# Potential Reads - Chapter 2: "Computing Machinery and Sexual Difference: The Sexed Presuppositions Underlying the Turing Test" by Amy Kind #### Part III: Naturalism and Normativity - Chapter 9: Judith Butler and phenomenology - Exposes tendency of science and phenomenology to norm male, heterosexual desire for all. - Chapter 10: _Enactivism and Gender Performativity_ - "Reveals how 4E cognition theory often employs too narrow meanings of concepts such as "embodiment," "embeddedness," and the "social."" - Chapter 12: _Embodiments of Sex and Gender_ - Problematizes feminist literature's appeal to metaphors such as "texts," "scripts," "sites." #### Part IV: Body and Mind - Chapter 14: _Why Feminists Should Be Materialists and Vice Versa_ - Arguing against anti-physicalism, Droege believes a materialist approach can help feminists gain an understanding of the physical forces that contribute to our beliefs and values. --- # 1. _Is The First-Person Perspective Gendered?_ by Lynne Rudder Baker The first-person perspective is an essential property of persons. >A transgendered woman was born a biological male, but thinks of herself as a woman, and a transgendered man was born a biological female, but thinks of himself as a man. Gender identity is attitudes and feelings toward one's biological sex, along with associated behaviors. >I shall consider gender identity to be attitudes and feelings—even if confused or conflicted—toward one’s own biological sex, along with behaviors that manifest them, regardless of their causal antecedents (implicit social conditioning, explicit teaching, experience, deliberation, and so forth). ### What is a Robust First-Person Perspective? The first-person perspective is two-stage dispositional property: 1. Rudimentary stage: first-person perspective on environment, enables intentional action on nearby objects. Shared with many nonhuman mammals and prelinguistic persons (e.g., infants). 2. Robust stage: capacity to conceive of oneself in the first person, to think of oneself as oneself. Unique to language users. Robust first-person perspective requires embodiment and a language of some complexity. Usage of the opaque "I" wherein the speaker conceives as themselves from the first person, expressing a self-concept. >The language required for someone to have a robust first-person perspective must have room for a self-concept—often marked by a “*” as in “I*” (pronounced “I-star”). To have a robust first-person perspective, one must be able to entertain thoughts like “I wonder how I* am going to die.” In “I wonder how I* am going to die,” with the first occurrence of “I,” I refer to myself, and with the second occurrence of “I”—the “I*,” I attribute to myself a first-person reference. The first occurrence of “I” is transparent; any co-referring term can be substituted for it salva veritate; but the second occurrence of “I” is opaque. It is not transparent, but entails that the thinker or speaker conceives of herself or himself from the first person. The second occurrence of “I” expresses a self-concept. ### The Relation of the Robust First-Person Perspective to Gender Identity Having attitudes toward one's gender requires a robust first-person perspective. A robust first-person perspective leads to attitudes about one's body and therefore biological sex. Therefore, gender identity is dependent on having a body. ### Is the Robust First-Person Perspective Itself Gendered? When children learn language, they don’t just learn vocabulary—they absorb cultural norms and subtle gender biases. These biases and expectations become part of their worldview and can feed into how they conceive themselves as gendered individuals. So, _one acquires attitudes as one learns a language._ The robust first-person perspective is merely a capacity, it has no qualitative character and does not determine gender identity. It is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for one's gender identity. >How one manifests a self-concept depends on numerous environmental circumstances. We inherit all sorts of attitudes, feelings, and behavior from the language(s) we learn. Before a child reaches maturity, some of these attitudes, feelings, and behavior make up their gender schemas. >Does one’s first-personal concept of oneself entail one’s gender identity? Clearly, no. For one thing, some people do, and others do not, regard their gender as part of who they are. For some people, one’s identity is closely tied to gender (think of macho cowboys swaggering down the street, or coy girls flirting), but for others, one’s gender is just a contingent fact, like the color of one’s hair. ### How the Robust First-Perspective Underwrites Gender Freedom "Gender freedom" (the author's neologism) is the view that one has some control over the gender schema that one manifests. This enables people to reflect on and decide to change their beliefs, attitudes, and relationship to and about gender and gender identity. >Maturity, I believe, is to a certain extent a matter of coming to understand the worldview that one has unconsciously absorbed, especially the parts pertaining to gender (along with the parts concerning race and class), then evaluating the inherited worldview, and perhaps trying to change one’s outlook with more or less success. As we grow up, our attitudes relating to gender may change, and hence our gender identity changes. Reflective people may consciously try to change their attitudes and behaviors. The gender identity of transgender people does not match some or all of their biological and anatomical features. Intersexual persons are almost always taught to identify themselves* as either male or female. ### Can There Be Robust First-Person Perspectives without Gender? A world without gender schemas is theoretically possible, though likely impossible in practice given our history, psychology, and biology. Therefore, the robust first-person perspective is de facto gendered. However, the gendered nature of the robust first-person perspective does not necessitate gender inequality. Instead, it has the capacity to re-imagine and change how society organizes around gender. ### The Upshot In summary... - The robust first-person perspective does not, by itself, impose any gender roles or attitudes. - The robust first-person perspective confers imagining multiple life paths, empathizing