Biology and Philosophy 25 (2):143-162 (2010)
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Abstract |
It is nowadays a dominant opinion in a number of disciplines (anthropology, genetics, psychology, philosophy of science) that the taxonomy of human races does not make much biological sense. My aim is to challenge the arguments that are usually thought to invalidate the biological concept of race. I will try to show that the way “race” was defined by biologists several decades ago (by Dobzhansky and others) is in no way discredited by conceptual criticisms that are now fashionable and widely regarded as cogent. These criticisms often arbitrarily burden the biological category of race with some implausible connotations, which then opens the path for a quick eliminative move. However, when properly understood, the biological notion of race proves remarkably resistant to these deconstructive attempts. Moreover, by analyzing statements of some leading contemporary scholars who support social constructivism about race, I hope to demonstrate that their eliminativist views are actually in conflict with what the best contemporary science tells us about human genetic variation.
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Keywords | Race Social constructivism Genetics Geographical ancestry Human variation Philosophy of science |
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DOI | 10.1007/s10539-009-9193-7 |
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References found in this work BETA
Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race.David B. Wilkins, Kwame Anthony Appiah & Amy Gutmann - 1996 - Princeton University Press.
Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections.Kwame Anthony Appiah - 1996 - The Tanner Lectures on Human Values 17:51-136.
View all 32 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Race, Eugenics, and the Holocaust.Jonathan Anomaly - 2022 - In Ira Bedzow & Stacy Gallin (eds.), Bioethics and the Holocaust. Springer.
Realism, Antirealism, and Conventionalism About Race.Jonathan Michael Kaplan & Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther - 2014 - Philosophy of Science 81 (5):1039-1052.
The Egalitarian Fallacy: Are Group Differences Compatible with Political Liberalism?Jonathan Anomaly & Bo Winegard - 2020 - Philosophia 48 (2):433-444.
View all 45 citations / Add more citations
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