During our last debate, an audience member asked Mark Krikorian if his arguments for restricting immigration of foreigners were also arguments for restricting the child-bearing of natives. You might think that Mark would insist that native babies are somehow better than foreign adults. How hard could it possibly be to craft such an argument? However, Mark adamantly refused to compare the worths of different kinds of people. Instead, he informed the questioner that his question was based on a “category error.”
In so doing, Mark signaled high IQ, because smart people love to announce that someone has made a “category error.” But precisely what is a category error? Here’s a standard definition:
To show that a category mistake has been committed one must typically show that once the phenomenon in question is properly understood, it becomes clear that the claim being made about it could not possibly be true.
Here’s a more detailed discussion:
Category mistakes are sentences such as ‘The number two is blue’, ‘The theory of relativity is eating breakfast’, or ‘Green ideas sleep furiously’. Such sentences are striking in that they are highly odd or infelicitous, and moreover infelicitous in a distinctive sort of way. For example, they seem to be infelicitous in a different way to merely trivially false sentences such as ‘2+2=5″ or obviously ungrammatical strings such as ‘The ran this’.
Which raises a big question: How could the audience member’s perfectly intelligible question possibly be a “category error”?! If you say, “We should restrict immigration because immigrants burden taxpayers,” what on Earth is wrong with responding, “In that case, should we restrict child-bearing if babies burden taxpayers?” The answer, of course, is: Nothing at all. Not only is the latter question in the same “category” as the former question; it is the textbook way to check the logic of Mark’s position. And it starkly reveals the inadequacy of Mark’s original argument. Whatever your views on immigration, Mark definitely needs to assert something like, “We should restrict immigration because immigrants burden taxpayers and only natives are entitled to burden taxpayers.”
This in turn shifts the argument over to the fundamental question: What is morally permissible to do to foreigners but not natives – and why? Which recalls a previous Krikorian-Caplan dialogue. I asked Mark: “Suppose you can either save one American or x foreigners. How big does x have to be before you save the foreigners?” And Mark responded:
Another meaningless hypothetical.
Not only is this a meaningful question; it gets to the heart of what Mark needs to formulate a coherent position on immigration. I’m confident that Mark, as an avowed Christian, thinks we have no right to murder or enslave foreigners. And an avowed restrictionist, Mark clearly thinks we have a right to prohibit foreigners from domestic labor and residential markets – even though plenty of natives are eager to trade with them. Why, though, does Mark draw the line there? While it is rhetorically convenient for him to dodge the question by calling it a “category error” or “meaningless,” he intellectually doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
So why not face the question instead of stonewalling? I stand by my previous explanation: Mark thinks like a politician, not a truth-seeker. To make his position intellectually credible, he’d have to say, “Foreigners’ welfare is of near-zero value.” Unfortunately for him, this sounds terrible – and like most politicians, Mark hates to utter anything that sounds terrible. Occasionally bullet-biting is essential for truth, but it’s bad for winning popularity contests.
I’m never nervous when I debate Mark; he has good manners and reminds me of my dad. In contrast, I would be quite nervous even to be in the same room as a white nationalist. They seem like sociopaths. In terms of intellectual rigor, however, leading white nationalists far exceed Mark. I naturally think they’re deeply wrong. Still, if you want to construct an airtight argument for immigration restriction, your best bet is to build on the twin premises that (a) almost all immigrants are inferior to natives, and (b) the well-being of these inferior people is of little worth.
READER COMMENTS
Rebes
Jul 8 2020 at 11:16am
Excellent analysis.
“Naw, Jem, I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.”
Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Thomas Hutcheson
Jul 8 2020 at 12:14pm
I think you could make a logical augment that the class of immigrant that one wished to restrict would be a net subtraction to the real income of existing residents. It would be an empirical question whether a particular rule rule could restrict that class of immigrant without restricting other immigrants who would be net additions to the real incomes of resident at low enough administrative cost.
This principle, though restrictive, would still lead to immigration increasing by at least an order of magnitude
James Phillips
Jul 8 2020 at 12:58pm
You may be right that the case for immigration restriction is airtight starting from those two premises. But they are very unlikely and unattractive premises, giving your argument a definite strawman quality. Frankly, you are better than that.
