Well, how many of your seven criteria must a concept fail before it doesn’t exist? The reason I ask this question is that when someone claims that “race doesn’t exist” it sounds as though they are making an absolute and powerful statement. The reality seems to be (ironically) somewhat more fuzzy.
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I’m not sure I understand your point here. Are you saying that since, in some frame of reference the sun can be said to revolve around the earth, a denial of this, while not strictly true, is nonetheless accurate?
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Maybe you are, and maybe you aren’t, but here’s the thing: Questions such as whether blacks have larger genitals do have answers. Maybe the answers aren’t scientifically meaningful (whatever that means), but the answers are out there. If somebody uses the “race doesn’t exist” concept to suggest or imply that the answer must be “no,” they are abusing the concept.
Good question - I don’t really know as I’m not well versed in the existence/non-existence of scientific concepts. The seven items I listed were my attempt in providing a rationale/justification for why a scientist would reject the existence of concept of race as classically defined. If the concept fails in all seven, then the scientist would be reasonably justified in rejecting the concept and/or believeing that the concept doesn’t exist.
But ask me this: On what basis would you be justified in believing that race does exist? What’s your criteria for acceptance?
Then I suppose you would also have problems with someone making the following claim:
Q: “Do races exist?”
A: “Yes”
explanation/justification for statement made above
Would you not agree that the above reads as though it is making an equally absolute and powerful statement?
But wait - here’s another, straight from your FAQ:
Q: “Do races exist”
A" “Possibly”
explanation/justification for statement made above
One could also object to the phrase “races possibly exist” because it sounds as though an absolute and powerful statement is being made. One could interpret “races possibly exist” to mean that there is no way of ever knowing definitively whether races exist or not, either now, in the future, or ever. Much like an agnostic would claim regarding the existence/non-existence of God.
If you agree that “races possibly exist” can be just as powerful and absolute a statement as “races don’t exist”, then on what basis can you claim to use the term “races possibly exist” and reject “races don’t exist”?
If you disagree, then on what basis can you claim that “races possibly exist” cannot/must not/should not be interpreted as an absolute and powerful statement?
If I make a claim (Q: Do races exist? Does the Sun revolve around the Earth? A: No), and I then follow up that claim with a justitication/explanation (“Here’s why I said No to the question”) the justification/explanation is providing the context for why I said “No”. Which is what I did immediately following my Q: “Do races exist?” A: “No” in my FAQ (I’ll admit I may not have provided a clear enough justification/explanation). Which is what would be done for the other question as well.
Originally posted by eponymous
Originally posted by lucwarm
Uh, I hate to say this, but are you kidding me? You’ve been debating extremely knowledgeable people regarding this issue, have been dealing with the likes of Collounsbury, edwino, tomndebb, and a host of other debaters, and you provide me a link to a thread close to a year old with only two posts, the last by JillGat? JillGat? I didn’t know he/she was a common contributer to all the many race threads. NOTE: To JillGat and others who are ready this, I am in no way trying to disparage the knowledge/debating skills of you/her. I just didn’t think a one line dismissal to a question could be so intimidating, especially to lucwarm.
OK, you got me. I’ll concede and state that most people haven’t said you can’t/shouldn’t debate issues pertaining to race. Hasn’t deterred you, right?
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Questions such as whether blacks have larger genitals do have answers, but I’ll counter with this: So what? What if I choose to ignore your answers? What if everyone, save yourself, simply ignores your findings? What then?
If someone sets up a FAQ with the following statement: Q: "Do black people have larger genitals than other races? A: “Yes (or No)” (corresponding explanation/justification), and I counter with the argument that the term “black people” is being abused because it implies the existence of and entity (a black race) that may or may not exist, what’s your response? You yourself said there are answers out there - I’m assuming you wouldn’t object to the same type of response/criticism that you yourself have provided in this thread and your FAQ.
lucwarm,
Look - I’m a reasonable person, at least I like to view myself as such. If you could provide me passages from my FAQ that you find objectionable, let me know. I can go back and modify the wording to make it less objectionable. Keep in mind, though, that the final modifications may still not be exactly what you want. After all, I’m trying to adhere to what the current view is in the scientific community regarding the “race” issue. If you object to the current view, well, take it up with the scientific community.
