Defining Sexuality

A Strange Island

This thought experiment has similarities to Berger and Luckmann's claims from a Social Construction of Reality in their discussion about sexuality. But to allow for a clearer marker of what exactly genes are structuring for or not structuring for we have to sharpen such an example a little more.

(think of The Village by M. Night Shyamalan)

So, we take an island, or a very large enclosed space for greater control. Perhaps with the help of confederates at first, we create a culture or society. Except in this society it is all one sex, which we will take as all male. This society has also been configured to have zero knowledge about the female sex, either in humans or other species. We have to limit scientific knowledge a little bit on such an account, but we could still have their knowledge be rather robust in many other ways. In general, this culture and social structure looks much like ours, except there is only one sex and only knowledge of one sex (and hence desires, beliefs, intentions all only engage one sex.)

Now, we are going to imagine any set of genes that are born or brought as a baby to be raised on such an island. My intuitions, similar to Berger and Luckmann's claim, is that all humans here would experience sexual urges and engage in sexual activity (not to say there are not ways to do away with sex altogether). Furthermore, I am going to argue that they would have sexual desires, that is, they would have a sexual mental life. And, no matter whether their genes or epigenetic structuring were “heterosexual” or “homosexual,” such sexual urgings would most likely be towards other males. This is where terminological problems erupt, even for most scientific and psychological descriptions as regards our own society. For most uses of the idea of heterosexual or homosexual, the common cultural parlance of sexuality within our cultural sphere is being used, and such a use would not permit a “heterosexual” male to have sexual thoughts, desires and behaviors towards other males for their entire life. When describing genetic considerations, say from evolutionary development, what is taken to inhere in the gene takes a certain social world as given. Assuming certain fixed environmental conditions is a good strategy on one level, it works for evolution's “desires,” but when describing a relationship between genes and behavior, when actually understanding what genes are going to be coding for, it often leads to empty statements.

Terminology aside, there are facets that we can explore about behavior. There are many things that we think as part of our sexuality that are environmentally and culturally contextual. Our culture encourages our desires and thoughts to have certain parameters. Heterosexual males in our society not only like females, generally speaking, but they in general like them even more when they show their femininity in certain, expressive ways, say in socially normative way. Due to our large mental and associational abilities, we create categories and attach unnecessary things in unlockable ways within our brain/minds and within our cultural beliefs.

Back to our male-only island, assuming we are right that all individuals on the island are having sexual relationships, even the most “heterosexual” oriented male on this island will not one day turn to their partner(s) and say something like “I enjoy your rather large breasts, your less hairy body, and your smaller penis, but I get the idea that something is wrong, that perhaps there should not be a penis there at all. I cannot quite conceive of what should be there . . .” These kind of thoughts do not occur. As far as questions of whether there may still be some kind of bifurcation of behaviors and thought, such as the possibility that those we would conceive of as “heterosexual” and “homosexual” end up choosing partners in a relatively different way or with different characteristics, it is questionable what kind of effects would follow. Or it may be that the cultural and environmental situation would essentially eat up what we see as expressed as far as sexually divergent behaviors. There is good reason to think that even if some kind of bifurcation is happening, all individuals in the end are still having sex with another male. Which throws a wrench into how we think about sexuality for the most part.

Following on previous posts on identity, there is a gap between what your self is and what your genes are. There is a great cultural chasm that shapes possible behaviors, which is why I argue we are blank slates. The set of genes that makes up any individual, if they were raised on our island, would be a significantly different individual, different self than what they are or have become within the parameters of our present society. The radical differences in behavior, mean radical differences in “mental” conceptions. They mean radical differences in attitudes and even emotions. It is a different mental process to be having thoughts about having sex with a male than it is to be having thoughts about having sex with a female. Our present culture probably overestimates those differences, perhaps because we over highlight and over-create gender and sex differences. And, as can be seen through simple analysis or through artistic expression, there are of course many similarities to being in any kind of relationship, and thus many mental thoughts about such things may be parallel.

