Category: Epistemology

The Social Construction of Sex: A Formal Argument

by Charles M Rupert, posted in Charles Matthew Rupert, Epistemology, Philosophy, Social Responsibility

Introduction

Everywhere nowadays there seems to be what some are calling the denial of common sense: the argument that sex is socially constructed, or made up by social practices. Arguments from J. K. Rowling and a seemingly endless armada of right-wing provocateurs have spread the message that this is woke nonsense and yet another attempt of the left’s attempt to reimagine everything. This, in turn, has led my students to question my teaching of this subject. They simply don’t accept social constructionism as a theory and dismiss it without due consideration as an “agenda”. So, in this post, I am going to create a tedious but hopefully brief argument showing why philosophers and many other scholars and scientists believe that sex is socially constructed and not biologically determined.

The Deductive Arguments

The formal arguments are comprised of two deductive arguments and a series of inductive ones. The first deductive argument is a modus ponens type that goes like this:

  1. If sex is not biologically determined, then it is socially constructed.
  2. Sex is not biologically determined.
  3. Therefore, sex is socially constructed.

The first thing to note about this argument is that it isn’t so much an argument for the social construction of sex, as it is an argument against the biological determination of the same. The second thing to note is that this first premise is perhaps the weakest assumption of my whole argument. It is assumed that if no biological determination can be made that the best remaining explanation for the concept of “sex” is a social one. As there remains the possibility of a third alternative, this can only be as good as whatever the alternatives are. But most likely this argument’s opponents would challenge the second premise, so we need a second argument to support it, such as follows:

  1. If sex is biologically determined, then there must exist at least one definitive biological attribute which all members of that sex possess and no non-members of that sex possess.
  2. No biological attribute can be found that satisfies both criteria.
  3. Therefore, sex is not biologically determined. 

This Modus Tollens argument starts by simply defining the meaning of “biological determination” as having some biological attribute that can distinguish all members of one sex from all non-members. The second premise assumes that no attribute which would satisfy the logical requirements necessary to serve as the defining element exists, and so the argument concludes that sex cannot be biologically determined. Again, the second premise stands in need of support. The only reasonable way to justify this claim is with a series of arguments establishing counter-examples to any and all proposed biological attributes that presume to determine sex.

The Inductive Arguments

It would be impossible to refute every would-be contender, not because it couldn’t be done, but because it would take an infinite amount of time to do so. Rather then, let us first see if we can narrow the field of contenders. We know abductively that a successful biological attribute cannot be shared by multiple sexes, nor can there be any member of a sex who fails to possess the definitive attribute. Suppose “having arms” is taken to be the definitive biological attribute for the female sex and we can easily see how it would fail both criteria: there are some females who do not have arms and some non-females who do have arms. We don’t need both to fail however, either the one or the other failure would be sufficient to rule out whatever supposed attribute as a distinguishing attribute and so fail to establish biological determinacy. It should also be noted that no criteria could be an average since averages are by definition social and not biological attributes. For example, it would be impossible to claim that females are humans that are “shorter on average” than other sexes since we are looking for a way to determine an individual’s sex. No individual is the average, even if they happen to be the mean, the mode, or the median of some human attribute.

Most proponents of biologically determined sex argue one of four major categories: gender, anatomy, physiognomy, or genetics. It is, of course, possible that there are other potentials candidates that would meet the criteria, but if so, I have never encountered them, and as the burden of establishing such claims must rest with the proponents of the theory that believes that they exist, I will leave it to them to bring up in rebuttal. In what remains, I will argue that a counter-example can be produced for each potential attribute of the four categories, dealing with many though certainly not all possibilities as examples.

Gender

Gender would include particular behaviors or appearances that we could say define sex, e.g., females are the humans who wear their hair long. There are obviously many examples of gender that could work such as males are the ones who wear pants or grow beards or earn an income, while females are the ones who wear dresses or make-up or take care of the children.

All of these examples and indeed any you can probably think of could have an exception. To establish them as the defining biological attribute, we would have to prove that all males have beards, including young ones, or have ever had “long” hair or that no female has ever worn pants or neglected their children. Even a single example of a single instance of this would be sufficient to disqualify it as a defining biological attribute and even a hypothetical example would do the same, since to be distinguishing, it cannot be possible to show a counter-example.

