From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gwi.net>
To: <bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU>
Subject: BHA: Re: hidden causal mechanism
Date: Sat, 1 Nov 1997 11:48:52 +0200


Hi Rakesh--

You ask:

>What grounds does Bhaskar give me for differentiating between a hidden
>causal mechanism and a nonempirical metaphysical posit, like biological
>race?

This is a very interesting question, which I've been mulling over and hoping
someone more knowledgeable that I am on the issue would take up, but perhaps
everyone else is also hoping there's an expert among us.  Anyway, let me
suggest a couple lines of consideration, which maybe others can fill in
further.

One of the difficulties about the whole theory of "race" is defining what
the term refers to (biology, ethnicity, nationality, etc.), and then
sticking to that definition.  My impression is that most efforts to
attribute intellectual or characterological differences to "race" assume an
*apparently* biological distinction but in fact use a social definition.
For example, in the U.S., the tendency is to use the "one drop of blood"
rule, so that if one has "one drop" of black blood, one is black.  This
obviously doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since one should equally be
able to assert that one drop of white blood makes one white (actually, this
is the attitude taken somewhere, I think Jamaica), and if not, then it would
seem that blacks are in fact genetically stronger and maybe whites are
headed the way of the dinosaur (which is probably true, though not for
genetic reasons ... I don't think ...).  Despite the logical untenability of
the "one drop" rule, it's astonishingly persistent, and by now has become so
politically institutionalized in the U.S. that very few people are willing
to challenge it (witness the recent debate over introducing "multiracial" as
a category in the Census).  Anyhow, my point is that claims that, say, the
"black race" is intellectually inferior tend to slip a socially-defined
definition ("one drop") in place of a biological one.  Thus comparisons of
racial performance on intelligence tests (which are themselves deeply
problematic) trade on categorizations that are biologically dubious.

Nevertheless, perhaps one could still claim that biology leads to
differences of *some* sort.  But this too becomes difficult to judge.  For
example, I recall hearing that blacks tended to have smaller lung capacity
than whites--but it's rather obvious that this difference has little bearing
on athletic achievement.  One soon ends up banging into the same problem
facing claims of major differences between the sexes: the degree of
variation *within* each category is far greater than the difference between
the categories, and the differences that one does find (1) tend to be based
on the simplest physiological contrasts, such that (for example) the
athletic performance of "average" women is very similar to that of smaller
men, i.e. size alone accounts for almost everything; and (2) can be
substantially or entirely overcome by training, education, and access to
various resources.

In a sense, I haven't been answering your question, since I've been
rehearsing the (undoubtedly familiar!) empirical evidence against the
concept of "race" (evidence that has been around almost as long as the
concept, actually).  This is because critical realism cannot itself judge
between two theories, if both theories are put in realist terms: then the
matter is entirely one of empirical evidence for and against each theory.
So, for example, someone may develop a critical realist economic theory to
rival marxism, and choices between them would have to be based on their
abilities to explain evidence.  CR would basically have nothing to offer.

But this means there may be another consideration: one may ask whether
"race" is a scientific (i.e. realist) theory that simply proves false (as
with phlogiston), or whether instead, the theory itself *cannot* be put into
consistent realist/scientific form.  I have to admit, I don't know the
answer to that one, especially since we cannot predict what new theories
might be devised.  But I find it interesting that the theory of "race" seems
to flow from a sort of extension of positivism.  Positivism asserts that
only the perceptible is real; racism assumes that perceived differences
*must* indicate real differences.  Along these lines one may be able to show
that a specific theory of race is, in the strict sense, ideological.  In any
case, while we cannot critique theories that haven't appeared yet, with a
*particular* existing theory of race, critical realists *may* be able to
show that the theory fails to meet realist criteria even before it meets the
evidence.  The issue then comes down to race theories that are also realist,
which, as I've said, is an empirical matter.

I hope that's a start.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-gwi.net *or* tobin.nellhaus-AT-helsinki.fi
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce




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