with others, reflecting on inner states, even lying or play-acting. Crucially, it lets us envision ourselves and the world differently than they currently are, providing room for change. - De facto (in practice), most cultures maintain two dominant gender categories. De jure (in principle), there’s nothing in our first-person self-awareness that requires us to fit exactly two genders— we could have many genders or none at all. # 2. _Computing Machinery and Sexual Difference: The Sexed Presuppositions Underlying the Turing Test_ by Amy Kind Philosophical discussion of the Turing test has historically ignored that Turing's imitation game articulated a _gendered_ test—a man ("A") tries to imitate a woman ("B"), winning if he fools the questioner ("C") into identifying him as a woman. Kind calls this the "man/woman imitation game." The question motivating this chapter: >How has philosophical engagement with the issue of computer intelligence been influenced by the comparison to sexual differentiation—what I will call “the sex analogy”—on which it is based? Two competing interpretations of the Turing test: 1) ignores the man/woman imitation, and 2) attends to the man/woman distinction. However, even where the distinction is acknowledge, the sex analogy has been inadequately explored. The Turing test's modeling on the man/woman distinction has led us astray in our attempt to conduct an effective investigation and assessment of computer intelligence. ### The Standard Interpretation There is widespread dismissal of the man/woman distinction, even described as a "red herring." The standard interpretation is one of _species-differentiation_: >Which of the two beings with whom I am communicating is a member of the human species and which is not? ### A Minority Interpretation A small cadre of philosophers support the minority interpretation: Turing offers not a species-differentiation test but a _sex-differentiation test._ >Here the test for intelligence is an indirect one. The machine can be said to pass the test—and thus to count as intelligent—if it manages to fool the interrogator into identifying it as the woman as often as the man had managed to fool the interrogator into identifying him as the woman. The thought seems to be something like this: If a computer is as good at this kind of sophisticated imitation task as a man is, then we can infer intelligence on the part of the computer. That’s not to say that they take imitating a woman to be easier than imitating a human of unspecified sex. Rather, the difficulty lies in the fact that in the species-differentiation test the interrogator knows that one of the participants is the machine whereas in the sex-differentiation test, this thought does not even enter the interrogator’s mind. Surprisingly, proponents of the minority interpretation generally do not consider gender itself particularly significant. Rather, their main point is that the interrogator must remain ignorant about the presence of a machine participant. Furthermore, the gender distinction could be replaced by other distinctions such as nationality or political alignment. ### The Exegetical Question They key question is: >How has our understanding of that species-differentiation test been influenced by the fact that it was modeled on a sex-differentiation test? Regardless of Turing's intentions, using a sex analogy for the Turing test has subtly but significantly skewed our understanding of AI intelligence, having these three consequences: 1. Intelligence is seen as all-or-nothing. 2. Superficial markers of intelligence are prioritized. 3. The machine is seen as merely "pretending." ### Intelligence as All or Nothing Since sex historically has been seen as binary and fixed, the sex analogy leads intelligence to be understood similarly. - However, we often consider intelligence as a continuum, such as animal intelligence. - Intelligence is often considered variable too, such as when one develops from child to adult, or in unfortunate cases of accident or illness which lead to reduction of intelligence. Consider if the imitation game was regarding nationality. In that case, the two-contestant format seems somewhat unnatural. It'd make more sense to adopt a multi-contestant format where the interrogator attempts to narrow the field until a single contestant remains. Just as flight-capability shouldn't be linked to being indistinguishable from being a human, so too should intelligence not be human-centrically linked to being indistinguishable from a human. Ironically, Turing aimed to avoid human prejudice by avoiding the question, "Can a machine think?" However, he failed by modeling the test on the man/woman distinction. ### Superficial Markers of Intelligence The sex analogy encourages considering superficial criteria (like hair, as mentioned by Turing himself) when assessing intelligence. For instance, both the man impersonating a woman and a woman who was not stereotypically feminine would likely respond in a stereotypically feminine, and thus superficial, manner. Because Turing’s machine-intelligence test was modeled on the gender imitation game, intelligence becomes similarly constrained to superficial traits (e.g., speed and accuracy in responses) while deeper aspects of intelligence (e.g., genuine understanding, emotional nuance) become sidelined. Requiring a wide range of human-specific skills for intelligence is itself superficial and distracts from deeper, more universal qualities of intelligence. ### The Pretense of Intelligence The sex analogy inherently involves deception (a man pretending to be a woman); machines, by analogy, are framed as _pretending_ to be intelligent. The Chinese Room thought experiment is an example of this criticism. A system might pass the Turing test for speaking a language like Mandarin without having _understanding_ of Mandarin. # 9. _Sexual Ideology and Phenomenological Description: A Feminist Critique of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception_ by Judith Butler Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology challenges reductive, naturalistic accounts of sexuality, proposing that sexuality is deeply tied to existence and history, and thereby potentially benefitting feminism. However, in this essay, Butler critiques Merleau-Ponty for reinforcing patriarchal heterosexual norms