Identity

_db

and I had a stimulating, if not cutthroat, discussion elsewhere on the metaphysics of identity. Specifically in regards to sexual identity, but it applies to other identities as well.

Is it wrong to identity someone by their biological sex? i.e. is it wrong, not only ethically but metaphysically as well, to identify someone as "male" or "female" or "intersex"?

To leave any teleology behind, then, generally speaking a male is that organism that provides sperm if the organism is to have sex, and generally speaking the female is that organism that provides eggs if the organism is to have sex. This is a very common pattern in biology. The conditional if is a constraint.

The overarching issue, then, I believe has to do whether or not natural kinds exist. Is it metaphysically correct to identify something as an instance of a natural kind, or a member of a set, or are natural kinds simply not real (nominalism)? Is it correct to call a person with a penis a male, a vagina a female, etc?

It is true, it seems, that the labels we put on things are not what that things "actually is". The coffee cup next to me is not "actually" a coffee cup. But there is a fact of the matter what the structure is of this thing I call a coffee cup, and its structure is the reason why I call it a coffee cup. Even though the coffee cup is not "actually" a coffee cup does not mean it is wrong for me to call it a coffee cup. It is correct to call a coffee cup a coffee cup, even if it's not "written in the book of the world" that the coffee cup is a coffee cup.

In my opinion, ethics aside, it is not incorrect to identify someone by their sex. The distinction is not arbitrary - there is an obvious difference between "asexual" reproduction and "sexual" reproduction, and there are obvious differences between the two dominant sexes as well. The features we have are overwhelmingly due to the billions of years of biological evolution that preceded our existences, a process that formed general patterns of distinctions between organisms. But are these patterns of distinctions anything more than patterns? Is there any identity to these patterns? I believe there is.

I see very little issue with simply identifying people through their sex. How we define sex is of course going to be important, but generally it has to do with what genitals you had when you were born. If you have a penis, you are male, for example. To identify someone as male is to simply say that they have a penis. That they have a penis is a fact, and from the common use of sexual identification in maternity wards, this means they are also male. Identifying someone though a label like this is nothing above and beyond simply pointing out the factual physical characteristics of this person (identifying a person as a person is also a natural kind).

If we deny that it is correct to identify someone by their sex, then this also opens the door to denying other things that are not as ethically related. We can deny that anyone is a human or belongs to any species at all, or that nationalities are non-existent, or that family relations do not exist, or that any use of a natural kind is incorrect. I take it as evidence to the contrary that people who reject their nationality typically decide to move away from their home country, or that people who wish to not be associated with their sex go through sex changes. Part of their identity is related to their physical constitution, location, etc.

Natural kinds, of course, are not nearly as static as Aristotle and co. believed. Nowadays, kinds can be seen as a family resemblance between entities. There are some general essential features that are shared between members of the set, but not all of them universally or equally. And it is also true that these sets are fluid and prone to change. If all humanity died out but one person with a penis, would this person continue to be a male, or even a human? In this case, part of the identity of a person seems to rest on the relation it has to other things around it, how similar/different it is to other things.

It is essential that we use natural kinds in our language, as well. For instance, without natural kinds there would be no way of identifying who has cancer and who does not. A person who has metastasizing cells may deny they have cancer, and claim they do not identify with this label, but that would be wrong. A person who has insomnia is an insomniac, and it would be wrong to forget to include this description.

I am, of course, aware of the ethical issues that arise from this conception. And I think it is true that even if it is metaphysically true that someone is male does not mean it is ethically right to put expectations on this person to be a certain way. Those who advocate a natural law theory of ethics are stuck looking in the past; they are trying to justify future constraints by looking at past constraints (albeit with a narrow sight that misses just how flexible constraints can be in allowing freedom).

But all too often do we see the rejection of one extreme by an affirmation of another extreme. In this case, it seems to me that denying that sex exists is a rejection of universal natural kinds in favor of an extreme nominalism of sorts. This is not at all dissimilar to how ancient Buddhists affirmed nominalism to escape the oppressive caste system of Hinduism, which used the idea of universals to "sort" people into their castes. At any rate I don't think we need to reject universals to affirm modern ethical values. We don't really need metaphysics to do ethics.

_db

So anyway, the basic argument presented is that if we define natural kinds as a family resemblance of entities with similar features, then it is factually correct to label those with similar feature as belonging to a natural kind. If "being male" means "having a penis", then people with a penis are male. Being male is equivalent to having a penis. Natural kinds may not "exist" outside of our conceptual scheme, but "nature" does seem to act "as if" they do through patterns of constraint and inclusion/exclusion.

