Thanks, I made most of the corrections.

This could be a case of clever sillies, of intellectuals playing word games and stretching the bounds of reason to show off their aptitude; yet, unfailing passionate advocacy argues against a clever silly hypothesis (Charlton, 2012)1. What else? The early race debate sheds light on the matter.

There is also: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289615000057

I read the paper. I don't think that the authors correctly understood the concept, since they consider clever sillies to be, at times, dogmatic.

Strange claims. Herrnstein was Jewish, Hsu is Asian. Why would they advocate white supremacy?

For deconstructionists that just testifies to the power of the ideology.

The fallacy of concluding something about a concept or idea based on its origin (in this case, not even the true one) is known to logicians as the genetic fallacy.

Yes, but the analysis is called a genealogical analysis.

Generally, it fits well with the previous installments.

Yes, I probably could have cut out a few pages. Consider, though, that opponents of the concept write shelves of books to communicate their point. Could you check over section V? It deals with philosophical arguments. You might see a conceptual errors on my part there. After I do a little more editing -- and take a few more comments -- I will condense all six sections down to one mega-submission and resubmit that.

I think you need to remove the unecessary "us" "our" "we" when they suggest several authors. If you say "we can see" it's fine because several single authors use that and I see the "we" as involving both the author and reader(s). But otherwise, avoid that.

Concerning Section IV-I, you rightly noted that Fst values are misleading due to its (too) strong dependence on within population diversity, and you cogently remarked that Templeton is comparing apples and oranges when using mtDNA Fst for non-humans and RFLP Fst for humans, for the reasons you've noted. It's a good point, I think (although I wonder why you didn't email Templeton about it but were focusing only on the 75% rule standards in your mails).

This CD of 1.28, in turn, is equivalent to a Cohen's d, or difference in standard deviations, of about 2.58 (assuming normality and equal variances).

Perhaps you can explain a little bit how you arrived at this value (e.g., instead of dividing by the sum of the SDs, you SQRT the product of the two SDs). But more importantly, is it a common practice to convert CD into Cohen's d ?

and found, based on 71 cranial measures, an average Caucasoid-Negroid CD of less than 0.5; of the traits, only 15% had a CD above 1.0; these results were consistent with those reported by Sarich and Miele (2004), who ended up emphasizing the largeness of the differences relative to those between other primate sub-specific groups.

"largeness of the differences relative to" : which differences ? Maybe you should use "these" instead.

This found Hs value corresponds to an F/Gst value of ~0.05 based on our regression line using 24 subspeciated species

I would like you to explain this sentence. It's so obscure...

In general, I find that section hard to read. The whole thing involved answering the question of whether THR meet the 5 criteria listed by Mayr & Ashlock. You come to the conclusion that we cannot say that THR meet the criteria but that we cannot reject THR either, based on these arbitrary criteria. So, what's next ? Was that just to say that scientists shouldn't use these kind of arguments to reject THR ?

Concerning section IV-J, it's nicely made, probably the best answer to the critiques of the biological races. In particular, I don't understand why some people are so silly as to believe that if there are no races, this implies there are no racial genetic differences in behavior, personality, IQ, etc. The two issues are unrelated, and it is so evident that it is somewhat a shame that you need to explain that in length in order to make that clear. It would be as if you need stats to give the proof that deaf people do lack knowledge in doing IQ tests, compared to hearing people.

I particularly appreciate the distinction between total genetic differentation (using, e.g., Fst) and one related to a specific trait, e.g., height. The first does not allow us to infer anything about the second, or inversely.

The most important argument, I believe, is the one pertaining to effect size. Given Fst values, the between population variance is not small, given Cohen's d, it's large. And to top it off the between population variance is no lower than within population variance when taking into account within-individual variation (by far the largest variation) in one study you cite, which is a point rarely made (curiously) by the "anti-race" crusade. (By the way, concerning the formula you applied to convert Fst into d values, I will appreciate if you cite a reference.)

That said, this sentence is obscure :

That is, to the extent that congenital race differences are questionable, they are questionable not because race is an arbitrary social construct, but because (i) race is delineated in terms of a specific variable (typically geographic ancestry) and (ii) it is questionable that the trait in question would vary congenitally by this variable.

There is also that sentence that bothers me :

One might reiterate Loring Braces’ argument — which, we admit, we could never make sense of -- that there was some unique evolutionary selection against population differences in the particular traits under question.

Not just because of the unecessary use of "us" (or "ours") but more because the sentence suggests you have mentioned Braces' argument earlier, which wasn't the case, as far as I can see. I also believe the following sentence is badly written :

In the same way that no human populations could exist without heads, it could be argued that no human population could exist e.g., with a genetic propensity for time preference less than that of any other populations.

I think I understand the idea, but it took me a lot of time to understand it. This problems occurs quite frequently throughout the entire text. And not just section 4.

In this case, what is atypical about our socially recognized races that makes them unlike, e.g., educational groupings? Or: what is atypical about the deviations in question that makes it unlike typical deviations from the mean?

