Asian Americans are more valuable than white Americans
a guest post by Stephen Kershnar
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The following is a guest post by Stephen Kershnar, one of the most controversial philosophers alive.
I do not endorse Kershnar’s essay: in a comment, which I’ll leave later, I will explain some of the disagreements I have.
In technical terms, though, Kershnar is a brilliant philosopher, and he is always full of surprises. If you disagree, which I do and which you will, I ask that you read the whole thing before commenting — in particular, I encourage you to read beyond the first two sentences.
With that, let the Kershnar cycle reactivate…
When professors talk about IQ, intelligence, and race, many seem terrified that their colleagues will call them a racist. Some professors – such as Charles Murray and Noah Carl – try to soften their findings by saying that intelligence differs from moral worth, and so the differences they’re focusing on don’t matter so much. Other professors say that intelligence does not affect what makes people valuable. Instead, they say, virtue matters, and it doesn’t correlate with intelligence. In this essay, I argue that the professors are mistaken. People and groups are not equally valuable. Nor does their value depend on how virtuous they are.
The value of something is equal to the sum of its intrinsic value and extrinsic value. These types of value exhaust the types of value something can have. Something is intrinsically valuable just in case it is valuable because of its intrinsic property. Something is extrinsically valuable just in case it is valuable because of its extrinsic property. That is, something is extrinsically valuable because of its relation to something else.
A person’s intrinsic value depends on his well-being or, perhaps, his desert-adjusted well-being. We'll leave desert aside for now. Our intuitions support the notion that intrinsic value tracks well-being. Intuitively, it seems that what makes people happier makes the world better. Similarly, it intuitively seems that God would favor making happy people rather than sad people because creating happy people would make the world better. Â
Well-being is another way of talking about how well someone’s life goes for him. As the late great Derek Parfit points out, purported bases of well-being include pleasure, desire-fulfillment, and objective-list goods. Intuitively, greater pleasure makes someone’s life go better for him. See, for example, the above hypothetical regarding whom God would prefer to create.
Desire-fulfillment, though, does not make someone’s life go better for him. As Parfit points out, if a person has a desire, but never finds out whether it is satisfied, it does not make his life go better. Consider the following case.
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Case #1: Snow Leopard
A person is watching a show on animals. She sees a snow leopard desperately trying to catch a sheep, and desires that the leopard catch it. She never finds out whether the leopard succeeds.
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It is implausible that the leopard’s failure make the viewer’s life go worse. She never finds out that the leopard failed. In contrast, a person’s experience of a desire being satisfied makes her life go better, but this is a type of pleasure. Roughly, a pleasure is an experience that the experiencer intrinsically desires.
In addition, if a person desires something to happen in the future, for example, he wants his son to become a doctor, but he dies before his son becomes a doctor, there is no time at which his desire makes his life go better. It does not make the father’s life go better when he has the desire because the desire has not yet been fulfilled. It does not make his life go better when the desire is fulfilled because the desire no longer exists because the desirer no longer exists. Â
On some theories, objective-list goods make a person’s life go better. An objective-list good is something that makes a person’s life go better independent of whether it is pleasurable or fulfills his desire. Plausible objective-list goods include knowledge, love, moral responsibility, and virtue. Following the late Robert Nozick – also great –the intuition behind objective-list goods is that we don’t want to live in an experience machine even if it doing so would make us have an extremely pleasurable life. Here is the relevant case.
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Case #2: Experience Machine
When hooked up to an experience machine, a person experiences being a certain sort of person and doing certain sorts of things even though neither is true. The hooked up person would have an extremely pleasurable life. Before being hooked up, a person must consent to and then pay for being hooked up to the machine.
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When asked, most people do not want to be hooked up to such a machine, even though they would have an extremely pleasurable life. They don’t want to be hooked up because they would not have objective-list goods, only the experience of having them.
If the above claims are true, then how well someone’s life goes depends on the amount of pleasure and the amount of objective-list goods he gets during his lifetime. As a result, how much well-being a person has during his lifetime is equal to the intensity of his well-being – well-being per time – and how long he lives.
           On some theories, what is intrinsically good is not well-being, but desert-adjusted well-being. That is, some people think that it is better that decent people are happy and that evil people are sad, rather than vice versa. Consider this case.
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Case #3: Util Benefactor
A benefactor can give 100 utils (units of pleasure) to decent folk or 101 units of pleasure to prison rapists.
