Papers and book chapters by Phila M Msimang
Theoria, 2022
Historically, the South African Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has been viewed as a reliable s... more Historically, the South African Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has been viewed as a reliable source of information given its near century-long work of compiling statistics and reports about race relations and the social conditions affecting different race groups in South Africa. I make the case that the IRR should not be considered a reliable source of information about race groups and their social conditions in contemporary South Africa because of how the IRR misrepresents the views of ordinary South Africans with the intention of influencing policy towards the IRR's preferred ideological positions. Rather than presenting criticism of their ideological slant, I show how their policy proposals are not supported by their survey data or their interpretation. Furthermore, I argue that their misrepresentation of South Africans' beliefs is damaging to democratic processes because what the public claims it wants from government has a significant impact on what government's mandate from its citizenry is thought to be.
Philosophical Papers, 2022
Critical notice of Joshua Glasgow, Sally Haslanger, Chike Jeffers, and Quayshawn Spencer, What Is... more Critical notice of Joshua Glasgow, Sally Haslanger, Chike Jeffers, and Quayshawn Spencer, What Is Race? Four Philosophical Views (Oxford University Press, 2019)
Remapping Race in a Global Context, 2021
Racial classifications are thought to be useful in biomedical settings because they can suggest m... more Racial classifications are thought to be useful in biomedical settings because they can suggest medically relevant genetic ancestry and medically relevant social or environmental variables. This is the use of race as a proxy in biomedical settings. In this chapter, I argue that the pragmatic use of racial classifications in these settings can be no more than a stop-gap for variables of biomedical or clinical significance. I argue that the only appropriate use of racial classification in biomedical settings is in the context of accounting for the victims and beneficiaries of racism in health, and in cases where we want to track and intervene in racial inequities or disparities in health irrespective of their history or cause.
Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and Religions, 2022
Ovett Nwosimiri argues in a paper he published in 2021 that affirmative action and preferential h... more Ovett Nwosimiri argues in a paper he published in 2021 that affirmative action and preferential hiring policies are no longer appropriate for South Africa because of the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The case he makes is that since COVID-19 has impacted people of all races, there should no longer be any consideration of race in hiring policies and practices. He claims that continued preferential hiring practices unfairly discriminate against non-designated groups. I argue that this claim presumes that the pandemic has been a devastating but equalizing force in economic opportunity and participation for people in South Africa. I show that this claim is simply false and that the falsity of his claim undermines Nwosimiri's case. Nwosimiri does not take account of the false premise his case is founded on because of his inappropriate methodological choice to ignore empirical evidence that has bearing on his argument.
Global Epistemologies and Philosophies of Science, 2021
This essay explores the relationship between the social sciences and human biology with respect t... more This essay explores the relationship between the social sciences and human biology with respect to race. I begin by giving an overview of the disparate origins of racial classification and the population history of South Africa. I then move from there to sketch how knowledge from the social sciences can improve the quality of hypotheses about population history and, conversely, how the biological sciences can be informative to the social sciences. I end by discussing the relationship between race, biology, and social scientific questions in the context of the land debate in South Africa.
Lee McIntyre's Respecting Truth chronicles the contemporary challenges regarding the relationship... more Lee McIntyre's Respecting Truth chronicles the contemporary challenges regarding the relationship amongst evidence, belief formation and ideology. The discussion in his book focusses on the 'politicisation of knowledge' and the purportedly growing public (and sometimes academic) tendency to choose to believe what is determined by prior ideological commitments rather than what is determined by evidence-based reasoning. In considering these issues, McIntyre posits that the claim "race is a myth" is founded on a political ideology rather than on support from scientific evidence. He contrasts this view with the argument that racially correlated biomedical outcomes for self-identified racial groups suggest that biological races are real. I explore how McIntyre's framing of the claim "race is a myth" as fundamentally ideological results in him failing to engage with the arguments and evidence many constructionists and biological anti-realists put forward in support of their views. I also show how the biomedical evidence he thinks supports biological realism is unconvincing.
Transformation, 2020
Race Otherwise is a contemporary exploration of race and identity in South Africa that attempts t... more Race Otherwise is a contemporary exploration of race and identity in South Africa that attempts to provide us with a new form of humanism that may help us overcome or at least challenge and disrupt racialisation. This book is located in a local non-racialist tradition in which race is to be overcome or transcended through creative ways of reimagining ourselves and how we relate to one another. It locates the problem of race in the way we think about each other and ourselves. Given this attitudinal focus, the ultimate proposal of the book of how South Africa is to move forward is by engaging in what Erasmus views as a radical form of love. I explain how this book does not provide us with a viable framework of understanding race and neither does it give us any way of overcoming racial injustice.