Ethics only enters the picture if this identity is extended from a factual description to a normative prescription. It is a normative claim to believe that if you are male, you must use your penis in a certain way, or embrace your male identity and identify as a male. The expectation that one identifies with their physical identity is a normative claim that can be criticized.

Thorongil

Is it wrong to identity someone by their biological sex? — darthbarracuda

No. Humans are not clownfish. We can't choose our sex. If men want to dress like women or men want to dress like women, that's their prerogative, but you can't force me to use pronouns that don't match their biological sex.

_db

If men want to dress like women or men want to dress like women, that's their prerogative, but you can't force me to use pronouns that don't match their biological sex. — Thorongil

"Men" and "women" are gender pronouns, not sexual pronouns.

At any rate, you seem to have ignored the question of the OP. The question was not "can people identify differently than their biological sex", it was "is biological sex even an appropriate label in the first place".

Thorongil

↪darthbarracuda

You asked several questions in an extremely long post. I felt like responding to one of them. In the future, maybe you should make your threads more concise, to make sure people respond to what you want them to.

_db

↪Thorongil

You do realize I made a summary post right after, right?

Thorongil

↪darthbarracuda

I didn't see it until after I posted. :-|

Srap Tasmaner

[Retracted: @darthbarracuda correctly spotted a risk that his thread would be hijacked. (Sorry, man.)]

_db

↪Srap Tasmaner

Make another thread on it, please.

Mongrel

It is true, it seems, that the labels we put on things are not what that things "actually is". — darthbarracuda

Maleness is a property. What's your stance on Hume's Bundle Theory?

andrewk

↪darthbarracuda

I can't see anything intrinsically wrong with society's tradition of identifying people by their sex. I think a moral dimension enters when somebody wishes to not be identified by their sex. In that case I think basic respect for the feelings of others requires that we not identify them by their sex except when necessary or when impractical to do otherwise.

While I have no objection to my sex being part of a phrase somebody uses to identify me, I can understand how some people might not like that, just as it seems impolite to refer to somebody by their tallness, skin colour, disability or body-mass index. It seems ethical to respect such preferences where possible.

As an aside, as I have been learning French and German in recent years, I have been struck by how much larger a role sexual identification plays in those languages than in English, and I'm not just referring to ascribing sexes to inanimate objects. In English the use of sex-differentiated terms like conductor/conductress were discarded quite a while ago, with some terms such as actress taking longer to disappear but becoming rare now. But in those Continental European languages, based on my limited reading (I'm very happy to be corrected) it seems to be still standard usage to use sex-differentiated terms for roles and professions, and failure to use the sex-differentiated term may even still be considered incorrect.

Wosret

What do you care about? Being right, and telling everyone, or others? Telling people true things isn't always helpful, especially if they're on the verge of figuring it out themselves. If they figure it out, then they discovered, and learned something new. Even if it isn't something they'd like, it still feels good. Figuring something out after someone told you, especially if they were a dick about it, means conceding something to someone, maybe someone you dislike.

Identities are not things where there are clear definitions, or boundaries, meaning that what's attributable to them varies wildly from one individual to another. No one really has access to the essence of things. I'm not suggesting that therefore nothing is true about them, or that they can't be discussed and used. Only, that they will often be used badly, with irrelevant, inflammatory, and discriminatory attributes. We're never super scientists meaningly only the facts.

So, two points. Being right isn't always what's most important -- and it's easy to be wrong.

jkop

I sometimes get to read that female architects demand to be identified as architects, not as female architects. The assumption seems to be that the word 'female' changes the meaning of the word 'architect' in some unwanted ways. Or that it would preserve unwanted conventions.

Granted that the profession used to be dominated by men, and that injustices still exist, e.g. in salaries or status, which is the case in many professional fields.

But would it really matter to drop the word 'female'? I don't think it would raise anyone's salary nor status.

BC

I think a moral dimension enters when somebody wishes to not be identified by their sex. In that case I think basic respect for the feelings of others requires that we not identify them by their sex except when necessary or when impractical to do otherwise. — andrewk

If we accede to a wish that someone is to be called a woman or a man, because he or she has decided that's what he or she is -- even though they are embodied as the commonly understood male and female -- are we aiding and abetting delusional thinking?

