In this commentary I give an overview of the book "What is Race?: Four Philosophical Views," outlining the arguments each author makes in formulating and defending their respective views. I present some challenges to these views and argue that the scope of the book is an important consideration in our assessment of its contribution.

Lee McIntyre’s Respecting Truth chronicles the contemporary challenges regarding the relationship amongst evidence, belief formation and ideology. The discussion in his book focusses on the ‘politicisation of knowledge’ and the purportedly growing public (and sometimes academic) tendency to choose to believe what is determined by prior ideological commitments rather than what is determined by evidence-based reasoning. In considering these issues, McIntyre posits that the claim “race is a myth” is founded on a political ideology rather than on support from scientific (...) evidence. He contrasts this view with the argument that racially correlated biomedical outcomes for self-identified racial groups suggest that biological races are real. I explore how McIntyre’s framing of the claim “race is a myth” as fundamentally ideological results in him failing to engage with the arguments and evidence many constructionists and biological anti-realists put forward in support of their views. I also show how the biomedical evidence he thinks supports biological realism is unconvincing. (shrink)

This essay explores the relationship between the social sciences and biology with respect to race. I begin by giving an overview of the disparate origins of racial classification and the population history of South Africa, noting the peculiarity of their roots. I move from there to sketch how knowledge from the social sciences can improve the quality of hypotheses about population history and, conversely, how the biological sciences can be informative to the social sciences. I end by discussing the relationship (...) between race, biology, and social scientific questions in the context of the land debate in South Africa. (shrink)

Hempel’s Dilemma is a challenge that has to be met by any formulation of physicalism that specifies the physical by reference to a particular physical theory. It poses the problem that if one’s specification of the physical is ‘current’ physical theory, then the physicalism which depends on it is false because current physics is false; and if the specification of the physical is a future or an ideal physics, the physicalism based on it would be trivial as it would be (...) tautologously true, or because very little (if anything at all) can be inferred from or about a physics that does not yet exist. I review the reasons for thinking that the dilemma is a perpetual problem for currentist specifications of the physical, then introduce the argument that the standard positions on the specification question are wanting because they lack a generality which physicalism is generally accepted to have. I end with a suggestion for a way forward for physicalism. (shrink)