CHESS Seminar Series 2022/23: Rosa Runhardt (Radboud University)

Title: Legitimate reactivity in measuring social phenomena: race and the census

Abstract: As a result of being measured, individuals sometimes alter their behaviour and attitudes to such extent that subsequent measurement results are affected. This ‘reactivity’ to measurement problematizes prediction and explanation, but some reactivity is nevertheless legitimate. Using the example of the measurement of race in the US Census, I will demonstrate that some forms of reactivity do not affect the accuracy of research. I argue that legitimacy of reactivity depends on the metaphysical status of the phenomenon being measured and give a practical taxonomy of two factors that affect legitimacy. Firstly, it is affected by the degree to which the measurement could have been otherwise, which I define using an information-theoretic measure borrowed from the philosophy of language literature on conventions. Intuitively, this measure asks: if we were to ‘restart history’, could we end up with a measurement of the phenomenon that uses a different but equally valid set of categories? In other words, is the measurement conventional, or is it functional? Secondly, legitimacy is affected by the degree of voluntariness. A measurement is wholly voluntary if its designations are freely up to the individual being measured, while on the other hand it is involuntary if it is instead determined by our social history, an external factor to the individual’s judgement. I show that where in this taxonomy one places the measurement of race depends on one’s metaphysics of race.

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