Chen has now said that can races plainly be categorized on the basis of various sets of heritable characteristics such as color of skin, eyes, and hair.
Well, if they plainly can then tell us which sets of heritable characteristics such as color of skin, eyes, and hair allow you to categorise your Pacific Islander and East Asian races.
We have asked you to do this 12 times so far. And you always weasel away form it.
Since you are now explicitly claiming that humans can clearly be categorized on the basis of various sets of heritable characteristics such as color of skin, eyes, and hair, the time has come for you to do so. You have made the explicit claim in GD that you are able to do something. So now lets see you do it.
And everybody remember, Chen’s Pacific Islander race encompasses Polynesians, a population that not infrequently has red hair, along with Mongoloid Indonesians, Singaporeans Australian Aborigines and New Guinean Melanesians.
Chen is correct that “Pacific Islanders = Oceanians” and “East Asian” represent separate races, where we define race in terms of either clades or population clusters and we set the level of analysis such that we can discriminate between the two. (In the same manner, dark people and light people would never represent separate clades or population clusters).
The question that Blake asks is: either 1) what pattern of heritable characteristics would a non-geneticist recognize between these two populations.
2) by what patterns of heritable characteristics could a non-geneticist use to classify a particular individual as either “Oceanian” and “East Asian.”
is easy. If we took a random sample of individuals who were independently classified as “Oceanian” and “East Asians” and measured a set of heritable differences (say h^2>.5) such as skin reflectance, hair texture, and craniofacial morphology, we would find average differences between these two populations. This would be our pattern of heritable characteristics, which would testify that we are, in fact, talking about different genetic population. (i.e. our population classifications would have external validity).
is less easy. It’s worth noting that it’s not particularly relevant to taxonomic classification – unless someone here can cite some criteria that I am aware of. My experienced when traveling through the area was that I could guess Asian regional ancestry with a reasonable degree of accuracy. >75%
This thread is not called: “Are there human subspecies?” This thread is called: “Is there such a biological thing as a racial groups?” Now, to clarify, I asked a couple of people if the thread was really about “human subspecies?” No one said that it was. This is why I have persisted in posting. I’m not interested in debating whether there are human subspecies. I am interested in debating the “biological reality of race” – that seems to be a philosophically interesting question. Is anyone here seriously maintaining that it’s either “subspecies” or “social construction”?
Well, that is one of the biological definitionsprovided for race. The definition also provides:
In terms of physical traits there is a description of some of the craniofacial traits variations across major racial groups here. There’s also a graphical display of the clusters found in Howell’s data here.
As I’ve said above, the existence of populations with shared traits due to shared evolutionary history can also be seen from cluster analysis. Different populations will have more or less gene flow between them but they can easily be recognized as distinct populations because they have different, relatively stable, allele frequencies. These reflect their common ancestry. Nonetheless, real life evolution and populations are messy. There are no neat and tidy boundaries, especially at the geographical edges.
So yet again Chen totally fails to answer the simple questions.
Chen has said that Pacific Islander and East Asian are two of the races.
Chen has now said that can races plainly be categorized on the basis of various sets of heritable characteristics such as color of skin, eyes, and hair.
Well, if they plainly can then tell us which sets of heritable characteristics such as color of skin, eyes, and hair allow you to categorise your Pacific Islander and East Asian races.
We have asked you to do this 12 times so far. And you always weasel away form it.
Since you are now explicitly claiming that humans can clearly be categorized on the basis of various sets of heritable characteristics such as color of skin, eyes, and hair, the time has come for you to do so. You have made the explicit claim in GD that you are able to do something. So now lets see you do it.
African Savanna and African Forest elephants are classified as African subspecies (some argue species). If 95% of the African elephants interbred, would that mean that the remaining 5% were no longer members of different subspecies. Your reasoning makes no sense.
That said, I don’t get where you are getting your populations. Clearly, South and central Americans are hybrids (i.e.multiracial). I never suggested that other groups were. Even if they were it would be biologically interesting to know which ancestral populations they were a combination of. How is it not interesting to knowing how much W. SS African/European/Amerindian admixture this hybrid person or hybrid population has?
I’m game. Since we are doing this cladistically, we have to figure out how to calculate “above chance.” (From a caldistic perspective, there are degrees of error — e.g African/Out of African; North Eurasian/South Eurasian; European; East Asians; etc.)