South African Journal of Science, 2020
Since the publication of the now infamous paper 'Age-and education-related effects on cognitive f... more Since the publication of the now infamous paper 'Age-and education-related effects on cognitive functioning in Colored South African women' by Nieuwoudt and colleagues where they claim the cognitive functioning of coloured women is defective in some ways, there has been renewed doubts about the legitimacy of race in research... The attention which this paper has received is perhaps related to how it is a caricature of a more common and mundane problem about the status of race in research.
Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy , 2019
Adam Hochman has recently argued for comprehensive anti-realism about race against social kind th... more Adam Hochman has recently argued for comprehensive anti-realism about race against social kind theories of race. He points out that sceptics, often taken as archetypical anti-realists, may admit race in certain circumstances even if they are eliminativists about race. To be comprehensively anti-realist about races, which also means rejecting all 'race talk', he suggests that racial formation theory should be abandoned in favour of interactive constructionism. Interactive constructionism argues for the reality of racialized individuals and racialized groups to the exclusion of realism about races. Its supplementation of comprehensive anti-realism is meant to give us the ability to account for all relevant phenomena of interest surrounding the question of race without having to admit that races are real in any sense. I argue that although Hochman's interactive constructionism succeeds in establishing the existence of racialized individuals and groups, it does not do so to the exclusion of realism about social races. Furthermore, I show that his comprehensive anti-realism, even when it is supplemented with interactive constructionism, is inadequate to deal with all relevant phenomena of interest surrounding the question of race.
Transformation Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa , 2018
There is a consensus amongst many South African scholars, activists, human rights advocates, and ... more There is a consensus amongst many South African scholars, activists, human rights advocates, and citizens that South Africa should become a non-racial society. So strong is our collective belief in a non-racial society in the future of South Africa that we have this principle inscribed in the founding provisions of our Constitution. As an ideal, it stands as a guiding principle in the virtues and values promoted in our society. Arguments abound in the literature for why non-racialism is a noble and worthy cause, but little attention is given to the question of if the attainment of such a society is possible. If non-racialism is a state in which we no longer think about race, I argue that such a state is probably not in the future of South Africa. In this article, I ask what should be done if the attainment of such a non-racial society is not possible. Particularly, I ask if the strategy of racial eliminativism is useful in the endeavour towards a more racially just society if racial thinking will persist despite any of our efforts to move past the idea of race.
The semiotic theory expressed in Gvoždiak (2012) is an inherently linguistic (speech act centred)... more The semiotic theory expressed in Gvoždiak (2012) is an inherently linguistic (speech act centred) theory, whereas the semiotic theory presented in Msimang (2014) tends more towards a general theory of communicative systems in which social ontology, which follows from speech act theory, is an interesting part. It is my purpose in this note to contrast the two positions of semiotic theory as they appear in the aforementioned papers in reference to their appropriation of Searle’s social ontology. Gvoždiak (2012) makes an argument for a collectively intentional and speech act centred construal of the sign and semiotics. Through his interpretation of Searle’s social ontology, he came to the view that all signs are necessarily social signs and that the representational content of signs must be intentional in nature and not only intentional in interpretation. On the other hand, the claim in Msimang (2014) is that social ontology is defective as a theory of sign because it is inherently intentional (viz., based on speech acts), and that there is more to the notion of a sign.
Signs and Society, 2014
Searle’s social ontology concerns the question of how it is that we are to reconcile different as... more Searle’s social ontology concerns the question of how it is that we are to reconcile different aspects of reality but takes for granted a particular kind of naturalism based on his unexplicated “basic facts” of nature. The consequence of this approach is that Searle’s ontology deals specifically with social reality and its institutions, and never directly with the basic facts upon which his position rests. Paradoxically, this naturalistic assumption alienates his theory from its connection with the basic facts because the nature of this connection is taken for granted and not explicitly shown how nature is connectable to the social world. I hope to show that Searle’s project is redeemed by biosemiotic theory that makes an explicit connection between the beginnings of sociality, which is where Searle’s work starts off, and the biological and physical nature of things, which is what Searle’s work takes for granted but what biosemiotics explicates.
