Transactivism 2
More on Eliminativism
In Transactivism 1 we started to look at a paper by the Trans philosopher and theorist Talia Bettcher. Bettcher’s proposal is that ‘trans politics ought to’ recognise as a fundamental principle that ‘transpeople have first-person authority… over their own gender’ (p. 98). Since there’s no reason to restrict this principle to transpeople this coincides with the claimed right (TR) we identified in earlier pieces(1, 2, 3, 4, …), which aims to make good on the slogan that “Trans rights are human rights”. So if there is anything that ought to be recognised here it is TR. Moreoever, Bettcher maintains that the way gender terms are used now is to “circulate genital information”, over which subjects have no first-person authority. So the claim that they ought to be used in ways that acknowledge their authority is best seen from the perspective of a recommendation for concept change. Finally, Bettcher holds what we report on when we report on our gender identity—the thing over which we exercise first-person authority—is a mental state. The conclusion, then, was that Bettcher’s proposal is an example of what we called an “in favour” elimination. Specifically:
EEB What people used to call “women” and “men” (people with particular genitalia) are (really) women* and men* (people who have a particular mental state).
Bettcher is aware that although the implication is that first person authority is being accounted for in terms of the status of gender identities as mental states, maintaining that people are incapable of being in error about what mental states they happen to be in is a difficult position to defend. Indeed, Bettcher wants to go further and claim that if we remain within the horizon of epistemic evaluation we simply cannot make sense of first person authority at all!
Although not fully developed, the argument here is revealing, if not fully developed, the contention being that the epistemic purview provides us with only two options (pp. 100—101). Either we are fallible (subject to self-deception, wishful thinking etc.) but nevertheless still expert when it comes to determining the contents of our own minds; or, we are just immune to systematic error. But both options ‘fail to account for the actual phenomenon’ (p. 100) of first-person authority. The second is of little consequence to the argument, but the first is crucial as one might think that people being for the most part right about what they think is more than sufficient to establish a workable claim to authority: it has an “innocent ‘till proved guilty” feel to it. However, Bettcher argues that since it is ‘an empirical rather than an a priori matter’ (p. 101) whether or not people are indeed for the most part right there are no resources within this approach for establishing first person authority on a priori grounds. So whatever argument there is for first person authority it must be a priori in character. But if the “actual phenomenon” is not to be accounted for epistemologically the obvious question is what sort of phenomenon is it “really”? What lies behind the epistemic shadow-play? What exactly is it that remains ‘insightful about the “Cartesian” view’ (p. 101) and how are we to understand the authority it invokes once we ditch the idea that it relates to incorrigibility?
Bettcher’s suggestion is that since to disagree with someone about what it is that they believe (about the content of their mental states) is ‘an infringement on the first person’s autonomy’ (p. 103), the authority conferred upon such reports ‘should be understood strictly as an ethical phenomenon’ (p. 101. My emphasis). Now, aligning the incorrigibility of mental states with (“strictly”) ethical considerations over and against physical states and epistemological considerations in this way is an admirable attempt to impart the authority of first-person reports of gender identity with a heft of the sort required to undergird a fundamental principle or a right like TR. But before starting to evaluating this suggestion it’s worth noting two things. Firstly, the contrast between mental state/gender identity reports, which cannot on this account include “genital” information, and physical state reports that must, seems crudely drawn. Viewing this from the “mental” side, as it were, it seems odd to regard—say—a pain-report as being unrelated to the body; that the body is somehow “external” to the state in question. As (even) Descartes notes:
Nature… teaches me by these sensations of pain, hunger, thirst, etc., that I am… so intimately conjoined, and as it were intermixed with [my body], that my mind and body compose a certain unity.