The better argument for caring more about natives than immigrants is that natives are more fully our neighbors and brothers than foreigners. We are more involved in each other’s lives and affairs, and we should feel more empathy and solidarity with them. This is in the Bible, this is in Smith, this is in human nature. It’s a reasonable starting point to make a restrictionist argument, and I’m pretty sure this is where Krikorian should start. I don’t know if he does start there, but it is pretty clearly the best starting point in making the restriction case. Why not address this argument rather than the unattractive strawman you knocked down?
nobody.really
Jul 8 2020 at 3:38pm
I would rephrase. After all, I rather expect that people in Larado, Texas, are much more involved in the lives and affairs of local Latin American immigrants than they are in the lives and affairs of people in, say, U.S. citizens in Alaska and Hawaii.
Instead, I’d argue that many people regard nationality as a mutual aid society. Under this view, we are expected to feel some kind of solidarity with people who share our nationality, even if they are total strangers to us, whereas we are not expected to share such solidarity with people who do not share our nationality. In an earthquake or tsunami, we expect FEMA rescue people in San Diego–but not similarly situated people in Tijuana.
Thus, I expect that Krikorian may well regard these questions categorically. This isn’t a question about how much he values other people. Rather, it’s a legalistic question of who had a claim on the loyalty of a fellow countryman, and who doesn’t.
So it is. I expect that humans evolved in small tribes, and thus we have an innate inclination to tribalism.
But people who regard nations as fairly arbitrary constructs–libertarians, for example–may not share this view. Moreover, I understand the Bible to also nboorepudiate this view. Indeed, in the parable of the good Samaritan (among other texts), I read Jesus of Nazareth to call upon his followers to extend compassion without regard to tribal boundaries. Cuz, as Deidre McCloskey reminds us, Jesus and libertarians have so much in common….
Mark Z
Jul 8 2020 at 3:53pm
Proximity might explain why people feel this way, but it doesn’t really justify it. There are cities in the world I’ve been to that I like better than any in the US, where I’ve found the people are generally nicer, the culture is better imo; if a disaster struck such a foreign city, it would affect me sentimentally at least as much if a comparable disaster struck any American city. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that (or anything peculiarly right with it, I think it’s morally neutral). I don’t really perceive much of a sentiment then to justify caring more about people who happen to live in the same nation-state as me.
Mark
Jul 8 2020 at 4:31pm
The question that is how much less important is a foreigner than a citizen? Should a foreigner be worth the same as a citizen, half, a tenth, a hundredth, or nothing at all?
Just saying “we should value our own citizens above foreigners” is extremely vague and nearly everyone agrees with it on some level. For instance, I’d expect nearly everyone to agree that it is okay for certain taxpayer benefits to be only available to citizens, but also to think it is not okay to enslave foreigners and make them work for citizens. That suggests most people put a moral value on foreigners that is less than 1 citizen but more than 0 citizens. So the question is one of quantity.
And the fact is that the marginal benefit of immigration to a typical foreigner is going to be many times larger than any marginal costs to citizens (indeed I’d argue citizens get a benefit on the margin). So to argue that immigration restriction is justified, you really do have to give an extremely low number that would be morally shocking if it were spelled out.
Matthias Görgens
Jul 8 2020 at 10:57pm
Bryan already addressed arguments like that, eg in his recent comic book on immigration.
One standard argument for a second best solution, is to just tax immigrants for the harm their are supposedly causing, and then some extra, to turn a profit.
Use the money collected to do something nice for the closer natives you care more about.
You can also restrict migrants access to welfare, and only allow them to stay in the country for as long as they have a tax paying job, etc.
All those restrictions will alleviate any hypothetical harm migrants are causing, while still being less onerous on them than the near total ban in migration we see today.
Philo
Jul 8 2020 at 1:27pm
“I’m pretty sure this is where Krikorian should start.” Caplan’s point is that Krikorian hasn’t actually done this. White Nationalists have a valid argument, it’s just that their premises are false. Krikorian hardly has anything that counts as an argument.
