In his 2014 paper entitled “A Radical Solution to the Race Problem”, Quayshawn Spencer claims to debunk the common view that folk racial classification has no biological basis. His argument is intended to show that the following conclusion is…
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Topics: Epistemology, Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of language, Philosophy of Race, Philosophy of science
Keywords: Biologically real, Census races, Human population structure, Race, Racial classification
In this paper I reconstruct Spencer (2014)’s argument supporting the conclusion that ‘race’, in its current U.S. meaning, is a rigidly designating proper name for a biologically real entity, specifically for the partition at the K = 5 level of human population structure. Then, I object to the argument by contesting three distinct key assertions in it. First, I contest the assumption that if a term t has a logically inconsistent set of identifying conditions but a robust extension, then it is appropriate to identify the meaning of t as just its referent. Second, I contest the thesis that ‘race’, in its current U.S. meaning, is a rigidly designating proper name for a specific set of five race categories. Third, I contest the thesis that the partition at the K = 5 level of human population structure that Spencer identifies with the human population continental distribution, or ‘the Blumenbach partition’ as Spencer calls it, is biologically real in the sense Spencer needs. If even only one of my objections is convincing, Spencer’s “radical solution to the race problem” is seriously undermined.
In his 2014 paper entitled “A Radical Solution to the Race Problem”, Quayshawn Spencer claims to debunk the common view that folk racial classification has no biological basis. His argument is intended to show that the following conclusion is…
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