Hempel's Dilemma is a challenge that has to be met by any formulation of physicalism that specifi... more Hempel's Dilemma is a challenge that has to be met by any formulation of physicalism that specifies the physical by reference to a particular physical theory. It poses the problem that if one's specification of the physical is ‘current’ physical theory, then the physicalism which depends on it is false because current physics is false; and if the specification of the physical is a future or an ideal physics, the physicalism based on it would be trivial as it would be tautologously true, or because very little (if anything at all) can be inferred from or about a physics that does not yet exist. I review the reasons for thinking that the dilemma is a perpetual problem for currentist specifications of the physical, then introduce the argument that the standard positions on the specification question are wanting because they lack a generality which physicalism is generally accepted to have. I end with a suggestion for a way forward for physicalism.
Scientific communications by Phila M Msimang
South African Journal of Bioethics and Law, 2022
To the Editor: I recently came across the article 'Human reproduction: Right, duty or privilege? ... more To the Editor: I recently came across the article 'Human reproduction: Right, duty or privilege? South African perspective' by Malcolm de Roubaix in your journal. [1] It gave an insightful historical overview of the legal framing of reproductive rights in South Africa (SA). Despite the merits of some of its descriptive components, I note with concern the implications of the argument that it presents us with and the assumptions it holds in making its ethical case. The argument itself is at least as old as Plato's Republic in the Western canon, and concerns itself with the important issue of the ethics of procreation. [2] The more specific question that de Roubaix deals with is: when is it responsible (or not responsible) to procreate and have a child in SA? Let me begin by expressing my general sympathy with the claim made by the author that 'we should consider the probable quality of life of the child we intend to produce' [1] in a manner that brings these considerations to bear on our decisions about whether to procreate. This is a kind of personal accountability about reproductive choices that we should encourage. Prospective parents should consider such factors as their sociopsychological situation, their ability to make provisions for their children, the appropriateness of the available support systems that they would have for the child, and so on, with the myriad of other considerations relevant to the well-being of the child and the community they would be joining. De Roubaix's article, though, focuses on the financial or material means of parents as a criterion upon which to decide fitness to procreate. His case is summed up in this paragraph in which he says: 'We should consider the probable quality of life of the child we intend to produce, and evaluate our personal social and economic environment before contemplating pregnancy: is it conducive to rearing a child in a manner commensurate with section 28 of the Bill of Rights? If not, we are not responsible parents, and should reconsider. This does not imply anti-natalism or ultimate elitismthat only the rich should procreate (ironically, they tend to limit their reproduction)-or that affluence is essential for a fulfilling and happy childhood. However, I do argue that families should be limited to the extent that parents can care for their child/children and provide him/her/them with the best possible future. Radical social engineering as practised in China and India are incompatible with contemporary notions of democracy and human rights. The state nevertheless has a responsibility: to intervene by designing and initiating programmes to promote responsible parenthood within social development-something apparently totally absent in our current planning. ' [1]
South African Journal of Bioethics and Law, 2022
Media Articles by Phila M Msimang
The Other Universals Project aims to bring together scholars from all over the world to interroga... more The Other Universals Project aims to bring together scholars from all over the world to interrogate the question of oppression and discrimination by focusing on the views and perspectives of marginalised peoples. It aims to inform, if not completely shift, the conversation about oppressed peoples to these peoples speaking for themselves. Phila Mfundo Msimang reflects on the three-day workshop.
Theses by Phila M Msimang
Biological racial realists face a range of problems. These problems depend on whether they claim ... more Biological racial realists face a range of problems. These problems depend on whether they claim races are natural objective classificatory groups (i.e., that races are monistic) or that races are pragmatic or investigation dependent classifications (i.e., that races are pluralistic). Realists who say races are objective face selection problems in which they must choose between equally valid but non-concordant classifications that cannot be decided objectively, and realists who claim that racial classifications can be decided by practical considerations face the problem of pragmatics in which they construct what races are according to investigation dependent criteria decided by the interests of the investigator. I conclude that monistic theorists cannot prove that races are objective and pluralist theories risk not being able to distinguish themselves from constructionism. In review of the literature, I argue that there are no viable biologically realist racial theories left and that the best explanations we have to account for racial phenomena are socially constructionist theories.
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Papers and book chapters by Phila M Msimang
Scientific communications by Phila M Msimang
Media Articles by Phila M Msimang
Theses by Phila M Msimang