I understand that people who think their sex organs do not match their gender often feel that way from an early age, so I pause in questioning whether confused gender identity is real or false.

I'm not concerned when adults (say, 30 years and up) decide to become the opposite gender by changing clothing, behavior, hormone balance, or physical structure. Whether it is existentially valid, or not, I just don't know--but there is room for doubt, at least sometimes, I think. I am quite concerned when children are encouraged by parents (and others) to pursue a 'become-the-opposite-gender' route. Some adult activities just aren't appropriate for children.

Forgottenticket

Would you have any problem with other things like say AI and aliens assuming the title of Human if they behave in a way undiscernible from humans? In Aristotelian terms the body in itself could be seen as the accident whereas the personality/soul/identity is the essence. (I'm using the chair example here rather than the hylomorphism stuff tho that is also derived from platonism).

This is not new culturally. It's the subject of most possession stories. Also there is a problem in the ethics part of your OP. It's possible to imagine removing the title of human through scientific racism (the classical example was Craniometry).

BC

↪JupiterJess

Artificial Intelligences and aliens can sit there and declare they are humans until hell freezes over. Their beliefs do not make it so. I might like to believe that I am a god, but telling everybody that I am a god isn't going to make it so, just because I believe it.

andrewk

↪Bitter Crank

I don't disagree. I wasn't saying there's a moral obligation to comply with someone's wishes to use a particular set of sexed words in relation to them when those words do not correspond to their biology. I think that's more controversial and I can't say I understand the arguments for that position.

My position is that it is at least ethically recommended to use non-sexed words in relation to someone if they don't like references to them to unnecessarily mention their sex. In English this is easy to accomplish by just using pronouns like they, them and theirs. In some other languages it can be much more difficult because sex affects so many other parts of the language. [Another reason why English is a really great language, contrary to all the negative things some people say about it! But that's another topic]

In general my position is that discrimination - putting people into boxes - is unfortunate, so if someone requests to not be boxed, whether on sex, sexuality, ancestry, body shape or religious beliefs, I try to respect that. Indeed, as far as practical, I try to avoid boxing even without it being requested. But demanding to be put in a particular box goes in the opposite direction and makes me feel uneasy.

BC

↪andrewk

If I were working with a person who wanted to be called XX, even if they were XY, I would comply with their wishes, just to make the working relationship possible if nothing else. I might find their situation interesting, and I might like them personally. But they still might go into a box labeled "probable crackpot" or "unfortunate case".

If someone I don't know very well, don't work with, who just happens to be around and they insist on the XX treatment even though they are XY (or whatever) I am more likely to not comply with their request. But I haven't, and don't, set out to deliberately bug people about their various and sundry alleged identities, even though I might think they are out to lunch about it.

In general, I'm a boxer. I like boxes, slots, and pigeon holes and put people, places, and things into their appropriate slot, whether they like it or not. That doesn't mean I'm not nice to people, but some people are basically crazy and I have several boxes for that. I find it convenient to have definite slots for people, even though I understand that slots don't fully contain anyone. People who go into the "full of shit" box might actually be quite pleasant people. Similarly, people I like very much might end up in "neurotic and thoroughly misinformed" box, like two of my siblings.

People want identity? There's a box for that.

Forgottenticket

Artificial Intelligences and aliens can sit there and declare they are humans until hell freezes over. Their beliefs do not make it so. — Bitter Crank

The heart was at one time considered the essence of a human. Yet it's possible to envision a completely artificial heart that exists functionally in a way that is identical. The physical processes necessary to reach the higher level (wherever it is we exist) were never relevant before. It seems overtly reductionist. As the classical example goes, how is a world war defined? Obviously it must be unrelated to its scientific physical constitution(?)

I might like to believe that I am a god, but telling everybody that I am a god isn't going to make it so, just because I believe it. — Bitter Crank

But being human is an achievable social status just like WW3 is a future achievable title. Being a God is not achievable at all really unless it is a title for a person who creates simulated reality/artwork. In which case maybe someone might market computer/ art products to you because it is pragmatic to take your belief as being true.

Wosret

I was attempting tact and diplomacy, not to imply that trans people are wrong... but the question is whether it's right or wrong to identify people by their biological sex or not... don't worry, no one is delusional about that.

Going to a doctor to ask about transition often involves some mockery, like giving you hormone tests, or physical exams and assuring you of your sex.