Maybe you can do better that Krikorian. But your premises don’t look very promising. I live in the northern Midwest. Why consider Hawaiians more my neighbors than Manitobans? I have an actual (not just metaphorical) brother who lives in Canada and has become a Canadian citizen. Naturally I am more involved in his life and affairs, and feel more empathy and solidarity with him, and with his Canadian-born children, than I do with some random American. And you don’t explain how naturalized American citizens have managed to achieve the neighbor-brother/empathy-solidarity status that they lacked before naturalization.
Still, you can probably improve on the performances both of Krikorian and of the White Nationalists. Go for it!
Mark
Jul 8 2020 at 4:58pm
I agree. In the dialogue this links too, Krikorian seems to argue that immigration somehow weakens national solidarity, and this point is not challenged by Caplan. However, I propose that immigration does not inherently weaken national solidarity, but can only do so in a nation where most people are xenophobic. One could also imagine a society where most people are xenophilic and take pride in being cosmopolitan. In such a society, immigration would actually increase national solidarity by reinforcing cosmopolitanism as the society’s value and point of pride. Indeed, sometimes it seems that Canada is already there and many liberal parts of the US are as well. There was incredible community-level solidarity in for example the peaceful street protests against a Trump’s Muslim ban. I could easily see a unifying pro-immigration national narrative in the future that runs something like “We did a lot of bad stuff in the past but we’ve found redemption through becoming the first society that did not just use its spoils of conquest to enrich itself but became open to all the world to share in those spoils.”
Mark Z
Jul 9 2020 at 3:09am
I’d rather eschew the idea of national solidarity altogether. Particularly for a nation as diverse as the US in terms of culture and values, I think the only plausible unifying theme is a commitment to individual freedom. I don’t care much for the idea of American exceptionalism, but I think America’s unifying narrative has generally been (and should be) unusually rooted in abstract ideas – like equality and freedom – rather than collective historical narratives like the one you suggest. It seems like you’re suggesting trying to repurpose the nationalist myth (the idea of some morally contiguous national identity), but I don’t think it’d work, or be desirable. As long people believe there is a cohesive “us” in that sense, many (or most) people will reject a collective identity based on guilt at atonement and opt for something else.
James Phillips
Jul 8 2020 at 6:25pm
I have just sketched the alternative premises. I am not trying in depth to defend them, still less to argue from them. Others have already done that, e.g. Smith. I’m quite certain that Krikorian does not argue from the premises Caplan proposes here, and the result is that he manages to associate Krikorian with very disreputable views, without actually showing that he holds them, or that they are required to make a restrictionist case. I think – I know – Caplan can do better than that. Let’s hear the best arguments, all of them in good faith.
KevinDC
Jul 9 2020 at 11:13am
I think you’re missing the point of the post. Caplan isn’t claiming that Krikorian holds those premises. At least that’s not how I read it.
The point is more like this. Let’s say Krikorian does in fact hold premises like the alternate ones you laid out, or something reasonably close to them. If that’s the case, then Krikorian has two problem. First, those premises don’t lead to the conclusion he wants to defend, and second, they render his responses to the questions he was asked as pure dodges. If you merely hold that one should care “more” about the lives and well being of people who pay taxes in the same political boundaries as you, compared to lives of people in the rest of the world, then it’s reasonable to ask questions like “how much more”, and wondering what the exchange rate between citizen and non-citizen well being should be is a perfectly sensible and coherent question to ask. This renders Krikorian’s claims about category errors and meaningless hypotheticals an intellectually lazy dodge.
The only way to get around having to answer those questions is to hold the alternate premises that Caplan describes. If you genuinely think that there is categorically no amount of non-citizen welfare that can be compared to citizen welfare, and that it is inherently meaningless to even ask how much of one can offset the other, that does entail believing that citizen welfare is of infinitely greater value than non-citizen welfare. But Krikorian obviously wouldn’t endorse that. He probably believes that our concern for citizen welfare should be massively higher, but not infinitely higher. But he doesn’t want to actually explicitly say that either. Answering Bryan’s question with “It would take a massive number of foreign lives to deserve as much of our concern as the life of a single non-foreigner” sounds awful.
