Philosophy of Biology

Biological Conceptions of Race 463

for the nonexistence ofhumanbiological races. In a different sense, however, they
are moreglobal. Rather than focusing on a particular race concept, each aims to
explain whyanyproposed biological definition of human race is doomed to failure.

4 GLOBAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST HUMAN BIOLOGICAL RACES

In this section I will present three global arguments against the biological reality
of human race.^10 I will call the first ‘the no subspecies argument’, the second ‘the
independent variation argument’, and the third ‘Lewontin’s genetic argument’.
These arguments have been extremely influential and are widely assumed to prove,
unambiguously, that human races are biologically unreal. Yet, as we will soon see,
these arguments are not as conclusive as people often suppose.
Let us begin with what I have called ‘the no subspecies argument’. Defenders of
this argument aim to show that human races are biologically unreal by establishing
that there is no respectable race concept in systematic biology [Livingstone, 1964;
Gould, 1977; Futuyma, 1986]. This argument starts with the assumption that
the term ‘race’ is synonymous with the taxonomic term ‘subspecies’. Human
races, for example, are subspecies ofHomo sapiens. Next, it is argued that the
subspecies concept has been discredited in systematic biology. After the downfall
of the typological and geographical concepts, many systematists simply gave up
the practice of dividing species into subspecies. One reason is that some began
to worry that the subspecies concept is misleading. On their view, it suggests
discrete units of variation when, in reality, infraspecific variation is often clinal
and discordant. A second reason is that there are other ways of studying variation
below the species level — and, thus, some have argued that the subspecies concept
is superfluous. Proponents of this argument conclude that if there is no legitimate
subspecies concept in systematic biology, then there is no legitimate basis for the
everyday practice of dividing humans into biological races.
The central problem with this argument is that the subspecies concept has not
been fully abandoned in systematic biology [Kitcher, 1999; Pigliucci and Kaplan,
2003; Andreasen, 2004; Gannett, 2004].^11 After the downfall of the typological
and geographical concepts, some systematists began defining subspeciesphyloge-
netically— as distinct evolutionary lineages within a species [Templeton, 1999;
Shaffer and McKnight, 1996; Leggeet al., 1996; Miththapala, 1996].^12 As we

(^10) The distinction between global and local arguments against the biological reality of race is
not frequently made in the race literature. Indeed, sometimes an author draws a global conclusion
from a local argument. For these reasons, I have reconstructed some of the arguments that I will
present in this section.
(^11) An important difference between Gannett, on the one hand, and Kitcher, Andreasen, and
Pigliucci and Kaplan, on the other, is that Gannett rejects the biological reality of human race
whereas Kitcher, Andreasen, and Pigliucci and Kaplan suggest that human biological races might
exist (or might have once existed).
(^12) Although Templeton allows for the possibility that subspecies might be defined phylogenet-
ically, he denies thathumanraces can be defined in this way. Part of the reason is that he
believes that there is, and always has been, too much outbreeding among human populations for