The bottom line however is that behavioral and mental processes are going to be significantly different based on social structures, social institutions, and discourses. On our island we have shadowed out “heterosexual” desires and emotions, but we can go through endless other (actualizable) social thought experiments that would mean a certain given set of genes would become a robust self but not have the behavior, emotional, or characteristic response that we want to claim attaches to our genes in some way. That does not mean that genes are not structuring and limiting and encouraging different behaviors, only that they do not do it inevitably so to create a given characteristic of a given self. Such an understanding thus makes our behaviors and mental world infinitely malleable.

Another important point from Berger and Luckmann: It is madness to think we do not control our social and discursive worlds. I deny free will and we can argue for the dialectical buildup of social structures, discourses, and norms, but we have to accept that we are capable of changing a great deal of our social worlds. And though much of this we could only do after we have become knowledgeable, more reflective adults, it does not mean we could not setup significantly different worlds around children that would mean they become vastly different than what our current structures create. This essentially happens every generation as social norms, technologies, and institutions change. We have to accept that we can set up the island from above. Most of us would define that as a world we want nothing to do with, but all of our social institutions and structures have to be considered within our grasp. Furthermore, we are born into families, communities, nations, and a broader world, including the specific time frame and all that comes with it. As individuals we do not control the entirety of those institutions, structures, and discourses (“moral” norms, for one). But, in time, we can make significant changes to such worlds, especially those institutions and discourses more immediately within our personal and familial spheres. We can within limited communities speak different thoughts.

Though I would argue that we do not have personal, sexual and family relationships that are as healthy as they should be across most swaths of society, and I believe there are significant changes that can be made on such accounts, the world that is most necessary for change (from where I stand) is the socializational/educational world we set up around most (really all) individuals. As to sexual identity and politics, obviously the first thing that needs to happen is the naturalizing of humans, to see sex for the act that it is, to see drives and emotions for what they are. Which means that any politicizing or moralizing of sexual acts have to be ignored as complete stupidities. The idea that any sexual act, such that is consensual and not obviously problematic, should be considered deviant, a sin, socially degrading, or whatever, such people should quite frankly be ignored as they come to the public or political sphere. And that is happening to some degree, I think. Though preachers may still say homosexuality and other sexual acts are sins or inherently wrong, most politicians refrain from doing so, even as they implement policies from such thought. 

Lastly, we have the identity politics of the day. Such discourses have suffered both from a poor understanding of human development but also suffered as people tried to expand social protections to all individuals. In doing so they found a “born this way” narrative to be empowering, which makes sense from an argumentative and political point of view. I would argue (probably almost libertarian-like, which I am about as far from as possible) that a better argument is just that personal choices, behaviors and ways of being are not to be interfered with unless there is evidence that they provide any social problems. People have a freedom to express identity in whatever way they find sensible and empowering, especially when it involves the stupidities of our more animalian bases. As we pull the thread, unravel why we are the way we are and how we can organize social institutions and our selves so that we are the way we want to be, empty moral notions and even moral language around issues like this simply have to be set to the side.

Official Blog Ontology

This blog's ontology is brought to you by John Heil. This is his 3AM interview. Also, his book Philosophy of Mind is a good introduction into philosophy of mind, framed in his ontology-first point of view.

[Heil, from 3AM]

. . .

What I object to is the unthinking move from linguistic premises to ontological conclusions, from the assumption, for instance, that if you have an ‘ineliminable’ predicate that features in an explanation of some phenomenon of interest, the predicate must name a property shared by everything to which it applies. (A predicate is ineliminable if it cannot be analyzed, paraphrased, or translated into less vexed predicates.)

Philosophers speak of ‘the pain predicate’. When you look at creatures plausibly regarded as being in pain, you do not see a single physical property they all share (and in virtue of which it would be true to say that they are in pain). Instead of thinking that the predicate, ‘is in pain’, designates a family of similar properties, philosophers (including Putnam in one of his moods) conclude that the predicate must name a ‘higher-level’ property possessed by a creature by virtue of that creature’s ‘lower-level’ physical properties. You have many different kinds of physical property supporting a single nonphysical property. This is the kind of ‘non-reductive physicalism’ you have in functionalism.

