Guest speaker Kalewold H. Kalewold (Stanford University) will be giving a public talk on April 15, 2022 from 1:00pm-3:00pm in Gallalee Hall 227.
Talk title: “Philosophy of Explanation and the Use of Race in Medicine”
Abstract:
The biomedical race debate concerns what role, if any, race should play in medicine. Much of the debate has revolved around the merits of biological racial realism and anti-realism, that is, on whether race is a meaningful biological category. In this talk, I challenge the premise that there is medically relevant genetic differentiation corresponding to race that is epistemically useful in medicine. I argue that race, realistically conceived, lacks the explanatory constraints to illuminate the causal structure of racialized differences in disease risk. I forward an alternative approach drawing on and expanding work in mechanistic explanation. Mechanism discovery offers a normatively and explanatorily attractive methodology to researching, diagnosing, and treating complex trait disorders. But it delivers the result that race will not be a medically relevant category in the manner the realist suggests.
This event is sponsored by the Arts & Science Dean’s office, the Philosophy Department, Gender & Race and the McCollough Institute.
