Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

Abigail Nieves Delgado, Jan Baedke in Issue 20

How to Eliminate Race from Human Microbiome Research [Special Issue]

Epistemology, Philosophy of Medicine, Philosophy of Race, Philosophy of science

Recent human microbiome research has suggested that racial patterns between different groups of people can be understood as variation in how many and which microbes live in and on their bodies. Such racial classifications (from ‘Indigenous’ to ‘Black’ or ‘Caucasian’) are said to be helpful to better grasp microbiome-linked health-disparities (especially in the Global South) and diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes. In this paper, we argue that…

Kelly Happe in Issue 20

Plasticity and/as Race: Rethinking Philosophy’s Relationship to the Life Sciences [Special Issue]

Epistemology, Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of Medicine, Philosophy of Race

This essay engages Catherine Malabou’s provocation that the life sciences can provide a materialist theory of thought (plasticity) that can reimagine agency, identity, and freedom. Paying particular attention to the science of epigenetics and its potential rethinking of origins and history in the name of a radical futurity, I argue that in fact it shows that plasticity is the very mode by which power is enacted and reproduced, specifically anti-black…

Phila Msimang in Issue 20

Prescribing Race: No Blank Scripts for Using Race and Ethnicity in Health [Special Issue]

Epistemology, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of Medicine, Philosophy of Race

Recent research shows that the inappropriate use of race and ethnicity in healthcare leads to poor patient outcomes. Contemporaneous work shows that accounting for inequalities caused by discrimination often requires the use of race and ethnicity as variables that are mediated in their effects by discrimination along those dimensions of identity and/or classification. This suggests that the appropriateness of using racial and ethnic group descriptors depends on context. This paper…

Ludovica Lorusso in Issue 20

Eliminating Race: A Philosophical Discussion [Special Issue]

Epistemology, Philosophy of Medicine, Philosophy of Race, Philosophy of science

In this paper I face the issue of eliminativism about race. I suggest that a partial as opposed to a blank eliminativism is the epistemically correct philosophical position, by remarking that there are different concepts of “race” and for each of them different philosophical and scientific considerations apply. I first introduce the eliminativist position and show that different forms of eliminativism exist; I then examine how distinct kinds of eliminativism…

Jonathan Kaplan in Issue 20

Race and Racialized Populations: Ascriptions, Power, and Identity [Special Issue]

Epistemology, Ontology, Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of Medicine, Philosophy of Race, Philosophy of science

In this paper, I endorse the view defended by Hochman and others that there are no races but rather there are only racialized populations. The distinction between “race” being real but socially constructed and being its being non-existent or a ‘myth’ might seem of little importance. But aside from conceptual clarity, the view that there are only racialized populations makes better sense of how racialized populations came into being, how…

Azita Chellappoo in Issue 20

Race in Medicine: Moving Beyond the United States [Special Issue]

Epistemology, Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of Medicine, Philosophy of Race, Philosophy of science

Debates over the use of racial categories in medicine have, thus far, been largely focused on cases and considerations occurring in the United States. However, race is used in medical settings in many places outside the US. I argue that the US focus leads to important limitations in our ability to understand and intervene on issues of race in medicine in other areas of the world. I draw on work…

Fabio Bacchini in Issue 20

Against a Radical Solution to the Race Problem [Special Issue]

Epistemology, Ontology, Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of language, Philosophy of Medicine, Philosophy of Race

In this paper I reconstruct Spencer (2014)’s argument supporting the conclusion that ‘race’, in its current U.S. meaning, is a rigidly designating proper name for a biologically real entity, specifically for the partition at the K = 5 level of human population structure. Then, I object to the argument by contesting three distinct key assertions in it. First, I contest the assumption that if a term t has a logically…

Marianna Bergamaschi Ganapini in Issue 20

Age and Self-Knowledge

Epistemology, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of action

This paper proposes an analysis of some possible implications of aging focusing the effects that aging may have on one’s self-knowledge. The goal of the paper is in fact to connect research on aging with different accounts of self-knowledge and put forward the following hypothesis: (i) in the late stages of our lives we adopt a different way of looking at ourselves, and (ii) there are three main factors likely…

Caterina Di Maio in Issue 20

Charity and Altruism: Rational Requirements for Action

Epistemology, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of action, Philosophy of mind

This paper discusses the possibility of altruism based on the linguistic, and then practical notion of charity, to distinguish it from psychological and ethical selfishness. My starting hypothesis is, as Thomas Nagel argued, that altruism could be interpreted as a rational requirement for action. This hypothesis arises from a specific approach in analytical philosophy to the problem of explaining action, which combines the concepts of charity and altruism in a…