Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-grxwn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-12T08:35:31.511Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
Series:   Elements in Metaphysics

Metaphysics of Race

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2024

Kal H. Kalewold
Kal H. Kalewold
Affiliation:
University of Leeds

Summary

Are races real? Is race a biological or social category? What role, if any, does race play in scientific explanations? This Cambridge Element addresses these and other core questions in the metaphysics of race. It discusses prominent accounts of race such as biological racial realism, social constructivism about race, and racial anti-realism. If anti-realists are right, our societies find themselves in thrall to a concept that is scarcely more veridical than 'witch' or 'werewolf'. Social constructionism grounds race in factors ultimately controlled by human thought and action. Biological racial realists argue that race is too quickly dismissed as biologically meaningful, and that it has a role to play in contemporary life sciences. The Element explores these views and shows their virtues and shortcomings. In particular, it advances an argument against biological racial realism that draws on the metaphysics of naturalness and philosophy of biology and medicine.
Get access

Keywords

racemetaphysicsrealismsocial constructionismracial anti-realism
Type
Element
Information
Series: Elements in Metaphysics
Online ISBN: 9781009241496
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 16 January 2025

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.)

References

Allison, A. C. (2002). The discovery of resistance to malaria of sickle-cell heterozygotes. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, 30, 279–287. https://doi.org/10.1002/bmb.2002.494030050108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andreasen, R. O. (2005). The meaning of “race”: Folk conceptions and the new biology of race. The Journal of Philosophy, 102(2), 94–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andreasen, R. O. (2004). The cladistic race concept: A defense. Biology and Philosophy, 19, 425–442.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andreasen, R. O. (2000). Race: Biological reality or social construct? Philosophy of Science, 67(S3), S653–S666.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andreasen, R. O. (1998). A new perspective on the race debate. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 49(2), 199–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appiah, K. A. (2007). Does truth matter to identity? In Garcia, Jorge J. E. (ed.), Race or Ethnicity? On Black and Latino Identity, Cornell University Press, pp. 19–44.Google Scholar
Appiah, K. A. (1996). Race, culture, identity: Misunderstood connections. In Appiah, K. Anthony and Gutmann, Amy (ed.), Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race. Princeton University Press, pp. 30–105.Google Scholar
Atlas, J. (1988). Chicago’s grumpy guru. New York Times Magazine. www.nytimes.com/1988/01/03/magazine/chicago-s-grumpy-guru.html.Google Scholar
Bever, E. (2013). Popular witch beliefs and magical practices. In Levack, Brian P. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America. Oxford University Press, pp. 50–69.Google Scholar
Bhogal, H. (2023). The package deal account of naturalness. In Hicks, Michael, Jaag, Siegfried, and Loew, Christian (eds.), Humean Laws for Human Agents, Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Biddanda, A., Rice, D. P., & Novembre, J. (2020). A variant-centric perspective on geographic patterns of human allele frequency variation. Elife, 9, 1–23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blum, L. (2010). Racialized groups: The sociohistorical consensus. The Monist, 93(2), 298–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blum, Lawrence A. (2002). I’m Not a Racist, but — The Moral Quandary of Race. Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Chen, L., Wolf, A. B., Fu, W., Li, L., & Akey, J. M. (2020). Identifying and interpreting apparent Neanderthal ancestry in African individuals. Cell, 180(4), 677–687.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Craft, W. (1860). Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery. LSU Press.Google Scholar
