There is another way of thinking about the woman in the hat. Let's say I am canoeing, and I alert to my kids an otter in the water, telling them where it is. Except that if I had gotten a closer look, I would have seen a wide flat tail and prominent front teeth. It's actually a beaver. But perhaps we have discovered a new sense of the word "otter" here? After all, I was able to communicate a true fact about the creature (its location) and further facts can now be communicated (Look, Dad! The otter is carrying a stick!) using "otter" this way. So, new sense of the word? Or does it make more sense not to add the second definition "anything that looks like one" to every noun? Instead we recognize that we sometimes label based on incomplete information, and that labeling may be useful in communication even when mistaken.
Good example. You had accurately expressed the thought of “an animal in the water”, but were incorrect in what type of animal it was. Whether or not this mistake matters depends on the context (do you care about pointing out some animal to alert your kids in which case your mistake didn’t matter, or were you searching for an otter, in which case your mistake mattered). You may have meant “otter” as just “animal in the water”, in which case your meaning is acceptable as applied, or as in “an actual otter rather than a beaver” in which case you the meaning of the word has been misapplied.
I think it is fundamentally mistaken to think of this as the semantic dispute a philosopher would expect. Under trans language, "woman" has pragmatics but not semantics. Trans-inclusive language has a purpose, the purpose isn't exactly a secret, and once you understand that purpose then you understand it would be accidental if there were a meaning that coincided with the usage.
For starters, this: "In that sense, a woman means someone with certain external features representing our general idea of a “woman” (longer hair, softer facial features, smaller frame, etc.). ... Under this concept, if it looks like a “woman,” it is a woman." sure doesn't sound like a trans-approved definition. Under that view, a trans woman does not need to look like a woman to be a woman, she merely needs to know that she is a woman. If you didn't ask the person in the hat for her pronouns, she may not be one. This is the only definition of woman accepted as non-transphobic, and also, it completely fails to define woman. But it's clear enough how to use it.
The primary purpose is to tiptoe around the gender dysphoria of trans people. This mainly means avoid the concept of biological sex. Woman can mean anything so long as it doesn't mean anything to do with what reproductive organs you have. If you have a simple word that picks out a category like "most of the people born with penises, and also the rest of the people born with penises even though they don't want to be lumped into this category" that is upsetting to the second part of the category. A corollary is that "male" and "female" no longer refer to biological sex either. If you are in a situation where discussion of biological sex is unavoidable, there are terms available that are clumsy and either absurd or undignified, such as assigned female at birth or uterus owner. By keeping the words for biological sex on a high, hard to reach shelf, this language will keep you from speaking about it more than necessary. This shades into a possible second purpose, which is a plan to get people to use the concept of sex less in thinking and understanding the world around them by making the language with which to think such thoughts less accessible.
The other purpose is to do an end round around discussions about issues like who belongs in what bathroom it sports team. The definition can do all the work: this is the one for women, and trans women are women, right? Are you saying they are not? Granted, both sides frequently hope definitions will do the work for them.
I understand your concern, but I’m not concerned about people’s motivations with definitions. This Substack is just concerned with the nature of meaning. The meaning of “woman” is multi dimensional and some of those dimensions (biology, appearance, even personality - like calling a clear man a woman because of how he is acting) are relevant in some contexts while others are relevant in only others. Each of those uses of “woman” may take on different “meanings” even though they would each fall under the same concept of “woman.”
Not motivations in definition; motivations in usage. And you should be so concerned, because to look for meaning is to implicitly assume the motivation in usage is to mean something. This assumption is usually correct and left unexamined because usually that's the whole point of language. But this is a case where I think it's a mistake to assume there is meaning; sometimes you reach a better understanding if you assume otherwise!
Amos Wollen is inching toward getting it, having recently suggested that philosophers could accept the trans preferred usage of "woman" and forget about defining it. Philosophers are drawn to this question of what it means because it seems like we have this puzzle that is important and perfect for a philosopher to solve, and it's just such a perfect prompt for sophistry, but the puzzle probably has no solution, and why it resists being solved is the puzzle you should be solving. For my part I can't entirely endorse Amos's position on this, because I'm not a linguistic prescriptivist, I believe a word like "woman" can have multiple meanings, and I believe that "adult human female" is, at a minimum, one of them. But more importantly, I simply cannot justify telling people "you know that word that you use to make sense of the world you are in that means something that you understand? Well it doesn't mean that, you can't have a word for that, it means something incomprehensible to you instead." This is hostile and newspeaky and makes people feel like they're taking crazy pills, and we certainly don't do it on anyone else's behalf. It's actually a lot to ask.
