Faeze Fafa Fazeli
University of Notre Dame, USA
In this paper, I first analyze the complex scene of scientific views on sex and gender. I show that there are two main research camps in biology and neuroscience: (I) binarists who seek for the fixed and essential differences between males and females that are rooted in biological ground (Cahill 2021; 2017b; Baron-Cohen 2020; 2004) . Thus, in their research on human cognition and behavior, binarists argue for two types of brains, namely male brain and female brain. (II) Nonbinarists who reject the notions of male brain/female brain by signifying the plasticity of human’s brain and displaying the influence of our environment and social relations on them. Instead, they argue for the mosaic theory of human brain, i.e., most brains are composed of both female-typical features and male-typical features (Fausto-Sterling 2020; Joel and Vikhanski 2019) .
Then, I argue that the main differences between the two camps can be understood in terms of their different social values rather than the difference in their empirical data or epistemic virtues. I investigate possible strategies to address the problem of using different (and, in fact, conflicting) values in science of sex and gender. To do so, I turn to what is now being called by philosophers of science the “new demarcation problem”, i.e., distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate value influences in science (Holman and Wilholt 2022) . In this paper, I focus specifically on Helen Longino’s and Kevin Elliott’s strategies and their applications to the science of sex and gender to see which one scores better in addressing the value disagreement in this context.
Chair: Isa Kooiman
Time: September 13th, 12:00 – 12:30
Location: SR 1.004, online
SOPhiA 2026 