Introduction: Genomics and philosophy of race.

Philosophy of race has become a multi-faceted subfield of philosophy, drawing on philosophy of biology, metaphysics, philosophy of language, ethics, and political philosophy. Race cuts across disciplinary lines within philosophy. Moreover, disciplines outside philosophydincluding population genetics, anthropology, sociology, and educationdhave much to contribute to discourse about race. A persistent danger of interdisciplinary conversation is that of talking past each other. For instance, scholars in different disciplines have distinct race concepts and use local intellectual machinery to address questions about race. One simple way to address these issues is to have the relevant parties meet each other frequently and repeatedly. But there are some barriers to this strategy. It requires openness, patience, and charity from the participants, and physical proximity is an important consideration. We realized that our own geographic regiondthe San Francisco Bay Areadprovided the necessary concentration of open, patient, and charitable scholars from many disciplines interested in race. During the 2013e2014 academic year, our group of biologists, philosophers, and social scientistsmet for twoworkshops (Stanford, UC Davis) and a public conference (UC Santa Cruz) to discuss a variety of concerns surrounding genomics and race. As a group we shared a commitment to thinking critically about how theoretical population genetics and genomics conceptualize andmodel certain constructs, such as “populations,” which, in turn, are deemed by some to be “races,” as theoretical achievements move from a circumscribed biological domain out to the general public. Therewas of course not complete agreement, but we benefited tremendously from learning from each other. Indeed, we believe the papers in this special issue are evidence that we are now a group of philosophically-informed scientists and scientifically-informed philosophers.