If the mind and body are “intermixed” in this way why shouldn’t we think of the sexed body as “intimately conjoined” with the mind? Likewise, from the “physical” side pretty much everyone has first-person authority over their sex. But the very description “genital information” implies that one’s knowing one’s own sex is akin to reporting on whether or not one is wearing matching socks (“sartorial” information) or has a verruca[1] (“pedal” information) and someone’s knowing that they are a man or a woman is clearly not a simple report of what on inspection they do or do not happen to find between their legs[2].
The second point is that nothing compels us to accept that the change in the structure of authority EEB proposes can’t be epistemic in nature and still make sense of shifts in authority (the normative space, as it were). As we saw in Are Transwomen women? 3, this elimination-explication model of concept change originates with the philosophy of science and no one thinks that the sciences don’t progress because they replace one fallible model with another. In a subsequent piece I’ll suggest a way in which we can respect the phenomenon of “incorrigibility” without breaking ranks with the epistemic (or semantic) tradition and looking for something ethical. That alternative approach will be more compelling if we can show that Bettcher’s well-intentioned proposal doesn’t work. However, in order to do so I need to say a little bit more about the theory that underpins the “eliminativist” approach and how this links up with talk of mental states.
EEB is just the version I’ve ascribed to Bettcher of an attempt to aspire to a position from which the concepts wo/m/an have been explicated-eliminated in favour of the concepts *wo/m/an, where the latter are authorised are authorised (self-)ascriptions of gender identity and the former (other-)ascriptions involving biological categories (sex):
EE. What people used to call “wo/m/en” are (really) wo/m/en*
To begin to defend (EE) the theory must satisfy two conditions: (i) the candidates for the right hand side of the explication-elimination schema say something that can be true or false; and (ii) there is sufficient continuity of function to rule out both a change of subject and “simple” or “good riddance” elimination.
Some examples that illustrate the connection between an “in favour” elimination and continuity of function might help here. In “Gender and Race”, Sally Haslanger offers the following definition of the concept woman:
S is a woman iffdf S is systematically subordinated along some dimension (economic, political, legal, social, etc.), and S is ‘marked’ as a target for this treatment by observed or imagined bodily features presumed to be evidence of a female’s biological role in reproduction (p. 39).
This definition is proposed in part as a way of dramatizing the gap between what people believe they mean when they talk about women and what—according to Haslanger—they “really” mean. The details aren’t important[3]; rather, the point is that if eradicating this form of subordination is the object of reform then at that idealised point in the future women will have been subjected to a “good riddance” or “simple” elimination
ES. What people used to call “women” are (really) _____ (Elimination Simpliciter)
In Are Transwomen women? 3 we noted that in order to be a genuine “explication-elimination” talk of the new object must take on in some readily identifiable way the burden of the work that talk of the old object did. There’s nothing to fill in the blank with in (ES) because nothing has taken on even part of the functional role of the concept woman.
Now imagine the introduction of “gender identity”-talk, where—let’s suppose—one is authorised to make self-assignments but the terms have never had any association with biological characteristics. Perhaps avowals of gender identity relate to sexual- or sartorial- preferences, or to a “spiritual” or some other sub/cultural affiliation. A change of subject does not warrant any kind of elimination and so is consistent with existing practices.
NC. What people used to call “women” are (really) women (No Change)
Note that someone might contend that culture is becoming moribund obsessing about biological characteristics, or even that to do so is politically reactionary, and should instead talk about preferences or subcultural identifications; but that is either a recommendation for a change of subject or a disguised attempt either at an explicative-, or at a “good riddance”, Haslanger-style-, elimination.
Returning to our two conditions, then, whereas (i) is specific to the proposed explication we can say more in general about (ii). How do we avoid changing the subject or simple elimination? When originally proposed by Rorty, the aim was to show that there was no reason why talk about brain states shouldn’t take over from talk about mental states. In other words, the sort of explication-elimination he had in mind was something like:
4"'. What people used to “Mental Statey” is Neural State Ny
Since this is the very opposite of the proposal we’ve ascribed to Bettcher let’s say more. As Rorty was aware, one of the principle reasons for rejecting (4"') is that whereas neural states are (like “genital information”) subject to empirical investigation mental state ascriptions appear to answer to different norms: they are items over which one has first person authority. And as we’ve noted before, differences in normative structure—different ways of rightly and wrongly picking things out/talking about them—suggest different sorts of things. But if they pick out different things how can neural state talk take over from mental state talk? Surely, that’s a change of subject at the very least?