Here however, I do not understand what you mean in the above statements. The way you write things is sometimes obscure to me (unless it's my english again).

There is finally one thing I find regrettable is the absence of discussion about STRUCTURE analysis. I don't know much about the technique, but some people such as Ken Batai (in his blog anthrogenetics wordpress) believe that some studies which used that technique don't give the conclusion that favors race realists' position. The argument is that the results depends on sampling. Spencer (The unnatural racial naturalism, 2014) on the other hand said it does not do any harm to this view :

With that said, Tishkoff et al.’s results are concerning because we should expect B to arise at K = 5 if B is a human population partition. However, once one examines Tishkoff et al.’s sampling scheme, one will find that Tishkoff et al.’s results are non-threatening to Rosenberg et al.’s results. This is because Tishkoff et al. (2009) dramatically oversample African ethnic groups. African ethnic groups make up 65.1% of Tishkoff et al.’s sample, even though African ethnic groups make up just 30.2% of human ethnic groups. Combined with the known fact that most K = 5 human genetic variation lies within parts, not among them, it is unsurprising that a study that greatly oversamples one major geographic region will find that its ethnic groups split into different genetic clusters at K = 5. In fact, Tishkoff et al.’s result is not unique.

Friedlaender et al. (2008) sample human populations in such a way that Oceanian ethnic groups make up 48.6% of the sample, even though Oceanian ethnic groups make up just 18.5% of human ethnic groups. At K = 5, Friedlaender et al. (2008, p. 178) find that the partition consists of Caucasians, non-Oceanian Mongloids, Black Africans, and two distinct clusters of Oceanians! Of course, neither Tishkoff et al.’s nor Friedlaender et al.’s results conflict with the standard result that K = 5 human genetic clusters are Amerindians, Black Africans, Caucasians, East Asians, and Oceanians, because their samples of human ethnic groups are not appropriate for identifying worldwide human population structure. Rather, these samples are appropriate for studying African population structure and Oceanian population structure, respectively.

It seems to me that the results from STRUCTURE may remind us of what you can get from factor analysis, including CFA, where the modeled latent factors depend on the sampling of subtests. Yet, no one would never say that there is no speed factor because it fails to emerge when the battery of tests is composed of 7 verbal, 3 performance, 2 memory and 1 speed subtests. Or that there is no universal agreement that a speed factor will necessarily emerge or is a fundamental element in the structure of human intelligence. Yet, scientists are so prompt to say that there is no universal agreement on the number of clusters in human population.

I hope you will mention it somewhere in your text (footnote maybe, just after when you mention Rosenberg 2005/2011 in section IV-I) as way to counter the "anti-race" theorists. The above citation is also important with regard to Section IV-H where you cite Conley et al. (2014) saying that there are more variations among african populations than between african and non-african populations. Conley et al. indeed cited Tishkoff (2009) in support of their point of view.

Section IV-K :

This, though, does not imply that some of the known large cultural, national, and regional differences are not explainable in terms of genetic ones. It has been shown that in theory small individual level behavioral differences can amplify such to produce large population level ones (Dickens and Flynn, 2001);

It's curious you're citing that study, since it says that environments cause genetic effects by way of mutual causality. At the same time, you say that cultural effects are explainable in terms of genetic ones, whereas I think Dickens & Flynn would argue the opposite (genes are explainable in terms of environments). But don't get me wrong. I don't disagree with the idea expressed in this section, but I'm just surprised by the mention of Dickens & Flynn.

When you say :

frequency differences in specific behaviorally associated alleles can (statistically) explain some of a number of interesting national, regional, and ethnic sociocultural differences

I will appreciate if you say explicitly if these relationships are strong, or just small/modest.

Section IV-L :

readers are cautiously referred to Lynn (2008) (cautiously because the work is badly in need of updating 20)

20 We make this claim based on our own investigation of the data.

What's the use of saying this when the reader has no way of checking this out ? Also, remove the "our".

Generally speaking, global variance in intelligence exhibits a north south clinal pattern for indigenous populations. This pattern does not hold when it comes to recent (post-1500) global migrants (e.g., Europeans in Australia, N.E. Asians in Brazil, and S.S. Africans in North America). Since there is a high correlation between skin color/reflectance and measured ability (typically around 0.9), the distribution of the two can be thought of similarly.

I don't understand the whole thing, i.e., in what way the last sentence relates to the first/second sentence(s).

Secondly, the migrant and intranational data, while generally consistent with a non-trivial hereditarian hypothesis, is not compelling; groups which one would expect to do poorly not infrequently fair well.

Can you cite a reference or two ?

Finally, I may have things to say about punctuations and all that, but I will continue by email, because I think it's stupid to "spam" the thread with useless things such as "should be a comma, not a dot". No one want to read these useless, trivial conversations. Especially when there are many things to correct.

I think you need to remove the unecessary "us" "our" "we" when they suggest several authors. If you say "we can see" it's fine because several single authors use that and I see the "we" as involving both the author and reader(s). But otherwise, avoid that.

