Who's Afraid of Imprecise Sexes?

Sexes stand accused of many forms of indeterminacy: as used in science, ‘male’ and ‘female’ might have multiple meanings, perhaps in different contexts; they might under-specify other relevant details; their boundaries may be blurry, and so on. In light of this, one stream of philosophical work on sexes has been concerned to achieve, or restore, precision and clarity about their meaning(s) as a scientific concept(s), or to abandon them if this can’t be adequately salvaged. Against this current, however, some philosophers of science hold that conceptual ambiguity can be ineliminable and even a feature, rather than a bug. In this talk, I'll ask (1) which of these arguments apply to sexes, if any, (2) how this bears on competing proposals for moving forward with or without them, and (3) what we might learn about conceptual indeterminacy in general from careful attention to sexes. I find that various arguments for the value of conceptual imprecision depend on different conditions being met, and that sexes will often struggle to meet these because they come with serious social, political, and methodological baggage. The upshot for the feasibility and desirability of competing proposals for the future of sex concepts is that these may depend on developing surrogates for imprecise sexes in science, changing the world to better reap the benefits of imprecise sexes, or both.