All of these examples can be proven inductively false, and so none can establish biologically determined sex. Such is true of any gender act or appearance we wish to use.

Anatomy

Anatomy includes the physical parts a person possesses that we could say define sex, e.g., females are the humans who possess uteruses or ovaries or breasts. Or males are the humans who possess penises or testicles or Adam’s apples. For these, or other, examples to establish biological determinacy we would have to prove that no men have uteruses and all women have them, including those who have had a hysterectomy. That a human who lost their penis was no longer a male, even if that didn’t quite make them a female. In fact, it’s easy to imagine that whatever organ we designate as the definitive one, could be removed.

Now we could simply hardline on this point and say that it is indeed the penis that makes a human male, and were a male to lose his penis he could not be classified as male anymore, and while not female, we could make up a new category for such people. However, there are two problems with doing this and still claiming that sex is biologically determined. First, the very act of inventing new sexes seems to suggest social construction, but we could defend against this by claiming that we are not “inventing” but discovering as many new biological sexes as we need to fit everyone in. While problematic in other ways, the more difficult problem for those who wish to establish biological determinacy for sex is that, by definition, it would prove sexual transition is not only biologically possible but extremely common-place, as the male who loses his penis transitions to a new sex and if their penis is regrafted to their body would allow them to transition back to male. In the same way, a female could have a penis attached and could then, by definition, become a biologically determined male. This is a conclusion that I take those who wish to establish biological determinacy for sex want to avoid.

Physiognomy

Physiognomy includes biological functions of organs or organisms that we could say define sex, e.g., females are the humans who can bear children or males are the humans who can produce sperm or impregnate a female.

For these examples to establish biological determinacy, we would have to prove that no male can bear children and that all females can bear children. Any sterile human could not be considered female, and neither could those who have yet to prove they are not sterile, such as children. Similarly, a human whose testicles fail to produce sperm could not be considered a male, whether they were born with those testicles or they are made of plastic would make no difference.

We might think that combining physiognomy and anatomy would strengthen the case for biological determinacy, but in fact, it would weaken it because now it would be harder to prove there are no exceptions since we have multiple criteria to satisfy, any one of which could provide an exception. Ultimately sex cannot be established on the basis of the function of organs because organs can change, as with anatomy, but also because they can functionally fail.

Genetics

Genetics includes the chromosomal characteristics a person possesses, i.e., their genes, that could define sex, e.g., females are humans who have two X chromosomes or males are the humans who have an X and a Y chromosome. For these examples to establish biological determinacy, we would have to argue that no men have anything other than an X and a Y chromosome and that no females have anything other than two X chromosomes. Both of these are inductively false. There is much larger genetic diversity than is commonly understood, including chromosomal sequences of XXX, XXY, XYY, XXXXX, XXXXXXX, and more. Additionally, there are genetically related conditions, such as androgen insensitivity, where humans who possess XY chromosomes are born with functioning vulvas, uteruses, and breasts, everything except the ova.

Anomalies

One, ill-conceived way of trying to save the biological determination theory is to dismiss these as mere exceptions to the general rule of binary biological sex. The problem with this idea is two-fold. One problem is logical. As I showed above, it only takes one counter-example to undo the theory. The second problem is more profound, in that it seems to accept, at least methodologically, the idea of social construction prior to biological determination. If exceptions can be ignored, then we are not so much dealing with defining sex by a biological attribute but rather with socially constructing a biological attribute that we arbitrarily commit to. This kind of biological determination is a social construction, one step removed.

History

History might serve as another possible source of determinacy for sex. Some may argue that the sex “you are born with” is your “true” sex. At first, it may seem plausible, but yet again we find that this sort of argument assumes a social construction rather than a biological determination. To claim a child is assigned a sex at birth by the arbitrary application of some biological attribute, either by a parent or a doctor is merely to claim this authority is the rightful one to choose. The idea that sex is chosen is assumed.

