The emperors of the Qing were from Manchuria, and they engaged in conquest southward into China and westward into central Asia.  Once China was conquered, the Qing were primarily concerned with westward expansion to defeat an ethnic group of Mongols called the Zunghars.  The Zunghars, like many central Asians, practiced Tibetan Buddhism, and for this reason they sought to depict themselves as defenders of the Dalai Lama.  In the course of defeating the Zunghars, Qing emperors sought to take over that role.  The important relationship was not between “Tibet” and “China” — it was between emperor and the Dalai Lama.   There are differing accounts of the nature of that relationship, but basically the Qing was committed to prevent any rival power from gaining influence over Tibet by means of the Dalai Lama.  And again, as there was little danger of anybody sending an army over the Himalayas, the primary strategic problem for the Qing had to do with Mongolia, not control over Tibet.

The Qing did not have “sovereignty” over Tibet, not in any ordinary sense of the term.  The Qing did not collect taxes, nor did Qing law apply in Tibet.    The Qing depicted the entire world as subject to various zones of control, and Tibet was one of those zones.  We can blame Qing leaders and Tibetans for not having the foresight to see that in the future the world would be organized into nation-states, but we can’t claim that the Qing-Tibet relationship has any obvious parallel in modern international law.

The basis of China’s claim to Tibet is the same as the U.S.’s claim to New Mexico.  We can be sympathetic to the sufferings of the Apache, but we’d be suspicious if Vladimir Putin began to champion their cause.  And if an Apache leader took refuge in Tijuana, I can’t imagine that American public opinion would be swayed to reparations or to New Mexican autonomy.    I don’t defend the way that Tibetans are being treated, but I’m also not a fan of Tibet’s champions abroad.  The Chinese government acts like a colonial power largely because it itself emerged in response to colonialism.  Making sense of that history seems to me crucial to figuring out what kinds of policy will promote the greater good in China and elsewhere.  I hope to be writing more about it soon.

The Wikifray discussion is here

Hi Gregor,

Your critique comes at a useful time for me. I’ve been designing a course about technology and interactions between Europe and the Qing dynasty. I’d meant the course to be about things like changes in the manufacture of opium, jesuit contributions to cannon technology, the development of a Chinese navy (and the sinking of that navy by the Japanese in 1895), changes in sugar production and how they affected labor, the development of rifles with a higher rate of fire, the relationship between steamboats and steamship diplomacy — that sort of thing, not really history of science at all.

Well, anyway, a lot of the ways that both Chinese and Europeans understood this technological development was cast in racial terms ( roughly “Machines as the Measure of Men” ). So I got into depictions of the world according to supposed technological prowess, and from there it’s just a short hop to Gould’s book on The Mismeasure of Men. I was in the middle of that when I read Saletan. I’ll add that I felt a bit horrified because the institution where I teach is very similar to one that trained him, I regard my main task as trying to prevent people from spouting the kind of bullshit he was spouting. And then I manage to spout my own forms of bullshit as well.

Point being, if you are willing to keep up this conversation (I know you are busy) it would be very helpful to me.

To your most recent points:

Again, genes (interacting with environment) choose specific traits in individuals, a mapping that is itself value neutral. Which traits are highly valued is chosen by society, and varies over time and space. This point is entirely trite and uncontroversial, at least among the sane.

The general point may be uncontroversial, but the specifics matter. I assume this is so obvious to you that you choose not to dwell on it (or maybe you just think I’m dwelling too deeply on it, and want me to look in a different direction.) Anyway, as you know but apparently Saletan doesn’t, and for the benefit of anybody else reading — the variation is in the genes, the ways the genes are expressed, the ways that a given observer chooses to define the trait under observation, and the social value/attention placed on the trait. The cases of race and intelligence both show that you can construct a trait that, yes, corresponds to some kind of physical reality but is itself a reification. I think it is fair to say that most people are less aware of that last point than you are. And I also think the example is an argument for paying attention to history – which definitions have caused mischief in the past, and how? Perhaps you think that if people get the math right the problems are solved and the history doesn’t matter. The honest answer is that I don’t know the math well enough to judge, but it seems to me your Platonic goal of disinterested observation might be served by keeping an eye on those interested observers who thought they were being disinterested.
In my sober moments, I don’t mean to throw the baby out with the bathwater. My post is overstated, but I don’t think that that point is trivial, even to the sane. Maybe I wouldn’t know.

