A Dark Faith

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

Selwyn Duke thinks that those who question the biological basis of various psychological and behavioural differences among races are “practitioners of a dark faith” (pun intended?) incompatible with the teachings of science:

It seems especially odd when you consider that most of these inquisitors [Duke’s term for the antiracist left] are secularists who subscribe to the theory of evolution. Yet, despite their belief that different groups “evolved” in completely different parts of the world, operating in different environments and subject to different stresses, they would have us believe that all groups are identical in terms of the multitude of man’s talents and in every single measure of mental capacity. Why, miracle of miracles, all these two-legged cosmic accidents, the product of a billions-of-years journey from the primordial soup to primacy among creatures, whose evolution was influenced by perhaps millions of factors, wound up being precisely the same. It’s really the best argument for God I’ve ever heard, as such a statistical impossibility could only exist if it was ordained by the one with whom all things are possible.

Duke’s argument as stated is flailing at a straw man, since few of the people he’s criticising have made the extreme claim that different races are “precisely the same” in “every single measure.” But Duke’s claim can be restated in a more moderate form: given the different evolutionary histories of existing races, isn’t it plausible to suppose that more of their differences are genetically based than the antiracist left is prepared to recognise?

eugenics chart The answer is no. Even staying at the level of empirical considerations, we might say that skepticism toward attempts to base behavioural differences among groups on biological grounds is inductively justified for the same reason that skepticism toward attempts to defend astrology is justified: because such attempts have been made over and over for centuries and have all proved spectacularly wrong. Asking us to consider the latest iteration of such theories in dewy freshness and innocence without attention to the long embarrassing history of such claims and their subsequent refutation is, well, unscientific, like asking Charlie Brown to trust Lucy to hold the football one more time. (Such history goes back a long way. Aristotle, for example, thought the failure of the Celtic and Germanic peoples to rival the cultural achievements of Greece was a sign of an innate intellectual defect. It’s ironic that the chief proponents of this type of argument in the 19th and 20th centuries were themselves of Celtic and/or German descent.) And this is before we even get to the social horrors that this sorry history of scientific failure has been used to justify.

Here’s an analogy: suppose that the next time a child goes missing, I say, “hey, maybe the child was kidnapped by Jews who wanted to use its blood to make matzohs.” When criticised for this suggestion, I exclaim indignantly, “Isn’t it possible that this is what happened? Shouldn’t we consider every possibility? Don’t you politically-correct inquisitors care about truth?” Well, of course my suggestion is possible in some abstract sense. But in light of the actual history of such speculations – their empirical ungroundedness, plus their horrific results – such a suggestion on my part would properly be assigned to the “pointlessly offensive provocation” file rather than to the “serious scientific hypothesis” file. And the fact that I find such hypotheses salient, despite their empirical weakness, reveals my own biases. (Of course all this applies to gender as well – which is why I was glad to see Larry Summers booted out of the presidency of my alma mater.)

But there is more involved here than empirical considerations, because empirical science deals only with the enabling conditions of mind, not the constitutive conditions. (For this distinction see here, here, here, and here.) In short, there are truths about what mind is that are accessible only to philosophical inquiry, not to empirical inquiry; and such truths place constraints on what sorts of empirical hypotheses about mind, and differences among minds, are admissible. Different races may indeed have reached mindedness by somewhat different evolutionary paths, but as long as it is mindedness they have reached, then whatever is philosophically knowable about mindedness will apply to all races equally. (It’s certainly not an astonishing statistical anomaly, calling for appeal to divine intervention, that widely separated and diverse cultures have converged on, for instance, the proposition that 7 + 5 = 12.)

As an example, it used to be popular in racist circles to say that certain races lacked a moral sense. Duke might say, “well, that’s an admissible empirical hypothesis – there’s no evolutionary guarantee that all races will have the same capacities – let’s do some tests and find out.” But suppose that it turns out, via philosophical analysis, that having a moral sense is part of having a mind – that mental and moral capacities are conceptually linked. In that case the suggestion will not be an admissible empirical hypothesis; its coherence has already been ruled out on conceptual grounds.

There is thus a sad irony in the fact that Duke’s argument is receiving favourable press among some praxeologists, because Duke’s complaint that antiracists’ dismissal of evolution-based arguments is an expression of “faith” is strikingly similar to the frequent mainstream characterisation of Austrian praxeology as a “cult” for dismissing empirical approaches to economics in favour of a priori considerations. From the materialist/empiricist/psychologistic/scientistic standpoint, any appeal to philosophical rather than empirical considerations counts as “faith” rather than science. But this simply evinces a lack of understanding of the nature of philosophical reasoning. Praxeologists recognise such critiques as bogus when directed at praxeology; they should recognise that such critiques are equally bogus when directed at the antiracist left.

