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The Importance of Realism about Gender Kinds: Lessons from Beauvoir

Bach, Theodore (2023) The Importance of Realism about Gender Kinds: Lessons from Beauvoir. Analyse & Kritik, 45 (2). pp. 269-295.

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Abstract

Beauvoir’s The Second Sex stands out as a master class in the accommodation of conceptual and inferential practices to real, objective gender kinds. Or so I will argue. To establish this framing, we will first need in hand the kind of scientific epistemology that correctly reconciles epistemic progress and error, particularly as pertains to the unruly social sciences. An important goal of the paper is to develop that epistemological framework and unlock its ontological implications for the domain of gender. As we will see, the real gender kinds that contemporary social scientists successfully identify and track are very much the same kinds to which Beauvoir was coordinating reference in The Second Sex. The correct identification of those kinds endures as a moral and political priority, regardless of one’s other gender-related normative agenda.


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Item Type: Published Article or Volume
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Bach, Theodoretheodorebach@gmail.com
Keywords: Gender, Beauvoir, Semantic Externalism, Scientific Realism, Natural Kind, Cultural Evolution, Naturalism, Boyd
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Biology > Function/Teleology
Specific Sciences > Cultural Evolution
General Issues > Explanation
General Issues > Feminist Approaches
General Issues > Natural Kinds
General Issues > Realism/Anti-realism
General Issues > Theory Change
General Issues > Values In Science
Depositing User: Theodore Bach
Date Deposited: 03 Dec 2023 01:58
Last Modified: 03 Dec 2023 01:58
Item ID: 22814
Journal or Publication Title: Analyse & Kritik
Publisher: De Gruyter
Official URL: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/auk...
DOI or Unique Handle: https://doi.org/10.1515/auk-2023-2011
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Biology > Function/Teleology
Specific Sciences > Cultural Evolution
General Issues > Explanation
General Issues > Feminist Approaches
General Issues > Natural Kinds
General Issues > Realism/Anti-realism
General Issues > Theory Change
General Issues > Values In Science
Date: November 2023
Page Range: pp. 269-295
Volume: 45
Number: 2
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/22814

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