Craver, C. F. (2007). Explaining the Brain: Mechanisms and the Mosaic unity of Neuroscience. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Craver, C. F., & Darden, L. (2013). In Search of Mechanisms: Discoveries across the Life Sciences. University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeWindt, A. R. (1995). Witchcraft and conflicting visions of the ideal village community. Journal of British Studies, 34(4), 427–463.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dikilitas, O., Schaid, D. J., Kosel, M. L., et al. (2020). Predictive utility of polygenic risk scores for coronary heart disease in three major racial and ethnic groups. The American Journal of Human Genetics, 106(5), 707–716.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ding, K., de Andrade, M., Manolio, T. A., et al. (2013). Genetic variants that confer resistance to malaria are associated with red blood cell traits in African-Americans: An electronic medical record-based genome-wide association study. G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics, 3(7), 1061–1068.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Evershed, R. P., Davey Smith, G., Roffet-Salque, M., et al. (2022). Dairying, diseases and the evolution of lactase persistence in Europe. Nature, 608(7922), 336–345.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eze, E. C. (1997). Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ferreira, A., Marguti, I., Bechmann, I., et al. (2011). Sickle hemoglobin confers tolerance to Plasmodium infection. Cell, 145(3), 398-409.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fields, B. J. (1982). Ideology and race in American history. In Kousser, J. Morgan and McPherson, James M. (eds.), Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward. Oxford University Press, pp. 143–177.Google Scholar
Fields, B. J., & Fields, K. E. (2012). Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life. Verso Books.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. A. (1974). Special sciences or the disunity of the sciences as a working hypothesis. Synthese, 28, 97–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franklin-Hall, L. R. (2015). Natural kinds as categorical bottlenecks. Philosophical Studies, 172, 925–948.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gao, X., & Starmer, J. (2007). Human population structure detection via multilocus genotype clustering. BMC genetics, 8, 1–11.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gibson, J. J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Gibson, E. J., & Walk, R. D. (1960). The visual cliff. Scientific American, 202, 64–71.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Glasgow, J. (2009). A Theory of Race. Routledge.Google Scholar
Glasgow, J. M. (2003). On the new biology of race. The Journal of Philosophy, 100(9), 456–474.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glasgow, J., Haslanger, S., Jeffers, C., & Spencer, Q. (2019). What Is Race?: Four Philosophical Views. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodare, J. (2013). Witchcraft in Scotland. In Levack, Brian P. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America. Oxford University Press, pp. 300–317.Google Scholar
Goodman, N. ([1955]/1983). Fact, Fiction, and Forecast. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gould, S. J. (1996). Mismeasure of Man. W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Hacking, I. (1999). The Social Construction of What? Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hardimon, M. O. (2017a). Rethinking Race. Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardimon, M. O. (2017b). Minimalist biological race. In Zack, Naomi (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race. Oxford University Press, pp. 150–159.Google Scholar
Hardimon, M. O. (2003). The ordinary concept of race. The Journal of Philosophy, 100(9), 437–455.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haslanger, S. (2016). What is a (social) structural explanation? Philosophical Studies, 173, 113–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haslanger, S. (2012). Resisting reality: Social construction and social critique. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haslanger, S. (2000). Gender and race: (What) are they? (What) do we want them to be? Noûs, 34(1), 31–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hellwege, J. N., Keaton, J. M., Giri, A., et al. (2017). Population stratification in genetic association studies. Current Protocols in Human Genetics, 95(1), 1–22.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hirschfeld, L. A. (1996). Race in the Making: Cognition, Culture, and the Child’s Construction of Human Kinds. MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochman, A. (2022). Has social constructionism about race outlived its usefulness? Perspectives from a race skeptic. Biology & Philosophy, 37(6), 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochman, A. (2017). Replacing race: Interactive constructionism about racialized groups. Ergo, 4(3), 61–92.Google Scholar
Hochman, A. (2013). Against the new racial naturalism. The Journal of Philosophy, 110(6), 331–351.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hou, K., Ding, Y., Xu, Z., et al. (2023). Causal effects on complex traits are similar for common variants across segments of different continental ancestries within admixed individuals. Nature genetics, 55(4), 549–558.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hunt, A. N. (2006). Haiti’s Influence on Antebellum America: Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean. LSU Press.Google Scholar
