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Race: Biological Reality or Social Construct?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Robin O. Andreasen
Robin O. Andreasen*
Affiliation:
University of Delaware
*
†Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716.
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Abstract

Race was once thought to be a real biological kind. Today the dominant view is that objective biological races don't exist. I challenge the trend to reject the biological reality of race by arguing that cladism (a school of classification that individuates taxa by appeal to common ancestry) provides a new way to define race biologically. I also reconcile the proposed biological conception with constructivist theories about race. Most constructivists assume that biological realism and social constructivism are incompatible views about race; I argue that the two conceptions can be compatible.

Type
Philosophy of the Social Sciences
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 67 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers Sep., 2000 , 2000 , pp. S653 - S666
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I would like to thank Claudia Card, Berent Enç, Dan Hausman, Steven Orzack, Michael Root, Larry Shapiro, Laura Sizer, Chris Stephens, Vanessa Tanaka, Naomi Zack, and especially Elliott Sober for helpful comments on an earlier draft.

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