Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T21:52:46.407Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Realism, Antirealism, and Conventionalism about Race

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Jonathan Michael Kaplan  and
Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper distinguishes three concepts of “race”: bio-genomic cluster/race, biological race, and social race. We map out realism, antirealism, and conventionalism about each of these, in three important historical episodes: Frank Livingstone and Theodosius Dobzhansky in 1962, A. W. F. Edwards’s 2003 response to Lewontin’s 1972 paper, and contemporary discourse. Semantics is especially crucial to the first episode, while normativity is central to the second. Upon inspection, each episode also reveals a variety of commitments to the metaphysics of race. We conclude by interrogating the relevance of these scientific discussions for political positions and a post-racial future.

Type
Medical and Social Sciences
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 81 , Issue 5 , December 2014 , pp. 1039 - 1052
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

Winther thanks Carlos López Beltrán, Marcus Feldman, and Amir Najmi for ongoing discussions on these matters and Alexandre Dor and Cory Knudson for research assistance; he is partially supported by a faculty research grant from the Academic Senate Committee on Research at the University of California, Santa Cruz. For comments on this article, both authors thank Doc Edge, Anthony W. F. Edwards, James Griesemer, Michael Hunter, Richard C. Lewontin, Roberta Millstein, Omri Tal, and an anonymous reviewer, as well as the other symposium participants and audience members at the PSA session “The State of Race in Population Genetics” and at a “Genomics and Philosophy of Race” workshop (http://ihr.ucsc.edu/portfolio/philosophy-in-a-multicultural-context/?id=15003) held at Stanford in November 2013, sponsored by the Institute for Humanities Research at University of California, Santa Cruz; the Computational, Evolutionary, and Human Genomics Center at Stanford University; and Science and Technology Studies at University of California, Davis, and organized by Edge and Winther. This paper was written fully jointly.