Non-reductive physicalism has become a default view, a heavyweight champ that retains its status until decisively defeated. Non-reductive physicalism acquired the crown, however, not by merit, but by a kind of linguistic subterfuge. If you read early anti-reductionist tracts – for instance, Jerry Fodor’s ‘Special Sciences (Or: The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis)’ (Synthese, 1974) – you will see that the arguments concern predicates, categories, taxonomies. Fodor’s point, a correct one in my judgment, is that there is no prospect of replacing taxonomies in the special sciences with one drawn from physics. But from this no ontological conclusions follow – unless you assume that every ‘irreducible’ predicate names a property.

This language-driven way of thinking is not one that would have occurred to the ancients, the medievals, or the early moderns – or to my aforementioned philosophical models. It is an invention of the 20th century, one that has led to the emasculation of serious ontology.

. . .

JH: I am not sure what ‘ontological reduction’ would be. How could you reduce one thing to another? I understand reduction as a relation among categories, or predicates, or taxonomies, or theories. Can you take a true description formulated in biological terms, and paraphrase it into a description formulated in terms of quarks and leptons? If that seems unlikely, then the reduction of biology to physics is not in the cards.

My conception of ontology differs from that of Ladyman and Ross, so I am unmoved by their rhetoric. Most philosophers nowadays accept Quine’s observation that there is no sharp boundary between philosophy and science. And, as Donald Davidson puts it, ‘where there are no fixed boundaries, only the timid never risk trespass’. Measured reflection on what we know about the universe suggests that wherever physics leads us we will find substances and properties.

Intelligence (Identity Series)

On Intelligence

Identity Series Continued

This is a bit out of order, but in some ways this post is easier to write. Intelligence is more difficult to define than things such as introversion/extroversion or sexuality, which gives more wiggle room as we discuss behaviors surrounding it. It can also be less controversial, which may be good.

A Tautology:

If you teach a child under 15 a second language, they will know a second language.

This takes language as a skill requirement. Any individual without serious brain damage we have to assume is capable of speaking a second language by the age of 15. (If anyone doubts this, I can expand further.) Second language attainment is often seen as a mark of education and I argue that pretty much any other academic discourse, whether math or science or logic (etc.), must be seen as within the same ballpark as language acquisition. To learn math or chemistry is to learn a discourse. It is to learn how to apply that discourse appropriately, and in a way not wholly different than language use. There are obvious differences, but as far as capacity to perform such skills or knowledge sets they are seemingly similar.

Malcolm Gladwell gets criticized often, perhaps fairly, but one of his main messages from Outliers rings true with me, and I read that as a similar tautology:

If you teach a child under 18 to be an excellent violinist, they will be an excellent violinist.

Meaning that requisite skill attainment of playing violin, at least to the point that you and me are unlikely to be able to tell that they are not "highly proficient", is capable of being taught to any individual. Such an idea is irregardless of any “musical ability” that we think somehow inheres within genetic structures. (Also see John Shenk, The Genius in us all.)

A counterargument is that the amount of work, the amount of environmental finesse we would have to engage in to get such an individual to learn a second language by the age of 15 or to be truly excellent on the violin may mean that we would be unable to teach them basic algebra, because we would be spending so much time pounding a second language into such individuals. This is one designation of intelligence after all, that there are marked differences in knowledge or skill attainment. And it would make sense that some individuals could acquire a certain amount of skills faster than others. Perhaps we can create true excellence in one skill sphere in any individual but only to the detriment of another. In the end, such a claim is true about every individual, and about why we find benefits in the divided skill accomplishments among a community. One can be a well-rounded but ready to specialize 20-year-old, but in the end, even if such an individual tries to take in a wide swath of knowledge, there is only so much depth that one can gain in any one area (and all areas are specialized out the wazoo, nowadays). One may be able to go in depth on 2 or 3 subjects or micro-subjects, but there is certainly a point where one is going to be unable to fully follow the top journals of many disparate fields. That is just the limit of the beast that is knowledge.

With that said, just the acknowledgment that (almost) any individual is capable of being one very skilled chemist by the age of, say, 22, is already to cast doubt on our intuitions that genes and intelligence sets are somehow being appropriately tended to by the environments we set up around all (and any) individuals. Or that we even know how to generally speak about intelligence. Or that our schools and reflections about such subjects are anywhere close to the appropriate ballpark.