So Bryan’s initial claim seems sound to me. If you merely want to argue that “we” should care “more” about citizens than noncitizens, then questions about how much more we should care are sensible and coherent questions that you should be expected to answer as part of your claim. But a response that such questions are “meaningless” or so incoherent as to be a “category error” only holds if the welfare of citizens is deemed infinitely higher. Otherwise, those questions are meaningful and Krikorian’s responses leave him with no intellectual leg to stand on.
nobody.really
Jul 8 2020 at 3:50pm
One (more) interpretation: Rightly or wrongly, we have legal mechanisms for limiting immigration. As far as I know, we lack legal mechanisms for limiting birth. Thus, even if immigration and birth rates are substitutes regarding the labor supply, they are not substitutes regarding public policy mechanisms for controlling them. In a public policy sense, they are in different categories.
KevinDC
Jul 9 2020 at 11:58am
This doesn’t work as a defense of using the “category error” claim. In order for a question or claim to be a category error, the question or claim needs to be incoherent, like asking “What color is the number two?” or claiming “I have an airplane made of sleep.” Just pointing out that things fall into different legal categories doesn’t make something a category error, at least not in the sense that term is used in logic.
To use an example from the natural sciences – is Pluto a planet? Currently, based on how we classify things, Pluto is not in the category of “planet.” But suppose I thought it should be? I might ask “why isn’t Pluto a planet?” or argue “Pluto should be classified as a planet again because XYZ.” But neither the question nor my hypothetical arguments would be committing a category error. Additionally, it wouldn’t be adequate to respond to me by appealing to the fact that Pluto isn’t currently in the “planet” category. The whole point of the discussion is “what is the proper classification for Pluto” – to argue that Pluto should keep its current classification by appealing to its current classification is just begging the question in that debate.
Similarly, Krikorian and Caplan weren’t holding a debate about what policy currently is. They were debating about what policy should be. So arguing that foreigners should be classified differently on the basis that we classify foreigners differently just begs the question in that discussion as well.
nobody.really
Jul 9 2020 at 2:55pm
Right. And in making that argument, they are presumably arguing about changing immigration policy–something we all recognize that (for better or worse) government controls.
But then someone asked about domestic reproduction–something that (as far as I know) government does NOT control. Thus, in debating about that policy should be, arguably questions about domestic reproduction are in a different category, outside the scope of the policy debate.
Now, I expect that there are things that government could do to discourage domestic reproduction. For example, government might decline to provide free public education to more than one child per couple. Thus, the boundaries between “things within government control” and “things beyond government control” are not as firm as I suggested above.
Still, if our goal is to understand Krikorian’s response rather than simply play a game of one-upsmanship, I suggest that my interpretation is more charitable–and perhaps more accurate–than Caplan’s.
KevinDC
Jul 9 2020 at 3:28pm
I disagree. It’s true that domestic reproduction is not currently under government control, but that doesn’t imply it’s out of the category of things that can be brought up in a discussion over what should be under government control. This is particularly true when you’re discussing the reasons for why something should or shouldn’t be under government control. If in a debate about X, you say “X should be under government control because Z,” it’s perfectly valid to reply “That would mean Y should also be under government control because Y is also Z.” Whether or not Y is currently under government control doesn’t somehow make the reply a category error, nor does it matter if Y wasn’t the original topic of the debate.
There’s a few valid responses that were available. You can withdraw the claim that Z implies things should be under government control, or you can argue that Y is not in fact Z and therefore Y shouldn’t be under government control (or at least not because of Z, there may be other reasons it should), or you can supplement your initial claim with additional factors that would include X but exclude Y. Caplan even suggested one that Krikorian could have used – “We should restrict immigration because immigrants burden taxpayers and only natives are entitled to burden taxpayers.” Indeed, for a committed nativist, that seems like a really mild bullet to bite. That response would have salvaged Krikorian’s initial position (provided he could have given a decent defense the additional clause). But that’s not the route he took. Instead he declared the question to be a “category error,” which is a demonstrably false claim, and honestly a silly one at that.