But there is literally no reason why this arbitrary choice must remain permanent or why a parent’s choice should supersede the individual’s. To analogize, it’s no different than claiming a person cannot change their name because it was assigned to them at birth by their parents. If that were the case then no married woman could take her husband’s last name, because she was born with her maiden one. Obviously, this is not true. In point of fact, we allow people to change their names, precisely because it was an arbitrary decision on the part of a person’s parents and we generally hold that individuals may decide for themselves arbitrary choices regarding their identity.

Socially Constructed Sex

None of this is to suggest that things like anatomy, genetics, and physiognomy or our history have nothing whatsoever to do with the determination of sex, only that the choice of which to focus on is seemingly always just that, a choice someone is making. You or someone else is always choosing your sex. When you meet a stranger, they take a guess. You either agree with their determination or you do not. What a theory of socially constructed sex really is then is a commitment to allowing individuals to decide on what basis they would prefer their sex to be determined. And, upon realizing they have the power to make this choice, most people base it on how they feel about themselves. This internal feeling is arguably just as biological an attribute as any other we have so far considered. The point here is not what they choose based on, but that they are the most appropriate person, and perhaps the only person, capable of making that choice.

Those who would like to be the dictators of others’ sexuality or those who would prefer to defer their choice to others, sometimes like to hide behind the bulwark of objective fact or science, but no such epistemological territory exists as this argument hoped to show. Without the claim of objective fact, such assertions have been revealed to be merely the wishes of people who like to tell others who they can and can’t be. Social constructionism asserts that freedom of sexuality is always chosen and trans people, like cis people everywhere, simply demand that others respect their choice about themselves.

We see in Concepts not Phenomena

by Charles M Rupert, posted in Charles Matthew Rupert, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy

Charles Sanders Peirce once noted that it is an achievement of human excellence to see the world as an artist. What he meant is to see the world as it really appears, and specifically not as we conceptualize it. Similarly, Claude Monet once said of his friend and fellow painter Edouard Manet, “He comes to paint the people, I have come to paint the light.” This comment speaks volumes about what we see when we see what we see.  If that sounds confusing it is because what we see remains constant but what we see it as can change. Monet and Manet were in the same place and painting the same scene, but they painted it vastly differently because Manet was painting the concepts as he knew them while Monet was painting the phenomena as he experienced it.

the people and the light.jpg
Manet’s realism (left) captures the vision of our mind’s eye; Monet’s impressionism (right) captures light as our eyes see.

I want to explore what that means. What did Peirce have in mind when he drew his distinction between phenomena and concept. I suspect that to see the world “like an artist” is to see the world precisely devoid of concepts. That is to peel back every single layer of cognition. We often think of this as what “the eye” sees, or what we see without the “mind’s eye”. Phenomena, we take to be primary to human cognition, like Immanuel Kant, from whom I take the word. The phenomena for Kant came from the unknowable noumena or the thing-in-itself. The noumena–if there is such a thing–is the thing outside of our experience of it, an object before we experience it. Kant held noumena to be beyond our ability to know. Human knowledge, he claimed, is limited to what we experience, that is phenomena. We do not see a chair, for example, what we see is patches of color in a familiar shape we “recognize” as a chaise lounge. We do not hear a song, we hear frequencies of airwaves, that we recognize as Bon Jovi.

This stands against many long-held theories of epistemology and human cognition. The traditional view, since John Locke anyway, is simply that we experience the world through our senses, and those senses give us reliable information, which we then conceptualize into the things we know. This picture, I believe, is completely backward.

No doubt our senses present us with reliable phenomena, qua phenomena, but that is not really what we experience. What we experience are concepts; concepts mapped onto the phenomena before or at the same time we experience them. Really, the human phenomenal experience is all about mapping concepts. Concepts are all we’re concerned with. When I look at a table and chairs, I don’t see colors and shapes and tints and shades and other static phenomena, even though all these are what we might say my eyes can “see”. When I look at a table and chairs, I see a “table and chairs”, that is the concepts “table” and “chairs” applied precognitively to the phenomena. I didn’t have to think about it. I didn’t have to ask myself, “what is that?” and answer myself, “that is a table and chairs”. I simply saw a table and chairs. Whatever part of my mind applies the concepts I know to the phenomena I experience, does so without the acknowledgment of my conscious mind. And what is more, I’m satisfied with my knowledge of the table and chairs because I can apply “table” and “chairs” to the phenomena of my eyes.