We could go on and make two more claims. The first I do not think most people argue for, but some surely do. The first is that as a society we, or the Europeans or the Koreans, have set up a fairly level playing field, and now such a field is sorting people through such (genetic) intelligence differences. That is unquestionably wrong, and it is wrong across the nation, within communities and even within families. But we could tone that down and say something more ordinary like, there is the possibility of creating an equal opportunity educational system that will in the end sort people by intelligence levels, so that those with more genetic intelligence gifts end up being the ones who are more knowledgeable and more skillful. I think there is good reason to think that the second claim may be near impossible as well, at least from our ground level.

In the end, anyone who thinks that we can shrug at the gross disparity between knowledge and skill attainment between individuals, or who even hints that such differences have a significant genetic component (other than as some trivial measure), must present some argument about where such differences exist. It is difficult for me to argue against the above tautologies. And as I see pretty much any other knowledge attainment as falling along similar lines, the question becomes how do we even begin thinking that radical environmental changes to all individual lives are not the first and foremost change that we should be arguing for. That is, we should be willing to setup the environment around every individual in our society so that they become (say) very good chemists. And again, by very good chemist here, I mean something like in the top 10,000 chemist in the world. One that is highly skilled and employable. Now, if genes come in, I may grant that due to genes some random individual may not be able to get into the cream of the crop, say in the top 100. But can they adequately perform the skills of an excellent chemist or those skills of our well-qualified doctors? Without a doubt. The argument that any given genetic repertoire (other than significant impairment) renders any individual incapable of such skill attainment is surely wrong. 

Furthermore, we are products of our genes and environment, given that its not in the genes, then it is in the environment, and later in the programming/brain of that individual as they respond more complexly to the environment. And there is much low hanging fruit where such environmental factors are concerned. Due diligence is probably the first step. 

Some other references: 

Bruce Waller, Against Moral Responsibility

Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods

Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, Social Construction of Reality
Stanislas Dehaene, Reading and the Brain

Game Theory, or Why we are Blank Slates

Infinite behavior means blank behavior.

The blank slate was a bad metaphor from long ago. Why we need to defend it or kill it I do not know. But I do so all the same.

Our behavior is infinite. Our selves, a given set of genes, are capable of endless behavioral repertoires. We could be an infinite many selves. Ones that vary in behavioral dispositions and identity characteristics in infinite ways. That is, the things that we think are integral to our self today are capable of being infinitely manipulated, and yet still have remaining a robust, viable individual (though perhaps one that our present selves would disapprove of).

I am tempted to say that is enough to make us blank slates. A slate is not blank because I can do anything to it. If all I have is yellow chalk, all I can do is write in yellow, though I can write the word “blue.” Anyways, enough of that.

What we care about are intricate characteristics of our selves. We care about behaviors and why we do the things we do, and whether those things could be done radically differently. Games show that behavior is infinite, and that is because we can create infinite numbers of games that our brain/body can play, and this will lead to infinite behaviors. Now, there is limitations to our behaviors. We cannot fly unaided (in a gravity world) or calculate as fast as computers, and thus our game behaviors are limited by such things. But that also shows by careful manipulation of our environment, say by creating zero-gravity chambers or living on the moon, we can create a significantly different game than the one we create on earth or before the scientific revolution. 

Just because there are certain parameters to behavior and behavioral expression, it does not mean that behavioral expression is not infinite. Integers have significant parameters to them, but yet we still declare, intuitively, that they are infinite.

Language and games show the infinite behavioral manipulation that can be made to any body/brain, to any individual. The language and society one grows up in will mean that one's language and game-behavior will be determined by that culture. But of course, it is completely blank what the games are within the culture that your genes happened to have been born into. It is therefore blank as to what game behavior you will end up having.

I, of course, only care a little about game behavior, even if it is infinite (and hence blank). We care more about other personal characteristics such as knowledge-gathered and knowledge-used (intelligence). We care about things like the scope of our relationships and how we interact with people. But these latter things are capable, once we put all social institutions and social discourses on the table, of being infinitely arranged as well. And given that our genes are capable of being born into many disparate societal arrangements, the selves we end up being are capable of being infinitely altered, and in the most dramatic of ways. Hence, I would argue that for most people, such an argument is enough to make us blank slates.

