Science, Technology, and Society at Temple University | a diverse network of faculty and students interested in the social, historical, and philosophical dimensions of science, technology, and medicine.
Newcomers are always welcome to our monthly meetings
Monday, April 14, 12-1pm
Solving the Racial Health Disparities Problem
with Quayshawn Spencer (UPenn)
Charles Library 1st Floor, and on Zoom: https://temple.zoom.us/j/92285674938
(co-authored with Ian Peebles)
Abstract. Contemporary work in bioethics presupposes race to be essentially not biological and real, and ‘racism’ to pick out something that’s essentially structural or polysemous. We aim to show that these received views are deeply mistaken if the aim is to solve the racial health disparities problem. We argue that the theories that best enable us to solve the racial health disparities problem are a pluralist race theory, and a virtue-based account of racism. We intend to show that the latter is because these theories are the best in terms of providing us with relevant accuracy and scope, causal explanatory power, non-superfluous ontological complexity, and practical applicability for the task at hand. However, for this talk, I will limit the focus to defending the employment of a pluralist race theory to solve the racial health disparities problem.