Race: Racial Ontology #2 (Naturalist Theories of Race)

hello my name is David Miguel gray and I'm an assistant professor of philosophy at Colgate University is Reis something we can fully explain in terms of the natural world around us welcome to part two of the four part series on racial ontology a guide for the perplexed in the first part we discussed three general problems that make giving any kind of race difficult those were the domain problem the expertise and deference problem and the mismatch problem for part two of this series I want to look at a particular set of theories that we can call naturalist theories of race while the term naturalism is used in many different ways we can think of naturalism as the view that properties within a particular domain of investigation our physical properties for instance there are lots of domains of inquiry where we may believe in non-physical properties you might believe in numbers which are a kind of abstract object is they aren't located in space or time or you might think that moral properties like the wrongness of pushing someone in front of a car is a non physical property that is if we look at all the physical stuff involved in pushing someone in front of a car for example the car the person the act of pushing you might think that the rymus is not among those physical parts if one were to be a naturalist about moral properties they might claim that the moral properties are among the physical parts believing that difficult debate on moral naturalism aside we can say that to be a naturalist about race is to say that racial properties just are physical properties if you are wondering what aside from physical properties racial properties could be one possible alternative is that racial properties are social properties social properties are those that are dependent on human acts and decisions while properties that we consider physical thought to be independent of human acts and decisions take an example of an object like the Great Sphinx of Giza the property of being made of limestone is a natural property the statue limestone isn't something that is the result of human actions or decision-making however the fact that this object is a statue isn't a natural property someone decided to shape the limestone into a couch into Sphinx so what's the upshot of thinking of races as being composed of natural properties well that means that races exist independently of any human actions or decision-making processes races are something in the world that natural scientists can investigate and discover the opposing view would be that races are created by people which will be the topic of the third video so now we have an idea of both of what it means to think of races in terms of natural properties as well as what that view can be contrasted with this leads us to the question which natural properties for the naturalist there are a lot of different accounts of what race could be before the 20th century when Ray seemed to be studied primarily by natural historians the following features were associated with racial naturalism one races have either natural essences or some set of observable natural properties that are shared by all or most members of that race to these natural properties our inheritable three these natural properties place races into a hierarchical system where they can be differentiated in terms of physical behavioral intellectual and moral characteristics I'm not going to spend any time on these older views as they aren't currently held for any scientific reason nowadays the only pop up infrequently among those who have a limited and/or motivated understanding of biological properties if you would like to read more about this I'd highly recommend Michael udel Dorothy Roberts Robert de sel and Sarah Tishkoff taking race out of genetics net blocks how heritability misleads about race and Alan Templeton's biological races in humans this leads us to what some philosophers like Josh Glasgow have called the new biology of race unlike the old biology of race the new biology holds that races have natural properties that are common to most members of that race these natural properties give us no reason to think that any intellectual moral or behavioral characteristics can be attributed to races in virtue of shared natural properties while there are many possible accounts of which natural properties could be used to define race when approached that is gained a following is to think of races as partially defined or caused by reproductively isolated breeding populations what's that well a population is a group of the same species that live in the same place what makes the population of breeding population is that members of this group can induce sexually reproduce however there are a few things that could make breeding population reproductively isolated one way is that the breeding population is geographically cut off from other breeding populations of their own species for instance you can imagine a group of people cut off from others because they live on an island or are separated by mountains deserts in this case geographic properties of our world would shape our natural properties another way a breeding population could be reproductively isolated is that even though a population is located together and could interbreed portions of that population don't interbreed with other portions for instance if there were cultural taboos about subgroups of wealthy or short individuals breeding with subgroups of poor or tall individuals respectively those subgroups could be reproductively isolated even if they live in the same location in this case social elements of our world would shape our natural properties so that's what reproductively isolated breeding populations are but how might they be used to define race one way is that we can often define race in terms of ancestral relations for instance if someone is of a particular race let's call it race X we can explain conditions for that individual being of that race if one's parents are both of race X then one is also of race X now you might see a couple of problems here first what happens when one parent is of racex but another parent is of race why in this case we might have to say that the offspring are either a new race say race Z or don't have a race as they are the product of non isolated breeding populations second even if one's parents are both members of race X what makes them members of that race the answer is that their parents were also of race X but now we are often an infinite regress the explanation of what makes someone a member of a race is not answered which is pushed back a generation each time that question gets asked we need an explanation that stops the infinite regress one of two answers is normally given here one option is to say that one's the ancestor is a member of race X and virtue of sharing simple phenotypic or observable properties specific to other members of one's reproductively isolated breeding population the second option is to say that one's ancestor is a member of race X in virtue of sharing similar genotypic or genetic properties specific to other members of one's reproductively isolated breeding population given that much of our genetic makeup plays no direct role in our observable traits the genotypic similarities would not necessarily mean that raises have phenotypic similarities so the cows I just sketched which make use of ancestral relations among reproductively isolated breeding populations and either genotypic or phenotypic properties is one way to develop a naturalist account of race for now I'll leave it to you to think about how such a view can deal with the problems I outlined in the first video the domain problem the expertise and deference problem and the mismatch problem I should note that in an attempt to be quite inclusive of a variety of naturalist theories I've not specified the different ways this account can be developed in order to respond to various concerns for three accounts that make use of the naturalist ideas sketched here see Philip pitchers race ethnicity biology and culture Robyn Andrea sins the meaning of race folk conception in the knee biology of race and Quay Shawn Spencer's around solution to the race problem and for an attack on naturalistic counts see Joshua glass goes on the new biology of race in part 3 we'll discuss social theories of race