67. Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin | Racism, Death

Can racism be understood as a historically evolving system of domination, and do near-death experiences and the prospect of immortality really support the big metaphysical conclusions people often draw from them?My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy.1. GuestBenjamin Mitchell-Yellin is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Sam Houston State University and his work focuses on ethics, action, racism, as well as death and dying.2. Interview SummaryBenjamin Mitchell-Yellin begins by laying out a “genealogical” account of racism: to understand what racism is (and how it works), you need an essentially historical lens rather than a timeless list of necessary and sufficient conditions. On his view, racism is pluralistic in its basic structure: psychological elements (attitudes, dispositions, patterns of perception) and social-structural elements (institutions, norms, policies) are co-fundamental and develop together over time. A central through-line is domination—both a “drive to dominate” at the individual level and a broader “dominion of the dominant,” where those with power shape institutions and public narratives in ways that reinforce hierarchy. He connects this to contemporary politics—e.g., how leadership and public rhetoric can normalize racial antipathy and help explain downstream social effects.The conversation then shifts to near-death experiences (NDEs) and the attempt to use them as evidence against physicalism. Mitchell-Yellin (drawing on work with John Martin Fischer) argues that prominent “NDEs refute physicalism” arguments are typically much weaker than advertised: the inference from “people report vivid experiences” to “mind is non-physical” makes big, contestable leaps, and appeals to simplicity often backfire because “soul” hypotheses introduce a lot of new explanatory burdens (especially about mind–body interaction). He also emphasizes the interdisciplinary point: physicians and researchers can contribute crucial data, but philosophers are doing something different—evaluating whether the metaphysical conclusions actually follow. And when it comes to controlled tests aimed at verifying “out-of-body” perception (hidden targets near ceilings, etc.), he notes that results have not produced the sort of clear “hits” we’d expect if literal disembodied observation were common.Finally, they discuss immortality—especially whether it would be necessarily boring, and whether it would be desirable even if boredom isn’t guaranteed. He engages Bernard Williams’s famous Makropulos-style argument, stressing that the relevant “boredom” is a deep, existential disengagement (not mere restlessness), and he suggests there are plausible routes by which interests could remain resilient (old projects becoming newly meaningful, new cultural products continuing to appear, etc.). But he also develops a further worry about meaning: if what you value depends on ongoing engagement with valuable objects (people, projects, environments), then very long lives risk outlasting—or watching the degradation of—the very things that make life worth continuing. He highlights climate change as an under-discussed example of how the long-run disappearance of valued activities and conditions could threaten the desirability of immortality, even for someone who initially wants it.3. Interview Chapters00:00 - Introduction00:40 - Genealogical view of racism05:06 - Cause of racism vs. racism itself11:04 - Importance of history14:31 - Weakness of theory?19:20 - Potential counterexample21:28 - Inferring racism in new cases26:01 - Drive to dominate27:44 - Racism and Trump31:57 - Revealing racism35:23 - Benefit of historical view36:18 - Near-death experiences and physicalism41:03 - Dependence on prior views45:45 - Philosophical input51:32 - NDE data limited57:21 - NDE’s are real1:00:05 - Experience vs. interpretation of experience1:01:41 - Fake reports1:05:02 - Immortality and boredom1:12:41 - Memory1:14:06 - Other problems with immortality?1:19:03 - Extending life1:25:05 - Value of philosophy1:29:41 - Conclusion This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fric.substack.com/subscribe