SSP Forum: Lily Hu on How Race Makes a Difference

The
Symbolic Systems Forum
(community sessions of SYMSYS 280 - Symbolic Systems Research Seminar)
presents

How Race Makes a Difference

Lily Hu
Philosophy Department, Yale University
Thomas A. Wasow Visiting Scholar in Symbolic Systems

Monday, March 3, 2025
12;30-1:20 pm PT
Margaret Jacks Hall (Bldg. 460), Room 126
In-person event, not recorded (see below for entry instructions if you are not an active Stanford affiliate)

Note: Lunch is provided, if pre-ordered, only for members of SYMSYS 280, but others are welcome to bring a lunch and eat during the presentation.

ABSTRACT:

A tension appears in contemporary social-scientific studies of the causal effects of race. Race is understood by most scholars today to be a deeply social phenomenon—a category that not only explains distinctive patterns of social inequality but is defined by these myriad social differences. But this fact about race, on the one hand, sits uneasily with a core tenet of the concept of cause, on the other. On the leading philosophical and scientific-methodological accounts of causation, a cause is something that makes a difference in conditions that are, broadly speaking, “otherwise equal.” But if race marks social difference, then what is it for two persons or groups that are differently racialized to be “otherwise equal” in the sense required by good causal inquiry into the effects of race? Those different in racial status are defined by a host of social differences. And yet the background conditions that must be installed for causal inquiry to get off the ground require leveling those very inequalities. The aim of this talk is to draw out this internal tension and to see how it might be resolved—without giving up on the scientific project of causal inquiry about race.

Notes on entry to the meeting room:

Entry to the building is open to anyone with an active Stanford ID via the card readers next to each door. If you do not have a Stanford ID, you can gain entry between 12:15 and 12:30pm ONLY by knocking on the exterior windows of room 126. These windows are to the left of the west side exterior door on the first floor of Margaret Jacks Hall, which faces the back east side of Building 420. Please do not knock on these windows after 12:30pm when the talk has started. We will not be able to come out and open the door for you at that point.