I’ve argued in previous posts (see here, here, and here) that a number of popular hypotheses about genetically grounded behavioural differences are simply ruled out by philosophical considerations. In addition, there are cases where although certain hypotheses are not absolutely ruled out, their a priori probability is lowered. For example, one reason for stressing environmental (as opposed to biological) determinants of mentality as much as antiracist thinkers do is that mentality itself consists to a significant degree in transactions with the physical and social environment rather than merely what is going on inside the skull. This discovery, however, was reached by philosophical/conceptual rather than empirical means (the “externalist revolution,” as we may call it, of which Wittgenstein was the principal herald), and has gone largely unrecognised by those working in the empirical sciences – which is one reason that empirical researchers continue to proceed as though everything relevant to mentality were located in the brain. The externalist dimension of mentality does not absolutely rule out innatist hypotheses, but it does give us a reason we would not otherwise have had to look more closely at environmental determinants of mental features than we otherwise might.

In short, then, when a hypothesis is either impossible or relatively unlikely for a priori reasons, has a poor track record a posteriori as well, and has the inferiority of certain groups as its principal upshot, the suggestion that the hypothesis might have been prompted more by prejudice than by fearless scientific inquiry seems less like the “political correctness” about which Duke wails than it does simple common sense.

, , , ,

20 Responses to A Dark Faith

  1. Anon2 October 29, 2007 at 8:50 pm #

    Coincidentally Friedman is debating a related issue on his blog, where he takes a somewhat contrary stance:

    http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2007/10/ethnic-cleansing-other-horrors-and.html

  2. Sheldon Richman October 30, 2007 at 6:42 am #

    Thank you. Simply excellent!

  3. Mike October 30, 2007 at 2:12 pm #

    Awesome Roderick. Outstanding take down of ignorance.

    Well done.

  4. imp October 30, 2007 at 4:12 pm #

    I’ve come to suspect that Selwyn Duke is a pseudonym for Michael Savage. Though I’m not religious myself, it bothers me that someone who is not an evangelical christian could be promoting his racial views under the guise of being an evangelical christian, in order to gain influence in the evangelical christian community.

    To see the Savage/Duke synergy in full and somewhat nauseating glory, check out:

    http://www.americandaily.com/article/17787

  5. Administrator October 30, 2007 at 7:04 pm #

    I’m also puzzled at why supposedly anti-Darwinian religious conservatives are so fond of invoking biological determinism.

  6. Randall McElroy III October 31, 2007 at 4:07 pm #

    RL:

    That Larry Summers aside grabbed me: are you saying that philosophical requirements rule out the possibility that the bell curve for male intelligence is flatter than the bell curve for female intelligence? That can’t be what you’re saying, but otherwise why cheer Summers’s departure?

    If the objection is that his comments were provocative and similar in tone to previous arguments used to oppress women, is it so bad that merely suggesting that hypothesis as a possible factor (rather than endorsing it) is unpardonable?

    I ask because as I understand it, science is actually more on his side than against it. Clearly people with minds have the potential to be at the peak of intelligence (or at the bottom), but that doesn’t mean that they will all line up the same.

  7. Dain October 31, 2007 at 8:35 pm #

    From what I can tell, much of the left is against even meer inquiry into things such as IQ difference and race, not to mention cultural critiques that disproportionately affect one race more than another. My default position is to think the biological stuff isn’t worth examing much either (primarily because even if real differences exist, it has no ethical ramifications for me), but I’d have to confess that it certainly seems possible that statistically significant differences appear between men and women, or one race and another.

    From what I’ve read, I second Randall in the claim that apparently there are at least some differences among men and women, for instance. It’s a scientific fact that they have different brain structures, and this I would think would have some ramifications for behavior, emotion, etc. Richard Haier of UC Irvine has studied this.

    But again, it isn’t something I harp on, as I don’t think means any race is inherently more dangerous, lazy or unintelligent than other. And there is alot of evidence to point out that IQ is very much environmentally influenced and negligble with regard to capacity for economic growth, good institutions, etc. Gene Callahan wrote an excellent article for Mises a while back on this: http://www.mises.org/story/2677

  8. Administrator October 31, 2007 at 10:55 pm #

    Randy,

    why cheer Summers’s departure?

    See Arthur Silber on this here and a shorter note by me here.

    is it so bad that merely suggesting that hypothesis as a possible factor (rather than endorsing it) is unpardonable?

