PHILOSOPHY - Race: Racial Ontology #1 (Introduction)

In the first of this four-part Wireless Philosophy series, “Racial Ontology: A Guide for the Perplexed,” David Miguel Gray (Colgate University) introduces general problems philosophers face when they ask the question “What kind of thing is Race?”. In particular, what fields of inquiry should study race, if there can be racial ‘experts’, and what an account of race should look like if it is to capture the issues we care about.

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[IXPrometheusXI]

My favorite part of this channel is how it makes university professors actually good at drawing on the whiteboard.

[nyp]

Never seen a presentation on race so devoid of actual scholarship on the philosophy of race. Did you deliberately ignore every philosopher on this subject or are you unaware that they exist?

[Zoharargov]

Philosophers have the property of overusing the word "Property".

[-zn]

Races are real biological kinds. It's fashionable to deny this, but that's mostly driven by the facts that (a) antirealism about race has become politically correct, and (b) social constructionism about everything is trendy in the social sciences and middle-brow discussions. The arguments normally cited for the unreality of race are simply invalid. Yes, the races aren't very different biologically. But humans aren't very different from chimps; that doesn't mean they aren't two different species. The question is: are the differences real and systematic? Not: are they big? One could go on and on...but there seems to be no reasoning with the true believers right now. These fits of social insanity usually blow over, people calm down, and a few years from now it'll be possible for people to be rational about this again. At which point people will look back on the array of fallacious arguments against the reality of race and it will be hard for them to believe that some kind of mass insanity about this subject gripped so many people. Mostly the fad is driven by the idea that believing that race is real is somehow racist (which is obviously false), and that discrediting the idea of race can help diminish racism (which probably isn't true...but it might be... But that is not an admissible reason.). Political motives then take over, and that's what's really motivating the fad.

[lukeyoung]

totally off topic but i chuckled at 6:06 when everyone but the philosopher was a cat

[GaidexVillerX]

Race does not mean anything at all when talking about modern human beings and Ethnicity  is a more correct word.

[andrewmeng]

Excellent video, who can do me a favor to tell me how or which software can make such a video? I mean that with a hand drawing and writing on screen. Thanks a lot!

[AntiCitizenX]

You just spent 8 minutes discussing the ontology of a thing that you never even once tried to define. I could have replaced "race" with "tribbles" and this video would have been just as tautologically relevant.

Pro-tip guys. First define "race" before waxing philosophical over what "kind of thing" a race is. Then you can talk about whether or not that definition is valid and cogent.

[thebeesknees]

People who live in mountains will be different than people who live on plain farms. The body of the mountain man is adapted for lower oxygen more than the farmer man. Also, someone who lives nearer to the equator will have darker skin than someone from the arctic to block out more UV light and the arctic man lighter to create more vitamin D since UV light is less that north up. Also humans split up during our migration across the planet, causing many seperated people and causinh differences.

[kolby-xo]

Thanks for the forecast! Just a quick off-topic question: My OKX wallet holds some USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (air carpet target dish off jeans toilet sweet piano spoil fruit essay). How can I transfer them to Binance?

[TheHueben]

I'm not so sure about the semantic difference theory. Just because some experts have a definition for words that im using, doesnt mean that i am speaking in a meaningful way. I think the meaning of words is not defined by other people. The meaning of a word just comes with the intention of the speaker. Meaning words only mean what i mean with it.

[rangequeen]

Non-content related: This video is overloaded with repetitive distracting images that add nothing to the content. The cat drawings gorgeous but once each would have been enough. If you want to bring complex concepts and vocabulary to people don't prevent them from thinking by giving them dominant and overly simplistic visuals like this. So while this looked very pleasing I was really displeased that I had to watch it twice to get all the information, not because of lack of understanding but because the video seemed to actively try and destroy any concentration the viewer has.

[australiabelongstoafricans]

International criminal courts have a lot to say about race being physical. There are no social constructs under international law.

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide Article 2:

"Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part"

Notice the international courts have stated racial groups can be physically destroyed and its a crime of genocide to do so. How can you physically destroy a social construct?

[mariasmith]

Anthropologists can easily distinguish the race of a SKELETON, and genetic sequencing can easily differentiate different markers of race from a bit of TISSUE. So, um, NO. Race is not how you are brought up, or what you look like. There is ABSOLUTELY no difficulty in understanding what race is. You are CREATING problems with the definition, because you don't like the implications. I think it is kind of evil to try to confuse an issue by pretending that you are trying to clear it up, actually.

[jamforall]

So basically, you're describing a socially constructed and developed identity that's maintained historically through Collective sense of belonging that is further made real through government and institutional norms and practices. The categorization of humans is based on cell marker to make "race" real. Your philosophy without a doubt, the ontology of race Is analytical because it helps to deconstruct what race means . We know why we need race– to subjugate, control, and most of all to segregate the supposedly inferior from the superior. No man is superior over me; .No goddamn man, not even a single one this appeal to me. Is but for his guns, disease, blocking access, and inferior treatment that makes him think that he is. Every man puts their pants on one leg at a time. Therefore, we are all the same

[joshuaoha]

I got to disagree. We in fact do have a group of experts we can differ to. Geneticists, and Biological Anthropologists. And there is not "massive disagreement" within the field. There is great consensus within my field of study, that no scientific criteria can be created, to divide humans into distinct groups or "races".

GAH!
I don't understand how you are distinguishing
the difference between natural categories and socio-historical
categories.
The definitions : A natural category is a category found in nature independently of how we would classify things. A socio-historical category is a category which exist because of us. Where I have a problem is the examples they give. For example, «being made of wool» is said to be a natural category, «while being a hat» is a socio-historical category. It seems to me they have this backwards.
after all, «Wool» is just hair that have the right combination of
quantitative properties that all hair have in the right window of
proportions. This would mean that «Being wool» is a disguised
quantitative property of hair rather than a qualitative property of
anything distinct from hair. To a lamb, their hair is not «wool», that's
just the way their hair is. It's only woolen to us. On the contrary, it seems odd to say that an object which is a hat is a hat by virtue being part of a culture.
It seems to me that I can recognize all sorts of objects that are hats,
even objects I have never seen before, even object that would have been
fashioned by freak accidents of nature or divine intervention or
aliens. If it can go on the top of the head, rest there relatively
secured, and reasonably comfortable, then it's a hat. Also, they
say that «Being a doctor» is a socio-historical category because we have
institutions and that doctors must go to fancy universities and be
accreditated and so on. But it seems to me that the category
«being a doctor» is a category made of the conjunction of two different,
more basic categories - one of which is the category «having a medical
licence» (which is a social construct) and the other which is «having
medical skill». After all, you can pass a law that revoke a person's
medical license, but you can't so easily remove their medical skill. Rant over.

[TeraAFK]

Ethnicity isnt race. Races are beings of different evolutionary branches which have been recognized by other races. Examples: Humans, Elves, Orcs, Demons, Angles... etc. Races are fictional. All humans are the same race. In the real world: if cats had evolved into some cat-people (just as we are ape people), we would have the human race and a catpeople race.

[Wizo]

So even trying to pick which group of experts to rely on is hard to define? Man, it sounds like this is going to subjective as hell.

[hunterwilliams-foust]

Humans are too tribal and ignorant. We argue, divide, and kill each other for the stupidest reasons. Nation states, race, ethnicity, all of the these social constructs we humans have created are the very ideologies holding humanity back not only as individuals, but also as a species.