To really see what I mean, let’s examine this from another angle. Look at children’s drawings the world over and you will see art, not as the artist sees the world, but as the rationalist see it. The child draws the world of concepts. The humans they depict have the right parts to make them visually identifiable as human: one head, round; two eyes, in the center of the head; one nose underneath the eyes and one mouth underneath the nose; a body; two arms; two legs; perhaps hands with five fingers each; feet; perhaps even a heart. There is nothing of “realism” in the child’s work. Every child is a minimalist. What is relevant here is that to “see the world as an artist” is to unlearn what comes so natural to us that even very young children can do it: seeing the world in concepts.

IMG_2251.JPG

It is important to note that when we see the world in concepts, we are the ones applying the concepts, but we do not create the concepts. We take them from our experience of the unconceptualized world and our culture. When we don’t know what something is, what we mean to say is we have no conceptualization for the pattern of phenomena we are experiencing. Lacking a concept, we don’t even have a name for what we experience and so we are reduced to gesture, verbal or physical, and wonder. The child’s primordial and perennial question, “What’s that?”, is the basis of all human understanding. It is from this question that we build up batteries of concepts into the storehouse of knowledge.

The real point here is that human beings apply the concepts we see and we apply them in such a way that we do not recognize our own hand in their application. We experience them as out there in the world, coming to us through our eyes. But this is both false and dangerous. It is because of this inconspicuous application that we experience our own biases as “natural”. We cannot see ourselves standing before the light and so see our shadow as something manifest in the world. This gap between what we see and how we see it is perhaps the greatest source of epistemological error. The gap is perilous to transverse when dealing with observable phenomena, but it is doubly perilous when the phenomena in question must be inferred from the phenomena that can be observed, for here we must jump the gap twice! 

Truth, Lies, & Alternative Facts

by Charles M Rupert, posted in Alethiology, Charles Matthew Rupert, Epistemology

With the publishing of Robert Mueller’s long-awaited report, I felt it apropos to revisit the concept of “alternative facts”. Specifically, where exactly it fits in the realm of truthiness. What is it that makes a fact, a fact anyway? And can a fact have alternatives and still be a fact? This is worth spending at least a little time discussing, but first I should provide a meager background on the phrase.

The term “alternative facts” is the brainchild of Kellyanne Conway, Counsel to President Donald Trump, and his chief fixer. The phrase made its debut in 2017 in a Meet the Press interview with host Chuck Todd. Conway is recorded saying, “Our press secretary, Sean Spicer, gave alternative facts to [these claims], but the point remains that…”. The claims in question were media blowback over President Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer’s earlier claim that Trump’s 2017 inauguration was the “largest audience to ever witness an inauguration – period – both in person and around the globe.” The data he cited favoring Trump’s immense crowd-size was uncited and seems to be entirely fabricated. All evidence suggests that the crowd size was smaller than Obama’s second inauguration and only two-fifths the size of his first inauguration. When confronted by Todd, who asked why Spicer would produce such a “provable falsehood”, Conway defined Spicer’s position as an alternative fact as opposed to falsehood. Conway continues to defend the usage of the term, which she defines as “additional facts and alternative information”.

Aristotle was the first to discuss the logical law of the excluded middle, which states that between two mutually exclusive terms, there is no middle. For the case in hand, there is no middle term between true and untrue; we have no quasi-true. Alternative facts certainly seems like it is trying to open up some middle ground between true and false. But we should be careful here, because over time things may be true by turns or in complex situations, partially true and partially false. The law of the excluded middle applies only to fixed statements. Conway’s definition of additional facts and alternative information could be just fine if the statement in question is not fixed. For example, if we base our assessment of inauguration crowd size on the number of DC Metro riders, then it appears that Spicer was lying, but if other sources of data are used or taken into account then the statement is not fixed. The problem for Spicer and Conway is that they never specified what data they were using to make their claim. The DC Metro riders are cited because that is the source for Spicer’s claim that Obama had a crowd of 317,000 in 2013. But that same source would put Trump’s crowd at 193,000. So, it is likely then that Spicer was using alternative data, if he was using data at all, and Conway was being legitimate in her defense of him.

