(Re-)Defining Racism: A Philosophical Analysis (African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora)

✍ Scribed by Alberto G. Urquidez

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 423
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

What is racism? is a timely question that is hotly contested in the philosophy of race. Yet disagreement about racism’s nature does not begin in philosophy, but in the sociopolitical domain. Alberto G. Urquidez argues that philosophers of race have failed to pay sufficient attention to the practical considerations that prompt the question “What is racism?” Most theorists assume that “racism” signifies a language-independent phenomenon that needs to be “discovered” by the relevant science or “uncovered” by close scrutiny of everyday usage of this term. (Re-)Defining Racism challenges this metaphysical paradigm. Urquidez develops a Wittgenstein-inspired framework that illuminates the use of terms like “definition,” “meaning,” “explanation of meaning,” and “disagreement,” for the analysis of contested normative concepts. These elucidations reveal that providing a definition of “racism” amounts to recommending a form of moral representation―a rule for the correct use of “racism.” As definitional recommendations must be justified on pragmatic grounds, Urquidez takes as a starting point for justification the interests of racism's historical victims.

✦ Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction: Summary of the Argument
1.1 Problematizing the Concept of Racism
1.1.1 Racism and the Concept of Racism
1.1.2 Competing Conceptions of Racism
1.1.3 A Methodological Intervention
1.2 Racism’s Janus-Faced Character: The Necessity/Contingency Divide
1.2.1 Three Theoretical Problems
1.2.2 Necessity and Contingency
1.2.3 Accidental and Essential Features
1.2.4 “Reverse Racism” and Language-Game Contestation
1.2.5 Racism as a Sociocultural Concept
1.3 An Antiracist Ethic: Racism from the Eyes of the Victim
1.3.1 The Primacy of A Priori Analysis
1.3.2 Valuing the Victim’s Perspective
1.4 A Normative-Pragmatic Pluralism
1.4.1 Trading in Ontology for Pragmatism
1.4.2 Rethinking the Categorial Plurality of Racism
1.4.3 Beyond Wittgenstein: From Descriptive to Prescriptive Grammar
1.5 Chapter Summaries
References
Part I: Racism Without Ontology
Chapter 2: The Problem of Definition: Toward a Conventionalist Framework
2.1 Introduction: On the Question “What Is Racism?”
2.1.1 The Philosophical Question
2.1.2 Metaphysical Analysis
2.2 Grammar and Philosophy: A Conventionalist Approach
2.2.1 Meaning, Use, Understanding
2.2.2 Explanation of Meaning
2.2.2.1 Grammatical Rule and Grammatical Proposition
2.2.2.2 What Grammatical Knowledge Is and How It Is Acquired
2.2.2.3 Explanation of Meaning and Explanation of Racism
2.2.2.4 The Significance of Explanation of Meaning for Philosophy?
2.2.3 Wittgenstein’s Normativism
2.2.3.1 Wittgenstein’s Normativism
2.2.3.2 Demarcating Semantic Rules
2.3 Conclusion: The Aim of This Book
References
Chapter 3: Re-defining “Definition”: An Argument for Conventionalism
3.1 Introduction
3.1.1 Scope of the Chapter
3.1.2 Terminology: “Proposition,” “Sentence,” “Rule-Formulation”
3.2 The Many Sides of Convention: Recasting Metaphysical Predicates as Facets of Convention
3.2.1 The Empirical Side of Convention
3.2.1.1 Contingency as the Mark of Culture
3.2.1.2 What We Affirm and What We Do with What We Affirm
3.2.1.3 The Arbitrariness of Grammar
3.2.2 The Non-Empirical Side of Convention
3.2.2.1 Necessity and Universality
3.2.2.2 Logical Priority
3.2.2.3 Justification and the Arbitrariness of Grammar
Grammatical Propositions as Reasons
Epistemic Justification
Pragmatic Justification
3.3 A Priori Analysis
3.3.1 Normative Descriptions of Grammar