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Most people intuit that even if neither gift affects third parties, the benefactor should give the utils to the decent folk even though it adds less to aggregate well-being. What explains this intuition is that it is good that people get what they deserve.
The best theories of desert say that praiseworthy acts or virtue grounds desert. I claim that praiseworthy acts alone do so. Intuitively, if manipulators make someone more virtuous, this does not make her deserve more happiness. For example, if a radical Marxist group makes Patty Hearst more virtuous by brainwashing her, intuitively, this does not make her more deserving. As a result of the above arguments, I claim that intrinsic value is equal to the weighted product of a person’s well-being and desert, although the actual mathematical relation is more complex.
           Extrinsic value is the value an individual has on the basis of his relation to something that has intrinsic value. For example, a person’s extrinsic value depends on how much he increases others’ desert-adjusted well-being. A person might increase desert-adjusted well-being by benefitting others via work or charity. He might also do so by reproducing.
 If the above claims are value are correct, the following equations capture the value of an individual’s life.
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Table #1: Value of an Individual’s Life
(1) Total Value = Intrinsic Value + Extrinsic Value
(2) Intrinsic Value = [(Well-Being / Time) x Time] x Desert
(3) Well-Being / Time = (Amount of Pleasure + Amount of Objective-List Goods) / Time
(4) Desert = (Praiseworthiness / Act) x (Number of Acts)
(5) Extrinsic Value = Contribution to Others’ Intrinsic ValueÂ
           On this theory, the total and average value of a group depends on value per individual and number of individuals. The following equations capture these notions.
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Table #2: Value of a Group
(6) Total Value = (Total Value / Individual) x (Number of Individuals)
(7) Average Value = Total Value / Individual
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           If these equations are correct, then people often differ in value. Some people have greater well-being than others. Some people are more deserving than others. Consider, for example, a person who lives an ecstatic, morally good, and long life compared to one whose life has none of these features.Â
The same is true for groups. Consider, for example, Asian-Americans and whites. On average, Asian-Americans live longer than whites. Asian-Americans likely get more objective-list goods. They likely get more love because – on average – they are more likely than whites to be married and less likely to get divorced. They likely know more than whites because – on average – they have greater intelligence (as measured by IQ tests) and greater knowledge (as measured by success in school). They likely are more virtuous than whites because – on average – they are less likely to commit crime. On average, these same sorts of things likely also make them more deserving than whites.
Intelligence is relevant here. Intelligence correlates with pleasure and longevity. That is, it correlates with the amount of pleasure a person experiences during his lifetime. Intelligence also correlates with objective-list goods. As measured by IQ, greater intelligence correlates with marriage and success in school. As measured by IQ, intelligence inversely correlates with divorce and crime. Based on criminality and divorce, intelligence likely also correlates with how deserving someone is. The correlation here is general. Exceptions are quite common.
If moral responsibility is an objective-list good, then more intelligent people likely have more of it. This is because greater intelligence makes it more likely that a person understands and reacts to moral reasons. On John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza’s theory of responsibility – in my view, the best theory of it in philosophy – reasons responsiveness lies at the heart of moral responsibility. Both the above conceptual argument and empirical evidence support this correlation.
If intelligence correlates with work-based contribution and inversely correlates with reproduction, then it is unclear whether intelligence correlates with extrinsic value. Given the importance of reproduction to extrinsic value, it is likely that reproduction-based contribution outweighs work-based contribution. The argument for reproductive contribution being more important than work-based contribution is that the average life is worth $10 million dollars and, through work, most people don’t contribute that much economic value to others. Â
In deciding someone’s value, then, we need to consider intrinsic and extrinsic value. It is unlikely that regarding two people chosen at random, they are equally valuable. They likely differ in intrinsic value because they differ in well-being and desert. It’s unlikely that the differences balance each other out. They also likely differ regarding extrinsic value. Again, it’s unlikely that the differences in their intrinsic and extrinsic value balance each other out. Â
Groups are also not equally valuable. In addition to differing in average value, groups differ in total value. This is in part due to groups having different numbers of people. Â Â
In short, people are likely not equally valuable. This is in part because they do not have lives that go equally well for them. This is in part because they are not equally deserving. Similar factors tells us that groups are likely not equally valuable. This applies to races in the same way that it applies to other groups. Consider, for example, that faculties, nationalities, and sexes likely differ in value. Â
An objector might claim that people are equally valuable because they are all human. This objection fails. Being human does not make someone valuable. It is an arbitrary biological category similar to left-handedness. If there were an intelligent creature who was not human – for example, Marvin the Martian – his value would depend on his intrinsic and extrinsic value in the same way that Ronald Reagan’s value depends on these things. Being human is morally irrelevant.