Jeffers, C. (2013). The cultural theory of race: Yet another look at Du Bois’s “The Conservation of Races.” Ethics, 123(3), 403–426.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalewold, K. H. (2020). Race and medicine in light of the new mechanistic philosophy of science. Biology & Philosophy, 35(4), 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, J. M., & Winther, R. G. (2014). Realism, antirealism, and conventionalism about race. Philosophy of Science, 81(5), 1039–1052.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufman, J. S., Dolman, L., Rushani, D., & Cooper, R. S. (2015). The contribution of genomic research to explaining racial disparities in cardiovascular disease: A systematic review. American Journal of Epidemiology, 181(7), 464–472.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Khalidi, M. A. (2018). Natural kinds as nodes in causal networks. Synthese, 195, 1379–1396.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khalifa, K., & Lauer, R. (2021). Do the social sciences vindicate race’s reality? Philosophers Imprint, 21(21), 2–17.Google Scholar
Kitcher, P. (2007). Does “race” have a future? Philosophy and Public Affairs, 35(4), 293–317.Google Scholar
Kitcher, P. (2001). Science, Truth, and Democracy. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, P. (1999). Race, ethnicity, biology, culture. In Harris, Leonard (ed.), Racism, Humanity Books, pp. 87–117.Google Scholar
Kitcher, P. (2012). Preludes to Pragmatism: Toward a Reconstruction of Philosophy. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kleingeld, P. (2007). Kant’s second thoughts on race. The Philosophical Quarterly, 57(229), 573–592.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, D. (1983). New work for a theory of universals. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 61(4), 343–377.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewontin, R. C. (1972). The apportionment of human diversity. Evolutionary Biology, 6, 381–398.Google Scholar
Long, J. C., Li, J., & Healy, M. E. (2009). Human DNA sequences: More variation and less race. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 139(1), 23–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lu-Adler, H. (2023). Kant, Race, and Racism: Views from Somewhere. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malik, K. (1996). The Meaning of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society. Bloomsbury.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mallon, R. (2018). Constructing race: Racialization, causal effects, or both? Philosophical Studies, 175(5), 1039–1056.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mallon, R. (2017). Social construction and achieving reference. Noûs 51(1), 113–131. https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mallon, R. (2006). “Race”: Normative, not metaphysical or semantic. Ethics, 116(3), 525–551.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marks, J. (2007). Long shadow of Linnaeus’s human taxonomy. Nature, 447(7140), 28–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mills, C. W. (1998). Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race. Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Moroz, L. L. (2014). The genealogy of genealogy of neurons. Communicative & Integrative Biology, 7(6), 1–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Müller-Wille, S. (2014). Race and history: Comments from an epistemological point of view. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 39(4): 597–606.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Outlaw, L. (1996). On Race and Philosophy. Routledge.Google Scholar
Pearlman, S. M., Serber, Z., & Ferrell, J. E. Jr. (2011). A mechanism for the evolution of phosphorylation sites, Cell, 147(4), 934–946.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Piel, F. B., Steinberg, M. H., & Rees, D. C. (2017). Sickle cell disease. New England Journal of Medicine, 376(16), 1561–1573.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Piel, F. B., Patil, A. P., Howes, R. E., et al. (2010). Global distribution of the sickle cell gene and geographical confirmation of the malaria hypothesis. Nature Communications, 1(1), 1–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pigliucci, M., & Kaplan, J. (2003). On the concept of biological race and its applicability to humans. Philosophy of Science, 70(5), 1161–1172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rao, S., Segar, M. W., Bress, A. P., et al. (2020). Association of genetic West African ancestry, blood pressure response to therapy, and cardiovascular risk among self-reported Black individuals in the Systolic Blood Pressure Reduction Intervention Trial (SPRINT). JAMA Cardiology, 6(4), 388–398.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rasmussen, M., Guo, X., Wang, Y., et al. (2011). An Aboriginal Australian genome reveals separate human dispersals into Asia. Science, 334(6052), 94–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Root, M. (2003). The use of race in medicine as a proxy for genetic diferences. Philosophy of Science, 70(5), 1173–1183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenberg, N. A. (2011). A population-genetic perspective on the similarities and differences among worldwide human populations. Human Biology, 83(6), 659–684.