as Nathan believes, there is no such thing as mind-independent "moral worth," there is probably no such thing as mind-independent "human worth." Nathan agrees that there is "no objective standard that tells us how to weigh different values." So we return to the subjective, which again favors Murray and Carl.
I borrow the illustrative example of the drowning people: as Nathan notes, commonsense morality says to save women, children, and parents in different scenarios, the imperative action implictly revealing their greater (subejctive) "human worth." But there is no commonsense morality rule that says to save the smarter person. Nathan simply posits that it "should" be part of our calculation. But if the way to determine human worth is subjective and not mind-independent, and the median person does not include intelligence as part of her calculation, then intelligence is not a component of "human worth."
3) I think the argument that intelligence instrumentally contributes to human worth is unassailable, but this does not imply intelligence actually *is* a component of human worth. To illustrate, suppose you come home and discover the cure for cancer taped to your refridgerator, which you excitedly share with the world. By sharing the cure and not throwing it away, you have contributed more to human welfare than any single person in history. But did possession of the cure, in and of itself, contribute to your human worth? Did it make you superior in any way? No, the only thing that made you a worthy human was the choice to share it with the world. Simply possessing the cure is certainly *instrumentally* valuable, but it does not contribute to your "human worth", in the way we would typically think about it.
Therefore, I argue that possessing something that is *instrumentally* valuable does not add to human worth unless you took actions to obtain it. Since there are basically no actions you can take to improve your general intelligence (dual n-back training?), general intelligence does not make you more worthy as a human.
Love you Nathan, but I disagree with your reasoning.
PS I agree most with the concluding message: "You were born into the natural aristocracy. You have an obligation to strive for the greatness of which you are capable." But this is not a repudiation of Christian morality, but a restatement! Jesus famously said, "To whom much is given, much will be required" (Luke 12:48). The Parable of the Talents illustrates the idea of people possessing different endowments. Saint Peter and the Apostle Paul emphasize using "gifts that differ according to the grace given to us" (Romans 12:6). The Christian notion is that inequality is natural, but each person is expected to make the most of what they have been given.
Yes -- your "PS " is important here, because it highlights one of the biggest misunderstandings afoot today -- I find it everywhere from the far left to the far right and points inbetween -- namely: that Christianity is egalitarianism. Originally, historically, it was precisely the opposite.
I think the problem here stems from the idea of *individual* moral worth.
Individual moral decisions have a way of netting each other out in large groups over long time periods. For every villain there is a hero. For everyone that uses their intelligence for evil there is one that uses it for good. For every high IQ society that goes crazy during WWII we have a post war economic miracle.
Low IQ societies by contrast just can't keep the lights on, whatever heroes or villains there might be within.
Most of the benefits (or detriments) or intelligence come from *Hive Mind*. It's the high IQ society we are striving for. That will assure that we tend to have more heroes then villains and that we tend to have more prosperous outcomes then not.
Another way of looking at it would be Gregory Clark's "The Son Also Rises". He notes that while smart families often have bad individuals within them, as an extended family unit they tend to have high value on average.
You don't deny a low IQ person citizenship because you have some complex understanding of their individual moral worth. You just know that letting in lots of low IQ people is bad for society, and that since you can't look into the soul of every applicant and all their descendants you just have to judge as a group based on broad criteria.
Charles is naturally approaching this from the libertarian individualistic perspective. It's not individual outcomes and individual morality we are debating though, but the statistical inevitabilities from large n-counts with certain characteristics.
"For every high IQ society that goes crazy during WWII". You're saying this from a position of not contemplating that you or your family could be such flotsam.
I would rather be born in 1940 Japan as an average Japanese than 1940 Congo as an average Congolese.
