[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series, Extended Edition, Alejandro Naranjo Sandoval, (University of California, Davis)

[Ryan Cox]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series, Extended Edition, is Alejandro Naranjo Sandoval, (University of California, Davis)

The title of the talk is "Race and the Logic of Historical Elucidation". Here is an abstract for the talk:

Many social constructionists urge us to consider the history of a category as part of our investigation into its nature. In other words, they urge us to engage in historical contextualizing. But a pressing question looms over this kind of project. To be socially constructed is for the existence and nature of a category to be partly determined or constituted by historically specific social and cultural facts of a society. When historical contextualizing asks us to investigate our categories at times before these social and cultural facts came about, it's not clear we're dealing with the same categories at all! In this paper, I investigate whether, despite this challenge, historical contextualizing can provide insight into socially constructed racial categories, as well as what kind of insight we can hope to attain. After taxonomizing different kinds of historical contextualizing, I argue that historical elucidation is, in fact, a coherent, substantive direction of inquiry for social constructionists. The two most promising options are conceiving of socially constructed racial categories as either (1) institutional, in which case they're tied to institutions whose identity-conditions are essentially path-dependent, or (2) functional kinds serving a larger role within background institutions. I end by arguing that both options vindicate historical elucidation... in some cases. With luck, historical elucidation reveals the very nature of race.

The seminar will take place at 3:30pm on Wednesday Dec 04 in the Philosophy Seminar Room (N494).

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to ryan.cox at sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan.cox at sydney.edu.au

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