Argument

In the article “Bright New World,” Ole Martin Moen makes a case for increasing general intelligence globally in order to make the world a better place.^{Footnote 1} The argument seems to proceed in the following way:

1. 1) We should, all other things being equal, do what is better rather than what is worse for humanity.

2. 2) It is better for humanity, all other things being equal, to have people with higher rather than lower intelligence quotient (IQ) scores.

3. 3) One way of having, in the future, people with higher rather than lower IQ scores is to enable individuals with higher rather than lower IQ scores to have offspring.

4. 4) One way of enabling individuals with higher rather than lower IQ scores to have offspring would be to introduce modest economic incentives for prospective mothers who agree to produce their children using artificial insemination by donor (AID), the donors being men whose IQ scores are in the top 5 percent.

5. 5) Therefore, provided that we do not have more cost-effective or less ethically controversial ways of improving the lot of humanity available to us, we should introduce modest economic incentives for prospective mothers who agree to produce their children using AID, the donors being men whose IQ scores are in the top 5 percent.

The argument cannot be found in this exact form in the article. It is a rational reconstruction of the case, with an eye on the principle of charity. Rational reconstruction is needed if an argument in its original form is incomprehensible to the reader, usually due to historical or cultural distance, or unclear. The issue in the present case is unclarity. It is not always obvious what Moen has exactly meant, and this makes the validity, soundness, and normative force of the argument difficult to assess. An auxiliary rule in rational reconstruction is the principle of charity, which requires that the views under scrutiny be presented in their strongest possible form. It is not, of course, always straightforward what the view’s proponents see as its strongest form, but every attempt has to be made to avoid incoherence, inconsistency, and straw man interpretations that are easy to reject but do not catch the essence of what has been claimed.^{Footnote 2}

The argument, as formulated previously, is valid—its conclusion (5) follows logically from its premises (1–4).^{Footnote 3} If, in addition, all the premises are true (morally right and factually accurate), the argument is also sound. Its normative force, even in the case that it is valid and sound, depends on the caveats and qualifications either expressed in the premises (“all other things being equal,” “provided that”) or accumulated in the more detailed analysis.

The aim of this article is not to criticize the idea expressed in Moen’s article. It is, instead, to identify the questions that need to be answered before the argument deserves serious attention. Moen’s responses to the questions posed here might show that the suggestion can and should be taken further—or they might reveal that the case cannot be made in a way that would be acceptable to the parties concerned. The first main section (“What?”) is an attempt to clarify what Moen means by “IQ” and “intelligence” (terms used interchangeably in the article). The second (“How?”) tracks how Moen proposes to proceed in practical terms to reach the goal of a population with higher rather than lower IQ scores overall. The third (“Why?”) examines why Moen believes that higher rather than lower IQ scores would be valuable to humanity, and not a threat. The fourth (“Assumptions”) studies the concepts and presuppositions needed to make the argument credible. And the fifth (“Questions”) lists the questions that need to be answered to complete the case preliminarily presented in the article.

What?

IQ tests are thought, at least by their advocates, to measure the essence of human intelligence. Moen states in the article that higher IQ points can actually solve the world’s challenges.^{Footnote 4} Because I fail to see how a psychological test device, as such, could be one of the world’s most valuable assets, I take Moen to mean that elevated general intelligence, as measured by higher rather than lower individual IQ scores, is the actual item of value referred to. This is not crucial in terms of my rational reconstruction, as the connections made in it are directly among higher IQ scores, ways of achieving them, and their associated benefits. It seems, however, natural to think that the value evoked resides not in IQ measurements themselves but in what they measure.^{Footnote 5}

Intelligence, general intelligence, and IQ scores are believed, in the light of current knowledge, to be genetically inheritable. The correlations seem to be strong when it comes to general intelligence, as measured by IQ scores.^{Footnote 6} Intelligence in any more comprehensive sense, though, is an elusive beast that is best left out of this discussion, at least initially. If we keep our focus on IQ scores and what they are geared to measure, as Moen mostly seems to do, we can, in the first instance, avoid questions about emotional, social, and other types of intelligence that might otherwise cloud the central issue.

