Re-defining “Philosophical Analysis”: Not Descriptive Analysis, or Conservatism, but Pragmatic Revisionism

Abstract

This chapter considers the question “How should the word ‘racism’ be used?” The author argues that answering this question requires that philosophical theory starts from a substantive value. One such value has been explicitly proposed by some and widely presupposed by others. This is the norm that commonsense thinking about racism must be preserved by an adequate philosophical definition of “racism.” Call this the presumption of conservatism. The author develops a framework for assessing this presumption and considers the work of Lawrence Blum, Joshua Glasgow, Jorge Garcia, Tommie Shelby, and others. Because the moral status of ordinary usage is problematic, prescriptive theory ought to adopt a pragmatic revisionist approach to racism. Such an approach is not one that aims at revising ordinary usage per se, but one that aims at meeting some alternative end. (Pragmatic revisionism is methodologically revisionist in that it is open to recommending substantive revisions as a byproduct of achieving other ends.)