•  111
    Tricky Truths: How Should Alethic Pluralism Accommodate Racial Truths?
    with Ragnar van der Merwe
    Acta Analytica 1-23. forthcoming.
    Some alethic pluralists maintain that there are two kinds of truths operant in our alethic discourse: a realist kind and an anti-realist kind. In this paper, we argue that such a binary conception cannot accommodate certain social truths, specifically truths about race. Most alethic pluralists surprisingly overlook the status of racial truths. Douglas Edwards is, however, an exception. In his version of alethic pluralism—Determination Pluralism—racial truths are superassertible (anti-realist) tr…Read more
  •  10
    Social "races" in biomedical settings
    In Ludovica Lorusso & Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther (eds.), Remapping Race in a Global Context, Routledge. pp. 265-280. 2021.
    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 biomedic…Read more
  • Revisiting the question of race and biology in the South African social sciences
    In Inkeri Koskinen, David Ludwig, Zinhle Mncube, Luana Poliseli & Luis Reyes-Galindo (eds.), Global Epistemologies and Philosophies of Science, Routledge. 2021.
    This essay explores the relationship between the social sciences and 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, noting the peculiarity of their roots. I 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 …Read more
  •  7
    Don’t shy away from the elitist implications of your argument: Response to de Roubaix (review)
    South African Journal of Bioethics and Law 15 (2): 42-43. 2022.
    -
  •  17
    The IRR as False Witness
    Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 69 (172): 1-31. 2022.
    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 ordin…Read more
  •  16
    COVID-19 and Affirmative Action: A Response
    Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and Religions 11 (2): 127-148. 2022.
    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 c…Read more
  •  67
    What Is Race? Four Philosophers, Six Views
    Philosophical Papers 51 (1): 115-145. 2022.
    In this commentary I give an overview of the book "What is Race?: Four Philosophical Views," outlining the arguments each author makes in formulating and defending their respective views. I present some challenges to these views and argue that the scope of the book is an important consideration in our assessment of its contribution.
  •  115
    Lessons in our faults: fault lines on race and research ethics (review)
    South African Journal of Science 116 (9/10): 1-3. 2020.
    CITATION: Msimang, P. 2020. Lessons in our faults : fault lines on race and research ethics. South African Journal of Science, 116:8449, doi:10.17159/sajs.2020/8449.
  •  53
    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” i…Read more
  •  121
    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 f…Read more
  •  70
    Problems with the physical in physicalism
    South African Journal of Philosophy 34 (3): 336-345. 2015.
    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 becau…Read more
  •  245
    On Vít Gvoždiak's “John Searle's Theory of Sign”
    Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 22 (2): 255-261. 2015.
    Vít Gvoždiak published a reconciliatory analysis of Searle’s social ontology with semiotics in Gvoždiak (2012). Without prior knowledge of his paper, an analysis of the same subject appeared in Msimang (2014). Even though Searle’s social ontology is a common point of reference in the formulation of semiotics in these papers, it also serves as a point of departure in their understanding of semiotics and its development. The semiotic theory expressed in Gvoždiak (2012) is an inherently linguistic …Read more