James
Jul 8 2020 at 8:26pm
Krikorian does not even need to address the welfare of foreigners to make his case. Here is a start:
If I hired a financial advisor and that advisor used 10% of my net worth to fund safe drinking water in developing nations where people often die from waterborne disease, the gain to people in developing nations is pretty clearly huge compared to my loss. You could probably even produce a cool graphic novel showing that the behavior of my financial advisor almost certainly makes the world better. But no one would argue that my financial advisor should do this while acting as my agent, no matter how much money I had or how little the cost per life saved. This is not because of some moral calculus weighing the gains against my losses. It is because my agent is obligated to weigh alternatives based on how they affect me.
The federal government is an agent and the citizens of the US are its principals. Now an agent is not entitled to do any arbitrary amount of harm to other parties for the benefit of a principal, but an agent may take actions that benefit a principal even when there are alternatives that make other parties far better off at only a minor cost to the principal.
I do not believe this, but I think it is what people like Krikorian actually have in mind even if they don’t quite say it.
For a libertarian, the obvious response is that an agent cannot do on behalf of a principal anything that the principal has no right to do, and individual US citizens do not have the right to prevent noncitizens from anything peaceful, to include living or working nearby, speaking Spanish, practicing their native religion, etc. So the crux of the issue with Krikorian is not the moral worth of foreigners. It is the legitimacy of the state doing things that no citizen has a right to do.
Mark Z
Jul 9 2020 at 3:26am
You’re making sort of a fiduciary trust type argument it seems. I think that may apply to elected officials, who have obligations to their citizens, but it doesn’t apply to citizens themselves. You may be morally obligated to donate some of your income to clean drinking water in developing countries. Your advisor is, of course, obligated obligated to serve your wishes. It would be wrong for him to use your assets to fund clean drinking water of his own accord, but that does not relieve you of your obligation to donate your money of your own accord. The implication only seems to be that Bryan, rather than trying to convince politicians to pursue open borders, should try to convince voters to impose the mandate for open borders on the politicians they elect. If you instructed your accountant to direct some of your assets to some charitable cause, obviously he has no right to refuse to do so on the grounds that it ‘isn’t in your interest.’ Likewise, a politician who wins an election because of his support for open borders would have as much a mandate to pursue that policy as your accountant would to follow you instructions to donate your money to charity.
And I don’t think there’s a good argument for such a relationship among citizens. That is, in how I vote – or behave in general – I don’t think there’s any obligation to consider the interests of other citizens above those of foreigners, or any obligation to consider the ‘national interest’ above my own personal interest (many Americans would individually benefit from immigration). Here the shoe is on the other foot: ‘national interest’ is the charitable cause one would be insisting the agent elevate above the interests of the principal.
Brian Holtz
Jul 8 2020 at 10:11pm
As some of the above comments show, it’s easy to make a stronger libertarian-leaning case against open borders than the strawmen that Caplan prefers to address. Methinks Caplan cannot pass an intellectual Turing test on this topic. Can anyone point to Caplan’s best-ever effort to steelman a libertarian-leaning case against open borders?
Mactoul
Jul 9 2020 at 1:27am
Libertarian thought regards nations as administrative (in)conveniences merely. This total lack of appreciation of the political factor renders all these debates futile. Arguments can only proceed to conclusions if premises are shared and they aren’t when a libertarian debates a non-libertarian.
dcpi
Jul 9 2020 at 1:49am
It is about loyalty. Think about warfare. People of different nations will kill each other out of loyalty to their nation and befriend each other when their nations ally. It’s expected that people will be loyal to their nation. Thus foreigners living within ones nation are always suspect since there loyalty may lie elsewhere. The idea may be old fashioned, but many people believe it in their bones. Babies are assumed loyal, immigrants are assumed to have a higher loyalty to their home country.
Jens
Jul 9 2020 at 3:28am
Great post, Caplan at hist best. Closed borders are a crime.
Ari T
Jul 9 2020 at 8:44pm
I think immigration is super complex topic. Caplan has great points that everyone should try to respond.
I think Krikorian made an error in that argument just like Caplan said. What he should have said is that “our country belongs to the current citizens, and we decide who to let in”. Just like your house + yard belongs to you. People cannot immigrate there without your permission. I really don’t see why you cannot make same choice collectively. It is not based on anyone’s worth.
One of the smarter arguments against immigration I think is simple. If something goes wrong, politically or so, how do you get the “immigrants” out? Legally and realistically speaking.