Quite frankly, I’m not sure that it makes any sense to refer to a classification scheme as existing or not existing (in the sense you seem to be using). To the extent that they “exist” at all, classification schemes exist purely in the world of ideas.
A better way to talk about classification schemes is to look at how useful they are, and importantly, can they be used to make interesting predictions. Now, one can cook up ridiculous classification schemes that nonetheless can be used to make some interesting predictions. But that’s not necessarily a problem IMHO. One can imagine a ranking of classification schemes with the most useful ones at the top and the less useful ones at the bottom. There’s simply no need to draw a line and say something to the effect of “If you’re not in the top 40, you don’t exist.”
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I would have a problem, yes. Perhaps not as big of a problem, since, as a technical matter, any classification scheme that is described can be said to exist.
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Oh come on - “possibly” is an equivocal term. And the reading you propose is not a reasonable one. By your style of reasoning, every statement is absolute and powerful.
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See above.
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And that’s great. However, for the reasons expressed above, I think that your explanation/justification is not totally satisfactory.
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Not at all.
Here was my original claim:
There’s little doubt that the link I posted backs up my claim.
Now, here’s your response to my statement above:
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I ignored it, but you were trying to change the focus a little bit.
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Again, you’re not really responding to the point I made, which I’ll repeat:
The question is not whether the “race” issue should or shouldn’t be debated. The question is whether the “no race” position rules out the possibility of the “significant differences” I mentioned earlier in this thread. What Jillgat did was an extreme example of this problem, but it’s not the only time it’s happened. (Admittedly, I’m making assumptions about why Jillgat did what she did.)
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Absolutely not. If I set up a FAQ claiming that blacks had larger genitals (assuming this is the case), I should have a disclaimer setting forth some of the problems with the race concept that have been discussed so often on these boards.
But what if the classification scheme isn’t really useful, but is just being passed off as being useful because one thinks that it makes interesting predictions? And who decides which classification schemes are really useful and which ones aren’t?
If I use some ridiculous classification scheme and conduct studies that have some interesting results, but in which have no basis in fact/truth, and I pass off those findings as legitimate and valid, you wouldn’t have any problems with it?
Why not? If it doesn’t walk like a duck, doesn’t talk like a duck, doesn’t look anywhere near what a duck should look like (or what you think it should look like), why persist in thinking that it does? Why keep using “duck” when all the evidence suggests that it’s not a duck and never was a duck?
So what position would satisfy you to the point that it doesn’t rule out the possiblity of significant differences? The acceptance of the classical concept of race? Ignoring all the data/sudies that clearly point towards the “races don’t exist” claim? What?
My interpretation of JillGat’s response was that he/she thought the question asked was completely ridiculous.
lucwarm, it seems to me that you are saying the following:
If I can group a collection of people and make any statistical prediction for that group, I am justified in calling them a race. It would work as well with the appelation “black” or “asian” as it would with “lefty” or “redhead”.
Is this true? If so, I grant your premise. I just think you should choose a different term than “race”. The term race has a pre-existing meaning, a group of people genetically seperate in some manner from other groups of people, who are in turn genetically seperate in some way. Whatever your statistical grouping is, it isn’t not a genetically seperate entity.
You can’t use the term race to talk about a statistical prediction without the underlying genetics. And since the science definatively disproves the genetic argument, you’re left arguing that word means what you want it to mean.
I’m not sure what your point is here. Certainly there is room for debate over what is useful and what isn’t. And I’m certainly willing to concede that there may be more useful concepts than race out there. (Although I would point out that using race has certain economic advantages. For example, if I were looking for an organ donor, I might use race for the first cut, and then genetic tests after that.)
