2 ms·

Race is only a sensible concept in science when it comes to the social category (i.e. it's a thing because we all act like it is a thing and some people ascribe

by hnbad 3y ago

Race is only a sensible concept in science when it comes to the social category (i.e. it's a thing because we all act like it is a thing and some people ascribe certain meanings to it and act on those meanings). Since the study is about biological functions of the brain, "controlling for race" seems like a category error. If you're looking for biological differences, ethnicity (or clines, I guess?) seem the more appropriate distinction. I'm not even sure how the study would meaningfully assign race given that Germans generally don't share the same definitions of racial categories as Americans (anything other than "white" and "Black" is messy and even those categories don't match as neatly as you might expect). Heck, even ethnic groups are fuzzy ("ethnic German" being a particular problem because there is no cohesive concept of German identity prior to the 19th century and even if you only go back that far things remain confusing).

boringuser2 3y ago
This is a tedious post that isn't worth dealing with in-depth because I am skeptical that you even fully understand the issues in question. I'll bullet a response to you so you have the potential to possibly open your thinking. 1. Just because blue and purple are proximal on the color wheel, does not mean that blue and purple do not exist. i.e. The notion that a gradient exists does not invalidate the difference between proximal colors. 2. Even granted, there is a large geographic component to genetic distance clustering determined via SNP variation. 3. There have been specific studies that assess the American definition of race as comporting to genetic admixture. Individuals identified as black or white had perfect correlation to European or African ancestry. 4. The motivation to deconstruct race clearly pollutes this discussion. Everything can be deconstructed similarly. In fact, there is no real reason to have a sense of self at all given that your notion of being a distinct entity is a social construct. 5. The idea that races would have obvious phenotypic differences and similarities but could not possibly have other cognitive differences is inconsistent with basic reason and very metaphysical in thinking. There is absolutely no reason to think that evolution has no effect on the brain.

by hnbad 3y ago

boringuser2 3y ago

This is a tedious post that isn't worth dealing with in-depth because I am skeptical that you even fully understand the issues in question. I'll bullet a response to you so you have the potential to possibly open your thinking. 1. Just because blue and purple are proximal on the color wheel, does not mean that blue and purple do not exist. i.e. The notion that a gradient exists does not invalidate the difference between proximal colors. 2. Even granted, there is a large geographic component to genetic distance clustering determined via SNP variation. 3. There have been specific studies that assess the American definition of race as comporting to genetic admixture. Individuals identified as black or white had perfect correlation to European or African ancestry. 4. The motivation to deconstruct race clearly pollutes this discussion. Everything can be deconstructed similarly. In fact, there is no real reason to have a sense of self at all given that your notion of being a distinct entity is a social construct. 5. The idea that races would have obvious phenotypic differences and similarities but could not possibly have other cognitive differences is inconsistent with basic reason and very metaphysical in thinking. There is absolutely no reason to think that evolution has no effect on the brain.