Biological Science Rejects the Sex Binary, and That’s Good for Humanity

[Nesslig20]

Continuing from a relevant point brought up in the other topic:

@Rumraket

My concern is not cladistics. It’s with the idea that the lack of sharp boundaries is supposed to undermine the idea of the “realness” of some group. I am not objecting to the biological system of classification (I’d be happy to agree the clade fish is real), I am arguing for the idea of some sort of physical realness to methods of categorization even despite it having to involve some degree of arbitrariness at the boundaries. No, not at the fundamental level. At the fundamental level everything is just quantum fields or whatever, but things don’t have to be real at the fundamental level to be real, or to matter to us, or to have real-world consequences we have to deal with and can’t just pretend isn’t of any value or consequence and we just have to convince ourselves is some sort of illusion of our perception.

I have not argued that, in order for a group to be ‘real’, it has to be based on the fundamental level of quantum physics. In fact, I gave an example to the contrary (clades aren’t defined at the level of quantum physics, but I argued that they are ‘real’ groups). I also have not claimed that groups have to be ‘real’ in order for it to matter to us, or to have value, or to have real-world consequences. We have lot’s of unreal groups that are very significant to us, like the concept of ‘family’ comes to my mind (I hope I am not causing another spin-off argument about ‘family’ like with ‘fish’).

I am saying is that a group is not ‘real’ if it is not objective; i.e. if it’s arbitrary on how the boundaries are defined. Thus the only thing I disagree with is when you said that “I am arguing for the idea of some sort of physical realness to methods of categorization even despite it having to involve some degree of arbitrariness at the boundaries.” I’d like to hear the argument for that, or rather how YOU would define the ‘realness’ of a group. Basically your question to me back at you: What do you mean by it being real, where some other category is not? What is the “realness” of it that some other category, for example one that corresponds to the everyday sense of the word, is not?

@Rumraket

You argued at length by drawing from an analogy using colors that color groups aren’t real, because they can in principle blend into each other over infinitely many gradations. That is the reason you stated for why color groups aren’t real. And so the decision of where one group begins and another ends would have to be totally arbitrary. The idea seems to be that if there is not sharp dividing line in principle then the group isn’t real.

Specifically, the spectrum of colors are - literally - gradients. It’s arbitrary to draw lines within that. That’s how gradients work. You’ve basically argued the same point about how arbitrary it would be to point out the “very first fish” among the fine gradations of numerous ancestors.

@Rumraket

As I argued before, many objects in our surroundings are relatively uniformly colored, and while colors are part of some huge space of possible colors that don’t have obvious or clear boundaries, rarely do we find real things that are perfectly uniformly colored all possible colors in equal amounts.

And I have already addressed the exact same argument (paraphrased) before.
Argumentum ad nauseam.

@Rumraket

The world is in many cases such that while there isn’t a perfectly sharp boundary between things (areas in light and areas in shade), there is a relatively narrow transition zone where one part shifts gradually into another but much larger area in relatively uniform illumination or shade. In such cases the distribution of light lends itself in an intuitive sense to categorization. This part A is “in shade” provided by the trunk of that tree, that part B is not, and the transition zone C between them occupies a much smaller area.

The exact dividing line is an arbitrary decision to a degree , but I think any reasonable person would have to admit it would not make sense to put the dividing line right in the middle of the letters A or B, and while the exact spot you pick for a dividing line is arbitrary to a degree, it would be “natural” to put it somewhere in C (which could be even more narrow).

No, I think you accidentally pointed out an example where there are distinct groups.
Region A is the umbra and C is the penumbra.

These regions are geometrically defined. I mean, sure quantum physics is very fundamental, but (I wouldn’t necessarily, but some would argue that) you can’t get much more fundamental than math. Or just looking at the ‘physical’ shadow itself, the umbra is ‘complete shadow’ and penumbra/antumbra is ‘partially shadow’. This isn’t the case regarding colors. There is no such thing as ‘complete red’ or ‘partially red’. At least, not objectively.

@Rumraket

…Some things are totally ambiguous, some are less so, and some are such that essentially everyone who isn’t mentally ill can agree on the distinctions.

Whoa, wait…hold up!! Ad hominem alert. Also, I don’t think using “mental illness”, not even as a potential reason for why someone wouldn’t agree with you on this, is very cordial to say the least.

@Rumraket

So if we return to the case of fish, we can see that even here there is some sense of arbitrariness involved. Even here we have to decide on how far back that clade should go, and we do that by picking characters shared among some collection of organisms and not shared by others. And we can know that this apparent dividing line of characters is a product of fossilization and extinction. That there was, once upon a time, organisms in existence that would have blurred out that dividing line between ancestor and descendant.

Again, I already addressed this with regarding the names we assign to the clades is indeed arbitrary, but clades themselves are not arbitrary.

Basically you are pointing out that, since there are (practically speaking) an infinite number of ancestors, we theoretically could defines a clade based on each of them. Thus, there is nothing special about the particular clade that we may give the name of ‘fish’. That’s just an accident of the surviving species and the extinct fossil species we happened to discover. If we were to find a new fossil species that for all intents and purposes looks like a fish, and it is sister to the fish we knew, we may reassign the name ‘fish’ to a more inclusive (parent) clade. However, let’s say that happens. Guess what? That newly characterized clade that gained the name ‘fish’ is also a real group. As I have pointed out before, it doesn’t matter what we call any clade. Conversely, it doesn’t matter to what clade we assign the word ‘fish’. The clade remains a real group. That is what I mean when I say “in the cladistic sense, fish is a real group”. I am not saying that it is objective give the name ‘fish’ to any clade. So, you are just talking past the point I was making.

@Rumraket

And I think we can say similar things about the categories male and female. Going back to the shadow analogy, I think many more people fall into the A and B parts than into C,

Can you define ‘male’ and ‘female’ geometrically? If not, then you can’t use the shadow analogy here.

@Rumraket

and while the distinction would ultimately have to be arbitrary, I think that for purposes where having such categories becomes important (for matters of law, policy, health care and what have you), we’re going to have to decide where to put that line.

I think if you are treating sex as a spectrum, not as distinct groups, would improve matters of law, policy and health care, since that more accurately reflects the reality. So far, when I have seen people (not referring to you here) wanting to see the sexes being treated as distinct categories as a matter of law or policy, most that I have seen is very absurd things. Like people are ridiculing the suggestion that the men’s bathroom should have free tampons available. Like, what’s the issue with that? Let’s say the women’s bathroom is out of order and they can only use the men’s bathroom, so it would still be a good thing for cisgender women too. Or are we afraid that men who don’t get periods are going to abuse these tampons? Or do we have a serious problem with sexes going to the “wrong” bathrooms? Are unisex bathrooms the work of the devil? Are we going full Ned Flanders here?

But I also have noted more serious instances where establishing sex as distinct categories as a matter of policy has led to great harm. E.g. This below:

The problem with sex testing in sports