Rorty’s solution to this problem has two elements. Firstly, he thinks that there’s an (ontologically) privileged way of talking that picks out the really existent items in virtue of their roles in explaining things. Secondly, he thinks that those things can be picked out in different ways, and that the fact that the ways seem very different—have different normative structures—doesn’t itself mean that different objects are being picked out. Specifically, Rorty argues that what makes something a mental state as opposed to a physical state is not due to anything mysterious about the former that make our access to it incorrigible but simply that it is one of our contingent linguistic practices to accord an epistemological privilege to those who use mental-state talk to report on what is going on with them. So when I say “I’m in pain” my avowal isn’t overridden because I’m using the special access each of us has to the contents of our own minds; rather, it’s due to the fact that we have developed a way of talking that positions each of us in an epistemically privileged position with respect to such claims. From the perspective of the future-retrospective (4"') that way of talking/linguistic practice has disappeared and along with it mental states. But that is because neural-talk has taken over from mental-talk as a way of reporting on what was there all along—the neural states.
Notwithstanding the success or otherwise of Rorty’s particular “explication”[4], the above suggests two different ways of thinking about what takes place.. What I’ll call Type-I explications assume that we have a favoured view of what there is really and the change in question involves moving to a better way of picking out what the “old” way did inefficiently or with some confusion. In our original Oedipus complex example, neural talk would be a better way of picking out what was there all along (the brain structures) because it avoids all that quasi-mystical therapy and places the relevant phenomenon within a broader explanatory framework. Likewise, in Rorty’s example talking about the mind comes with all sorts of baggage, philosophical and otherwise, whereas claiming that when subjects report on their mental states they are only doing what brain scientists do much more effectively when they talk about neural states. Unsurprisingly, the preferred way of talking—the presumption that it tells us what there really is—determines what counts as better and worse. And given its origins that tends to be in terms of what we’re most interested in in the sciences (prediction, control, etc.). But the choice of preferred vocabulary is not intrinsic to this way of thinking: there’s no reason why we can’t pick something other than a physical or materialistic vocabulary.
The great thing about Type-I explications, then, is that they set out to assure us that we are talking about the same thing when we undertake our proposed shift in authority. But this ontological prejudice is, I think, optional: we can reject the idea that what there really is is fixed by a specific vocabulary (one’s preferred science, for example, or the sciences in general) and yet still hope to show that what we’re talking about is the same thing. Call these Type-II explications. It’s worth noting that if we can’t make sense of these then our obvious target when evaluating a proposed explication is the status of the preferred vocabulary/way of talking/identifying what’s real. But if we can make sense of them then it’s clear that we can’t draw a simple line between the vocabulary that picks things out and the different ways in which those things can be identified. On this pluralistic interpretation there are as many different general sorts of things as there are different ways of talking about things in general. Of course, establishing continuity for a Type-II explication is going to be a far more complex business, but given that the sorts of changes proposed we should anticipate complexity. What is clear, however, is that when evaluating the proposed shifts we need to think on a larger scale about what would be lost and what gained, what would better and what worse.
With this distinction in place it’s time to return to Bettcher’s proposal. That will be the topic of my next piece.
[1] This may well be how gender/sexual dysphoria presents itself, but we have long abandoned that as playing any role in justifying TR.
[2] Cf. Wittgenstein: ‘But what about such a proposition as “I know I have a brain”? Can I doubt it? Grounds for doubt are lacking! Everything speaks in its favour, nothing against it. Nevertheless it is imaginable that my skull should turn out empty when it was operated on.” (On Certainty, 4)