“We know there are no uncontrolled confounds, because we discovered the mechanism.”
“What’s a ‘mechanism’?”
“A causal process where we know there are no uncontrolled confounds.”

Seems you need a more direct conception of mechanism for the concept to be useful?

Interesting post!

There’s something that bothers me though (maybe my misunderstanding) in the “Mechanism is Unconfounded Causation” section. Doesn’t your “quick and dirty” definition of “mechanism” lead to circularity? Like…

…were also only assuming heritability and nothing else, like Lewontin, probably because I misread.

But if you’re assuming we ALREADY know an IQ variant X and its frequency in different races, then sure it’s like the island example and it’s clear. Thanks!

I understood that and the island example, but it wasn’t clear how that carried over to Lewontin’s point about races, maybe because I misunderstood your whole point?

Lewontin’s example was about heritability, by itself, not implying between-population “genetic” differences, right? I thought you…

If anybody could explain this to me I’d appreciate it. The context by the way is criticizing Lewontin’s “two populations of seeds” thought experiment.

Somehow the sentence sounds intuitively reasonable, but I don’t know how to translate it to precise language, much less to a result in statistics.

Specifically, who are the “you”, “me”, and “groups of people like” you/me? Are you and I in the same population? If so, aren’t the “groups of people” also in the same population?

Or are you and I in different populations? If so, the premise of the conditional is exactly what we’re trying to answer!

I think that question mostly comes down to how you define “biological reality”, not to anything about race itself.

Depending on that definition, race is either not biologically real at all; or biologically real only to a trivial, insignificant degree.

This is my last reply here. Have a good one!

Uh, no.

bsky.app/profile/rong...

OK, no more posts from me. I did post one reply after that but before I read your post.

Like, don’t even label that concept I quoted “race”. I think the “race” label might be misleading. Call it R-groups or something. Then I’m saying that R-groups existed thousands of years before that R-groups concept existed.

That’s separate from the question of whether it’s really a race concept.

Electrons were a bad example because they’re a natural kind and race is not. My point was simply that THE DEFINITION I QUOTED describes a thing that existed before the concept was invented.

Of course those statements are consistent. There’s no tension at all between them. I’m sorry that I couldn’t explain it clearly.

If you don’t accept that distinction, between the concept in our minds and the category it picks out, then fine. But it’s a disagreement that has nothing to do specifically with race.

OK, well at least we finally got to the disagreement. It’s got nothing to do specifically with race.

For example, we have an invented concept of ELECTRON. The concept has only existed for less than two centuries. But the concept picks out a category, electrons, which has existed for much longer…

All talk about beliefs, discourse, practices, etc.—which everyone agrees were socially invented—seems irrelevant to what I said above.

That CONCEPT picks out a CATEGORY. The CATEGORY is constituted entirely by non-social things: just read the definition again. I’m saying the CATEGORY existed—was non-empty—long before the CONCEPT existed…

You just described how people’s CONCEPTION of race was invented, along with race-oriented discourse and practice. Of course those were invented! No one denies that.

Set aside for a moment the question of whether the concept I posted is an ordinary concept—not conception, but concept!—of race…

My beliefs aren’t in opposition to anything. My definition of what I called the (or an) ordinary conception of race was a rough paraphrase of this, below.

I said it has certain implications, such as, races have existed for thousands of years. I still don’t see why that doesn’t follow obviously.

Also I should add, Glasgow’s chapters in “What Is Race?” He explains his “basic realism” again, but he also argues cogently against Sally Haslanger’s constructivism as described in her chapters.

(I don’t agree with everything he says, but I agree with his argument against constructivism.)