I used "we" because there originally were -- or, at least, were supposed to be -- two authors. Replacing "we" with "I" would look silly, so I would have to rewrite a number of sections. If you definitely can not accept "we" let me know. If so, I will have to rewrite a number of sections or "locate" a co-author.

Perhaps you can explain a little bit how you arrived at this value (e.g., instead of dividing by the sum of the SDs, you SQRT the product of the two SDs). But more importantly, is it a common practice to convert CD into Cohen's d ?

The formula is: CD = (Mb-Ma)/(SDa+SDb), where CD=1.28. I assume that the population SDs are about the same. So we have: 1.28 = (Mb-Ma)/2SD, which is:
Mb-Ma = 2.56 SD. No?

and found, based on 71 cranial measures, an average Caucasoid-Negroid CD of less than 0.5; of the traits, only 15% had a CD above 1.0; these results were consistent with those reported by Sarich and Miele (2004), who ended up emphasizing the largeness of the differences relative to those between other primate sub-specific groups.

"largeness of the differences relative to" : which differences ? Maybe you should use "these" instead.

Craniometric -- I will use "these".

This found Hs value corresponds to an F/Gst value of ~0.05 based on our regression line using 24 subspeciated species

I would like you to explain this sentence. It's so obscure...

I rewrote this as: "The average Hs value was 0.72 (and so the maximum possible Fst would be 0.28). When Hs is plotted by F/Gst for the sample of 24 species, a Hs value of 0.72 predicts a F/Gst value of 0.05. Using Heller and Siegismund's (2009) regression line based on 43 species the same result is found. "

What I meant is that among non-human species a Fst of 0.05 is what one would predict given a Hs of 0.72.

In general, I find that section hard to read. The whole thing involved answering the question of whether THR meet the 5 criteria listed by Mayr & Ashlock. You come to the conclusion that we cannot say that THR meet the criteria but that we cannot reject THR either, based on these arbitrary criteria. So, what's next ? Was that just to say that scientists shouldn't use these kind of arguments to reject THR ?

It was to give a complete discussion of the matter. Nothing is next. Do you want me to rewrite it? Yes, it was a lengthily discussion, but I was trying to show that no matter how you look at the matter the subspecies issue is undetermined.

(By the way, concerning the formula you applied to convert Fst into d values, I will appreciate if you cite a reference.)

I didn't use "fst", rather I used "%variance", specifically Eta-squared -- see: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Eta-squared The formula is given in: Cohen J. (1988). Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.). You can use the "converting effect sizes" excel (at the bottom) here: http://www.stat-help.com/spreadsheets.html. Note, I used typical interpretation guidelines. See: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/15958/how-to-interpret-and-report-eta-squared-partial-eta-squared-in-statistically. An Eta-squared of 14% is about 0.81 SD.

That said, this sentence is obscure :

That is, to the extent that congenital race differences are questionable, they are questionable not because race is an arbitrary social construct, but because (i) race is delineated in terms of a specific variable (typically geographic ancestry) and (ii) it is questionable that the trait in question would vary congenitally by this variable.

How about?

" Of course, one can only argue against the existence of socially important genetic differences between biological races if one recognizes and defines biological race. The next step is to actually show that the said differences do not exist. It is not infrequently argued, though, that sociological races could not differ on account of being "socially" and not "biologically" constructed (e.g., Alland (2004)). As discussed in section II, this conclusion is an obvious non sequitur. Showing or claiming that sociological races do not correspond with biological ones provides no leverage in arguing that there are no significant genetic differences between them. This is because there obviously are socially important genetic differences between many socially constructed groups, such as social classes. "Social construction", then, necessarily can not be inconsistent with "genetic differences”. Groups obviously can be socially constructed around genetic differences. Knowing nothing else, one would treat socially constructed groups as arbitrarily constructed ones. The a priori probability that any differences between arbitrary constructed groups is a function of the heritability of the trait in the population (see Tal, 2009 for proof concerning individual differences).This is merely a restatement of the behavioral genetic default according to which group differences should be, knowing nothing else, assumed to have a genetic basis since genes condition differences between individuals within the population at large. To argue against this probabilistic reasoning, one must provide evidence that ethnic groups are not arbitrarily constructed -- that they are constructed in a manner such that there are no such differences or such that the existence of such differences is a priori implausible.

Were we to socially construct groups and then select ones for which there were appreciable differences in some highly heritable trait, it would be more likely than not that the between-group differences in that trait would be partially congenital. In the case of skin color: Argentinians versus Colombians; North Hemispherians versus South Hemispherians; Theravada Buddhists versus Mahayana Buddhists; wealthy Mexicans versus poor Mexicans. In some instances the group differences would be completely unrelated to genetics. Whether the majority of the pairs would exhibit genetic differences would depend on the precise population heritability estimate of the trait in question. But it is clear that social constructionism per se is not inconsistent with between-group genetic differences. Thus, when it comes to “race”, what is the argument? It can not merely be that races are socially constructed. It would have to be that races are socially constructed only around non-behavioral differences. But this begs the question. "

Not just because of the unecessary use of "us" (or "ours") but more because the sentence suggests you have mentioned Braces' argument earlier, which wasn't the case, as far as I can see. I also believe the following sentence is badly written :

How about?