What is not trite is your normative claim that society should choose what it values so that people of different genetic endowments enjoy roughly equal success. The dog example illustrates that nobody is prepared to embrace it beyond a point, not even you (yes, their treatment varies across cultures but pampered slaves is as good as it gets). That is because there are other properties (e.g., general affluence, peacefulness, culture, etc.) that we find desirable in our notions of a good society, and a trade-off between equality and these other virtues is plausible. Some values may be imposed by power elites, but many others are rendered necessary by widely shared goals, like freedom from hunger and violence.

Fair enough. Still, the conversation seems to be going like this:
You “What about the constraints?”
Me “What about the way people overstate those constraints?” I mean, freedom from hunger and violence seem to me goals of very, very few societies – the far more common model seems to be “Protect one group from hunger and violence by lumping as much as possible of it on another.”
So I guess one of my questions is, what kind of a question are we debating? If we are talking about the world of2007, what do you think is the bigger problem – our failure to acknowledge genetic differentiation or the arrangement of the world into societies based on a bogus categories supposedly derived from science? I recognize the two aren’t mutually exclusive, and I also recognize that that isn’t your claim.

So yes, a trade off between equality and heritable virtues is possible (you are right) – but it seems to me that the more difficult social problems up to now have involved trade offs (not made) between groups that are not constituted by genetic differences. More often, what I see happening is people trying to justify for example, poor treatment of women on the basis of female biology. Hence my claim “Surely a just society is one that finds the best way for biological differences to be advantageous to all concerned, that finds opportunities for both short and tall. An unjust society is one that allows prejudice to shape scientific categories, thus justifying discrimination.” – I take your point that the “best way” is going to have a number of caveats, that it will never be possible to ignore genetic differences. I still think the second sentence is correct – you may find it trivial (and not relevant to your own intellectual endeavors) but it’s relevant to the lives of lots and lots of people. It doesn’t necessarily help them to acknowledge the general principle as obvious when the fallacy is so common. (Not that I’m doing them any good either).

Both you and Arch (to say nothing of Stanley Fish) also seem to suffer from the perennial confusion between normative science and the sociology of practiced science. The fact that there are few, if any, disinterested observers doesn’t imply that we shouldn’t endorse a Platonic principle of disinterested observation, and hold each other to it. The statements “Rushton’s motivations are racist” and “Rushton is wrong” require different (though not completely unconnected) reasoning. If I claim that dogs are genetically unsuited to play piano sonatas, it is not enough to cite chapter and verse on how many poodles I have killed or how I am funded by the cat lobby (cats, it is well known, have a deep appreciation of Chopin), true as they might be. The arrogance of postmodernism lies in the smug assumption that everyone who rejects epistemological relativism/nihilism must be a political naïf.

I’m not Stanley Fish. Point taken. As noted, I reacted the way I did because Saletan was rehearsing ideas that were both wrong and caused terrible injustice. He claimed that ignoring the injustice made him more objective, and then used his supposedobjectivity to ignore the ways issues he brought up had already been demonstrated to be problematic. What I think is sad about the episode is that Saletan has now replicated precisely the error you bring up here – he’s partially retracted what he said because he discovered that one of the authors of a study was racist, but still not pointed out the ways that the study was wrong. Probably a more socially useful post would have been to rehearse Gould’s points.

There is more to “what if” than proof by insinuation (though it is often employed as such a tactic, for sure). The evidence for racial differences in socially valued genetic endowments is unpersuasive, but that for substantial individual variations is overwhelming (mushy liberals refute the former by rejecting the latter). If you haven’t thought about how society should treat its congenitally dumb, ugly, lazy, criminal or psychopathic members (in proclivity, at least) - regardless of race or gender - you haven’t paid attention to much that is relevant in the social realm.

Your second sentence – I assume rewritten it says that “There are substantial individual variations in socially valued genetic endowments” I don’t quite understand how that answers my worries about who is deciding what is socially valued. And again, I remain impressed that there might be a lot of different ways of handling this problem, and that an answer on first principles might not be as effective as a kind of ad hoc pragmatism.
But I’ll try to take your question as stated. It seems to me that we have differential moral obligations. I think that there is a certain base set of obligations due to people simply by virtue of their being human, and that those obligations take priority over others (I’m perhaps Confucian in this respect – I see somewhat higher obligations to immediate community, family, etc). Once those basic obligations (i.e. those due to people by virtue of being human) are met, my tolerance for inequality is high. Indeed, I’d prefer a world in which the morally astute (which may well be a heritable characteristic) are rewarded.

Is that a useful response? If not, it would be most helpful for me if you reproduced the old ghost of a-z you –yadda yadda, me trenchant point, you idiotic point, me ??? style of précis.

I’m trying to think of my favorite film death.  I think it is the end of Le Samourai (Japan again, but filtered through France!), which I am now going to spoil by saying that it involves a sacrifice, a clean modern line, a kind of love that can’t really be love.  It’s death as a Sade tune — “We move in space with minimum waste, maximum joy.” 

NIGHTMARE: I get asked that a lot. I’d say it was indeed subtle, my own artistic inspiration, borrowing a bit from German Expressionism and (because I love the textures) the Righteous Brothers. I feel that I had an artistic whole, a real organic quality that…

ME: But just to back up for a moment…

NIGHTMARE: …that recalled Fellini at his most playful and yet sad. I guess La Strada was my biggest influence. Such a brilliant film!

ME: Right, but what specifically was different?

NIGHTMARE: This was the biggest tsunami yet — a wave to convention in order to subvert it.

ME: All my nightmares have the biggest tsunami yet.

NIGHTMARE: But here, recall, that you were at top of the big cliff! And so, breaking down the forth wall, going a little meta, when you thought “those waves are just like in my nightmares,” you felt a false sense of triumph — as if you had endured it all before. As if now, finally, you could rise above and look down on your terror, as if all was well.

ME: Yes, I see.

NIGHTMARE: And then giving you this illusion of wakefulness, I of course produce an even bigger wave, one that makes the cliffs disappear, one that shook the building you were in and covered everything with water.

ME: And then I woke up. It was chilling. I’m wondering, I was speaking to somebody over the weekend who claimed she no longer had nightmares, that even in sleep she knew herself to be dreaming, and thus felt no fear.

NIGHTMARE: The detached observer. Yes, that might be your best strategy, your best hope. But you have to be very careful, because we nightmares are always laying traps, subverting your awareness, sneaking up again. We’re tricky bastards. Comfort yourself in your world all you want, but you’ll see me again, or somebody quite like me.

ME: You’re like a talk show before the writer’s strike.

NIGHTMARE: I enjoy my work. What can I say — I’m an auteur. One can’t strike from oneself.

That much everybody knows. So why am I  blogging about it?
What do I have to add? Well, the way the borders change – they are contingent on collections of impressions, shifting landscapes of shops, schools, apartments, transportation. We recognize that the borders of daily life are impermanent, however meaningful they may be in any moment.

Is that part of the reason for the ever-recurring immigration debate in America? We all know that a border is a fake thing, and thus we pour money into policing, wall-building, legislation, caricatures of immigrants in order to make this fake thing seem real, urgent, permanent, safe. When really no border can be any of those things.

I know that the observation doesn’t solve the problem, or even address what most consider to be the issues, but over and over in the immigration debate my sense is that the actual lives of immigrants are totally marginal to the fears that people have about losing jobs, low wages, security, a breakdown of established rules. Like terrorism, immigration is a debate about our own neuroses. I just wish we once again had political elites willing to insist that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. Instead, we get “FEAR! FEAR! FEAR!” Which in turn makes me rather afraid, just not about immigration or terrorism.

Here’s what I’m thinking. Imagine there is a world of a limited number of wealthy cities, and a vast hinterland of poor areas squeezed out by the imbalance of capital. Imagine, therefore, people immigrating to cities to try to gain a portion of the wealth. How do you think the rich mercantile powerbrokers would react? Perhaps their response would have something to do with police? And perhaps this structure of the world might have come into existence in the late nineteenth century?

That’s what Frederick Wakeman’s Policing Shanghai made me think. He describes the French and British both competing and colluding with the Chinese public security forces in Shanghai in the 1920’s and 30’s. The city was very corrupt, with various forces trying to control the opium trade, and the imperialist powers having a deep interest in helping Chiang Kaishek defeat the Communists (who, the British and French worried, might spur revolts in Indochina and India). Seems like this scenario supports Petrella’s hypothesis.

Occurs to me that this basic regime has only shifted its centers of gravity, not its fundamental logic.  How depressing..