Does 'race' have a future?

Philosophy and Public Affairs

Volumn 35, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 293-317

  Kitcher, Philip ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 36749057814     PISSN: 00483915     EISSN: 10884963     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1088-4963.2007.00115.x     Document Type: Article

References (46)

1. These have been well presented by many anthropologists in recent decades; see, for example, F. B. Livingstone, "On the Nonexistence of Human Races," in The Concept of Race, ed. Ashley Montagu (New York: Free Press, 1962). Useful recent summaries are provided by Stephen Molnar, Human Variation (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1992); and by
2. Jared Diamond, "Race without Color," Discover 15 (1994): 82-89.
3. Ian Hacking, "Why Race Still Matters" Daedalus 134 (2005): 102-16
4. Hacking has made it extremely clear that what philosophers call the "Kripke-Putnam"theory of kinds comprises two related, but distinct, approaches (and explicitly not a fully developed theory). See his forthcoming essay, "Putnam's Theory of Natural Kinds and Their Names Is Not the Same as Kripke's," where he points out how Putnam looks to underlying structures as sources of explanation rather than as essences.
5. Their articulation of a nonessentialist approach to species begins in two classic works of the neo-Darwinian synthesis. See Theodosius Dobzhansky, Genetics and the Origin of Species (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937; reprint 1982), especially chap. X; and Ernst Mayr, Systematics and the Origin of Species (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942; reprint Harvard University Press [Cambridge, Mass.: 1999]), chap. II-V. Mayr reiterated his main arguments, and his defense of the "biological Species concept," throughout his long career.
6. In Mayr's classic formulation, "Species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations, which are potentially isolated from other such groups," Systematics and the Origin of Species, p. 120; it should be noted that this is the abbreviated version of Mayr's definition, even though it is typically repeated as Mayr's analysis.
7. See
8. M. J. Littlejohn and G. F. Watson, "Hybrid Zones and Homogamy in Australian Frogs, "Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 16 (1985): 85-112; and
9. N. H. Barton and G. H. Hewitt, "Analysis of Hybrid Zones" Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 16 (1985): 113-48.
10. The term is introduced in
11. Theodosius Dobzhansky and Boris Spassky, "Drosophila paulistorum, a cluster of species in statu nascendi" Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 45 (1959): 419-28.
12. Robin Andreasen, "A New Perspective on the Race Debate" The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (1998): 199-225.
13. Michael Hardimon, "The Ordinary Concept of Race" Journal of Philosophy 100 (2003): 437-55.
14. It is worth emphasizing that there is nothing paradoxical here. We can apply either label depending on how deeply we intend to probe the causal history of our practices of racial classification.
15. See Philip Kitcher, The Advancement of Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), chap. 4. In a forthcoming essay, "Plato's Joints," Laura Franklin-Hall subjects Plato's metaphor to devastating scrutiny.
16. See Philip Kitcher, Science, Truth, and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), chap. 5. I attempt to explicate the analogy further in "Scientific Realism: The Truth in Pragmatism" (forthcoming).
17. The obvious link is to his Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1978). But the same general view is also present much earlier in the dependence of kinds on practices of projection that appears in Nelson Goodman, Fact, Fiction, and Forecast (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956).
18. See William James, Pragmatism, Lecture VII; John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty, chap. 5, Experience and Nature, chaps. 1-2.
19. John Dupré, "Natural Kinds and Biological Taxa," Philosophical Review 90 (1981): 66-90,
20. Philip Kitcher, "Species," Philosophy of Science 51 (1984): 308-33.
21. Some critics of my proposals about species came close to seeing this point; see, for example
22. P. Kyle Stanford, "For Pluralism and Against Realism about Species," Philosophy of Science 62 (1995): 70-91.
23. Concerns along these lines were offered independently by Anthony Appiah, Amy Gutmann, and Michele Moody-Adams.
24. See Systematics and the Origin of Species, p. 122, for recognition of the problem with asexuality; for a succinct statement of Mayr's later attempts to deal with it, see The Growth of Biological Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 283-84.