However, there is still a good deal of duplicity here. The first is Spicer’s and the second is Conway’s. Even if alternative data was being used to support Spicer’s crowd assessment of 420,000 it is duplicitous to compare crowd-size using different counting methods. Problems abound, but let’s focus solely on the problem where one estimate might be grossly less reliable than the other. Imagine if Spicer used DC Metro ridership for Obama and his best friend’s gut feeling for Trump. This would be an alternative source of data and a fact as far as Spicer’s friend really had a gut feeling that there were 420,000 people at Trump’s inauguration, but the unreliability of “gut feelings” in general make this claim highly dubious and by not revealing the source, a propagandistic manipulation of the highest order. 

But it is Conway’s duplicity that should really concern us. And the word that ought to really concern us is “fact”, not “alternative”. The existence of alternative facts does not entail that we are in a post-truth era. Alternative facts, as Chuck Todd said of them at their birth, are not facts! In Conway’s terms, they are alternative theories of the interpretation of experience. Alternative interpretations have been around for millennia, and they make up a large part of what we consider to be the process of attaining truth. A “fact” on the other hand is something we all agree is true, in other words, there is a little dispute. And therein lies the problem with Conway’s phrase, for in order to be alternative it must not be a fact, and in order to be a fact it must not have a likely alternative.

It’s clear that Conway’s invention of the term is politically motivated and propagandistic. What she was trying to achieve is to give more substance to Spicer’s claim that saying alternative theory or alternative data, both of which would require further proof. To claim an alternative fact is to claim victory for a competing theory at the same moment it is being introduced. In fact, it is to claim victory merely by introducing an alternative theory. Such action is surely not reasonable, logical, interested in the truth, or honest. It is a win-at-all-costs, manipulative, lying form of sophistry. This is difficult to reconcile with Conway’s insistence that alternative facts are opposed to falsehoods, for it is the truth that is opposed to falsehoods and alternative theories are not necessarily true.

This sadly has become par for the course in the Trump administration. Instances of claiming victory while the situation is very much in doubt are rampant. Alternative facts are just one form of this premature celebration. Its as though Trump and those closest to him believe that acting confident is the same thing as being confident; that if you just pretend hard enough it will become true. But this is not the way the world works. Wishful-thinking is not science, down is not up, and there are no alternative facts.

Alternative Panpsychism

by Charles M Rupert, posted in Epistemology, Metaphysics

The topos of this article is ontology. The attempt herein is a journey of discovery into the nature of reality while avoiding the limitations of substance dualism, monist reductionism, phenomenological ontology (Heidegger), and the self-satisfying illusion of objectivity. The goal is to take an element or two from all of these and to forge a new theory of being. To understand the nature of being beyond the subjective knowledge as itself.  Rest assured that I don’t intend to suggest answers, but merely to refine the question. I am dissatisfied with Kant’s abandonment of the question entirely. I believe the numena can be known in and of itself and in fact, is known by each and every one of is. And that is as good a place as any to start.

Kant’s view that things in and of themselves can’t be known suffers the fatal flaw that it presumes “things” to be something other than the self. What Kant really means to say is that Other things can’t be known in and of themselves. One might go so far as to suggest that this is the metaphysical root of the Self/Other divide. But for our purposes in this essay, Kant really can’t say that the experiencer is unknowing of its own experience. For proof, I might offer Descartes, whose Cogito argument unquestionably suggests that the experiencer knows they are experiencing. The thinker knows they are thinking, even if they know not what they are thinking. To be able to deduce one’s existence from the fact that one experiences, regardless of whether or not that experience is a delusion, requires a silent premise that one has some experience of experiencing. For if one is not aware that one is aware, the Cogito becomes unconvincing.