"Another way to escape the reverse of the "too little variation" argument would be to reiterate a version of Loring Braces’ (1999) argument. According to this, since each population has an equal ability to use language and to develop culture they must necessarily not differ in behavioral traits such as intelligence. This type of argument, of course, is ridiculous when applied in context to normally distributed traits because within each and every population innumerous subpopulations exist which do differ in these traits. If these subpopulation which differ can exist then populations which exist can differ. Worse, it is already known that human populations do differ in the said traits; the debate is over “why” not “whether”. In short, the “too little variance” argument cannot be salvaged. To the extent that it is deemed to be valid it clearly fails to support the position in defense of which it has been enlisted."

This problems occurs quite frequently throughout the entire text. And not just section 4.

Point the passages out please and I will rewrite them.

The argument is that the results depends on sampling. Spencer (The unnatural racial naturalism, 2014) on the other hand said it does not do any harm to this view.. It seems to me that the results from STRUCTURE may remind us of what you can get from factor analysis, including CFA, where the modeled latent factors depend on the sampling of subtests. Yet, no one would never say that there is no speed factor because it fails to emerge when the battery of tests is composed of 7 verbal, 3 performance, 2 memory and 1 speed subtests.

Yes, there are at least two different arguments. You are correct that I didn't directly discuss this issue. How about:

"Box 4.1. Critiques of Unsupervised Cluster Analysis
A number of critiques have been made against the use of unsupervised cluster analysis to objectively delineate racial classifications. One is that cluster-analyses can not establish a correct level of genetic granularity; thus any level of analysis must be subjectively chosen. Another is that global genetic and morphological data bases such as 1000 Genomes, HapMap3, and W.W. Howells’ Craniometric Data Set are based on biased samples, ones which were collected with traditional racial classifications in mind. A third is that cluster analysis outputs heavily depend on the population data inputted; when one inputs data from different sets of populations one gets different results.

Regarding the first, it is correct that cluster-analyses can not establish a correct level of genetic analysis. This is as one would expect since there is no such level. One can look at genetic propinquity on a broad continental level or on a small regional one. In context to race, this has always been recognized. The same consideration holds with respect to taxonomic categories. For example, the level of genetic analysis that corresponds to "genus" is no more correct than that which corresponds to "species". Nonetheless, unsupervised cluster-analyses can provide objective grounds for preferring one level of intrapecific analysis to another given some notion of what makes for an ideal race, for example: degree of clusteredness, amount of genetic differentiation, and the genetic coherence of the divisions picked out. When unsupervised cluster analysis is run which automatically picks out a "best" level of analysis (e.g., fineSTRUCTURE and DAPC) or which generates results which allow one to do so (e.g., STRUCTURE), the TRCL has generally been shown to cut out divisions which are preferable given these pre-specified criteria (Dienekes, 2005; 2014). Regarding the second argument, one can not directly refute a hard form of this, according to which subtle and difficult to detect biases inevitably shape sampling decisions. One can only request that the argument is applied equally with respect to other scientific endeavors. If done, this would unveil the epistemic nihilism on which it is based. In response to a moderate version of the same argument, it can be pointed out that multiple data bases developed by different research teams for different purposes generate similar results. Moreover, the results are as one would expect given known historic geographic barriers to movement, for example, the presence of large deserts, mountain ranges, oceans, and so forth. The third point is superficially correct; the population data which one inputs into a cluster analysis program flavors the results. But this point only works as an argument against the TRCL insofar as one maintains, in accordance with the second argument, that global data bases are riddled with sampling-bias. As discussed above, there are good reasons for concluding otherwise."

It's curious you're citing that study, since it says that environments cause genetic effects by way of mutual causality.

What Flynn emphasized and what his model allows for are two different things.

frequency differences in specific behaviorally associated alleles can (statistically) explain some of a number of interesting national, regional, and ethnic sociocultural differences

I will appreciate if you say explicitly if these relationships are strong, or just small/modest.

This is tricky because the effect sizes of the alleles themselves explain very little. The cross population frequency differences, though, can explain a lot. Maybe I should clarify this. I am not sure how I can be explicit because it depends on the traits in question. I cited a bunch of different studies. I will see what I can do though. How about the following footnote:

"The effect sizes of the alleles themselves explain little; but the patterns of frequency differences can explain a substantial portion of the phenotypic ones in the sense that the squared correlation between allelic scores based on multiple alleles and phenotypic scores is often moderate to high for some traits.

Section IV-L :

readers are cautiously referred to Lynn (2008) (cautiously because the work is badly in need of updating 20)

20 We make this claim based on our own investigation of the data.

What's the use of saying this when the reader has no way of checking this out ? Also, remove the "our".