25. For penetrating discussion of the taxonomic issues that arise with respect to bacteria, see Laura Franklin-Hall, "Bacteria, Sex, and Systematics," forthcoming in Philosophy of Science.
26. The landmark article is
27. Noah Rosenberg etal., "Genetic Structure of Human Populations," Science 298 (2002): 2381-85.
28. Interestingly, as the authors point out, the sixth population is a relatively isolated group from Pakistan; at this stage the association of clusters with major geographic regions breaks down. See Rosenberg etal., "Genetic Structure of Human Populations."
29. Here they continue in a direct way the inquiries carried out by Cavalli-Sforza. It is also worth noting that the kinds of rationale for introducing genetically based classifications that emphasize the causal role of genes in giving rise to human phenotypes (rationales most evident in the writings of "ogre naturalists") are quite alien to biologists like Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman, both of whom have been persistent and subtle critics of tendencies to crude genetic determinism.
30. As it did, almost instantly. The New York Times rightly saw this as extremely important scientific work, and, ignoring the cautious language of the article, reported it as a regrounding of the concept of race.
31. Rosenberg etal., "Genetic Structure of Human Populations."
32. I am indebted to an Editor of Philosophy & Public Affairs, who suggested that I should confront directly the issues raised in the next few paragraphs.
33. This possibility is explored in Dürrenmatt's play Die Physiker. I have elaborated on the moral in chapter 8 of Science, Truth, and Democracy.
34. See Science, Truth, and Democracy, chap. 8, and also
35. "An Argument about Free Inquiry," Noûs 31 (1997): 279-306.
36. This also means that we only rarely have to confront the obviously difficult issues about how to weigh intellectual values (greater understanding of some aspect of nature) against practical concerns.
37. In the New York Times article that rightly celebrated the beautiful research, the term 'cluster'immediately gave way to 'race.'(It is unclear whether the substitution resulted from a connection that might appear natural to well-meaning people, or whether it should be charged to culpable carelessness.) I heartily sympathize with the tactic pursued by Rosenberg, Feldman, and their colleagues, but any effective use of this tactic will have to come to terms with the ways in which social interests and prejudices distort the transmission of knowledge. I discuss related issues in "Knowledge and Democracy," Social Research (2006). It is also worth noting that Möbius, the central figure of Dürrenmatt's Die Physiker, also tries an insulating strategy-and that he fails.
38. I discuss issues of this sort at greater length in sections VI and VII of my essay "Race, Ethnicity, Biology, Culture," in Racism, ed. Leonard Harris (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1999), pp. 87-117; reprinted as chap. 11 of Philip Kitcher, In Mendel's Mirror (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
39. Tommie Shelby, We Who Are Dark (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006). In his APA symposium presentation, Shelby gave a concise but forceful account of the uses of racial categories, along the lines I give here.
40. To acknowledge this is not to embrace essentialism. I note this because discussions with philosophers who have made outstanding contributions to our understanding of racial concepts have convinced me that there are serious misunderstandings of any proposals that recognize this kind of genetic variation-in some instances, I have even found an inability to hear the words that present recent genomic findings. For those who have difficulty, Hacking's lucid explanation in "Why Race Still Matters" ought to be required reading.
41. Ian Hacking, "Why Race Still Matters" Daedalus (2005): 102-16, at p. 108.
42. http://www.katiasolomonfoundation.org/CordandMarrowDonation.html. I conjecture that the appeal statement uses both terms 'race' and 'ethnicity' not because of any confusion about the relation of the cultural concept of ethnicity to genotypes, but because the foundation simply wants to maximize the number of responses.
43. http://www.aclt.org/details/d.aspx/16. Capitals in original.
44. Here, evidently, I echo the arguments that Shelby has constructed for the social uses of solidarity.
45. This point parallels Shelby's case that racial notions may be needed to understand, and correct, patterns of past prejudice. In the medical context, it has been made very eloquently by Keith Ferdinand.
46. Philip Kitcher, Science, Truth, and Democracy; also "What Kinds of Science Should Be Done?" in Living with the Genie, ed. Alan Lightman, Dan Sarewitz, and Christina Dresser (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2003), pp. 201-24.