#conservationism

⇄ Appiah is right: racial terms are empty, like ‘phlogiston’, and we should stop talking as if they named kinds

I lecture in Accra, and Appiah, whose father was Ghanaian, is someone my students claim with a certain pride, even when they disagree with him. I want to defend his eliminativism, at least for argument's sake. The argument, roughly: racial terms were…