Well, there are plenty of other choices. You picked two strange ones. The Japanese at this time had been brainwashed for two generations to hate the Chinese and think it was their God given right to seize territory and commit atrocities carte blanche. They joined the Rome-Berlin axis to form the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo axis and used their youth literally as cannon fodder in the kamikaze. The Congo was a colony of Belgium in 1940 (The Belgian Congo) and was, like Belgium, neutral. It only became independent in 1960. By any standard, the Belgian Congo was a safer place to be in 1940 compared to Japan who was soon to have two atomic bombs dropped on it and surrender to the allies. Japan's high IQ (if it had it at the time) was no barrier to it being utterly stupid.
I picked an example of one of the worst times and places for a high IQ society and compared it to a low IQ society that wasn't involved in WWII.
Whatever troubles Japanese had to suffer through in the 1940s, they would soon become a first world country where people live comfortable fulfilling lives. Meanwhile, the Congo remained a third world hellhole.
High IQ societies retain the potential for improvement, and most manage to get there in time. Low IQ societies have no potential, they can never improve and their standard of living relies entirely on how much high IQ societies are willing to pay for their natural resources or tourist beaches and they usually squander what little they get from that.
Wonderful post. I always like it when someone points to something I've always taken for granted but perhaps shouldn't have. Such things remain invisible to me until someone, in this case you, point them out.
Incidentally, why has average Japanese IQ gone up in the last decades?
The Flynn effect refers to the large increase in IQ scores across the world in the 20th century. It was probably driven mostly by education, and to a lesser extent by better nutrition and medical care.
Does this mean you think the increase in IQ was on g as well? Or do you think IQ does not matter only as a proxy for g?
Ah, I see. I was thinking of Ed Dutton's idea that in the West we have been getting, on average, stupider since the Industrial Revolution due to the fact that pretty much everyone nowadays survives, rather than just the healthiest, and therefore the most intelligent, since health and intelligence are correlated. I was wondering how Japan had bucked that dysgenic trend but maybe I was conflating intelligence with IQ scores. Or maybe Ed Dutton is simply wrong.
I still don't get that "it's wrong to shoot random people for fun" is a truth of logic. It is a claim about what is morally right, and what is morally right is not a truth of logic, unless you are some kind of strong realist in the Platonic sense.
“Yet, when it comes to “human worth,” in my view, Motz ranks among the elites. He is far superior to Chris Langan—the conspiracy theorist and philosophy crackpot who supposedly has the highest IQ in the world.”
Or perhaps you are within one SD of Motz’s IQ, which makes him comprehensible to you, whereas Langen seems like a “crackpot” much like you’d seem like a crackpot to, say, the 77% who can’t read a bus schedule.
Just a thought.
A provocative argument. I’m new to this debate, but think Carl has the stronger case.
It seems like you’re essentially equating worth with accomplishment. Yes, smarter people can get things done better, in the current environment. Yet, just a few thousand years ago, physical fitness mattered much more than it does now, and I wonder how many of the geniuses you cited would have been able to even survive. There’s probably a threshold level of intelligence to thrive regardless of circumstances, but I bet it’s not very far above the mean.
And you didn’t really refute the notion that “accomplishment” can be good (life-saving medicine) or bad (concentration camps). I’m interested to read the book about national IQ differences you referenced. Japan went from kamikaze pilots and the rape of Nanking to its current state of prosperity and peacefulness apparently without any changes to the country’s average IQ. China is one of the most oppressive regimes out there but has a higher average IQ. And I certainly wouldn’t want to live in Belarus, also above average. Again, countries may need a threshold level of average intelligence as a pre-condition for national success, but it doesn’t look sufficient.
I wrote: "Part of what makes humans more intrinsically valuable than other animals is our superior capacity to understand, contemplate, plan, have an identity, and (as Kershnar highlights) exercise autonomy....There can even be greatness in failure." I don't see how this is, as you say, "essentially equating worth with accomplishment."
"And you didn’t really refute the notion that 'accomplishment' can be good (life-saving medicine) or bad (concentration camps)." - I don't "refute" this because there's nothing to refute. As I say, "Any instrument can be used for bad purposes."
Incidentally, the average IQ of Japan has increased substantially over the past several decades. More important, IQ is not the only relevant factor. Communism --> bad outcomes. Check out Garett Jones's book Hive Mind.