Lastly, the common claims of evolutionary psychology often have to do with personality traits. I am a strong evolutionist, and I believe evolution can tell us important things about structures of our dispositions, but still, with enough societal jingling, much that we already do through processes of socialization, we can thoroughly undermine or rewrite or socialize out any kind of personality trait. We can change institutional and discursive structures that make genetic structuring of those dispositions vanish in the air, essentially because the social structures that such genetic structuring are reacting under has been dissolved.

Often, as we dig deep, the proposed genetic structures that align with proposed characteristics within our society may be real. As we tinker with different possible social arrangements, those genetic structures may have robust effects on the behaviors of individuals. I would caution, though, that many of these genetic effects that we see happen in radically altered environments will not fall within the broad categories that we use to describe such genetically induced characteristics within our social sphere.

I will lay more of this out in future posts. I will argue that within our present cultural structures, we already significantly alter dispositions through social structure and socialization processes. I also will argue that even with modest social shifts, we can thoroughly alter the meaning and expression of a behavioral disposition, such as the expression of introversion/extroversion.    

- For some parallel arguments, check out Jesse Prinz's Beyond Human Nature.

Preliminary to Identity Series

I am working on a series about identity and characteristics, essentially behavior, since that is all there is in the end, behavior and dispositions to behavior. I will talk about heritability more later, but these were some burning thoughts.

The other day I encountered a standard argument analyzing heritable factors, and as usual got caught off guard by this idea that a certain percentage of a characteristic's manifestation was “due to genes.” I decided the phrase was maddening. I partially mean this was a little upsetting, but more fundamentally I mean it was incapable of being clearly understood, which of course can be upsetting as well.

So, here is my maddening thoughts on such a phrase and idea. Let us take slavery. Now, we can create true propositions given certain social/environmental factors. An African in the southern United States in the 1700's is a slave “due to their genes.” Now, given that skin color comes from genes, and given that we had a social environment that relegates any person with a certain skin color to a life of slavery, under such conditions the phrase, “Slavery is correlated with genetic differences,” is true. Within such an unalterable social context, there is going to be a very strong correlation between certain genes (namely those controlling skin color) and social positions and behavioral dispositions (namely those that slaves exhibit).

But, you say, we are smart enough to realize that the correlation only holds because of the accidents of the social environment, one that we were capable of easily changing. And one that, after ridding society of slavery, rendered mute the idea that the genetic connection between certain genes and the fact that those gene's correlated with slavery was interesting or meaningful at all.

In the end, I argue, that such an argument is going to hold for any characteristic, including the ones being pointed to by many heritability claims. Now, obviously, some of the environmental engineering we would have to devise in order to rid any correlation between a defined characteristic and the social displaying of the characteristic due to genes may require very heavy handed steps. These may be steps or the creating of social/environmental structures that we are unwilling to engage in. But, still, in the end, the idea that differences in behavior manifestations is “due to genes” will be seen as a maddening phrase, just as it is for the idea that differences in being a slave tracked well with various genetic differences.

The phrase “due to genes” always only makes sense as we hypostatize the environment or social structures. As we ask questions about not only our ability to place individuals within different social and environmental spheres known to us, but also other ones that we can devise, the questions of what exactly genes are structuring becomes a little clearer.

Maybe the lesson here is that when someone makes claims from twin studies, for instance, and points to some identity factor as being correlated with certain gene similarities, and they do so without making claims about more bottom line mechanistic structures, we have to be wary about what exactly is going on. And the truth is that this is not entirely evolutionary psychology's fault. Part of it has to do with the way we take characteristics and behavioral dispositions as salient givens in the first place. That is, identity structures are not as robust and “part of who we are” as we take them to be, such as the way we describe people as extroverted, or intelligent, or heterosexual, or psychopathic. Furthermore, there are discursive, institutional, and self reflective factors that can seriously alter the manifestation of any behavioral repertoire. And such factors can probably be arranged to erase genetic disparities or erase the characteristic altogether.

And hopefully this series will clear some of that up.