Chapter 10 - The Metaphysics of Race

Annotated Bibliography

Kathrin Koslicki. 2008. Natural Kinds and Natural Kind Terms.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/

Explains what it is to be a natural kind and how beliefs in natural kinds get justified

Sally Haslanger. 1995. Ontology and Social Construction.

http://web.mit.edu/~shaslang/

Explores the idea that reality may be socially constructed

Ron Mallon. 2007. A Field Guide to Social Construction.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/ 

Provides an overview of social constructivist claims in the humanities

Sally Haslanger. 2000. Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them to Be?

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2671972

Offers theories of gender and race challenging typical ways of addressing these questions

Anthony Appiah. 1996. Reconstructing Racial Identities.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3820309

Offers a positive account of race in contrast to the biological account

M.J. Barnshad and S.E. Olson. 2003. Does Race Exist?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/

Reports on research to delineate races based on genetic information

Naomi Zack. 2001. American Mixed Race: The 2000 U.S. Census and Related Issues.

http://heinonline.org/HOL/

Summarizes scientific findings about biological race, applying them to evaluate classifications in the U.S. census

Joshua Glasgow. 2003. On the New Biology of Race.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3655724

Evaluates a new biological theory of race

Ronald Sundstrom. 2002. “Racial” Nominalism.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/

Explores and evaluates the view that there are no races

Ron Mallon. 2004. Passing, Traveling, and Reality: Social Constructionism and the Metaphysics of Race.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/

Argues against social constructivism about race

Joshua Glasgow. 2007. Three Things Realist Constructionism about Race – or Anything Else – Can Do.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/

Defends constructivism against Mallon’s critique

Annotated Weblinks

http://philosophyideas.com/search/

A list of various various views about natural kinds at PhilosophyIdeas.

http://philosophyideas.com/search/

A list of various objections to dividing nature into kinds at PhilosophyIdeas.

http://philosophyideas.com/search/

A list of various answers to the question of what exactly a natural kind is at PhilosophyIdeas.

http://philosophyideas.com/search/

A list of various views about the modality of kinds at PhilosophyIdeas.

http://philosophyideas.com/search/

A list of various views about how language refers to natural kinds at PhilosophyIdeas.

http://philosophyideas.com/search/

A list of various views about the metaphysical source of natural kinds at PhilosophyIdeas.

http://philosophyideas.com/search/

A list of various views about our knowledge of natural kinds at PhilosophyIdeas.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/race/

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on race by Michael James.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on naturalistic approaches to social construction by Ron Mallon.

Discussion Questions

1. Provide three examples of natural kinds not discussed in the text.
2. Could there be an object that was both an instance of a natural kind and of a social kind at the same time? What would be such an example?
3. Provide three examples of social kinds not discussed in the text.
4. The text defines social kinds and social constructions such that they seem to implicitly require recognition by more than one person. Can you think of a social kind or social construction recognized by only two people (say, you and a friend)? What about only one person?
5. The text says that because species membership appears to be an extrinsic feature of an organism, this provides some reason to doubt that all natural kinds are individuated by intrinsic properties. Are there other kinds you can think of that could be individuated by intrinsic properties? State what one might take to be a plausible example of such a kind.
6. The text uses the category of witches as an example of a kind that was once accepted but is now correctly eliminated. Name another example like this and explain why it was correctly eliminated.
7. The considerations discussed in the text might lead us to conclude that something or someone is only cool relative to a group rather than universally or absolutely cool. If race is a social construction in the same way as being cool is, does it follow that race must be similarly relativized?
8. Which of the three arguments provided in the text for social constructivism or eliminativism about race did you find most compelling (even if you don't ultimately accept any of them)? Defend it against an objection raised in the text.
9. Which of the three arguments in the text for social constructivism or eliminativism did you find least compelling? Explain why.
10. State the causal argument against eliminativism in numbered premise form.