Not sure I see the disagreement, let me lay out the following points and see where we have an issue
1. Words can have multiple meanings depending on context
2. People can know the specific meanings of the words they use. They may not know *all* possible meanings of words but they can know what they meant in a certain usage.
3. The puzzle created by philosophy is the assumptions that words have a single meaning, when it is a web of related meanings that can be expressed using the same word.
4. “Woman” is one of these words, where it stands for something general in the abstract but specific in usage.
1. Yes, but also just because someone is talking doesn't necessarily mean they mean something.
2. Not always. For example they may follow social norms to recite platitudes without really understanding them. I think Amos Wollen provides a clear counterexample in his March post on the topic. He is committing to using the word "woman" in the way certain social norms require while having no idea what he means by it. He is aware that that is what he is doing. And this really is what trans norms expect.
3. Not in this case. That's the puzzle you expect to be solving, but I think you have failed to solve it, and I don't think it can be solved.
4. There isn't a specific meaning, but there is something that "woman" is often used to mean that trans activists would like it to stop ever meaning. There might be, for each trans person, a thing they have in mind, but no meaning they expect to be communicating from one person to another by uttering the word "woman".
Incidentally I followed the link from Amos's post to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy page on Trans philosophy. Haven't read the whole thing, but got far enough to learn that "What is a woman?" is a simplistic question and outside the scope of trans philosophy. So the puzzle to answer is why don't even trans philosophers have a satisfactory solution to the puzzle you think you're supposed to solve.
I agree but 3 isn’t a problem that I intend to solve. But a misunderstanding that this article is pointing out. Meaning is more akin to an encyclopedia than a dictionary. But the dictionary metaphor is more apt the more specific and finely grained our usage is
The only thing that makes someone a woman is being born biologically female. We've known that for a long time now. Identifying as one doesn't mean anything.
In some circumstances yes, but in others, if someone is dressed femininely I’d call them “Miss” regardless of what their biology is. Some cases we care about biology (medical context) whereas others we just care about appearances (ordinary context)
There is another way of thinking about the woman in the hat. Let's say I am canoeing, and I alert to my kids an otter in the water, telling them where it is. Except that if I had gotten a closer look, I would have seen a wide flat tail and prominent front teeth. It's actually a beaver. But perhaps we have discovered a new sense of the word "otter" here? After all, I was able to communicate a true fact about the creature (its location) and further facts can now be communicated (Look, Dad! The otter is carrying a stick!) using "otter" this way. So, new sense of the word? Or does it make more sense not to add the second definition "anything that looks like one" to every noun? Instead we recognize that we sometimes label based on incomplete information, and that labeling may be useful in communication even when mistaken.
Good example. You had accurately expressed the thought of “an animal in the water”, but were incorrect in what type of animal it was. Whether or not this mistake matters depends on the context (do you care about pointing out some animal to alert your kids in which case your mistake didn’t matter, or were you searching for an otter, in which case your mistake mattered). You may have meant “otter” as just “animal in the water”, in which case your meaning is acceptable as applied, or as in “an actual otter rather than a beaver” in which case you the meaning of the word has been misapplied.
I think it is fundamentally mistaken to think of this as the semantic dispute a philosopher would expect. Under trans language, "woman" has pragmatics but not semantics. Trans-inclusive language has a purpose, the purpose isn't exactly a secret, and once you understand that purpose then you understand it would be accidental if there were a meaning that coincided with the usage.
For starters, this: "In that sense, a woman means someone with certain external features representing our general idea of a “woman” (longer hair, softer facial features, smaller frame, etc.). ... Under this concept, if it looks like a “woman,” it is a woman." sure doesn't sound like a trans-approved definition. Under that view, a trans woman does not need to look like a woman to be a woman, she merely needs to know that she is a woman. If you didn't ask the person in the hat for her pronouns, she may not be one. This is the only definition of woman accepted as non-transphobic, and also, it completely fails to define woman. But it's clear enough how to use it.