You are the one that asked me to provide a reference. Lynn's work is in need of updating. My reference is my own judgment based on my own analyses.

Generally speaking, global variance in intelligence exhibits a north south clinal pattern for indigenous populations. This pattern does not hold when it comes to recent (post-1500) global migrants (e.g., Europeans in Australia, N.E. Asians in Brazil, and S.S. Africans in North America). Since there is a high correlation between skin color/reflectance and measured ability (typically around 0.9), the distribution of the two can be thought of similarly.

I don't understand the whole thing, i.e., in what way the last sentence relates to the first/second sentence(s).

The skin color distribution is clinal just like the IQ distribution. I changed this to: "Generally speaking, global variance in intelligence exhibits a north south clinal pattern for indigenous populations. This pattern does not hold when it comes to recent (post-1500) global migrants (e.g., Europeans in Australia, N.E. Asians in Brazil, and S.S. Africans in North America). Since there is a high correlation between skin color/reflectance and measured ability (typically around 0.9), the distribution of the two traits can be thought of similarly (i.e., both are clinal)."

Secondly, the migrant and intranational data, while generally consistent with a non-trivial hereditarian hypothesis, is not compelling; groups which one would expect to do poorly not infrequently fair well.

Can you cite a reference or two ?

In the text, I cite De Philippis (2013) and Fuerst (2014) which disccuss the matter. I added:

"groups which one would expect to do poorly not infrequently fair well (e.g., Fuerst (2014))"

Karl Boetel was not even an author, as his contribution was zero. And in your article, actually, there is only 1 author. You. And no one else. Have you seen this thread, by the way ? And what do you think ?

Mb-Ma = 2.56 SD. No?

Yes, I also found the same result earlier, but I'm more interested to know if it's a common practice or not.

You are the one that asked me to provide a reference.

Yes, true. But What I said is : "What's the use of saying this when the reader has no way of checking this out ?". I won't push the matter however. I don't have time for little details like these. I just wanted to say that it doesn't make sense to me.

I don't comment on your other replies because I'm OK with all of them (including the changes you've made), although I don't think my interrogation about what you mean by "the trait in question would vary congenitally by this variable" has been answered appropriately.

If possible, again, you should add a complete list of references. When I review papers here, I usually look at the references, and if I find something curious about what the author says, I read the references that he cites, but in your situation, I have to guess which paper you're referring to. And it's not always easy.

Concerning this :

Point the passages out please and I will rewrite them.

I will have to re-read the article once more, but I give you my approval in advance (to Part 4 at least). I will let you know if I find something, but I didn't remember it was important, because otherwise, I would have said it here.

Karl Boetel was not even an author, as his contribution was zero. And in your article, actually, there is only 1 author. You. And no one else Have you seen this thread, by the way ? And what do you think ?

I used "we" 71 times and "our" 23 times in section I, 94 times and 17 times in section II, 73 times and 10 times in section III, 103 times and 20 times in section IV, 102 times and 24 times in section V, and 65 times and 21 times in section VI. Whether or not you believe me, I wrote the piece under the true pretense of having a full co-author. It just did not work out that way. As it is, it would be very difficult to alter the tense. If you require this, I will dig up a co-author -- perhaps the original intended one -- who can contribute say one page to the end, who will approve everything else, and who will agree to make updated editions as needed. If this is what you require, let me know.

I don't comment on your other replies because I'm OK with all of them (including the changes you've made), although I don't think my interrogation about what you mean by "the trait in question would vary congenitally by this variable" has been answered appropriately.

I deleted this, so it doesn't matter.

If possible, again, you should add a complete list of references.

The references are here: https://osf.io/qjx2d/ They are now updated.

I will have to re-read the article once more, but I give you my approval in advance (to Part 4 at least).

I need your approval for the full thing. I will then request Frost's. After I will locate an outside reviewer -- though I am having trouble since I have been deemed persona non grata in some philosophy of science circles. I have been stigmatized as a "racist" and "white supremacist", presumably because my arguments are not shabby.

Thanks. I apparently need an army of editors.

[OBG] Nature of Race Full Version

Author: John Fuerst

Abstract: Racial constructionists, anti-naturalists, and anti-realists have challenged users of the biological race concept to provide and defend, from the perspective of biology, biological philosophy, sociology, and ethics, a biologically informed concept of race. We do this in a six part analysis.

Keywords: natural division, race, biology

The article can be found here: https://osf.io/ruxzi/
PDF and DOC version at OSF

Please download the latest version of the document and read it; the OSF browser version does not include the many footnotes.

Chuck,

Does this link (shown below) take me to the most recent version of your text?
https://osf.io/y2q3u/

Chuck,

Does this link (shown below) take me to the most recent version of your text?
https://osf.io/y2q3u/

Yes, section 1 can be found at that link. You can download the 2015-03-05 file on the right. I also uploaded a full version (all sections+references) here: https://osf.io/ruxzi/

There are a number of formatting issues, especially with the tables. But I was waiting for review comments first.

Section V-A is about the moralistic fallacy. I don't believe this section really deserves 2 pages. But you do what you want.

