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the NeoEugenics' Home Page Neven Sesardic published in
2000 an interesting article: "Philosophy of Science that Ignores Science:
Race, IQ and Heritability," published in the journal Philosophy of
Science and available in PDF format on the Internet.
He looks at the extreme measures that radical or naďve environmentalists are
undertaking to undermine Jensenism. That is, that the differences in average
intelligence between racial groups is at least in part due to differences in
the frequency of genes. This seems to be so unnerving to so many academics that
they are willing to put forth any argument, even highly specious ones, to
maintain their socially constructed worldviews. It seems that over the last few
hundred years we went from god to pure logic to science and are now turning to
pseudoscience when hard empirical data undergirds genetic science.
The whole article is well worth reading, but I had to spend some time
deciphering Lewontin's well-known objections of inferring between group
heritability from the high heritability of within groups. It is generally
accepted by the American Psychological Association that once a person reaches
adulthood, the heritability of intelligence rises to about 60~80% and may even
be as high as 90% as adults mature and take their place in the workplace. So
radical environmentalists can no longer attack the genetics of intelligence and
all of the various other distortions like "intelligence tests are
biased," etc.
First, it is an axiom in the biological sciences that if there is variability
in a trait within a breeding group (subspecies, breeds, race, population
groups, etc.), there will be genetic differences in that trait between breeding
groups. This should always be the default hypothesis. Lewontin et al. should
have to show why humans come about violating that rule, with the easily
observed differences of intelligence within and between racial groups. Instead,
he and others contend that much more evidence is needed.
This is where the strawman is set up to disprove Jensenism. It is
claimed that Jensen et al. tries to show a genetic Black-White difference in
average intelligence merely on the basis that there is a genetic component to
intelligence within all races. But Jensen does no such thing. There are in fact
volumes of empirical data collected that independently supports the genetic
difference in intelligence between Blacks and Whites.
Jensen addresses two types of environmental arguments against Lewontin's
position. First is the argument that a variable environment between Blacks and
Whites is the entire cause of the Black-White gap. This position requires that
there is also variation within each group in environmental conditions or impact
such as social economic status, quality of schools, nutrition, etc. The degree
of difference between the two groups in environmental variation depends on the
degree of heritability. With the heritability of intelligence in adults taken
as 70~80%, the standard deviation between adverse environmental conditions
effecting Blacks versus Whites would have to be about two standard deviations
for the gap in intelligence to be entirely environmental.
To give an example of how large a difference that is, in a population where the
average IQ is 100, those with an IQ above 130 is only 2.27% of the population.
Empirical observations show that there are no adverse environmental conditions
that enormous between Blacks and Whites. For example, the average Black's
nutritional needs would have to be worse off than the worse off of 2.27% of all
Whites. There just are no environmental conditions that vary that much between
Blacks and Whites. (Steven Pinker recently stated that the average IQ of
Ashkenazim Jews is between 108~115, and that it could not be attributed to any
environmental factors.)
The second environmental argument Jensen calls X-Factor: "Namely, this
factor ought to be uniformly present in one group and uniformly absent in the
other group, and furthermore it should manifest no variation inside either
group. For this reason, SES and educational inequalities (the usual suspects in
the puzzle of racial difference in IQ) are automatically excluded in this kind
of scenario because they obviously have a significant variance within both
whites and blacks. The same is true of some other popular candidates for
X-factor account, and all this shows that the search will by no means be easy.
Indeed, high within-group heritability can so severely constrain the X-factor
theorizing as to make this type of environmentalism exceptionally vulnerable to
disconfirmation."
An example of one possible X-factor is discrimination based on race against
Blacks: it is found in one group but not the other. James Flynn however
explains why this is a problem: "But this is simply an escape from hard
thinking and hard research. Racism is not some magic force that operates
without a chain of causality. Racism harms people because of its effects and
when we list those effects, lack of confidence, low self-image, emasculation of
the male, the welfare mother home, poverty, it seems absurd to claim that any
one of them does not vary significantly within both black and white
America."
