Ep. 34 — A Basic Issue in Defining the Term “Woman”: Logic Professor Dr. Tomas Bogardus, Ph.D.
Logicians are trained to pay close attention to the definitions of terms. For instance, in Patrick J. Hurley’s Concise Introduction to Logic, chapter 2 is entirely about definitions. Definitions are a big deal. (Logic is a field of the discipline called Philosophy. Definitions are very important for the other fields, too).
In law (I have a Masters in Philosophy, a Ph.D. in Public Law & American Politics, taught both Con Law and Logic), philosophy’s love for definitions helps.
Here is a conversation about what the word “woman” means. We could have picked other terms. Unlike all of the other words here on this description, some people think we need to redefine the term for political and/or moral reasons.The best correct definitions are those that provide necessary and sufficient conditions (in non-stipulative contexts). (A “stipulation” is just an agreement, like on a contract, or statute, of what a word means in a technical, limited sense). New gender terms that aren’t merely stipulative suffer from a basic deficiency: they have trouble on their own terms respecting their own goals of inclusion and diversity rooted in self-identification . This is a pretty basic problem. And a lot of people can easily see it for exactly what it is.
Let’s call this revisionist view the Self ID view. This new attempted definition of an old word, says Logic Professor Dr. Tomas Bogardus, Ph.D., gives neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for being a real woman. And no matter how you feel about social justice or moral requirements, this is a persistent problem for the revisionist Self ID view of what a woman really is. It does no good to try to manipulate people out of seeing this problem for what it is using shame techniques that are themselves as old as time. People can think for themselves. People can see the manipulation for what it is, and false shaming is no true key to a correct definition of any term.
This new movement to incorporate Self-ID into the cutting edge definition of the term “woman” inevitably doesn’t satisfy necessary and sufficient conditions. The classical definition for woman in classic, standard hard-copy dictionaries says a real woman is an adult, human female. Let’s call that the Classical View. English is very old. That old definition does give a plausible, internally consistent set of both necessary and sufficient conditions for what all and only women are, but is considered defective by recent revisionists for alleged reasons of ethical failure.
We’re in a real pickle if the classical definition meets the philosophical requirement for a good definition, but we are morally prohibited (we are told) from continuing to adopt it. Doesn’t morality require us to be sensitive to truth in definitions?
Or does morality require us to change definitions, even if they don’t provide truthful cognitive connection with the meaning of the term ? Because the new, cutting edged proposals for revising what the term “woman” means fails a standard test of the best, correct definitions, doesn’t it suffer from a fatal flaw? That flaw would be: the Self-ID revisionist view doesn’t tell us what the word really means. It doesn’t pick out all and only women in an internally, logically consistent way.
Revisionist gender theorists are working to avoid the classical definition, but at what philosophical cost? How do we know these new, alleged demands of social justice really are binding on our old definitions in the way asserted ?
Dr. Tomas Bogardus, Ph.D., who teaches Logic along with other courses in Philosophy at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, takes us through his careful writing on this topic, including a history of the debate of these matters. You can view his scholarly papers on his website here : https://sites.google.com/site/tbogardus/
The Republican Professor is a pro-understanding-reality, pro-getting-correct-and-accurate-definitions-of-terms podcast.
Therefore, welcome Tomas Bogardus !