Thread by @EveKeneinan

@Friended4Ever @AStratelates Philosopher Alex Byrne at MIT makes an actual, extended case for

AHF “Women are adult human females.”

which is necessarily a refutation of

TW “Transgender women are women”

philpapers.org/archive/BYRAWA…

@Friended4Ever @AStratelates He employs the deflationary Convention-T.

“Women are adult human females” is true if and only if women are adult human females.

That mean there would be a double implication

woman ⇔ adult human female

@Friended4Ever @AStratelates He makes a cumulative case with no one argument being conclusive, but adding up to a fairly strong case across six arguments.

@Friended4Ever @AStratelates His first point is to note that almost all dictionaries define “woman” as an “adult human female” or something like that as the primary definition and one which most of the other definitions depend on.

This is NOT an appeal to the dictionary, but rather ⬇︎

@Friended4Ever @AStratelates an appeal to the best explanation, which is, dictionaries all define “woman” this way because that is substantially close to what the word is trying to pick out in reality.

That would explain it.

They also do not define the word as if it were a social category.

@Friended4Ever @AStratelates Argument 2 is related: we have words in English for adult females of many animals species: hen, sow, doe, vixen, etc.

It would be ODD if English did NOT contain a word that picks out “adult human females.”

But “woman” is the only candidate for this.

So, probably, it does.

@Friended4Ever @AStratelates Argument 3: We can know that someone is a woman simply by knowing (only) that she is an adult human female. We know that Mitochondrial Eve, our genetic common female human ancestor was a woman.

We can get from “adult human female” to “woman,” which is some support of

W ⇔ AHF

@Friended4Ever @AStratelates Argument 4: AHF is equivalent to

JHF “A girl as a juvenile human female”

which can be supported independently of AHF.

When a baby is born the knowledge that it is female and “it’s a girl” come together, which is evidence for JHF, which is evidence for AHF.