468 Robin O. Andreasen
5 ECOLOGICAL AND PHYLOGENETIC CONCEPTIONS OF RACEThe three global arguments discussed in the previous section have been highly
influential and have played an important role in establishing what many take to
be the received view about race — viz., that human races are biologically unreal.
As we have just seen, however, not everyone takes them to be decisive. Indeed,
doubt about their success has led some philosophers and biologists to revisit the
question of the biological reality of human race and to ultimately argue for what
they take to be improved biological conceptions of race.
As noted earlier, two types of accounts have been offered — one ecological and
another phylogenetic. Let us recall that ecological conceptions of race typically
define races as subspecific groups composed of individuals who are phenotypically
and genetically similar to one another due to a common selective regime. Phyloge-
netic conceptions, on the other hand, define races in part as lineages of reasonably
reproductively isolated breeding populations. I will discuss these views in more
detail momentarily. For now, I would like to note that such accounts are often
taken to be improvements over their predecessors, in part, because they are rela-
tively minimalist in comparison with previous biological conceptions. For example,
each calls into question the racialist assumption that knowledge of a person’s race
allows one to make inferences about the psychological and behavioral traits that
she is likely to possess.^20 Second, each abandons the idea that races must form
discrete genotypic and/or phenotypic clusters for races to be biologically real.
Consequently, each allows that human biological races might exist despite the em-
pirical findings typically cited against the biological reality of human race.^21 In
what follows, I will discuss a number of difficulties that the ecological race concept
must address. I will then defend phylogenetic conceptions of human race against
three important objections.^22
The ecological race concept, as well as its application to humans, has recently
been endorsed Massimo Pigliucci and Jonathan Kaplan [2003]. Like the geograph-
ical race concept, the ecological race concept defines a race, in part, as a group
of individuals who have a number of phenotypic and genetic similarities in com-
mon. Yet, as noted earlier, there are also a number of important differences. The
ecological race concept requires that the similarities and differences used to in-
dividuate races beadaptivesimilarities and differences, whereas the geographical
race concept has no such requirement. Second, the geographical concept requires
that race membership be defined with reference to many characteristics. Pigli-
ucci and Kaplan, however, allow that ecological races can be named on the basis
(^20) Pigliucci and Kaplan [2003] are more willing than either Kitcher [1999] or Andreasen [1998;
2004] to acknowledge the possibility that knowledge of a person’s race might allow one to make
inferences about her psychological and behavioral traits.
(^21) See Pigliucci and Kaplan [2003] and Andreasen [2004] for more developed discussions of this
point.
(^22) For more detailed defenses of phylogenetic conceptions of race, see Andreasen [1998; 2000;
2004; 2005], Kitcher [1998], and Rischet al.[2002].