Your reply to Templeton is good, but I would appreciate if you write section "IV-I" instead of "IV" : "the ambiguous 75% rule of thumb, a rule which was discussed in section IV".

For your reply to Lahr (1996), I have nothing more to say, but perhaps you can refer to section IV-I, which talks about the 75% rule.

Your reply to Pigliucci & Kaplan (2003) is not satisfying. When they say "folk race" they must mean something like this :

There remains a broad consensus that current folk racial categories—those categories usually used on surveys, recognized by tbe U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and used on census forms and by U.S. Federal Drug Administration (FDA)—do not correspond to meaningful biological categories.

http://people.oregonstate.edu/~cloughs/Monist%20Race%20Kaplan.pdf

But what you say looks like nonsense to me; I don't see the argument you're making. You say something, but at the same time, nothing substantial, such as "they are only able to make this case by narrowly understanding the ecotype concept". Of course, you don't say what you meant by narrow understanding. Secondly, you cited Coyne's blog article "Are there Human Races?" on ecotype. But the only thing I read is this :

In my own field of evolutionary biology, races of animals (also called “subspecies” or “ecotypes”) are morphologically distinguishable populations that live in allopatry (i.e. are geographically separated). There is no firm criterion on how much morphological difference it takes to delimit a race. Races of mice, for example, are described solely on the basis of difference in coat color, which could involve only one or two genes.

I'm left with the impression that he uses races or subspecies and ecotypes interchangeably although it's difficult to tell. But whatever the case, reading the above quote does not help me to understand your point, when you say "they miss common ecotypic subspecies understandings, such as discussed by Coyne (2012)".

Ironically, what I believe could be an answer to Pigliucci & Kaplan was this passage from your section "Semantic Arguments" :

Given our concept of biological race, a reply to Malik is ready on hand: geographic ancestry, let alone continentally delineated group is not, in fact, synonymous with biological race; only when individuals from roughly the same geographic region descend from the same natural divisions do they belong to the same race; hence, the geographically defined sociological race of Asians in the US does not correspond to any biological one.

I do not understand why the entire critique of Pigliucci & Kaplan did not belong to "Folk Race Mismatch Arguments".

Next, the below paragraph, appearing just before the section "Panmixia Arguments" has a big problem :

In summary, these four arguments represent the prominent subspecies critiques of biological race. They are unsound because they narrowly equate biological race with the taxonomic category of subspecies and because they rely on qualification conventions or interpretations of these which are not commonly used in biology or which are selectively imposed in the case of humans.

Because I remember what you say in the 1st paragraph of section V-B. And it reads :

These can be subdivided into human subspecies, panmixia, population structure, and discordant cluster arguments.

In other words, the other paragraph "In summary, these four arguments ... imposed in the case of humans" is in the wrong place. Furthermore, you have added two sections : "Bio-statistical Arguments" "Folk Race Mismatch Arguments". So the above paragraph should be modified, and it's now 6 arguments, not 4.

Concerning the section "Panmixia Arguments" I believe the main idea has been already explained in section 2 (same thing with the section following this one) and I don't see anything new here. Also ...

While human races are not as genetically differentiated as Ostrich or Elephant subspecies, it is not difficult to find a plethora of species with unchallenged formally recognized races which are both phenotypically and genetically less differentiated than human continental divisions.

Can you cite a reference ?

Concerning the section "Bio-statistical Arguments" I read :

Rather, characters are correlated. This allows for increasing, not decreasing, accuracy when more traits are taken into consideration.

Is it the same argument as "aggregation reduces measurement errors and, consequently, improves accuracy of measurement" ?

Concerning "Cluster Discordances Arguments", I have nothing to say, since I agree. However, I think you can add "and different study samples" to this "Discordant clusters just mean that one is using imperfect data".

For section V-D, I think the sociological argument is hopeless. If you want to discuss it, fine, but I wouldn't waste my time on it.

Concerning V-D section, I don't understand the lumper-splitter controversy. If they think it applies to races, it also applies to anything else. I have heard that language classification (in american indian languages) also suffers this problem, yet I have never heard anyone saying that there is no language. Generally, the argument is just another version of the argument which says that if you don't know the exact number of races, there are no races at all. It's amusing that your single quote of Dobzhansky (1946) says it all ("There is no "true" subspecific level"), and yet the section V-D has a length of 6 pages.

In the same section, there is this passage that I don't understand. Too obscur... especially the last sentence.

Discussing one line of argument, Kaplan (2011) notes that one of the “main lines of argument against the biological reality of races” is that “what was meant by “race is biological” was a strong essentialist claim that we now know to be false, not just of human populations, but indeed of most biologically respectable populations”. To render this position otherwise: biological races are not real because “races” are biologically impossible entities.

Also, if the citation comes from "'Race': What Biology Can Tell Us about a Social Construct" (Kaplan 2011), I didn't find it in the paper. Same thing for this quote from your section "Folk Race Mismatch Arguments" :

Here is a rough summary of the main lines of argument against the biological reality of race: 3) the populations we identify as races in contemporary social discourse do not map neatly onto any legitimate biological populations (the mismatch argument see e.g. Root 2003).