A second objector might claim that people are equally valuable because they all have the same potential. This objection also fails. Having potential does not make someone valuable. Potential is merely the possibility – or, perhaps, likelihood – of having that which makes someone valuable. It is not itself a value-maker. In addition, people likely do not have the same potential. People with genetic-based psychopathy probably do not have the same potential regarding objective-list goods and desert as do others.
A third objector – motivated by one of John Rawls’ ideas – might claim that there is a threshold of value. The objector claims that everyone above this threshold has the same value. The problem with this objection is that it violates a plausible principle regarding justification: The greater the justifier, the greater that which it justifies. This principle seems true regarding the prudential goodness of knowledge, love, moral responsibility, and virtue. It also seems true regarding the other-things-equal value of desert. This principle, then, likely governs individuals’ value.  Â
Professors who talk about IQ, intelligence, and race, but who deny that these things matter, are mistaken about what makes people valuable. In general, people are not equally valuable. Neither are groups. And in general, intelligence correlates with some of the value-makers. The discussion of value should be kept separate from the discussion of IQ, intelligence, and race. Mistaken claims about equal value or about value tracking virtue are mistaken. As a result, they fail to make the implications of the professors’ findings less disturbing. Â
Ok, as promised:
1. This isn't an objection to anything in the article, only a meta-point about how much it matters. Some questions don't matter, and, as a result, some technically false statements about those questions don't really *need* correcting. Suppose it's true that the total value of some groups is higher than other groups, and that this is true in the context of racial groups (where 'racial groups' is understood loosely enough to satisfy philosophers who are, say, social constructivists about race); even so, I'm skeptical that the question 'are Asian Americans more valuable than white Americans?' matters any more than the question 'do people with an odd number of freckles matter more than people with an even number of freckles?'. Just as we will never, in fact, face a trolley problem regarding people with an odd number of freckles or an even number of freckles, we will never face a trolley problem wherein we're forced to choose between two racial groups. Some false assertions don't matter either: suppose someone falsely claims that people with odd freckles are necessarily worth the same as people with even freckles. Presumably, even if all false beliefs are intrinsically disvaluable, this one doesn't matter very much, especially if its isolated from other aspects of the person's belief system that are practically relevant. You might wonder whether, in the race context, Kershnar's conclusions have any practical import. I suggest they have none. Regardless of which groups contain the most value, all groups members are sufficiently valuable that they have rights, deserve respect, etc. You might wonder whether his conclusion has distributive implications vis-Ã -vis the allocation of scarce medical resources. But presumably, race is just a very loose proxy for the sum of someone's value, which can basically always be more accurately figured out by considering them individually. (You might charitably interpret Murray et al. to be saying that all groups matter equally *in all senses that matter practically*.)
2. I've never spent a minute looking into race/IQ research because everyone who ever has seems to have been made worse off as a result; but I'm a little suspicious of some of the empirical claims in terms of how they relate to wellbeing. E.g., if Asian Americans do better in schools, it's not clear why this means that they'd have more knowledge, as opposed to merely more academic knowledge or knowledge how to do well in tests. And there wasn't an argument for why academic knowledge is more intrinsically valuable than other types of knowledge one might acquire instead. (Similarly, I wonder about the strength of the putative correlation between IQ and knowledge, as opposed to some particular class of knowledge. Unless there is an argument singling certain sorts of knowledge out, it seems like there's a lot of work needing to be done to do this kind of group level comparison well. [And, who would want to do that?]).
3. Similarly, I have questions - though not objections - about some of the other claims. E.g., if white people get divorced more, does that strongly correlate with less time spent in love? You might think that many people who don't divorce due to cultural pressure are stuck in loveless marriages, and might be getting more love if they divorced.
4. Otherwise, I found the more theoretical claims about wellbeing pretty plausible, though I'm fairly uncertain about this stuff.
I think the framing here makes it sound more controversial than it is. What would be controversial, I take it, would be to say that it is better for good things to happen to Asians than to whites. The claim here, put more precisely, seems simply to be that Asians have better lives. Sure, that seems right enough. The problem is that saying that Asians are more valuable makes it sound like you might be saying the former, when the claim is really the latter.Â
The desert point complicates this a little, but if you really do think value should be desert adjusted, then this implication shouldn't be very surprising anyways. I mean, pick whatever gerrymandered group you want of people with more desert and this implication just falls out.