    Given a) the enormous difference in cultural pressures that the two sexes face, plus b) the a priori greater likelihood that psychological differences will be culturally rather than genetically based, plus c) the empirical fact that diversities among groups that were traditionally attributed to innate factors have consistently turned out to be due to differential cultural pressures, I think Summers’ remarks were far-fetched, groundless speculation. By itself that would be harmless, like suggesting that Elvis was kidnapped by space aliens. (I mean, he might have been, right?) But when we add in d) the role that remarks like Summers’ play in an actual structure of oppressing women, that moves it from idle talk to complicity in oppression. [So it’s not just (a), (b), and (c) by themselves that make the remark objectionable; (d) is crucial. And likewise it’s not just (d) by itself that makes the remark objectionable; (a), (b), and (c) are crucial too.]

    science is actually more on his side than against it

    How so? Have you read Fausto-Sterling’s Myths of Gender and
    Sexing the Body?

  9. Forgotten Man November 2, 2007 at 7:17 pm #

    Roderick,

    I believe you have missed the point of his article. It is not about whether or not the genetic theory is correct or not, and it is not about being dismissive of such theories that you believe to be obviously incorrect.

    It is the left’s and governments reaction to such statements that is alarming. One can make preposterous statements proclaiming that the Earth is flat and the moon is made of blue cheese and not have your personal life at peril. If you and the “anti-racist left” (that’s a cute way to frame your debate opponents as racists) are so sure of your views being correct, why are you afraid that these topics should become publicly debated?

  10. Leia November 3, 2007 at 12:22 pm #

    One can make preposterous statements proclaiming that the Earth is flat and the moon is made of blue cheese and not have your personal life at peril.

    This would change rapidly if large numbers of people were ever enslaved or slaughtered on the basis of the belief that the moon was made of green cheese. And rightly so. Sorry, but saying “gee, maybe the moon is made of cheese” is not the same as saying “gee, maybe Jews really are evil.”

    Excellent post, Roderick. The ever-so-“scientific” Duke needs to realize that the overwhelming consensus of biologists is that race is a social construct, not a biological reality. As for Summers, he clearly was claiming that genetic differences were the main reason for the lack of women in the sciences–and scientific research does not support this. At most it supports the possibility of some genetically-based personality differences, but no more than that.

  11. Leia November 3, 2007 at 12:24 pm #

    why are you afraid that these topics should become publicly debated?

    Because only a fool thinks that truth and logic will always triumph in the realm of politics. I’m afraid of “Jews are evil” being public debated in the same way that I’m afraid of “torture is okay” or “we should bomb Iran” being debated, the way they are currently. I have all the facts and reasoning on my side, but that probably won’t stop the Iranian corpses from piling up.

  12. Dain November 3, 2007 at 12:58 pm #

    Leia,

    Nothing should be off limits for discussion in a free society. It’s contradictory to limit speech – something that helps people arrive at truth – in order to protect truth.

    And what happens when one who wants to protect a minority finds that bombing a country may be the best way to protect them, at least in the short run? After all, some of the most vocal supporters of attacking Iran do so because Iran is supposedly anti-semitic, hateful of women, etc. For them, I’m sure they’d have no problem banning one kind of hate speech (“jews suck”) but supporting other hate speech (“let’s bomb!”).

  13. Randall McElroy III November 3, 2007 at 5:20 pm #

    Roddy,

    Arthur Silber’s article does not mesh with Steven Pinker’s comments that what Larry Summers actually said, rather than what his critics alleged, was that the reasons he was giving were possible explanations, and moreover that the real answer was a complex mix of several reasons. This non-fatally weakens point D.

    As far as the other points up there go, A is true. C is an unfortunate part of history, but it seems like it’s misused here: those arguments justified the subjugation of one group of men and women by another group of men and women.

    My real beef is with the assumption of the invincibility of B. We accept the genetic differences between the bodies of men and women, and know that these are based on evolution. It seems like a huge stretch to suggest that with these different body parts and amounts of hormones there would be no corresponding difference in brain structure. A scientifically inconceivable stretch.

    I haven’t read Fausto-Sterling’s books, but there is literature on the other side as well, so it’s hard for a non-specialist to be certain about. Did you read Roy Baumeister’s piece Is There Anything Good About Men?

    Lastly, not only science but philosophy was used against women in the past, so it’s not exactly the perfect shield either.

  14. Forgotten Man November 3, 2007 at 11:13 pm #

    [i]The ever-so-”scientific” Duke needs to realize that the overwhelming consensus of biologists is that race is a social construct, not a biological reality.[/i]

    Leia, you show your poor commitment to science with your blind faith in consensus. I’m sure there was an overwhelming consensus of biologists in Nazi Germany who believed that the Jews were genetically inferior.

