Race and the Problem of Empty Concept Dependency

Defences of racial anti-realism typically proceed by establishing that nothing possesses the descriptive characteristics associated with the term ‘race’. This leaves them vulnerable to the externalist challenge that the descriptive meaning of ‘race’ is subject to revision based on discoveries about the nature of its referent. That referent is, according to constructionist realists, the groups we call races (the R-groups). Anti-realists and constructionist realists agree that the R-groups are constructed as real social groups by being viewed and treated as though they were relatively homogenous groups, differing in significant, inherent, heritable ways. Only, anti-realists insist they are not races, but racialized groups. I seek to harness their agreement about the socially constructed nature of the R-groups to break the impasse between anti-realists and constructionist realists and settle their dispute in the anti-realist position's favour. On the account of their social construction agreed by both sides, R-groups exhibit empty concept dependency: they depend for their existence on people's utilizing a concept with no referent. Race cannot be both the concept which captures the R-groups’ nature and the empty concept on whose utilization their existence depends. When we are forced to choose, I argue, the latter is the only justifiable option.