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The Harvard Review of Philosophy:
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26
Frank J. Costa
The Restorative Proportionality Theory:
A New Approach to Affirmative Action
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This article offers a normative framework for affirmative action. It argues that affirmative action is not about diversity, but correcting historical injustice. The theory’s presumption is that racial groups would perform equally if not for history, because talent and hard work do not vary by race. The article explores the implications of that premise in answering the most provocative criticisms of affirmative action. Should white students pay for historical wrongs? Should African immigrants benefit from affirmative action? Are Asian Americans unfairly disadvantaged? The article proposes proportional representation as a limiting principle of affirmative action, because preferential treatment beyond proportionality contradicts the theory’s presumption of equal performance. The article proceeds to argue that some groups, like Asian Americans, rebut the presumption by fairly outperforming others and should not be penalized. Finally, the article argues that groups should not be classified on race per se, rather on a shared experience of injustice.
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The Harvard Review of Philosophy:
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Naomi Zack
Intersection Theory as Progressive:
Philosophy of Race, Feminism, and Antisemitism
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Many are already familiar with the idea of intersectionality. Intersection Theory can be conceived as encompassing other progressive theories, such as Philosophy of Race and Feminism. In Philosophy of Race, the ultimate explanatory concept is race; in Feminism, the ultimate explanatory term is gender. This discrepancy has given rise to Black Feminism. Intersection Theory can also be contextualized and expanded to include more detailed intersections when there is inequality within intersected groups. But, intersectionality does not yet address unpredictable violence, either against blacks or normally advantaged groups, such as United States Jews. For such cases, it is useful to posit a new intersectional factor of regressive violence, to account for counter-revolutionary response to decades of progress for minorities. Overall, the flexibility of Intersection Theory allows for creative analysis. However, not all intersections yield politically viable identities and those that would might require governmental recognition of group rights.
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Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther
A Beginner’s Guide to the New Population Genomics of Homo sapiens:
Origins, Race, and Medicine
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It is important to understand the science underlying philosophical debates. In particular, careful reflection is needed on the scientific study of the origins of Homo sapiens, the division of current human populations into ethnicities, populations, or races, and the potential impact of genomics on personalized medicine. Genomic approaches to the origins and divisions of our species are among the most multi-dimensional areas of contemporary science, combining mathematical modeling, computer science, medicine, bioethics, and philosophy of biology. The best evidence suggests that we are a young species, with a cradle in Africa. While prejudice, misunderstanding, and violence grow in many corners of the world, our best genomic science suggests a deep biological connection among all peoples.
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The Harvard Review of Philosophy:
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Michael O. Hardimon
Four Ways of Thinking about Race
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This essay presents four ways of thinking about race. They consist of four related but distinct race concepts: the racialist concept of race, which is the traditional, pernicious, essentialist, and hierarchical concept of race; the concept of socialrace, which is the antiracist concept of race as a social construction; the minimalist concept of race, which is the deflationary concept of biological race that represents race as a matter of color, shape and geographical ancestry; and the populationist concept of race, the race concept that represents races as populations, deriving from geographically separated and reproductive isolated founding populations. Taken together, the four concepts can help us better navigate our way through the murky conceptual domain of “race.”
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The Harvard Review of Philosophy:
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J. L. A. Garcia
Race as a Social Construction:
Some Difficulties
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This paper raises serious problems for the commonly held claim that races are socially constructed. The first section sketches out an approach to our construction of institutional phenomena that, taking Searle’s general approach, restricts social construction proper to cases where we adopt rules that bind relevant parties to treat things of a type in certain ways, thus constituting important roles in, and parts of, our social lives. I argue this conception, construction-by-rules, helps distinguish genuine construction from other activities and relations and also solves a problem raised against simplistic conceptions. The second shows why and how Sally Haslanger, Linda Alcoff, and Glenn Loury have explained race as a social construct. The next points out problems for their and other accounts, including circularity, difficulties arising from conceptual and linguistic history, and non sequiturs. After returning to Haslanger in more detail, I proceed critically to engage work by Ian Hacking, Lawrence Blum, Luc Faucher and Edouard Machery, and Charles Mills. The following sections move from specific accounts in the literature to offer general arguments that viewing races as products of social construction threatens to mislead in numerous ways. At the end, I discuss the significance of the issue and challenge whether social constructionist accounts are genuinely liberating.
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Hubert Dreyfus
Existential Phenomenology and the Brave New World of The Matrix
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Philippa Foot
The Grammar of Goodness
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Julian Barbour
The Deep and Suggestive Principles of Leibnizian Philosophy
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Nick Bostrom
The Mysteries of Self-Locating Belief and Anthropic Reasoning
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Christine M. Korsgaard
John Rawls
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Edwin Curley
The Incoherence of Christian Theism
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Ronald Dworkin
John Rawls
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Dale Jacquette
Probability, Practical Reasoning, & Conditional Statements of Intent
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Jaakko Hintikka
What Does the Wittgensteinian Inexpressible Express?
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D.M. Armstrong
In Defense of the Cognitivist Theory of Perception
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John Foster
Reply To Armstrong
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C. L. Hardin
A Green Thought in a Green Shade
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Michael D. Resnik
Structuralism and the Independence of Mathematics
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Thomas W. Pogge
Parfit On What’s Wrong
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The Harvard Review of Philosophy:
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Jonardon Ganeri
An Irrealist Theory of Self
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