KAFATOS ON HERRNSTEIN

To the Editors of the Crimson:

I hope that the substance of what Professor Herrnstein is saying in his article in the Atlantic Monthly does not get lost in the crossfire of polemics about academic freedom. For his thesis is important although. I believe, deeply wrong.

The first, and most voluminous, part of the article deals with the I.Q., its history, its predictive value for success in this society, and its heritability. Much of this section is well-written, informative and fair to the data. I do have several minor and two major quarrels with this part. First, the discussion of heredity is simplistic, omitting or underemphasizing crucial elements (e.g., the randomizing effect of I.Q. differences between mother and father, or the extensive overlap between groups with respect to the distribution of scores, which may be more meaningful and useful for the purposes of social policy than is the difference between averages). Second, the correlation between high I.Q. and success in this society says nothing about whether I.Q. measures an individual's overall "ability" or "intelligence." In fact, the correlation may simply point out that this society fails to provide a rewarding life for people with abilities other than those measured by the I.Q. In any case, the first part of the article would make a good contribution to a technical journal and would no doubt provoke sufficient healthy controversy based on technical disagreements alone.

But the importance of the article is elsewhere. It resides not in the bulk of the text but in the last two pages, and in the very revealing, racially oriented introduction by the editors. In the last section. Herrnstein is not a behavioral psychologist but a social theorist: he presumably chose the Atlantic for publication precisely because he considered this part of his article the most important. Thus, if his message is primarily socio-political, it is entirely appropriate that it be criticized on the political level. I am a firm believer in academic freedom, indeed in all freedom of thought and expression. But just as it is intolerable to suppress thought for political reasons, so is it intolerable to make a political statement immune from exposure under the guise of academic freedom.

The main argument in the second part of the article is only peripherally related to I.Q. and can just as well be discussed independently. Its essence is a syllogism: "If differences in mental abilities are inherited, and if success requires those abilities, and if earnings and prestige depend on success, then social standing will be based to some extent on inherited differences among people." An alternative, more direct expression, taking into account Herrnstein's text, would be: Mental abilities are genetically determined in part. Social success and earnings depend on mental abilities, Therefore social success and earnings are genetically determined in part.

Herrnstein proceeds to observe, correctly, that his premises will be reinforced by a social policy that minimizes inequalities of opportunity, optimizes the environment in which all individuals develop, and increases the dependence of social success and earnings on mental abilities. Clearly, if environmentally determined variations in mental abilities are minimized, the genetically determined variations will become more apparent. If the syllogism is correct, the conclusion would then become more forceful. Herrnstein visualizes a hereditary meritocracy becoming established in a highly stratified society as a result of liberal social policy goals and of the heritability of mental abilities. He is clearly resigned to this occurrence, as his last paragraph reveals: "The biological stratification of society would surely go on whether we had tests to gauge it or not, but with them a more humane and tolerant grasp of human differences is possible. And at the moment, that seems our best hope."

Two major points must be made in this connection:

1. Does current social policy really have liberalizing goals? Despite the rhetoric, many of us have been driven to a negative answer in recent years by evidence too painful to overlook any more. As Herrnstein himself states, we simply do not know how much, if any, of the current I.Q. difference between social groups is genetically determined. (Herrnstein fortunately avoids Jensen's fallacious extrapolation of heritability from data within a group to a comparison between groups.) If, as is entirely possible, external rather than genetic inequalities are primarily responsible for current I.Q. differences between social classes, and if these external inequalities are not disappearing (please start with prenatal malnutrition or lead poisoning, not with college admissions)--then shouldn't our first priority be to attack these inequalities, here and now?

2. In the long term, Herrnstein's syllogism is relevant. But incorrect. Because, by premise, its vision is utterly limited to a society based on competition, "built around human inequalities." I consider Herrnstein's article very useful, because a-reader with a broader vision can stand the argument on its head and derive the inevitable conclusion, which the author cannot or dares not derive. If a liberal society based on competition results in a rigidly stratified meritocracy, maybe we don't want a liberal society based on competition. If we still want our society to be liberal and progressive (I, for one, do want it with all my passion), then we must give up competition. Herrnstein can only visualize social organization in terms of a "social ladder." What if the next step in human evolution is a "social net" instead, an organization based on cooperation and altruism rather than a struggle for individual survival? What if we can build a society which emphasizes human diversity and not inequality, a classless society which appreciates all aspects of the human experience? Fetin C. Kafatos   Prolessor of Biology