Human Races

Don't you see that this refutes your position? How can race exist if nobody can even agree on what the races are?

Of course it does. Culture is garbage - it's the effluvium of communities eating, sleeping, screwing, and crapping in proximity. Anytime you put two humans in the same room you'll get culture. Making culture is what humans do.

It's the distance in inches or centimeters between the bottom of your feet and the top of your head. It's easily measured via rulers, tapes, trigonometry (if you're really desparate), or an extremely sensitive barometer.What units and devices would you use to measure "blackness"?[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 03-05-2004]

I don't understand where you're going with this question. "Cold" may be a subjective term but "zero degrees Celcius" is not. Clearly temperature exists. "One second" is an objective measurement (within the limits of relativity.) Clearly time exists.Explain to me how you would measure "blackness" or "asianness" and I'll grant you that race exists.

Sure they do. For instance a centimeter is a certain fraction of the distance light travels in one second.Anywhere in the universe I measure, a centimeter is the same length (within the limits of relativity.) Since it's easily and objectively measured in angstroms or cycles per second, itmust be. Anybody who measures a certain wavelength of light will get the same measurement.On the other hand, nobody can even agree on how many races there are. Is Tiger Woods black? I say he's asian. What's the objective basis for race?

Why do you think that I think there are some? I don't remember saying that I thought that. I don't understand where this question comes from. Are you trying to change the subject or something? Correct. They're subjective terms, constructed by the user. No two humans can agree on where hot becomes cold.On the other hand, all observers can agree at what point water becomes ice. That's at zero degrees Celsius. Ludicrous. Temperature in degrees is a discreet property. 50 degrees doesn't "blend" into 51 or 49 degrees. Ha! Maybe you are, but epistemology isn't the subject of this thread. The subject of the thread is race. I'll thank you to stay on topic, please.

There's as many cultures as the people who are in cultures think there is. Of course, nobody argues that culture is biological, or that culture has any existence outside of human experience.People don't claim the same about race. People claim that race has real, biological meaning.

At what point do your irrelevant questions become stupid, inane, irritating,and off-topic? Oops, past that point already.

Again, that doesn't follow from what I said about culture. Why are you asking again when I already told you that they don't? They're simply subjective terms. 32 degrees. Maybe you failed grade school physics? Constructed, yes, but also objective. Everybody agrees on exactly how much heat energy a degree of temperature represents. Can you show me where, prior to your joining the thread, I ever said "epistemology"? Here's why I didn't - I'm not a philospher. "Epistemology" is essentially meaningless to me.I'm criticising conecpts of race because race doesn't have real meaning. It's a socially constructed category with no biological meaning. That was, after all, the topic of the thread - the biological meaning of race. You're the one who brought up epistemology. No. What's the relevance of it to the biological meaning of race, which is the topic of this thread?

I don't know. Do people think it does? If you say so. My only position is, and always had been, that race is not a meaningful concept in biology.

Your repeated non sequiturs grow wearisome.Where did I say that there were multiple cultures that could be distinguished between? Be specific. Obviously, their objectivity. Do I need to tell you what that means, or can I trust you to look at a dictionary? Obviously, both. The systems are equivalent. Both. They're equivalent. I disagree. Since my argument was that race has no meaning biologically, you'll have to show me a biological meaning to race in order to refute me. Otherwise I'm forced to consider your argument a non sequitur.

Do you think that it's possible that social constructions exist without all of reality being a social construction? You don't appear to. I do. Objective reality clearly exists, but race is not a part of that reality. Maybe that's because it's possible to argue that some thing are social constructions without arguing that everything is a social construction? Everybody seems to get that but you, I guess.

Good point. And I knew that. I don't know what my problem was when I wrote that post. But thanks for pointing that out.

Yeah, but most people percieve that somebody is of a certain race not because they have all of those traits, but rather because they're a decendant of somebody of that race.For instance, what makes a person "black"? Most people would say the skin color. But it's entirely possible to pick a person considered "white" and a person considered "black" and have the white person's skin actually be darker than the black person's. But the black person is still "black" because his family is seen as black. And any children that person had with a white person would be considered black, not white. Race doesn't seem to follow the same rules as any other inheritable trait.I guess what I'm saying is that while the markers that people associate with race may be heritable and genetic, there's no marker where the presence of it always equals a certain race and the absence of it never equals that race. See what I mean?Dark skin doesn't always mean black, and light skin doesn't always mean not-black. Almond-shaped eyes doesn't always mean asian, and round eyes doesn't always mean non-asian. So what's the use of characterizing people into "races" if that characterization is always going to be essentially subjective?Race just isn't a useful characterization, biologically. On the other hand sometimes it makes sense to say "your ancestors were african, therefore there's a higher chance that you have such-and-such a gene." But I maintain that that's an entirely different situation than race.

No. Because nobody can do it right, there's no such thing as biological race in humans. But even those are arbitrary. Why "african" and "european"? Why not "Nigerian" and "Teutonic"? Especially since all the europeans originally came from Africa? How long do your ancestors have to have lived somewhere before you can say they're from there?Why not get even more specific and say that somebody was of "London" origin?I think it can be worthwhile to consider somebody as part of a group with origins in a certain area, but that's hardly the same thing as "race", and I think it shows in the specific cases of people of "mixed" ancestry.[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 03-10-2004]