References

Andreasen, Robin O. 2007. “Biological Conceptions of Race.” In Philosophy of Biology, ed. Matthen, M. and Stephens, C., 455–84. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Appiah, Kwame A. 1989. “The Conservation of ‘Race.’” Black American Literature Forum 23 (1): 37–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appiah, Kwame A., and Gutmann, Amy. 1996. Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Barbujani, Guido, Magagni, Arianna, Minch, Eric, and Cavalli-Sforza, Luca L.. 1997. “An Apportionment of Human DNA Diversity.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 94:4516–19.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barker, Matthew J., and Velasco, Joel D.. 2013. “Deep Conventionalism about Evolutionary Groups.” Philosophy of Science 80 (5): 971–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi Luca, Piazza, Alberto, Menozzi, Paolo, and Mountain, Joanna. 1988. “Reconstruction of Human Evolution: Bringing Together Genetic, Archaeological, and Linguistic Data.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 85:6002–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Coop, Graham, Michael B. Eisen, Rasmus Nielsen, Molly Przeworski, and Noah Rosenberg (with many more signatures online). 2014. “‘A Troublesome Inheritance.’” Letter. New York Times Book Review. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/books/review/letters-a-troublesome-inheritance.html.Google Scholar
Dobzhansky, Theodosius. 1962. “Comment: On the Non-existence of Human Races.” Current Anthropology 3:279–80.Google Scholar
Dobzhansky, Theodosius 1968. “Introduction” [to section on “Biological Aspects of Race in Man”], in Mead et al. 1968, 77–79.Google Scholar
Donovan, Brian M. 2014. “Playing with Fire? The Impact of the Hidden Curriculum in School Genetics on Essentialist Conceptions of Race.” Journal of Research in Science Teaching 51 (4): 462–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, Edwards Anthony William. 2003. “Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin’s Fallacy.” BioEssays 25:798–801.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Feldman, Marcus W. 2010. “The Biology of Ancestry: DNA, Genomic Variation, and Race.” In Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century, ed. Markus, Hazel R. and Moya, Paula M. L.. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Feldman, Marcus W., and Lewontin, Richard Charles. 1975. “The Heritability Hang-Up.” Science 190:1163–68.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Feldman, Marcus W., and Lewontin, Richard Charles 2008. “Race, Ancestry, and Medicine.” In Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age, ed. Koenig, Barbara A., Lee, Sandra Soo-Jin, and Richardson, Sarah S., 89–101. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Ginsburg, Benson E., and Laughlin, William S.. 1968. “The Distribution of Genetic Differences in Behavioral Potential in the Human Species.” In Mead et al. 1968, 26–36.Google Scholar
Glasgow, Joshua. 2009. A Theory of Race. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gravlee, Clarence C. 2009. “How Race Becomes Biology: Embodiment of Social Inequality.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 139:47–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Harawa, Nina T., and Ford, Chandra L.. 2009. “The Foundation of Modern Racial Categories and Implications for Research on Black/White Disparities in Health.” Ethnicity and Disease 19 (Spring): 209–17.Google ScholarPubMed
Herrnstein, Richard J., and Murray, Charles. 1995. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Hochman, Adam. 2013. “Against the New Racial Naturalism.” Journal of Philosophy 110 (6): 331–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hudson, Nicholas. 1996. “From ‘Nation’ to ‘Race’: The Origin of Racial Classification in Eighteenth-Century Thought.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 29 (3): 247–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jensen, Arthur. 1969. “How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?” Harvard Educational Review 39:1–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jobling, Mark A., Hurles, Matthew, and Tyler-Smith, Chris. 2004. Human Evolutionary Genetics: Origins, Peoples and Diseases. New York: Garland Science.Google Scholar
Kaplan, Johnathan M. 2000. The Limits and Lies of Human Genetic Research. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kaplan, Johnathan M. 2010. “When Socially Determined Categories Make Biological Realities: Understanding Black/White Health Disparities in the U.S.” Monist 93 (2): 283–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, Johnathan M. 2011. “‘Race’: What Biology Can Tell Us about a Social Construct.” In Encyclopedia of Life Sciences. Chichester: Wiley. doi:10.1002/9780470015902.a0005857.Google Scholar
Kaplan, Johnathan M., and Winther, Rasmus G.. 2013. “Prisoners of Abstraction? The Theory and Measure of Genetic Variation, and the Very Concept of ‘Race.’” Biological Theory 7:401–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kilham, Peter, and Klopfer, Peter H.. 1968. “The Construct Race and the Innate Differential.” In Mead et al. 1968, 16–25.Google Scholar
Lewontin, Richard C. 1970. “Race and Intelligence.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March, 2–8.Google Scholar
Lewontin, Richard C. 1972. “Apportionment of Human Diversity.” Evolutionary Biology 6:381–98.Google Scholar
Lewontin, Richard C. 1974. The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Lewontin, Richard C. 1993. Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA. New York: Harper Perennial.Google Scholar
Lewontin, Richard C. 1995. Human Diversity. New York: Scientific American.Google Scholar
Lewontin, Richard C., Rose, Steven, and Kamin, Leon J.. 1984. Not in Our Genes—Biology, Ideology and Human Nature. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Li, Wen-Hsiung, and Sadler, Lori A.. 1991. “Low Nucleotide Diversity in Man.” Genetics 129:513–23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Livingstone, Frank B. 1962. “On the Non-existence of Human Races” (with Reply). Current Anthropology 3:279–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Long, Jeffery, and Kittles, Rick A.. 2003. “Human Genetic Diversity and the Nonexistence of Biological Races.” Human Biology 75 (4): 449–71.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
López Beltrán, C., ed. 2011. Genes and mestizos: Genómica y raza en la biomedicina Mexicana. Mexico City: UNAM.Google Scholar
Lynn, Richard, and Vanhanen, Tatu. 2002. IQ and the Wealth of Nations. Westport, CT: Praeger.Google Scholar
Marshall, Gloria. 1968. “Racial Classifications: Popular and Scientific.” In Mead et al. 1968, 149–64.Google Scholar
Mead, Magaret, Dobzhansky, Theodosius, Tobach, Ethel, and Light, Robert E., eds. 1968. Science and the Concept of Race. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Mills, Charles W. 1988. “But What Are You Really? The Metaphysics of Race.” In Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race, 41–66. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Morning, Ann. 2011. The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about Human Differences. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Omi, Michael, and Winant, Howard. 1986. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ousley, Stephen, Jantz, Richard, and Freid, Donna. 2009. “Understanding Race and Human Variation: Why Forensic Anthropologists Are Good at Identifying Race.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 139:68–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Parker, Ashely, and Preston, Julia. 2013. “Paper on Immigrant I.Q. Dogs Critic of Overhaul.” New York Times, May 9, sec. A, 22.Google Scholar
Pigliucci, Massimo, and Kaplan, Johnathan M.. 2003. “On the Concept of Biological Race and Its Applicability to Humans.” Philosophy of Science 70:1161–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reardon, Jenny. 2005. Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Risch, Neil, Esteban, Buchard, Elad, Ziv, and Hua, Tang. 2002. “Categorization of Humans in Biomedical Research: Genes, Race and Disease.” Genome Biology 3 (7): 1–12.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rosenberg, Noah A., Pritchard, Johnathan K., Weber, James L., Cann, Howard M., Kidd, Kenneth K., Zhivotovsky, Lev A., and Feldman, Marcus W.. 2002. “Genetic Structure of Human Populations.” Science 298:2381–85.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rushton, J. Philippe. 1995. Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.Google Scholar
Serre, David, and Pääbo, Svante. 2004. “Evidence for Gradients of Human Genetic Diversity within and among Continents.” Genome Research 14:1679–85.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sesardić, Neven. 2010. “Race: A Social Destruction of a Biological Concept.” Biology and Philosophy 25 (2): 143–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sesardić, Neven 2013. “Confusions about Race: A New Installment.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44:287–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spencer, Quayshawn. 2012. “What ‘Biological Racial Realism’ Should Mean.” Philosophical Studies 159 (2): 181–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spencer, Quayshawn 2013. “Biological Theory and the Metaphysics of Race: A Reply to Kaplan and Winther.” Biological Theory 8:114–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tal, Omri. 2012. “The Cumulative Effect of Genetic Markers on Classification Performance: Insights from Simple Models.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 293:206–18.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vilà, Carles, Maldonado, Jesus E., and Wayne, Robert K.. 1999. “Phylogenetic Relationships, Evolution, and Genetic Diversity of the Domestic Dog.” Journal of Heredity 90 (1): 71–77.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wade, Nicholas. 2014. A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Weiss, Kenneth M., and Fullerton, Stephanie M.. 2005. “Racing Around, Getting Nowhere.” Evolutionary Anthropology 14:165–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winther, Rasmus G. 2011. “¿La cosificación genética de la ‘raza’? Un análisis crítico.” In López Beltrán 2011, 237–58.Google Scholar
Winther, Rasmus G. 2014. “The Genetic Reification of ‘Race’? A Story of Two Mathematical Methods.” Critical Philosophy of Race 2 (2): 204–23.Google Scholar
Winther, Rasmus G., and Kaplan, Johnathan M.. 2013. “Ontologies and Politics of Bio-Genomic ‘Race.’” Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 60 (3): 54–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar