Are human races cladistic subspecies?
- Authors: Mncube, Zinhle
- Date: 2015-06-25
- Subjects: Human races , Cladistic race concept , Cladistic subspecies
- Type: Article
- Identifier: uj:5553 , ISSN 02580136 , http://hdl.handle.net/10210/14139
- Description: In the article titled 'A New Perspective on the Race Debate', Robin O. Andreasen argues that contrary to popular scientific belief, human races are biologically real — it is just that we are wrong about them. Andreasen calls her contemporary biological concept of race ‘the cladistic race concept’ (or CRC). Her theory uses theory from cladistics — a systematic school founded by entomologist Willi Hennig in 1950 — to define human races genealogically as cladistic subspecies. In this paper I will argue that despite its promise as a biological definition of human races, Andreasen's CRC is unconvincing. In particular, I will show that the central problem of the CRC is its attempt to apply cladistics below the species level. In other words, there is good reason not to think that cladistic subspecies are not real, and therefore, they cannot be the target of a realist concept of race.
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- Authors: Mncube, Zinhle
- Date: 2015-06-25
- Subjects: Human races , Cladistic race concept , Cladistic subspecies
- Type: Article
- Identifier: uj:5553 , ISSN 02580136 , http://hdl.handle.net/10210/14139
- Description: In the article titled 'A New Perspective on the Race Debate', Robin O. Andreasen argues that contrary to popular scientific belief, human races are biologically real — it is just that we are wrong about them. Andreasen calls her contemporary biological concept of race ‘the cladistic race concept’ (or CRC). Her theory uses theory from cladistics — a systematic school founded by entomologist Willi Hennig in 1950 — to define human races genealogically as cladistic subspecies. In this paper I will argue that despite its promise as a biological definition of human races, Andreasen's CRC is unconvincing. In particular, I will show that the central problem of the CRC is its attempt to apply cladistics below the species level. In other words, there is good reason not to think that cladistic subspecies are not real, and therefore, they cannot be the target of a realist concept of race.
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A philosophical study of heritability
- Authors: Mncube, Zinhle
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: Nature and nurture , Behavior genetics , Genetic psychology , Environmental psychology
- Language: English
- Type: Masters (Thesis)
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/227052 , uj:22970
- Description: M.A. (Philosophy) , Abstract: The purpose of my dissertation is to ask the question, what non-statistical reality underlies heritability claims? But in order to ask this question, I must deal with the prior question – does it ever make sense to causally interpret heritability claims? The consensus answer to this question is “no”. Firstly, I argue that is possible to reply to each of the main lines of argument used to establish that heritability estimates are causally uninterpretable – (i) the existence of gene-environment interaction, (ii) the existence of G-E correlation, and (iii) the locality of heritability estimates. Therefore the consensus that “heritability estimates are devoid of causal implications” (Sesardic, 2005:10) is too quick. Specifically, (a) when there is no statistical gene-environment interaction (Sesardic, 2005; Tal, 2009, 2012), (b) when there is small to no geneenvironment correlation (Tal, 2009, 2012), and (c) within the domain of populations that have similar causally salient features, it makes sense to causally interpret a heritability estimate as a measure of the causal strength of differences in genes on total phenotypic variance. Secondly, when a heritability estimate is correctly used to express a causal fact, I argue that it suffers from the same problem that other measures of strength of association suffer from – the causal interpretation problem (or CIP). That is, when we say that heritability is a “measure of the proportion of the variance in a particular trait in a particular population that is attributed with genetic variation in that population” (Kaplan, 2006:56), the mathematics does not tell us how to interpret “attributable to/with”. Viewed in this light, the epistemological problem about heritability analysis...
- Full Text:
- Authors: Mncube, Zinhle
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: Nature and nurture , Behavior genetics , Genetic psychology , Environmental psychology
- Language: English
- Type: Masters (Thesis)
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/227052 , uj:22970
- Description: M.A. (Philosophy) , Abstract: The purpose of my dissertation is to ask the question, what non-statistical reality underlies heritability claims? But in order to ask this question, I must deal with the prior question – does it ever make sense to causally interpret heritability claims? The consensus answer to this question is “no”. Firstly, I argue that is possible to reply to each of the main lines of argument used to establish that heritability estimates are causally uninterpretable – (i) the existence of gene-environment interaction, (ii) the existence of G-E correlation, and (iii) the locality of heritability estimates. Therefore the consensus that “heritability estimates are devoid of causal implications” (Sesardic, 2005:10) is too quick. Specifically, (a) when there is no statistical gene-environment interaction (Sesardic, 2005; Tal, 2009, 2012), (b) when there is small to no geneenvironment correlation (Tal, 2009, 2012), and (c) within the domain of populations that have similar causally salient features, it makes sense to causally interpret a heritability estimate as a measure of the causal strength of differences in genes on total phenotypic variance. Secondly, when a heritability estimate is correctly used to express a causal fact, I argue that it suffers from the same problem that other measures of strength of association suffer from – the causal interpretation problem (or CIP). That is, when we say that heritability is a “measure of the proportion of the variance in a particular trait in a particular population that is attributed with genetic variation in that population” (Kaplan, 2006:56), the mathematics does not tell us how to interpret “attributable to/with”. Viewed in this light, the epistemological problem about heritability analysis...
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