Thanks for responding. How is there ever greatness in failure? Usually, it's failure on the path to accomplishment, i.e. a mistake that leads to a discovery or lesson. That's not failure.
Do we have a superior capacity to understand, contemplate & plan than other animals? Identify is tricky, as is autonomy. Do we understand them sufficiently?
I'm more leaning towards our capacity for symbolic thought is the most unique element of human abstract intelligence, which leads to all other higher cognitive functions.
Very few nonhuman animals can recognize themselves in a mirror. Learning how to chew the bark off a twig and stick it in a termite mound pushes chimpanzee intelligence to the limit. Of course we can never know for sure what goes on in the mind of an animal. But I think it's clear that the capacity of the *average* human to have an identity, understand, contemplate, and plan is qualitatively different from, and superior to, that of any other species.
Sure, but these things are not unique to humans they are just on a scale. A symbolic module is and, arguably, is the precursor to all the above.
I think theism and deontology need to be addressed in a non-trivial way to make your argument more broadly persuasive.
Isn't the problem with who is deciding who is more intelligent and in what realm? The Nazi’s wanted to kill people like Elon Musk.
This conundrum over the moral worth of people is perhaps why we got the "scientific" consensus that there are no important differences between groups and the denial about the heritability of intelligence. After the horrors of the second world war, it was easier to just lie and say that all groups are exactly the same in all socially valuable traits, and that education can increase intelligence rather than tackle an issue with no easy answer, especially when the religious foundations for belief in equal human worth were quickly vanishing.
Prominent intellectuals who are normally curious about most things suddenly become very disinterested or scientifically illiterate when the discussion turns to intelligence differences, and especially groups differences. In my opinion that is because they party because don't have an answer to the question of whether smart people are superior that is palatable to them.
We should remember though that high intelligence is a trait that is advantageous in our CURRENT post-industrial environment, but environments change. AI may prove to be much more competent than humans at cognitively demanding tasks, and available to anyone with a smartphone, thus rendering that advantage moot. The future environment may reward other traits instead of intelligence (beauty, sense of humor, work ethic). Perhaps in a few years I will be unemployed and my plumber will be making a fortune.
The only WW2 combatant that denied genetic intelligence difference was Stalin. This denial did nothing to limit his murdering.
Even the most famous example, Hitler, didn’t actually know much about intelligence (or much else). It’s not clear that the Nazies even prized intelligence all that much. The Nazi eugenics programs didn’t mention intelligence outside the elimination of clinically retarded individuals, where is was one among many disabilities. The ideal Nazi man doesn’t appear to emphasize intelligence in any way. If anything within the Volk Nazi-ism took on a rather egalitarian nature that valorized the average man quite a bit. The nazies didn’t say that intelligent Germans were “worth” more then less intelligent Germans.
P.S. if you ever became unemployed due to AI you would simply learn to become a plumber and probably outcompete your current plumber. Smart people can learn to do plumbing, it’s not rocket science.
1. Being smart is better than not being smart, all else equal. Everyone acknowledges this and we support education because we want smart children.
2. If we strip people of all other aspects of their character and then compare two people with the only attribute known being IQ, then we prefer the higher IQ person. This is socially undesirable to say and this is where the debate stems from. I think you're correct though, it's just highly unpalatable with this framing. I am a moral realist though.
As you mentioned, there is a similar debate with embryo selection. We don't know what embryo A and embryo B are like, so we are simply left with their genome. Everyone acknowledges having a horrible genetic disorder is terrible, but once you have actual people that you are making comparisons about, it's offensive. But in the context of embryo selection, all we have is the genome, so it's fine to pick on the basis of genes. Comparisons are necessary. (https://www.parrhesia.co/p/comparisons-are-necessary). The cost to denying this will soon be high as genetic enhancement improves.