It’s funny that you argue that I’m making up definitions. You argue that “race” is a “mish-mash.” Since, according to you, there is no correct definition of race, the problem can’t be that I giving an incorrect one. The problem must be that I’m giving a novel definition. (I’m not; I’m not that creative). Now, you seem to think that this is problematic. Why?
If we could get everyone to agree with Chuck – we would solve our “mish mash” problem. We would then be left with the question: Is chuck’s definition biologically and socially interesting? This is what we need to investigate. The first step is to decide if Chuck’s definition is “biologically coherent.” After that we can try to play your guess a person game and see how socially predictive (and interesting) it is.
Your statement that I challenged tried to make a case for race as different from subspecies. If they are the same thing–as I have seen in numerous biological texts–then you are claiming a difference without a distinction simply to make an unsupportable claim.
Another reference would be Witherspoon, et al., 2007. “Genetic Similarities Within and Between Human Populations”
Due to this, advocates (like yourself) of the population race concept only need to argue that there are patterns of between population differences (which is trivially true) for your position to be readily defensible. Common sets of shared traits are unneeded to establish within population relations.
Ok. I am arguing that races (in the sense of the x-y historic geographical populations) can be understood as clades. As such, they can be understood as “biological groupings” as opposed to “social constructs.” I am noncommittal as to whether these clades correspond with things (population clusters) which fulfill the criteria of being subspecies. Some might, some might not, none might.
In zoology “race” is equated with “subspecies.” But clearly, when we talk about “race,” we are not talking about something that is equated with subspecies. Rather, we are trying to clarify what we are talking about and we are trying to figure out its taxonomic status. In this debate,
Some argue that:
zoologically, race = subspecies
what we call races aren’t subspecies
therefore, races don’t exists (as subspecies)
therefore races are “social constructs”
(and therefore races have no biological basis)
others argue that:
logically, race is an incoherent concept
therefore, race is a social construct
and therefore race has no biological basis
My point is to establish:
that there is a logically coherent concepts of race which represent biological groupings and which roughly (sometimes very roughly) corresponds to the ordinary concept of race
that this concept of race is both biologically and socially interesting
Under ordinary circumstances, establishing the above 2 points should not be difficult. Yet, the “reality of race” issue is so sociopolitically charged and convoluted that it is quite trying.
Well, here you’ve given yet another example of a supposed pine forest which clearly has no biological basis . You say this is a pine forest, but over there you can clearly see some hardwoods which grow much more numerous the farther you travel in that direction. There’s a fairly large area near the middle that doesn’t have any fully grown trees at all which lowers the average number of trees per acre, and a lot of the growth around here is underbrush. You claim the density of pine trees in the area justifies calling it a pine forest, but there is no agreement among scientists on exactly how much density there would have to be before an area can be considered a forest of any kind, let alone a pine forest. Also, a creek runs through the middle, so it’s not one area, it’s actually two. So, you see, the concept of a pine forest, or any other kind of forest, has no biological basis and is therefore just a social construct.
Well, to make it clearer, biologists are not referring to the pine race but pine forest is good in this case.
Many do not make the mistake when talking about dogs as having different races (specially in English speaking countries) and yet, it is clear to all that breeds and natural changes observed in the Lupus genus do have genetic differences that depending on the kind can be observed, and that still does not create a different race among dogs.
What’s the criteria for a race = subspecies? What would our biological groupings however we decide to delineate them (e.g population clusters, clades) need to have to qualify as zoological races? To put it another way – just so we’re all clear on the matter – what disqualifies them?
If we establish the criteria, then we can look to see if there really are zoological human races, even if they don’t correspond to the groups commonly called so.
And particularly ironic given that in our previous thread of conversation the final post was #277 from me which you utterly ignored.
When did I ever claim that races had objective existence? And as I said in my last post, the “black” race clearly exists, in the sense that it is a grouping into which people (in the US in particular) mentally sort people. What else is a race other than that, at least in common parlance? And what’s your point?
Your debate style is extraordinarily confrontational and condescending.
Again, the majority of physical scientists are acknowledging that the old concept of race was imposed to biology, and are abandoning that old use. What I have seen so far, even from the medical cites produced so far, is a look at the populations and the propensities that they have or might have to specific diseases, but just like we don’t go right away to say that since a German Shepperd has a propensity to have their hind bones fall apart that therefore that is what we would use to call it a different race, so it is becoming more silly to continue using the old way race was defined to the human race.