In short, discrimination or racism can only operate through a number of
variable environmental factors. That puts the argument back into trying to show
that these differences in environment are significant at the level of two
standard deviations between the two groups—an extreme on the bell curve—of what
is normally found that it nullifies the radical environmental position.
It was interesting to note that Sesardic quoted Flynn several times. James
Flynn—of Flynn Effect fame—is in opposition to Jensenism, trying to find
evidence for an environmental reason for differences in average intelligence
between races. But he is an honest researcher, like Jensen, who looks at the
evidence and refuses to distort it for political reasons. Contrast him to
Robert Sternberg, who will say anything, including personal attacks, to try and
hinder the acceptance of Jensenism.
So how does Flynn summarize the debate between Jensenists and the environmental
determinists? "The result is something of a massacre, with Jensen showing
that the most cherished environmental hypotheses have been sheer speculation
without a single piece of coherent research in their favor. For this alone, all
seekers of the truth are greatly in his debt."
There are not many arguments that can be used against the obvious fact that
there are genetic differences responsible for the average IQ between different
population groups. The environmentalists are constantly claiming that the
Jensenists are biological determinists, and yet it is the Jensenists that
accept that there are both environmental and genetic differences that interact
in causing differences in average IQ. That means the environmentalists will not
admit to ANY genetic contribution—making their position the extremist one.
There are only a handful of tactics that remain to try and stop the general
public from learning the truth about the genetics of mental ability:
Spearman's g or a single factor for general intelligence is often
attacked as not being correct or other factors such as
Another is the Flynn Effect. Sesardic states, "Flynn's argument against
Jensen (that Block endorses) is based on an observed increase of average IQ
test scores in many countries in the last several decades—the phenomenon known
as the 'Flynn Effect'. Flynn's argument about race builds on this and goes as
follows. Since this secular gain in IQ must be due to some environmental causes
(about which we are now completely in the dark), then there is also a hope that
the racial gap in IQ might be accounted for in the same way (in terms of some
presently unknown environmental differences). This is an interesting argument
but it is hardly to be taken as immediately convincing or methodologically
unproblematic, especially not in a contribution that aspires to examine the
whole debate in a critical spirit. There are several obvious worries about the
argument. For example, psychologist Robert C. Nichols raised a serious
objection. He first reconstructed Flynn's argument and presented it in the form
of four premises and the conclusion, and then dismissed it as a 'faulty
syllogism', or as an obscurum per obscurius reasoning. But although this
kind of criticism ought to be specially congenial to philosophers of science,
and is moreover, published as an immediate response to Flynn's paper on which
Block so strongly relies, Block's paper contains no mention of that highly
relevant contribution to the discussion, nor of any other of the conspicuous
problems with Flynn's reasoning. Again, the filter blocked that kind of
information."
Another argument against genetic racial differences is Lewontin's observation
that 85% of genetic variation exists within population groups and only 15%
between population groups or races. But so what? The 15% can carry enough
difference for there to be far-reaching differences in cognitive function. Look
at breeds of dogs where the same situation could obtain—but a few genes makes
different breeds very different in looks, temperament, intelligence, etc. In
addition, recent discoveries in how different races need to be treated
different for medical conditions because they are different genetically belies
Lewontin's argument.
Then of course there are the endless just-so stories about this or that
environmental cause for Black–White differences in intelligence, but they never
succeed when put to empirical examination. Still, they keep a steady flow of
possible answers in front of the public instead of the real one.
The most sophomoric argument however is that only racists would even research
such a subject. That is like saying that philosophers should not discuss the
existence of god because it might hurt religious people's feelings. It is so
absurd, and yet this tactic is becoming ever more common in desperation.
"Jensenists are racists, and we therefore can dismiss their
research." In science, nothing is beyond being studied, as long as the
experiments themselves are not harmful. Of course, they can't just give up
completely in finding environmental causes for racial intelligence differences,
so lacking hard empirical evidence, most of the anti-race-realists have turned
to narrative studies. This way they can keep pointing their fingers at
racist Whites for all of the Black man's problems without empirical evidence.