This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Are my philosophy professor's objections to the biological definition of race sound?
My philosophy of race class has considered and dismissed the biological definition of race. We've explored five objections to race-as-biological:
Objection 1: It isn't possible to locate the boundaries between racial types with any precision. The biological definition of race aims to divide humanity into distinct categories on the basis of physiological traits that don't admit of clean divisions. but this is hopelessly arbitrary given the absence of differences of kind between purported racial groups (there are only differences of degree). Skin color, for instance, varies along a continuum without discrete segments that perfectly track racial distinctions. "Short" and "tall" aren't good enough for anatomy or basketball, and neither can the imprecise idea of "races." Race attempts to bracket "lumps" apart from each other, but this is a vain effort because there are only continuua.
Objection 2: Scientific authority: Scientists don't talk of "races" but instead prefer to speak of "populations." As John H. Relethford says in his introduction to biological anthropology:
Objection 3: There are no reliable lumpings/clusters of characteristics for "race" to track. For example, skin color is supposed to go with a certain hair texture and with certain facial features, consistently, but racial traits just don't hang together this way: many dark skinned people have straight hair, aquiline noses, thin lips, and many light skinned people have curled hair, full lips, and wide noses.
Objection 4: Modern dictionaries do not define race biologically.
The last objection makes very little sense to me, but here goes:
Objection 5: Human heredity is much more complicated than the transmission of racial essences. It involves a myriad of environmental factors, to produce the traits that distinguish humans from each other. Biological race-thinking is incapable of producing an adequate scientific account of this complexity.
Do you find these objections convincing? If not, why not?
I'm only going to address (1) and (3) since (2) and (4) are just appeals to authority.
You can locate boundaries between racial types, and there are reliable lumpings/clusters of characteristics to track. These boundaries just aren't "parallel to the axes" - as in, if the X-axis is color and the Y-axis is hair curliness, the boundary might not be a vertical or horizontal line. But also any random geneticist can build nicely separated clusters of humans with bog standard statistical techniques. Here's Razib Khan, for example, being a nerd about Bengali genetics:
https://www.brownpundits.com/2019/09/01/most-of-the-east-asian-in-east-bengalis-is-not-from-the-munda/
https://i0.wp.com/www.brownpundits.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Rplot05.png?ssl=1
(Note that PC1 and PC2 in the graphs are principal components, not an individual feature.)
Also, there is no "unique" boundary because Bengalis and Tibetans are separated so much that lots of different lines would do a good job of separating them.
When I read this sentence, two thoughts went through my head one after the other:
You can't expect a professor teaching a "philosophy of race" class to understand principal component analysis or clustering or population/individual genetics. Those are math and science; totally different departments!
... But if they don't understand the extremely relevant math and science in this case, and proceed to talk nonsense because of that ignorance, then what the hell good are they? And why should anybody take them seriously?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link