And yes I think there are many arguments in favor of immigration. In fact I think employment-based immigration is probably one of the better ways to say “cure cancer” (via economic growth).
And yes I think birth place is one of the biggest unearned advantages or disadvantages in life.
If I would get to decide this, my position would be to give anyone permission to immigrate as long as you can pay yourself. Including my home country.
Maybe 1000 years from now on we will look at some of these choices and think “ah we should have done that”.
p.s. I am not American.
KevinDC
Jul 10 2020 at 5:14pm
Hey Ari –
You said:
That’s an argument that’s been addressed in other posts on the topic of immigration, by Bryan and others. There are a couple of problems with it. The first and most obvious is that it commits a fallacy of composition. Just because something is true of a part of the whole, even if it’s true of every part of the whole, it doesn’t follow from this that it’s true of the whole itself. So granting that each person in a country can decide who gets to live and work on their own property, it doesn’t follow from this that all the people of a country get to collectively decide who can work and live on all the property of that country. That inference is invalid. We can’t go from “each person can decide who lives and works on their own property” to “everyone decides together who gets to live and work on everyone else’s property.” That doesn’t follow.
(Of course, my objection there doesn’t positively prove that the conclusion is false, only that the conclusion isn’t supported by the premise.)
Mark Bahner
Jul 11 2020 at 12:42pm
KevinDC has addressed this, but let me address it a bit differently (I think).
You say, “Just like your house + yard belongs to you.” I agree that your house + yard belongs to you. But if you were living in my neighborhood or city or state or country, I don’t agree that my house + yard belongs to you and the collective.
There are plenty of people in the U.S. who would sell parts or all of their land to immigrants. For example, there are developers make their entire living by buying land and building residences (houses, townhomes, apartments) and businesses on that land. Why should the collective be able to tell those people what they can do with their land?
So, for example, you may be unhappy that many people seem to be moving into your town or city, making it more crowded or unpleasant to you. But you don’t own your town or city, so why should you be able to decide what other people do with their land, if you think people shouldn’t be able to tell you what to do with your land?
Don
Jul 10 2020 at 1:33pm
New reader here. You say that Mark ignored a meaningful question with the “another meaningless hypothetical” but isn’t it without more specific context? The problem I see with the question is you are forcing Mark to imagine the scenario where indeed the same exact treatment can be shown to save more foreigners than natives. I’m not sure what scenario works there, and if there is no situation then it is a meaningless hypothetical. A COVID vaccine can save only one person, native or foreign, because it’s not as if you can say the vaccine can be given to more than one person. Other things that people may point to like money cannot be shown to have a direct relationship to saving lives. There may indeed be a situation, but doesn’t the burden fall on the person posing the question to give the specifics which are a necessary part of the response. If the vaccine was produced in Ghana then maybe Ghana citizens are given first dibs. Without specifics, the very simple response is 1+1/infinity, which is meaningless, hence the retort he gave.
Mark Bahner
Jul 10 2020 at 9:25pm
Ummm…some of the most gifted “numbers” people on the planet see numbers as colors:
Synesthesia
Mark Bahner
Jul 11 2020 at 12:29pm
Another question for Mark Krikorian would be how many generations would have to pass before an immigrant’s descendants would be equal to a “native”?
For example, if we should limit immigration, but immigrants come in anyway, are their children who come in very young or are born in the U.S. also a drag? What about their children?
I don’t think he’d be interested in answering that question…
Pierre Lemieux
Jul 11 2020 at 1:37pm
Categorical errors are the bread and butter of poets. See, for instance, the first two lines of Rimbaud’s “Voyelles” (translated by Christian Bök):
The French original, mesmerizing:
Both the French version and Bök’s translation can be found at http://wagsrevue.com/Download/Issue_3/Voyelles.pdf.
Pierre Lemieux
Jul 11 2020 at 1:42pm
I always wonder why defenders of limits to immigration don’t use Hayek’s argument for traditional rules preserving the “Great Society” against tribalism itself. In a more rationalist perspective, they could also use Buchanan’s social contract (which one of the commenters above implicitly alluded to).
Comments are closed.