| WEEK # | TOPICS | READINGS | QUESTIONS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction |
| What is Appiah's argument for eliminating talk of race? What, for Appiah, is at stake in deciding to eliminate talk of race? Does Appiah suggest an alternative to race talk? Does his alternative successfully avoid the problems he finds with race talk? How? |
| 2 | Natural Kind Terms (Issues in Philosophy of Language) | Putnam, Hilary. "Meaning and Reference." Journal of Philosophy 53, no. 19 (November 8, 1973): 699-711. Reid, Jasper. "Natural Kind Essentialism." Australasian-Journal-of-Philosophy 80, no. 1 (2002): 62-74.
Recommended Background
| How is the meaning of natural kind terms determined? Is there a difference between how natural kind terms have meaning and how other terms have meaning? Does it make sense to think of some specific set of terms as "natural kind" terms? |
| 3 | Classification and Natural Kinds (Issues in Metaphysics and Epistemology) | Dupré, John. "Natural Kinds and Biological Taxa." Philosophical Review 90, no. 1 (January 1981): 66-90.
Anderson, Elizabeth. "Knowledge, Human Interests, and Objectivity in Feminist Epistemology." Philosophical Topics 23, no. 2 (1995): 27-58. Recommended Background
Copi, Irving. "Essence and Accident." Journal of Philosophy 51 (November 11, 1954): 706-719. Bromberger, Sylvain. "Natural Kinds and Questions." Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 51 (1997): 149-63. | What (if anything) are natural kinds? What is the relationship between a commitment to natural kinds and a commitment to essentialism? Is it possible to have knowledge of natural kinds? What is meant by "natural" in "natural kind"? |
| 4 | Historical Background on the Notion of Rac | Stocking, George W., Jr. "The Turn-of-the-Century Concept of Race." Modernism/Modernity 1, no. 1 (1994): 4-16.
Hardimon, Michael O. "The Ordinary Concept of Race." Journal of Philosophy 100, no. 9 (September 2003): 437-55. | In attempting to understand what race is, how should we proceed? Are we attempting to analyze "our" concept? What is "our" concept of race? Has there been significant variation over time in the ordinary concept of race? Is there a stable core to the concept, and if so what should we make of that stability? |
| 5 | Biology, Philosophy, and Race: The Early Debate |  Bernier, Francois. "New Division of the Earth." In The Idea of Race. Edited by R. Bernasconi and T. L. Lott. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2000, pp. 1-4. ISBN: 0872204588.
Recommended Background
| What are the commonalities and differences in the historical accounts of race presented in the readings? Are there ways in which the historical accounts of race differ significantly from our contemporary (popular) understandings of race? |
| 6 | Race in Recent Philosophy of Science |
Andreason, Robin. "Race: Biological Reality or Social Construct?" Philosophy of Science 67 Supplementary Volume (2000): S653-S666. Glasgow, Joshua. "On the New Biology of Race." The Journal of Philosophy 100 (September 2003): 456-474.
| Is there a reasonable reconstruction of racial categories using the resources of biology? Are there compelling reasons to look for such a reconstruction? Why or why not? |
| 7 | The DNA Revolution and Race | Keita, Shomarka, and Rick Kittles. "The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence." American Anthropologist 99, no. 3 (September 1997): 534-544. King, Mary-Claire, and Arno Motulsky. "Mapping Human History." Science 298 (December 20, 2002): 2342-2343. Rosenberg, Noah, Jonathan K. Pritchard, James L. Weber, Howard M. Cann, Kenneth K. Kidd, Lev A. Zhivotovsky, and Marcus W. Feldman. "Genetic Structure of Human Populations." Science 298 (December 20, 2002): 2381-2385. Foster, Morris, and Richard Sharp. "Race, Ethnicity, and Genomics: Social Classifications as Proxies of Biological Heterogeneity." Genome Research 12, no. 6 (June 2002): 844-850. Sankar, Pamela, and Mildred Cho. "Toward a New Vocabulary of Human Genetic Variation." Science 298 (November 2002): 1337-1338. | Do human populations structure into discrete units? Is race a viable biological concept? Do genetic classifications correspond to social taxa? |
| 8 | Genomics, Medicine, and Race | "Editorial." Nature Genetics 29, no. 3 (November 2001): 239-240. Wilson, James, Michael E. Weale, Alice C. Smith, Fiona Gratrix, Benjamin Fletcher, Mark G. Thomas, Neil Bradman, and David B. Goldstein. "Population Genetics Structure of Variable Drug Response." Nature Genetics 29, no. 3 (November 2001): 265-268. Risch Neil, Esteban Burchard, Elad Ziv, and Hua Tang. "Categorization of Humans in Biomedical Research: Genes, Race, and Disease." Genome Biology 3, no. 7 (July 1, 2002): 1-12. Phimister, and Elizabeth. "Medicine and the Racial Divide." New England Journal of Medicine 348, no. 12 (March 20, 2003): 1081-1082. Cooper, Richard S., J. S. Kaufman, and R. Ward. "Race and Genomics." New England Journal of Medicine 348, no. 12 (March 20, 2003): 1166-1170. Burchard, Esteban Gonzalez, Elad Ziv, Natasha Coyle, Scarlett Lin Gomez, et al. "The Importance of Race and Ethnic and Ethnic Background in Biomedical Research and Clinical Practice." New England Journal of Medicine 348, no. 12 (March 20, 2003): 1170-1175. Bamhad, Michael J., and Steve E. Olson. "Does Race Exist? Human Genetic Diversity." Scientific American 289, no. 6 (December 2003): 78-85. | Is there any epidemiological ground to classify human beings into racial groups? Are there any risks to use race as a scientific variable in medicine and pharmaco-genomics? |
| 9 | Genomics, Race, and Health Policy | Stevens, Jacqueline. "Racial Meanings and Scientific Methods: Changing Policies for NIH-Sponsored Publications Reporting Human Variation." Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 28, no. 6 (December 2003): 1033-1098. Lee, Sandra Soo-Jin, Joanna Mountain, and Barbara A. Koenig. "The meanings of 'Race' in the New Genomics: Implications for Health Disparities Research." Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law and Ethics 1 (Spring 2001): 33-75. | Do health disparities correlate with human genetic variation? Or are they due to unequal distribution of resources? Could the use of racial categories in biomedical research lead to racial discrimination? |
| 10 | Racial "Projects" | Root, Michael. "How We Divide The World." Philosophy of Science 67 (September 2000): S628-S639. Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers. Haslanger, Sally. "Gender and Race: What Are They? What Do We Want Them To Be?" Nous 34, no. 1 (2000): 31-55.
Recommended Background
| Setting aside the question whether there are genetically defined groups that might count as races, there are certainly socio-politically defined groups that are considered races. Instead of attempting to analyze race in biological terms, should we instead opt for a constructionist account of race that takes races to be social kinds? |
| 11 | Race, Ethnicity, and Panethnicity |
Goldberg, David T. "Made in the USA: Racial Mixing 'n Matching." In American Mixed Race. Edited by N. Zack. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1995, pp. 237-255. | What is the relationship between race and ethnicity? Is there a meaningful role for the notion of race in a future that recognizes and celebrates difference? |
| 12 | Elminativism, Conservatism, or Revisionism? | Open discussion (no additional reading or reading questions). Time for group reflection on the material we've covered. |
Courses:
Classification, Natural Kinds, and Conceptual Change: Race as a Case Study >> Content Detail
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Study Materials
Readings
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Readings should be completed prior to each week's meeting.