No one lets you forget about that, I'm sure. It's about something other than that, and no one is denying the obvious, or they wouldn't be getting body modifications in the first place. It's difficult to look at yourself in the mirror without seeing a monster sometimes... but I'd much rather be the monster than the scared victim.

As for the importance of qualifying "female" before stuff, well what relevance is that? What possible positive connotation could that have? Are people suddenly generally considering female professionals more adept than male ones? It just looks like a fucking warning.

Terrapin Station

I'm a nominalist.

You seem to be thinking that nominalists would say that it's wrong to identify someone by biological sex. That doesn't follow. That would only follow if we were to add an additional view: "it's right to identify something by a type or kind term only if that type or kind term is or represents something 'real,' in the sense of something that is objectively the case; otherwise it's wrong to identify something by a type or kind term." But that view isn't itself nominalism, it would be a controversial view, and it's not a view that I'm aware of anyone holding.

Nominalists don't have any problem with type or kind terms. We're simply denying that types or kinds are themselves something real/objective. There's not a real "male" in some abstract, objective realm. There's not a numerically single property identically instantiated in two different, numerically distinct things. Buy we can't very well think or communicate all sorts of things--arguably the vast majority of things--that we have a need or desire to think and communicate without creating subjective type/kind abstractions, and there's nothing wrong with utilizing those.

What you're maybe getting at instead, but you're beating around the bush about it, is whether it's only right to identify someone by a biological sex kind term, and not by any other sort of kind term instead, such as the gender they mentally identify with. The answer to that doesn't have anything to do with nominalism versus realism. It has to do with what makes on term application right versus another term application, if anything makes a term right or wrong. And for most people that likely will lead to a discussion of essentialism--are there essential properties, what does one take an essential property to be, etc.

My answer to those questions is that term applications aren't right or wrong, especially not in an alethic sense. There are no objective essential properties. Essentials are simply what an individual requires to name some x an F.

Terrapin Station

So anyway, the basic argument presented is that if we define natural kinds as a family resemblance of entities with similar features, then it is factually correct to label those with similar feature as belonging to a natural kind. — darthbarracuda

This does not at all follow. The mere fact that we do something, that we think about something in some way, doesn't make it factually correct to do what we're doing or to think about it however we're thinking about it.

That of course doesn't imply that it's incorrect either. That's because it's possible for it to be neither correct nor incorrect.

WISDOMfromPO-MO

Is it wrong to identity someone by their biological sex? i.e. is it wrong, not only ethically but metaphysically as well, to identify someone as "male" or "female" or "intersex"?...In my opinion, ethics aside, it is not incorrect to identify someone by their sex. The distinction is not arbitrary... — darthbarracuda

But the distinction often is arbitrary.

The most powerful illustration is biological race. Biological race does not exist. Race is a cultural construct. I haven't read it lately, but I remember the American Anthropological Association Statement on Race making these important points:

1.) If you want to demarcate biological races in the human species, what do you use? Where do you start? Anything you use--skin color, free-hanging or attached ear lobes, stature, belly stars ("You can't teach a Sneetch")--will be arbitrary.

2.) The genetic variation within the biological races that we have constructed is greater than the genetic variation between such groups. In other words, the genetic variation within, say, the African-American population is greater than the genetic variation between African-Americans and, say, Caucasians.

Categories like "African-American" and "Caucasian" that are based on arbitrary points/lines of demarcation do not tell us as much of anything useful or reliable about the people we put in them as we act like they do. They might tell us something trivial, such as what continent a person's ancestors so many generations back lived on. But they are not predictors of much of anything that the average person can use in the typical, everyday social interaction in the most common contexts.

What use do most people on most occasions have for categories like male and female other than to differentiate for the purposes of unjust discrimination, manipulation, oppression, etc.?

And categories too often get taken out of their original, appropriate context and used in contexts and ways that they were not intended to be used. Therefore, we get things like the category "narcissist" being taken out of the scientific and clinical contexts it originated in and being applied in many different ways to many different behavioral patterns.

Meanwhile, I don't have time to refresh my knowledge of it, but, going by memory here, Labeling Theory says that people are told that they are things like mentally ill and then they behave according to that label--the label becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Your choice of words kind of betrays what I am talking about. The question asked was not if it is wrong to categorize someone by their biological sex. The question asked was if it is wrong to identify someone by their biological sex.

I would say that a biologist doing research simply categorizes.

When we take categories out of the context they were created for and make them identities, all kinds of problems ensue.

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