The primary purpose is to tiptoe around the gender dysphoria of trans people. This mainly means avoid the concept of biological sex. Woman can mean anything so long as it doesn't mean anything to do with what reproductive organs you have. If you have a simple word that picks out a category like "most of the people born with penises, and also the rest of the people born with penises even though they don't want to be lumped into this category" that is upsetting to the second part of the category. A corollary is that "male" and "female" no longer refer to biological sex either. If you are in a situation where discussion of biological sex is unavoidable, there are terms available that are clumsy and either absurd or undignified, such as assigned female at birth or uterus owner. By keeping the words for biological sex on a high, hard to reach shelf, this language will keep you from speaking about it more than necessary. This shades into a possible second purpose, which is a plan to get people to use the concept of sex less in thinking and understanding the world around them by making the language with which to think such thoughts less accessible.
The other purpose is to do an end round around discussions about issues like who belongs in what bathroom it sports team. The definition can do all the work: this is the one for women, and trans women are women, right? Are you saying they are not? Granted, both sides frequently hope definitions will do the work for them.
I understand your concern, but I’m not concerned about people’s motivations with definitions. This Substack is just concerned with the nature of meaning. The meaning of “woman” is multi dimensional and some of those dimensions (biology, appearance, even personality - like calling a clear man a woman because of how he is acting) are relevant in some contexts while others are relevant in only others. Each of those uses of “woman” may take on different “meanings” even though they would each fall under the same concept of “woman.”
Not motivations in definition; motivations in usage. And you should be so concerned, because to look for meaning is to implicitly assume the motivation in usage is to mean something. This assumption is usually correct and left unexamined because usually that's the whole point of language. But this is a case where I think it's a mistake to assume there is meaning; sometimes you reach a better understanding if you assume otherwise!
Amos Wollen is inching toward getting it, having recently suggested that philosophers could accept the trans preferred usage of "woman" and forget about defining it. Philosophers are drawn to this question of what it means because it seems like we have this puzzle that is important and perfect for a philosopher to solve, and it's just such a perfect prompt for sophistry, but the puzzle probably has no solution, and why it resists being solved is the puzzle you should be solving. For my part I can't entirely endorse Amos's position on this, because I'm not a linguistic prescriptivist, I believe a word like "woman" can have multiple meanings, and I believe that "adult human female" is, at a minimum, one of them. But more importantly, I simply cannot justify telling people "you know that word that you use to make sense of the world you are in that means something that you understand? Well it doesn't mean that, you can't have a word for that, it means something incomprehensible to you instead." This is hostile and newspeaky and makes people feel like they're taking crazy pills, and we certainly don't do it on anyone else's behalf. It's actually a lot to ask.
Not sure I see the disagreement, let me lay out the following points and see where we have an issue
1. Words can have multiple meanings depending on context
2. People can know the specific meanings of the words they use. They may not know *all* possible meanings of words but they can know what they meant in a certain usage.
3. The puzzle created by philosophy is the assumptions that words have a single meaning, when it is a web of related meanings that can be expressed using the same word.
4. “Woman” is one of these words, where it stands for something general in the abstract but specific in usage.
1. Yes, but also just because someone is talking doesn't necessarily mean they mean something.
2. Not always. For example they may follow social norms to recite platitudes without really understanding them. I think Amos Wollen provides a clear counterexample in his March post on the topic. He is committing to using the word "woman" in the way certain social norms require while having no idea what he means by it. He is aware that that is what he is doing. And this really is what trans norms expect.
3. Not in this case. That's the puzzle you expect to be solving, but I think you have failed to solve it, and I don't think it can be solved.
4. There isn't a specific meaning, but there is something that "woman" is often used to mean that trans activists would like it to stop ever meaning. There might be, for each trans person, a thing they have in mind, but no meaning they expect to be communicating from one person to another by uttering the word "woman".
Incidentally I followed the link from Amos's post to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy page on Trans philosophy. Haven't read the whole thing, but got far enough to learn that "What is a woman?" is a simplistic question and outside the scope of trans philosophy. So the puzzle to answer is why don't even trans philosophers have a satisfactory solution to the puzzle you think you're supposed to solve.
I agree but 3 isn’t a problem that I intend to solve. But a misunderstanding that this article is pointing out. Meaning is more akin to an encyclopedia than a dictionary. But the dictionary metaphor is more apt the more specific and finely grained our usage is
The only thing that makes someone a woman is being born biologically female. We've known that for a long time now. Identifying as one doesn't mean anything.
In some circumstances yes, but in others, if someone is dressed femininely I’d call them “Miss” regardless of what their biology is. Some cases we care about biology (medical context) whereas others we just care about appearances (ordinary context)