I really think it's not the correct reference. If it's true, be careful to replace all "(Kaplan 2011)" by the correct reference. Also, I remember now there was a "(Kaplan 2010)" in section IV (which is absent in the reference list).

In section V-E, you noted :

From this perspective, nature can never determine a concept; it can never specify, for example, that species entails this and not that.

I can't agree more. A good comparison would be to say that history does not determine theories. It is theories that must be used to understand, interpret history. Some people fallaciously believe that history makes theory.

Concerning the section "Semantic Arguments", I have already commented on this, since it was previously incorporated in section 2 and not 5, and I didn't see anything wrong in the argumentation. You said that geographic ancestry does not determine biological race, and that the meaning of the race concept did not change over time, and that population can't be a substitute for race. All of these points are correct.

In section "Historical Mismatch Arguments", you rightly noted that "scientific concepts often involve evolving and shifting meanings". I can't say anything special about it. You illustrate that fallacy in a nice manner. An attack toward an old concept does not necessarily do any harm to the new concept. More importantly, I agree that some authors (Zack, 2002) have mischaracterized the old, historical concept of race by pretending that it assumes discontinuities when in fact, it wasn't the case. Instead, discontinuity has been used to determine species.

I made all of the requested changes, except as discussed below:

MH: Your reply to Pigliucci & Kaplan (2003) is not satisfying. When they say "folk race" they must mean something like this

Part of the problem is that ""folk race" is used ambiguously. At times it is used to mean both sociological classifications like US "Asians" (which often don't cut out natural divisions) and at other times it is used to mean traditional race classifications like Mongoloid, Caucasoid, etc. (which do cut out natural divisions). Pigliucci & Kaplan (2003); Pigliucci (2013) seem to use it in the latter sense. Consider the following passage from Pigliucci (2013):

"Pigliucci and Kaplan (2003) have therefore proposed that human races—to the extent that they exist—could be thought of from a biological perspective as ecotypes. There are several implications to this proposal, the most fundamental being the following two: (a) there is little relation between human races qua ecotypes and the folk concept of race, because the same folk ‘‘race’’ may have evolved independently several times in response to local environmental conditions, and be characterized by different genetic makeups; (b) ecotypes (and hence races) are only superficially different from each other because they are usually selected for only a relatively small number of traits that are advantageous in certain environments. This means that races are nothing like phylogenetically divergent subspecies, and that racial differences are literally skin deep.. the validity of such contribution lies precisely in the fact that it shows that Sesardic-like accounts of race are ill-informed scientifically, so that we can all move on and concentrate on the more relevant and complex issue of the social construction of the concept of race...""

Pigliucci (2013) -- and by inference Pigliucci & Kaplan (2003) -- argue that:
(a) ecotypic races exist
(b) but ecotypes are nothing like "phylogenetically divergent subspecies" because they represent local adaptations
(c) therefore Sesardic's "folk races" -- which are the THRs and which are something like subspecies -- can't be ecotypes

My reply was that Pigliucci (2013); Pigliucci & Kaplan (2003) overly narrowly understood the ecotypic concept -- Mayr, for example, quite explicitly says that "phylogenetically divergent subspecies" are necessarily ecotypes. And Coyne equates the two.

To clarify, I rewrote this as:

"As such, while they allow for human ecological races and subspecies, they argue that such races do not correspond with traditionally recognized ones such as the THRs. As Pigliucci (2013) notes:

As for the biological interpretation of the concept of race, I have reiterated Pigliucci and Kaplan’s (2003) suggestion that it is not meaningless, but it does have a sufficiently different meaning from that of folk races [including the THRs] to create serious problems for most of the published scientific and philosophical literature on biological differences among ‘‘races.’ There are several implications to this proposal, the most fundamental being the following two: (a) there is little relation between human races qua ecotypes and the folk concept of race… ecotypes (and hence races) are only superficially different from each other because they are usually selected for only a relatively small number of traits that are advantageous in certain environments. This means that races are nothing like phylogenetically divergent subspecies, and that racial differences are literally skin deep. [Italics added]

Of course, they are only able to make this case by narrowly understanding the ecotype concept. In their hurry to dismiss 'folk races', they miss common ecotypic subspecies understandings, such as those discussed by Mayr (1970) and Coyne (2012). As discussed in section IV-I, Mayr (1970) noted that "not a single geographic race is known that is not also an ecological race, nor is there an ecological race that is not at the same time at least a microgeographic race”. So much for Pigliucci’s (2013) claim that ecotypic races are “nothing like phylogenetically divergent subspecies”!

MH: I do not understand why the entire critique of Pigliucci & Kaplan did not belong to "Folk Race Mismatch Arguments".

Yes, it would be a sub-type of this, too. It's a subspecies argument because ecotypic subspecies ~ races.

