Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T00:25:10.122Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How We Divide the World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Michael Root
Michael Root*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis-St. Paul
*
†Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, University of Minnesota, 831 Walter Heller Hall, 271 19th Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55455.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Real kinds or categories, according to conventional wisdom, enter into lawlike generalizations, while nominal kinds do not. Thus, gold but not jewelry is a real kind. However, by such a criterion, few if any kinds or systems of classification employed in the social science are real, for the social sciences offer, at best, only restricted generalizations. Thus, according to conventional wisdom, race and class are on a par with telephone area codes and postal zones; all are nominal rather than real. I propose an account of real kinds that recognizes the current reality of race but not zip codes and shows how a kind can be both constructed and real. One virtue of such an understanding of realism is the light shed on our current practice of racial classification. Race is not a real biological kind but neither is race a myth or illusion. However, the question of whether a social kind is real is separate from whether the category is legitimate. W. E. B. Du Bois maintained that while there are no biological races, race is real and should be conserved. My aim, in this paper, is not to argue for the legitimacy or conservation of race but to defend Du Bois's idea that kinds of people can be both made up and real and provide an understanding of realism that does justice to the social sciences.

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. S628 - S639
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Appiah, Kwame Anthony (1994), “Identity, Authenticity, Survival: Multicultural Societies and Social Reproduction”, in Gutman, Amy (ed.), Multiculturalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 149–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. (1992), “Illusions of Race”, in In My Father's House. New York: Oxford University Press, 28–46.Google Scholar
Aries, Philippe (1962 [1960]), Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. New York: Alfred Knopf. Translated by Robert Bladick. Originally published as L'Enfant et la vie familiale sous l'ancien regime. Paris: Plon.Google Scholar
Cooper, R. S. and Cooper, David R. (1986), “The Biological Concept of Race and its Application to Public Health and Epidemology”, Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law 11: 97–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Sousa, Ronald (1984), “The Natural Shiftiness of Natural Kinds”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 14: 561–581.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dupré, John (1993), The Disorder of Things. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1969), The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Signet.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1992), “The Conservation of Races”, in Brotz, Howard (ed.), African-American Social and Political Thought 1850–1920. New York: Transaction Publishers, 483–492.Google Scholar
Elster, Jon (1989), The Cement of Society: A Study of Social Order. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fein, Oliver (1995), “The Influence of Social Class on Health Status: American and British Research on Health Inequalities”, Journal of General Internal Medicine 10: 577–586.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hacker, Andrew (1992), Two Nations. New York: Ballantine Books.Google Scholar
Hull, David (1978), “A Matter of Individuality”, Philosophy of Science 45: 355–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mackay, Ruth B. and Puente, Manuel de la (1996), “Cognitive Research on Designing the CPS Supplement on Race and Ethnicity”, in Proceedings of the Annual Research Conference (1995), U.S. Bureau of the Census. Rosslyn VA, 326–337.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl (1977), “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”, in McLellan, David (ed.), Karl Marx: Selected Writings. New York: Oxford University Press, 300–325.Google Scholar
Ruben, David-Hillel (1989), “Realism in the Social Sciences”, in Lawson, Hilary and Appignanesi, Lisa (eds.), Dismantling Truth. London: Wedenfeld and Nicholson, 58–75.Google Scholar
Whewell, William (1847), The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, I. London: John Parker.Google Scholar
Wiggins, David (1995), “Substance”, in Grayling, A. C. (ed.), Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar