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Clines, Clusters, and Clades in the Race Debate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Matthew Kopec
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Abstract

In this paper, I argue against Andreasen and Sesardic, who have both claimed that recent cluster results in population genetics serve as evidence that the human species contains, or at least once contained, subspecies. I show that the cluster results are in fact evidentially inert relative to each author’s preferred subspecies concept. I then sketch the kinds of biological facts that could be used to push the debate further.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 81 , Issue 5 , December 2014 , pp. 1053 - 1065
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I’d like to thank Dominic Bailey, Matthew Barker, John Basl, Daniel Hausman, Jonathan Kaplan, Larry Shapiro, Elliott Sober, Quayshawn Spencer, and Rasmus Winther for their comments on earlier drafts of this essay, as well as Alan Templeton and the audiences at CU-Boulder, Northeastern University, University of British Columbia, UW-Madison, the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology 2011, and PSA 2012 for helpful discussion. This research was funded under a project at Northeastern University’s Ethics Institute entitled Nanotechnology in the Public Interest: Regulatory Challenges, Capacity, and Policy Recommendations (National Science Foundation, grant SES-0609078).

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