3.3.2 Criticisms of Grammar
3.3.3 Grammatical Approaches
3.4 Empirical Analysis
3.4.1 In Defense of Empirical Approaches to Racism
3.4.2 Beyond Realism and Constructivism
3.4.3 Conventionalism as Naturalistically Plausible
3.5 Conclusion
References
Chapter 4: Re-defining “Meaning”: Defending Semantic Internalism over Externalism
4.1 Introduction
4.2 The Case for Externalism
4.2.1 Some Key Concepts
4.2.2 Putnam’s and Kripke’s Arguments
4.3 Resisting Externalism: An Internalist Account of Conceptual Change
4.3.1 Rival Intensions: Empirical Discoveries as Pragmatic Reasons
4.3.2 The Pirahã: A Living Counterexample
4.3.3 Are the Pirahã Wrong/Confused?
4.3.4 The Arbitrariness of Grammar
4.4 Are Definitions Descriptive in Addition to Being Normative?
4.4.1 Descriptive and Normative Uses of Sentences
4.4.2 A Measure that Measures Itself?
4.5 Conclusion
References
Part II: Theorizing Conceptual Disagreement
Chapter 5: Re-defining “Disagreement”: Rationality Without Final Solutions
5.1 Introduction: From Ontology to Linguistic Norms
5.2 Stage-Setting for a Theory of Disagreement
5.2.1 Normative and Prescriptive Disagreement
5.2.2 A Mere Difference in Word Use?
5.3 Metalinguistic Negotiation
5.3.1 Non-Descriptive Disagreement
5.3.2 Pragmatic Advocacy
5.3.3 The Need for a Stipulative Definition of “Racism”
5.4 Negotiation and Rationality
5.4.1 Blum and Glasgow’s Disagreement
5.4.2 Contested Rationality
5.4.3 No Final Solutions: On Problems-to-Cope-With
5.5 Conclusion
References
Chapter 6: Re-defining “Philosophical Analysis”: Not Descriptive Analysis, or Conservatism, but Pragmatic Revisionism
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Framing the Prescriptive Question
6.2.1 Descriptive and Normative Analysis
6.2.2 Unpacking Conservatism/Revisionism
6.2.3 Metaphysical and Pragmatic Considerations
6.3 Agnosticism as Default Position
6.3.1 Doxastic Inertia or Instability?
6.3.2 Instability and Pragmatic Considerations
6.4 Two Arguments for Revisionism
6.4.1 Conceptual Inflation Argument
6.4.2 Political Morality Argument
6.5 Conclusion
References
Part III: Toward a Prescriptive Theory of Racism
Chapter 7: Adequacy Conditions for a Prescriptive Theory of Racism: Toward an Oppression-Centered Account
7.1 Introduction
7.2 The Moral Condition
7.2.1 A Necessary Value: Advance Nonwhite Interests
7.2.1.1 The Mills-Shelby Objection: Theory Should Not Explain Racism’s Wrongness
7.2.1.2 Arthur’s Objection: Racism Is Not a Moral Flaw, but an Epistemic Flaw
7.2.2 Legitimate Need and Historical Usage: The Racial Oppression Approach
7.3 The Explanatory Condition
7.3.1 Racism as Sociocultural Phenomenon
7.3.2 Criteria and Vagueness
7.3.3 Racism as Open Texture and Unfolding Process
7.4 The Resolution Condition
7.5 Conclusion
References
Chapter 8: Racial Oppression and Grammatical Pluralism: A Critique of Jorge Garcia on Racist Belief
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Garcia’s Theory: Two Senses of “Racism”
8.2.1 Garcia’s Core Essentialism
8.2.2 Infection and Characteristic Racism
8.3 Paternalism and the Primary Sense
8.3.1 Two Pictures of Paternalism
8.3.2 Garcia’s Revisionist Proposal
8.4 Ideology and the Primary Sense
8.4.1 Ideology’s Role in the Racial Structure
8.4.2 Ideology, Social Function, and Intuition
8.4.3 Ideology and the Ideological Role of Virtue
8.4.4 Ideology and Political Morality
8.5 The Secondary Sense as Wrong Explanation
8.5.1 Blum’s Objection and Characteristic Racism
8.5.2 The Wrong Explanation
8.5.3 Moral Grounds for Condemning Intrinsically Wrongful Beliefs
8.6 Conclusion
References
Chapter 9: Coda
9.1 Going Forward from Here: On the Feasibility of Negotiation
9.2 Three Paradigms of Racial Oppression
9.3 Going Forward from Here: Implications and Future Research
References
Bibliography
Index