So, if we agree with Descartes that we do indeed have a sense of our experiencing, then we must also have an experience of experiencing. There is little radical in this so far, but one implication of this is that we must have an experience of ourselves, that is of our experiences as from a thing, a place of being, an existence. Thus, we know what it is like to exist as ourselves. Assuming then, perhaps contra Kant, that we too are things, then we have the experience of one thing in and of itself, namely ourselves.

That doesn’t seem to get us very far, and if it does anything at all it seems to lock us into a phenomenology of everything that is Other to our subjectivity. But I don’t think that sort of absolutist abandon is quite right. I grant that our direct knowledge of Other things is filtered through our phenomenological experiences in a wholly subjective manner.  However, it is not by direct observation alone that we come to know the world around us, and reasonable deductions of the invisible can nevertheless become knowledge. So, armed with the knowledge of numena as ourselves, and our knowledge of others as we phenomenologically perceive them, what, if anything, can we know?

Let’s make one simple assumption. That there is nothing special or different about an atom that is a constituent of ourselves and those that are not ourselves. To make this more concrete, I’m simply claiming that a sodium atom in table salt is not essentially different from a sodium atom in a neuron of your brain, in fact, the former may be ingested by you for the sole purpose of becoming one of the latter. If you’ll grant me this consistency of the elemental universe, then it is reasonable to assume that my experiences of being a solution of atoms are a trait of atoms. The experience of the sodium atoms in your brain is not wholly different from that of the sodium atom in the table salt and that your experience of the world is then at least similar to the experience of the whole world, all its things, organic or inorganic.

Now, that certainly sounds absurd. Of course, my experiences are different from those of table salt, is what you’re probably thinking. But you’re wrong on a fundamental level.  And yet, you’re right on a level of higher complexity. The danger here is one of equivocation regarding the word “experience”. So, let’s clear that up. When I say your experience of yourself is the same as the experience of the table salt, I do not mean to suggest that the table salt has conscious and phenomenal experiences like you do. What I do mean is that it experiences things that happen in the universe. Salt dropped in water has an experience of dissolution. Much like you dropped in water has an experience of floating.  Perhaps a better example would be a rock dropped from a height toward the Earth experiences gravity in a nearly identical way you would experience gravity in the same situation. The experience I mean here is that of interaction with the other things and forces of the universe.

Before you get all disappointed with the essay and say, well so what? Everyone knows that things can have forces applied to them, but what we really want to know is if they have conscious and phenomenological experiences like us, and if not, then why do we? Good question, let me attempt to answer it by saying that while all matter experiences the things that happen to it, only complex organic matter remembers those experiences for any amount of time longer than the experience takes to occur.  Memory is what makes our experiences stick. Experiences can be recalled, set against one another, compared and synthesized. This is consciousness. This is a phenomenal experience. A phenomenon is more than photons hitting the atoms in the rods and cones of your retina, which is simply an experience. Phenomenal experience requires a secondary process, one that is complex and involves memory, pattern recognition, and ultimately gives rise to the experience of what we call consciousness.

Let me be clear, I’m not suggesting any kind of reductionist physical explanation for consciousness. It’s not that we have more complex structures that give rise to things like biology and psychology, but it is that these structures can repeat experiences. The sodium atoms in our brain and those in the table salt both experience the world, but the physical and chemical structure of our brains allow us to repeat our experiences again (remembering) and to mimic them without the stimuli reoccurring (recalling). I am not suggesting any sort of determinism. The atoms themselves function with quantum mechanical indeterminacies the likes of which make any reductionist determinism a dubious prospect at best.  I am instead saying that consciousness and phenomenal experience can be understood through a monist material worldview.

In sum, conscious experience is a result of phenomenological experience, which itself is a result of physical experience. The last is shared by all matter, living or not. Thus, consciousness is understandable in a monist materialistic picture of the universe, without the need for substance dualism, and limited by neither phenomenology, subjectivism, naive objectivity, or hampered by a reductionist regress into determinism.  All matter experiences, but only living things re-experience. Thus only living things remember, recall, and know that they have experienced anything other than what they are experiencing now.