This is an excellent piece, but I would take this argument even further. Without touching free will, if we accept hereditarianism, we necessarily abandon at least some of our belief in choice. Extreme examples illustrate this best, so consider Ted Bundy. No one would choose his mind, and even if he might otherwise have restrained himself out of moral obligation, he never choose to be a psychopath. We might balk at the idea that some people are innately morally worthless for reasons outside of their control, but the alternative—that Ted Bundy did nothing wrong insofar as he had no control over his psychopathy or impulses—is even less agreeable.
I simply cannot agree that moral worth comes to down to self-control. Imagine a man that fantasises about murder day and night, and cannot help that, but restrains himself. Has he greater moral worth than all other non-murderers? There is no objective way to decide this, but I feel that such a man has less, not more, moral worth than those with a healthy mind.
If we want a hereditarian revolution, we should toss the idea that choice has anything to do with moral worth out completely. I find free will as absurd as you find moral realism, but even if you disagree, a hereditarian must concede that moral worth is largely not a choice. The idea that we shouldn't judge another for things outside of their control is a backwards superstition. I would extend this even into the law. Courts already consider things like background when sentencing. Had I my way, those that show innately criminal tendencies, or have a family history of them, ought to be locked away forever, and second-chances reserved for those with clean minds and backgrounds.
Moral revolutionaries should not run away from the necessarily 'racist' and 'sexist' implications. Singer is correct that speciesism is no different from racism, and if races differ in intelligence and predilection to crime, some of them ought to be considered more valuable than others, and I would apply your argument about von Neumann to groups too. It is perfectly healthy to value our own group more than others. We should also listen to the same conservationist impulse that makes us sad that there are no more dodos. Even if bushmen or pygmies have not contributed much to human civilisation and likely never will, it would still be tragic if they died out.
If this seems radical, it is not so different from how our pre-Christian ancestors, whether Jewish or Pagan, saw the world. The Greeks and Romans were fascinated by heredity, and even practiced primitive forms of eugenics. They never hesitated to judge others by the reputation of their relatives. The modern superstition that we must not judge another for anything outside of their control would have utterly bewildered them.
The sociopath that dreams about murder all day but somehow restrains himself is a moral exemplar and we should praise his restraint!
But he also should be commited to an institution and not allowed to walk free on then street because that willpower might fail at any moment.
And if we knew for a fact that any children he had would have the same condition he shouldn’t be allowed to have children.
And if there were so many people with his condition that the state couldn’t possibly institutionalize them all they should be removed from society completely.
Simply put, the question of “moral worth” just doesn’t tell us enough about how we should treat people. The traits of the individual (including those they can’t control) and the context of the situation vary.
It’s probably good that we praise morally worthy decisions, and praise those that require more willpower even more. But that praiseworthiness is just one factor in how a society should act.
Remember: Mean differences with GREAT overlaps. 1/4 of blacks are smarter than the 1/2 of whites. Which is not the case with humans and chimpanzees.
Very interesting article. Throughout it, I kept wondering if the only absolute standard for moral worth that could be applied would be related to evolution, somehow. Through the lens of "survival of the tribe/species" one could define "worth" in economic terms such that productivity produces good and services that continue the functions of life. This resolves the question about why we'd choose ourselves over John von Neumann, but we'd choose von Neumann over an average person in hopes our offspring would reproduce with his offspring, thus, improving the probability of propagating our genetic code.
Also, it reinforces an idea I've held for decades: namely, that morality is a function of technology. Hanging horse thieves is eminently moral in a society where stealing a man's horse is effectively a death sentence because of limitations of transportation technology; it is patently immoral in a society where you can pull out your cell phone and call an Uber. Just as the pully and fulcrum amplified the advantages of strength, computers amplify the advantage of intelligence. It seems addressing the question of whether mortal worth is correlated to intelligence has never been more pressing.
"With the current technology, when choosing among ten embryos, there will be an expected difference of about 12 IQ points between the lowest and the highest."
I haven't heard a gain that large proposed before. Could you provide the source? Thanks
It hasn't been published yet, so no. But the claim is accurate.