Glasgow's Race Antirealism: Experimental Philosophy and Thought Experiments

Abstract

Joshua Glasgow argues that there are no races, using experimental philosophy and a more traditional thought-experiment approach. A closer look, however, finds these antirealist arguments much less convincing. Glasgow’s overall argumentative strategy is to endorse a relatively thin conception of what the concept of race requires, only to argue that even that thin notion is tied up too much with problematic elements that do not exist in any of the candidate groups that we might call races. This paper argues that a social-kind view of race can handle the objections Glasgow presents without much in the way of unwelcome implications, and some of his positive arguments turn out to be much more favorable to a social-kind view than Glasgow allows. Section 1 looks at Glasgow’s overall strategy, beginning with some experimental philosophy that he concludes shows that the ordinary concept of race is both a thin concept and biological. Section 2 then evaluates the implications of the experimental philosophy work Glasgow points to, concluding that Glasgow improperly takes these data to show that the ordinary concept of race requires thinking of races as natural kinds. Section 3 challenges Glasgow’s argument that we should stop believing in races, because belief in races involves too many false beliefs about the groups we are calling races. Section 4 looks at some thought experiments Glasgow uses to bolster his other arguments, suggesting that various counterfactual scenarios provide counterexamples for the claim that the socially constructed groups we call races are genuine races. I argue that these thought experiments need not lead to his conclusion. Section 5 looks at a quick argument Glasgow gives in his summary, to the effect that our criteria for race membership are inconsistent, arguing that it, too, is unmotivated. His arguments, therefore, do not give strong enough reasons to be antirealists about race.