MH: Next, the below paragraph, appearing just before the section "Panmixia Arguments" has a big problem

The "In summary, these [four] arguments represent the prominent..." should say [three]. But yes, you are correct that I forgot to mention three subtypes of arguments.

The biological scientific arguments are:
Subspecies arguments -- three of them
Panmixia arguments
Population structure arguments
Bio-statistical Arguments
Cluster Discordances Arguments
Folk Race Mismatch Arguments

I fixed thus:

"Biological arguments work from within the biological sciences and attempt to show that human races, or, at times, races in general, do not exist given some strictly natural scientific considerations. These can be subdivided into human subspecies, panmixia, population structure, bio-statistical, cluster discordance, and folk race-biological race mismatch arguments."

Concerning the section "Panmixia Arguments" I believe the main idea has been already explained in section 2 (same thing with the section following this one) and I don't see anything new here. Also ...

It gave an excuse to add:

"Before engaging this argument, it needs to be pointed out that the non-trivial differentiation between human populations indicates that there must have been significantly restricted gene flow. There is a well-known rule of thumb in biology called the One-Migrant-per-Generation Rule. According to this, populations will not genetically differentiate if there are more than one migrants per generation between them. While the actual practical number of migrants needed to prevent divergence is somewhat higher (Wang, 2004), the point stands that for the level of divergence found between THR, gene flow must have been substantially restricted."

While human races are not as genetically differentiated as Ostrich or Elephant subspecies, it is not difficult to find a plethora of species with unchallenged formally recognized races which are both phenotypically and genetically less differentiated than human continental divisions.

Can you cite a reference ?

I discussed this in section IV:

"Templeton (1998) did this using MtDNA for non-Human species (between subspecies) and microsatellites and RFLPs for humans (between continental populations). The Fst values range from about 0.095 to 0.95; of the 13 species he presented, humans came in 10th place in terms of interpopulation Fst values. Using the same method as Templeton (1998), similar results would be found using the values for the 17 ungalate species with MtDNA Fst values presented by Lorenzen (2008); of the 17, Humans would have placed 14th....Humans (based on continental races) came 21 out of 25 in terms of genetic differentiation . These results, then, are quite similar to those found by Templeton (1998)."

In a footnote I noted: "Of course, 21/25 is still the 14th percentile, which is low average (9th to 23rd) not borderline (2nd to 8th)."

I changed this to: While human races are not as genetically differentiated as Ostrich or Elephant subspecies, as discussed in section IV-I, it is not difficult to find a number of species with unchallenged formally recognized races which are both phenotypically and genetically less differentiated than are human continental divisions.

Concerning the section "Bio-statistical Arguments" ...Is it the same argument as "aggregation reduces measurement errors and, consequently, improves accuracy of measurement" ?

It would be more like: including a wider range of measures allows for the more accurate estimation of a latent variable.

It's amusing that your single quote of Dobzhansky (1946) says it all ("There is no "true" subspecific level"), and yet the section V-D has a length of 6 pages.

Probably true, but I will leave it.

In the same section, there is this passage that I don't understand. Too obscure... especially the last sentence.

"Discussing one line of argument, Kaplan (2011) notes that one of the “main lines of argument against the biological reality of races” is that “what was meant by “race is biological” was a strong essentialist claim that we now know to be false, not just of human populations, but indeed of most biologically respectable populations”. To render this position otherwise: biological races are not real because “races” are biologically impossible entities".

One of the lines of argument is that "biological race" means something like the species realist's species -- hence a "strong essentialist claim". It is argued that this is what "biological race" meant and it is concluded that therefore "biological race" can not exist any more that phlogiston can. One of my points has been: (a) this makes for an argument against "biological species" and (b) "intraspecific race" was never thought this way that species once were.

How about:

"To render this position otherwise: biological races are not real because “races” refer to entities which we now know can not possibly exist."

As for the source it was: Kaplan, J. (How Much) Do the Semantics of “Race” Matter? A Note From a Parochial Perspective. I noticed that it hasn't been published. I attached a copy below -- which does not specifically say "Do not Cite" He also presented it at a conference:

Jonathan Kaplan (Oregon State Univesity)
Do the Semantics of Race Matter?: A Note from a Parochial Perspective
Comment: Christopher Lean
http://www.docsrush.net/2535211/northwest-conference-preliminary-schedule.html

What do you suggest I do? If I list it, I will list it as: Kaplan, J. (n.d.). (How Much) Do the Semantics of “Race” Matter? A Note From a Parochial Perspective.

Note: from now on all edit are being made to the full copy.

Content-wise, I am very impressed. As far as presentation goes, formatting needs work. A lot of paragraphs aren't properly separated and quoted paragraphs aren't indented.

Content-wise, I am very impressed. As far as presentation goes, formatting needs work. A lot of paragraphs aren't properly separated and quoted paragraphs aren't indented.

The downloaded version should be better than the browser one. If you could point out errors that would be very helpful.

Currently, I am waiting for Peter Frost's and Michael Levin's reviews.

OK, added above.