Environmental factors are also seen as important to IQ score levels. Moen mentions proposed programs to ensure that pregnant women get sufficient amounts of iodine in their food or from nutrition supplements. In the absence of such programs, Moen writes, “up to 1 billion IQ points per year” are lost, and that “is a shame, for we need all the IQ points [we] can get to solve the world’s challenges.”^{Footnote 7} This suggests that the sum total of IQ points is what we are after, although the idea can be easily challenged (as indicated subsequently) and does not appear in my reconstruction. To put the iodine proposals into perspective, a recent study suggests that the gain of taking iodine deficiency seriously might be in the neighborhood of 1.22 IQ points per child born, with relatively small individual (and more considerable collective) savings in healthcare costs for pregnant women and very modest increases in the children’s lifetime earnings.^{Footnote 8}

One way of increasing the sum total of IQ points in the world is to encourage women to have their children with men who have higher rather than lower IQ scores. To the extent to which IQ scores are inherited, this would do the trick, and this is Moen’s point. It would also, however, be possible to increase the sum total of IQ points in the world by incentivizing people who would otherwise not reproduce to make babies, whatever their IQ score. Every 50 IQ point addition, with the creation of individuals whose IQ scores are 50, would raise the sum total. Because this is probably not what Moen had in mind, this alternative does not figure in my reconstruction.

It should be kept in mind that IQ tests are standardized and adapted to the population. For any population, the median IQ score is always 100. Historically, the nonstandardized results have been constantly rising, for whatever reason. The standardization means that, in a sense, the only way to increase the sum total of IQ points in the world is to increase the population; and, as suggested previously, it would then not matter what the individual scores of the extra people are. Again, because this is probably not what Moen was after, the reconstruction makes no mention of this and simply assumes that the figures referred to are nonstandardized, raw IQ points that can be anchored in a separately specified point in history.

How?

Moen declares that the aim of the article “is not to work the suggestion out in detail but to bring it to the table and give it an ethical defense.”^{Footnote 9} Because it is, of course, useful for any evaluation to start from what exactly has been brought to the table, it is fortunate that the article does in fact outline many elements of the proposed practice.

The first step would be to organize sperm banks to collect semen from men who have an IQ score of 125 or higher, which means that, in terms of general intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, they belong to the top 5 percent of their population. Because Moen does not mention monetary rewards, it is apparently assumed that the donors would participate in the program free of charge.

The second step would be to offer women who are thinking about having children the possibility to start their pregnancies by AID using the collected sperm instead of trying to have biological offspring with other men, including their spouses and partners. The women who agree to do this would receive a fee in three instalments—“one-third at insemination, one-third at birth, and one-third at the child’s fourth birthday.”^{Footnote 10} The reason for the instalment policy is not further explained.

Moen estimates that the cost of the procedure per pregnancy could be kept at $1,000 in a sufficiently large-scale operation. If five billion dollars were spent on the program, up to 5 million children could be born from these pregnancies—this would be, at the current rate, about 1 out of 30 annual births worldwide.

Why?

Moen believes that the benefits of the program would be considerable. Individuals with higher rather than lower IQ scores “have better jobs, eat healthier, are less superstitious, and are less likely to be either violent or the victims of violence.”^{Footnote 11} Because they are smarter and quicker, they are likely to introduce innovations that improve their own lives and the lives of others. Having more people with higher IQ scores would translate into having more researchers, inventors, entrepreneurs, and active citizens instead of criminals and welfare dependents. Apart from these instrumental benefits, Moen also seems to think that intelligence, or the aspects of it that can be measured in IQ tests, is intrinsically valuable—that it is good for us to be skillful in recognizing patterns, in making accurate predictions, in planning ahead, and in solving problems swiftly.

In addition to listing the benefits of raising population IQ scores, Moen’s defense of the policy consists of a number of counterarguments to the criticisms that could be leveled at it. Such criticisms claim, among other things, that the practice would be eugenic, it would devalue people with lower IQ scores, it would benefit some people at the expense of others, it would use women merely as a means, it would be tinkering with evolution, and it would evoke yuck reactions.

To the accusation of eugenics, Moen responds in two ways. On account of its voluntariness, the practice would not be eugenic in the bad way that the racist, compulsory, and self-evidently condemnable Nazi programs were. It would only be eugenic in assuming that some genetic makeups are more beneficial than others. And although this idea has been challenged in the name of equality, Moen believes that the challenge is mistaken. Some genes, he asserts, simply are more beneficial: “Indeed, it seems that as long as we are evaluative realists and we agree that different genetic makeups yield different psychological and behavioral results, it would be an enormous coincidence if they all ended up being equally beneficial.”^{Footnote 12} The upshot is that eugenic ideals cannot be rejected offhand.

Despite favoring genetic makeups that are deemed better, the elevation of IQ scores would not, according to Moen, devalue people with lower IQ test results. All people can be considered equal as far as ethical consideration and fundamental political rights are concerned—there is no reason why the moral status of less intelligent people should be lower than that of more intelligent people. But this is not to deny the value of individuals with higher IQ scores to society. Moen uses a historical example to elucidate the point: “It should be uncontroversial . . . that Alexander Fleming, the inventor of antibiotics, benefited many more people than Louis XIV did. It should also be uncontroversial that Fleming’s invention would not have been possible without his very high intelligence.”^{Footnote 13} So we can say that certain kinds of people are better to have around without saying that other kinds of people have less value as human beings.