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rosenberg, N. A., Mahajan, S., Ramachandran, S., et al. (2005). Clines, clusters, and the effect of study design on the inference of human population structure. PLoS Genetics, 1(6), 0660–0671.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rosenberg, N. A., Pritchard, J. K., Weber, J. L., et al. (2002). Genetic structure of human populations. Science, 298(5602), 2381–2385.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ross, L. N. (2023). What is social structural explanation? A causal account. Noûs, 58(1), 163–179. https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12446.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sesardic, N. (2010). Race: A social destruction of a biological concept. Biology & Philosophy, 25(2), 143–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sesardic, N. (2000). Philosophy of science that ignores science: Race, IQ and heritability. Philosophy of Science, 67(4), 580–602.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shelby, T. (2005). We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity. Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shelby, T. (2016). Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sider, T. (2013). Writing the Book of the World. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Singh, K., & Wodak, D. (2024). Does Race Best Explain Racial Discrimination? Philosopher’s Imprint, 23, 24.Google Scholar
Smith, J. E. (2015). Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Spencer, Q. N. J. (2018). A racial classification for medical genetics. Philosophical Studies, 175, 1013–1037.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spencer, Q. (2014). A radical solution to the race problem. Philosophy of Science, 81(5), 1025–1038.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spencer, Q. (2012). What “biological racial realism” should mean. Philosophical Studies, 159, 181–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strevens, M. (2008). Depth: An Account of Scientific Explanation. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sundstrom, R. (2002). Race as a human kind. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 28(1), 91–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tam, V., Patel, N., Turcotte, M., et al. (2019). Benefits and limitations of genome-wide association studies. Nature Reviews Genetics, 20(8), 467–484.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Taylor, P. (2011). Rehabilitating a biological notion of race? A response to Sesardic. Biology & Philosophy, 26(3), 469–473.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Telles, E., & Paschel, T. (2014). Who is black, white, or mixed race? How skin color, status, and nation shape racial classification in Latin America. American Journal of Sociology, 120(3), 864–907.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
UNESCO. (1950). Statement on Race. UNESCO Digital Library. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000128291.Google Scholar
Varagur, K. (2023). Love in the time of sickle-cell disease. Harper’s Magazine. https://harpers.org/archive/2023/08/love-in-the-time-of-sickle-cell-disease/.Google Scholar
Weslake, B. (2010). Explanatory depth. Philosophy of Science, 77(2), 273–294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiley, R. (1996). Dark Witness: When Black People Should Be Sacrificed (Again). One World/Ballantine.Google Scholar
Williams, T. N., & Weatherall, D. J. (2012). World distribution, population genetics, and health burden of the hemoglobinopathies. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine, 2(9), 1–14.Google Scholar
Winsberg, E. (2022). Putting races on the ontological map: A close look at Spencer’s “new biologism” of race. Biology & Philosophy, 37(6), 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wodak, D. (2022). Of witches and white folks. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 104(3), 587–605.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodward, J. (2010). Causation in biology: Stability, specificity, and the choice of levels of explanation. Biology & Philosophy, 25, 287–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yudell, M., Roberts, D., DeSalle, R., & Tishkoff, S. (2016). Taking race out of human genetics. Science, 351(6273), 564–565.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zack, N. (2018). Philosophy of Race: An Introduction. Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zack, N. (2014). Philosophy of Science and Race. Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zack, N. (1993). Race and Mixed Race. Temple University Press.Google Scholar

Save element to Kindle

To save this element to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Metaphysics of Race
Available formats
×

Save element to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Metaphysics of Race
Available formats
×

Save element to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Metaphysics of Race
Available formats
×