Projectibility and Group Concepts in Population Genetics and Genomics

Although the category “race” fails as a postulated natural kind, racial, ethnic, national, linguistic, religious, and other group designations might nonetheless be considered projectible insofar as they support inductive inferences in biomedicine. This article investigates what it might mean for group concepts in population genetics and genomics to be projectible and whether the projectibility of such predicates licenses the representation of their corresponding classes as natural kinds according to currently prevailing projectibility-based accounts of natural kinds. The article draws on a case study from cancer genetics, specifically, breast cancer risk in Ashkenazi Jewish women. © 2013, Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research.