    [i]Because only a fool thinks that truth and logic will always triumph in the realm of politics. I’m afraid of “Jews are evil” being public debated in the same way that I’m afraid of “torture is okay” or “we should bomb Iran” being debated, the way they are currently. I have all the facts and reasoning on my side, but that probably won’t stop the Iranian corpses from piling up.[/i]

    Only a fool would believe that truth and logic are upheld through politics. As H.L. Mencken said, “No one ever heard of the truth being enforced by law. Whenever the secular arm is called in to sustain an idea, whether new or old, it is always a bad idea, and not infrequently it is downright idiotic.”

    Hence, I am always suspicious of any topic where the victors claim “nothing to see here folks! We have it all solved and figured out. Nothing more to add, just move along or you will pay dearly!”

  15. Forgotten Man November 3, 2007 at 11:17 pm #

    “I’m afraid of “Jews are evil” being public debated in the same way that I’m afraid of “torture is okay” or “we should bomb Iran” being debated, the way they are currently. I have all the facts and reasoning on my side, but that probably won’t stop the Iranian corpses from piling up.”

    The thing is, when we don’t allow these subjects to be debated, it will be because “torture IS okay” and “we SHOULD bomb Iran” won in the eyes of those who decide what is allowable discussion.

  16. Administrator November 5, 2007 at 5:28 pm #

    Dain,

    Nothing should be off limits for discussion in a free society. It’s contradictory to limit speech – something that helps people arrive at truth – in order to protect truth.

    This seems to blur two different issues together — the question of whether the expression of certain viewpoints should be legally prohibited (to which any libertarian’s answer must rightly be no) and the question of whether the expression of certain viewpoints should be regarded as offensive or oppressive and met with (voluntary, noncoercive) social sanctions rather than treated as neutral contributions to civil conversation.

  17. Otto Kerner November 5, 2007 at 7:55 pm #

    “The ever-so-‘scientific’ Duke needs to realize that the overwhelming consensus of biologists is that race is a social construct, not a biological reality.”

    Is it that they overwhelmingly agree on this point, or that they overwhelmingly don’t want to end up like James Watson?

  18. Dain November 5, 2007 at 11:54 pm #

    Admin,

    I understood the difference when I wrote it. Indeed I meant it in the “civil society” sense. Notice I said “off limits”, not legally prohibited or unlawful, etc. Unless one means to blur the difference between society and state, as so many statists in fact do.

  19. Leia November 12, 2007 at 10:21 am #

    Nothing should be off limits for discussion in a free society. It’s contradictory to limit speech – something that helps people arrive at truth – in order to protect truth.

    Who’s limiting speech? I’m defending my right to mock and argue against other people’s stupid speech, which is a PART of free speech.

    Is it that they overwhelmingly agree on this point, or that they overwhelmingly don’t want to end up like James Watson?

    Why, because the vast PC conspiracy will come after them? Give me a break.

    And ending up “like James Watson” means ending up with a Nobel Prize, and I’m pretty damn sure most scientists would like to end up like that.

    I’m sure there was an overwhelming consensus of biologists in Nazi Germany who believed that the Jews were genetically inferior.

    Consensus is one factor to be taken into account–not the only one, but one important one. And as a matter of fact there was no such consensus in Nazi Germany–that’s why the government had to use force to create such a consensus.

    The thing is, when we don’t allow these subjects to be debated, it will be because “torture IS okay” and “we SHOULD bomb Iran” won in the eyes of those who decide what is allowable discussion.

    So because we don’t debate whether or not the moon is made of green cheese, it’s because we secretly suspect that this is true? That’s an entertaining idea.

    Only a fool would believe that truth and logic are upheld through politics.

    …and debate takes place within a political arena. At least, this debate does. So why are you so confident that the debate will uphold the truth?

    Besides, claiming that there’s scientific evidence for a political ideology when there isn’t any IS POLITICS. It’s not just politics when you disagree with it, I’m afraid.

    Hence, I am always suspicious of any topic where the victors claim “nothing to see here folks! We have it all solved and figured out. Nothing more to add, just move along or you will pay dearly!”

    Indeed. This is why I’m so damn suspicious of those people who keep telling me there’s no Tooth Fairy. I have to wonder what they’re hiding.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Uma fé obscura – Libertarianismo - April 26, 2017

    […] // Tradução de Uriel Alexis.| Artigo Original […]

Leave a Reply

Powered by WordPress. Designed by WooThemes