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I might have a problem with it. Anyway, when I used the word “problem” above, I meant that it’s not necessarily a problem to think of ridiculous classification schemes as existing.
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To continue your metaphor, there are lots of creatures that are thought of as ducks even though they lack one or more ducklike features. Ironically, it may be more difficult to divide animals into ducks and non-ducks (metaphorically speaking) than to divide people into different races.
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I puzzled over your question for some time, and I really don’t understand it. Would you care to re-phrase it?
Only to say that I am eternally grateful that Mr. lucwarm will not be presiding over any organ transplants what with him being too busy twisting words to even open a book on medicine. That made less sense than most anything said so far, you really don’t get it, do you?
Especially since using genetic tests we have an almost 100% prediction of rejection based on HLA and blood typing. Using race as a first cut would only reduce the pool drastically, needlessly, and unscientifically. Are you proposing that 25% African/ 25% Asian/ 25% Native American/25% Caucasian people should only get livers and kidneys from 25% African/25% Asian/25% Native American/25% Caucasian people?
Whatever, he’ll just come back asserting that we don’t understand the real issues (but refusing to specify what the fuck he actually sees they are), ask for things to be restated (word games) or ask Sparcy to either summarize or restate something or other.
Pure fucking sophistry. This is not an actual debate, it is that famous sketch, the argument clinic. Pure contrariness, ad hoc and w/o clear argumentation. I for one am sick of it.
It is your position that an argument is not just a series of contradictions. I have a problem with how you are defining argument and contradictions. You asked me how I would define “argument” and “contradiction.” I said that of all series of contradictions, one could not rule out one series of contradictions actually constituting an argument. I argued that “argument” is defined to whatever we wish, and we could include “series of contradictions” in our definition, and this had predictive value in explaining why my wife has to depend on the milkman for her orgasms. You countered that my wife’s dairy fetish has nothing to do with human discourse, but I argued that the price of ham in Sardinia did not support those findings. I eventually capitulated, nailing down my terms to define “argument” as “lucwarm” and “series of contradictions” as “troll.” You then agreed with me that an argument is a series of contradictions.
OK - I understand what you’re saying - All kinds of classification schemes can exist, from the ridiculous to the non-ridiculous.
And if I understand you correctly, you’re saying that it would be better to “rank”, so to speak, the various classification schemes we can come up with. And that we can rank these schemes based on some set of criteria (for example, usefulness). So someone is being disingenuous/stopping the discussion prematurely if they state that a particular classification scheme doesn’t exist, when in fact they should state that the classification scheme shouldn’t be used because it isn’t useful (or some other criteria). Am I getting close?
OK, Now help me out with this. If you’re saying that all kinds of classification schemes can exist (which can provide varying degrees of interesting results and/or predictions), then they exist by virtue of our devising those schemes.
Now, when you state that classification schemes exist by virtue of our devising those schemes, Do you mean that 1) these classification schemes are the product of the human intellect - that is, they are created by humans? Or do you mean that 2) these classification schemes already exist - that is, the human intellect “discovers” them in the realm of ideas?
Or is it 3) a combination of the two? That is, classification schemes are created by the human intellect, but we don’t create these schemes out of thin air. There are entities/elements that exist in the realm of ideas that, once accessed by the human intellect, can be used to create the multitude of classification schemes that can exist.
If it’s 1), then would you agree that if the human intellect “creates” these classification schemes, then humans can also “uncreate” them (that is, that these schemes can cease to exist)? Or rather is it that once a classification scheme is created by the human intellect, then it continues to exist indefinitely? That is, we really can’t uncreate them as long as there is a human intellect around with the ability to maintain its existence.
If it’s 2), then it’s safe to argue that one can’t necessarily deny the existence of an entity/classification scheme, because it could quite possibly exist in the realm of ideas. Just because the human intellect hasn’t detected a parituclar classification scheme, we can’t say that it doesn’t exist.