The tone of the counterarguments set in the cases of eugenics and genetic devaluation is familiar from science-friendly philosophical literature,^{Footnote 14} and Moen deals with the rest of the criticisms in a similar manner. The proposed program would not be unfair, because people already have different IQ scores, and the program would not change this; and because everybody would be benefited by the elevated innovativeness of the clever individuals born as a result of the policy. Women would not be treated merely as a means, because they could choose whether or not to participate; they would be paid; they would have intelligent children, who are usually not considered a burden; and they would not be alone—“almost all global health programs aim at social goals that are in some sense external to the individuals involved.”^{Footnote 15} Tinkering with evolution would not be a worry, because all kinds of selection mechanisms are already at work in human reproduction; and because people with high IQ scores tend to have fewer children, the proposed policy would only counterbalance a previous human-made bias. And yuck reactions are nothing to go by in the assessment of new technologies, because they, useful as they may be in some contexts, are based on our ancient hunter-gatherer reaction patterns, which are not a reliable guide in our current societies.

Assumptions

All arguments defending real-life schemes like this are based on either solid data and widely accepted norms or—more often—a combination of these and more or less viable factual and normative assumptions about how things are, or should be. These matters can be examined in the light of the premises of the reconstructed argument. According to the first of them:

1. 1) We should, all other things being equal, do what is better rather than what is worse for humanity.

This looks pretty unassailable—who would want to deteriorate the human condition?—but one aspect is in need of clarification. In what sense should we aim to make things “better” for humanity? What exactly does improvement mean in this context?

The second premise elucidates the matter by tying human betterment to individuals with elevated IQ scores:

1. 2) It is better for humanity, all other things being equal, to have people with higher rather than lower IQ scores.

How IQ scores are related to value for humanity remains an open question, though. The possibilities are manifold, ranging from material benefits through intellectual, emotional, and social gains to moral, political, and legal advances. Moen seems to have in mind two advantages. It is intrinsically better for humans to be smarter—and higher IQ scores correlate with this. It is also, and even more importantly, materially advantageous to have individuals with higher rather than lower IQ scores, both for the individuals themselves and for others. Of these assumptions, the idea that smartness is good in itself is a value-related postulation, whereas the expectation of material gains could, potentially, be confirmed or falsified.

As we proceed further into the details of the argument, two things ought to be kept in mind. One is the evidence that is claimed to connect smartness to material rewards. The other is the counterbalancing effect of the other dimensions of benefit and harm involved. The argument seems to be predominantly outcome oriented, and this means that good and bad consequences have to be measured and weighed against one another to find out which course of action produces the greatest positive sum total of net value. If material improvements can only be achieved at the cost of excessive emotional disturbance, social awkwardness, moral decay, political turmoil, or legal chaos, they may not be worth pursuing.

The third and fourth premises show how the goal set in the first two premises can be reached by reproductive choices and their redirection:

1. 3) One way of having, in the future, people with higher rather than lower IQ scores is to enable individuals with higher rather than lower IQ scores to have offspring.

2. 4) One way of enabling individuals with higher rather than lower IQ scores to have offspring would be to introduce modest economic incentives for prospective mothers who agree to produce their children using AID, the donors being men whose IQ scores are in the top 5 percent.

Premise 3 makes a claim about the heritability of IQ scores. This needs more verification than it receives in the article—the evidence given in the cited literature is fragmented, and some of the references are quite old, dating from the last millennium. The claim may well be true, but it is not well substantiated. Premise 4 in the form that I have given it in my reconstruction is almost certainly true in a weak sense. Some women already seek the seed of Nobel laureates in sperm banks without any financial incentives, and it stands to reason that a monetary reward would increase their number to some degree. The interesting question, though, is how much. A considerable increase would be needed to reach the initial target of the proposal, 5 million pregnancies.

If premises 1–4 are true, then the conclusion (5) follows logically from them, given one conceptual caveat. This is the formulation:

1. 5) Therefore, provided that we do not have more cost-effective or less ethically controversial ways of improving the lot of humanity available to us, we should introduce modest economic incentives for prospective mothers who agree to produce their children using AID, the donors being men whose IQ scores are in the top 5 percent.

Note that the “all other things being equal” clause of the first premise now appears in a specified form, as “provided that we do not have more cost-effective or less ethically controversial ways of improving the lot of humanity available to us.” This transformation is based on information added by premises 2, 3, and 4—that the proposal identifies only one possible way of proceeding—and on the potential competition between material (and intellectual) value and its emotional, social, moral, political, and legal alternatives.

Questions