If it’s 3), then it’s safe to argue that, even though classification schemes are a product of the human intellect, we can’t really “uncreate” them entirely, because the entities/elements that allowed us to create them still exist in the realm of ideas. Just because we think that we are creating and destroying classification schemes, this is really an illusion because the entities/elements that allowed us to create the scheme in the first place may still exist in the realm of ideas.
above is similar to 2), but my my guess is that 2) is close to the position you are arguing. Similar, I suppose, to the age old debate in Mathematics (are numbers/mathematical entities a product of the human intellect or do numbers/mathematic entities already exist in the Platonic realm, waiting to be discovered?).
Am I close? If not, it would help if you could clarify matters.
OK, here’s what you said…
So you are saying that the issue isn’t whether or not “race” should or shouldn’t be debated, but rather the “no race” position rules out the possibilty of the significant differences mentioned previously in this thread.
So what would, to you, be an acceptable position to take that doesn’t rule out the possibilty of significant differences? In other words, how should the debate/issue be framed that would be acceptable to you? I’m assuming that it should be something similar to what you have in your FAQ. Am I correct in assuming this?
“Uncreating” classification schemes is done all of the time. The taxonomy of Linnaeus, including the 5 kingdoms, has undergone significant modification as things are reshuffled based on greater knowledge about evolution. Old Linnaean taxons sometimes just cease to exist (where existing means currently used in science). They have no scientific relevance, so they are retired and are of only of historical interest. Science IMHO is very pragmatic – old disproven science is of very little general use to us. Science is based on rediscovery and retesting and establishing links based on observations. When stuff does not fit into theories anymore, it is tossed. Scientifically, it ceases to exist. Science is pragmatic – we use the best descriptors possible in order to best reflect the nature behind the observations.
This is not unique to science. We do this with nearly all classification schemes. I could define “Soviet” for instance as a citizen of Russia or the other former Soviet Republics from 1917 or whenever the Republic was incorporated into the USSR to the breakup sometime in the early 1990s. But there are no Soviets today – there are Russians and Uzbeks and Lithuanians. Soviet, as a classification, ceases to exist.
Race is defined by self-identification. While self-identification may reflect something about genetics, it is not a dependable indicator. At one point, when our knowledge of genetics was less, we thought that race may be an accurate indicator of genetics and ancestry. We now know different, and we have better groupings that take the place. So just like retired taxon, the term ceases to exist in a pragmatic scientific sense. We can describe things better, so we do. There is no scientific need to describe nature poorly. For the n-thousandth time: Race describes genetics and ancestry poorly. We have no need for poor classification schemes, so we devise better ones that better reflect the genetics and ancestry. We use them instead of race. Race is meaningless scientifically, and therefore should not be used.
Your position couldn’t be any clearer, and I agree with you completely. That’s my position on the “race” issue, and that’s what I thought I was trying to convey in my FAQ.
I’m just trying to understand specifically what lucwarm is objecting to. It seems to hinge on the existence/non-existence of race (or the classification schemes/our conceptualization of “race”). That is, I think he’s saying that one shoudn’t categorically deny the existence of “race”, when it’s probably better to state that it isn’t a useful concept. It may still exist, but in what sense it may still exist to lucwarm, I don’t know.
And, according to lucwarm one should still be able to use the concept, because it can be used to make interesting predictions. Regardless if those interesting predictcions are meaningless to the scientific community, regardless if the concept doesn’t accord with what is currently known about the concept, and so on. That is, he seems to be objecting to how scientists define the existence of concepts/classifications schemes, and the like. It’s somehow insufficient, or “abusive”, for scientists to explain what they mean (or provide justification/explanation) when they state something doesn’t exist.
To me this whole thread seems to be a philosophical debate about the existence/non-exietence of concepts/classifications schemes/entities, etc. and “what do you really mean when you say something doesn’t exist”? Issues pertaining to ontology, epistemology, philosophy of science, etc., that, I think, would be best answered by philosophers better versed in these areas.