by describing sexuality in a master/slave dynamic where men are seen as active and dominating and women are seen as passive and dominated. This framing betrays phenomenology by imposing abstract, rigid categories and incorrectly universalized roles, rather than describing genuine, diverse lived experiences. Additionally, men are implied to be the "neutral," universal subject while women are denied a meaningful and complex existence. In reality, sexuality involves mutual desire, complex negotiation, and shifting roles. Moreover, Merleau-Ponty normalizes male dominance and female passivity and objectification, legitimizing patriarchal power as natural and inevitable. Merleau-Ponty attempts to describe universal structures of sexuality and bodily experience, but this goal proves impossible because both are always historically and culturally shaped. Feminist critique must critically deconstruct Merleau-Ponty's patriarchal assumptions. Yet, the idea that the body is expressive, dramatic, and meaningful remains powerful and insightful. Feminists can appropriate Merleau-Ponty to explore how sexuality is produced through cultural struggle and individual creativity, rather than passively given by biology. >Merleau-Ponty’s original intention to describe the body as an expressive and dramatic medium, the specifically corporeal locus of existential themes, becomes beleaguered by a conception of “existence” which prioritizes hypothetical natural and metaphysical structures over concrete historical and cultural realities. A feminist critique of Merleau-Ponty necessarily involves a deconstruction of these obfuscating and reifying structures to their concrete cultural origins, and an analysis of the ways in which Merleau-Ponty’s text legitimates and universalizes structures of sexual oppression. On the other hand, a feminist appropriation of Merleau-Ponty is doubtless in order. If the body expresses and dramatizes existential themes, and these themes are gender-specific and fully historicized, then sexuality becomes a scene of cultural struggle, improvisation, and innovation, a domain in which the intimate and the political converge, and a dramatic opportunity for expression, analysis, and change. The terms of this inquiry, however, will not be found in the texts of Merleau-Ponty, but in the works of philosophical feminism to come. # 10. _Enactivism and Gender Performativity_ by Ashby Butnor and Matthew MacKenzie >In this chapter, we will extend the enactivist approach to examine the larger interpersonal and social contexts that frame embodied practices. >The goal of this chapter will be to bring feminist philosophy and the enactive approach into dialogue to highlight their explanatory and, perhaps, liberatory potentials. In the enactivist paradigm of embodied cognition... >the body plays a constitutive role in the integrated functioning of perception, affect, and other cognitive processes. Moreover, cognition is understood to emerge from the ongoing interaction of an organism with its physical and (in the case of humans and many animals) social environment. Human mindedness, then, is fundamentally embodied, embedded, and intersubjective. >Like many feminist philosophers, the enactive approach criticizes mind-body dualisms, the separation of reason and emotion, and atomistic individualism, and emphasizes the deeply embodied, value-laden, and situated nature of human experience. While enactivism recognizes cognition as embodied, social, and relational, it hasn’t fully explored _power_ as a central theme. Feminist theory is especially equipped to enrich and extend enactivism. By employing Judith Butler’s notion of performativity, we will demonstrate how gender, as one marker of social identity and difference, emerges through similar processes, feedback loops, and relational domains of significance and valence that are at the heart of enactive theory. >We argue that attention to the embodied, embedded, sense-making-and-maintaining interactions that partly constitute systems of oppression should be critically evaluated and assessed to understand their role in reproducing harm to both individuals and communities. ### The Enactive Approach In _The Embodied Mind_, Varela, Thompson, and Rosch argue that cognition should be understood as a form of embodied action. - Embodied: That cognition depends on 1) experiences from having a body with sensorimotor capacities, that 2) are embedded in a biopsychosocial context. - Action: That sensory and motor processes, perception and action, are fundamentally inseparable in lived cognition. At risk of oversimplification, there are five highly interconnected ideas at the core of enactivism: autonomy, sense-making, emergence, embodiment, experience. ###### Autonomy An organism is a self-organizing, self-maintaining system, continually creating and preserving its own boundaries through interaction with an environment. This process is relational and interdependent with respect to the environment and rejects a metaphysically isolated substance. e.g. A cell continuously rebuilds its membrane by metabolizing nutrients and expelling waste, maintaining a distinct internal environment within its external context. Feminist theories of relational autonomy align with enactivist autonomy, emphasizing social relationships, contexts of power, and interconnectedness. ###### Sense-making Cognition is fundamentally sense-making, which is threefold: 1) sensibility as openness to the environment via sensory awareness, 2) significance as positive or negative valence with respect to the environment relative to the organism's norms, and 3) the organism's orientation or actions in response to significance. Co-emergence: sense-making emerges from continuous interactions between an organism and its environment, shaping both the organism and the world. Experiential niche construction: an organism actively creates their reality through ongoing, interactive interaction with an environment. e.g. Luna the dog explores the park, feeling grass under her paws and smelling the scent of other dogs. She interprets certain stimuli as positive or negative, such as the behavior of other dogs or the type of terrain. Luna orients and responds adaptively based on these interactions. Over time Luna constructs a niche, burying a toy in a certain area or avoiding certain dogs. ###### Emergence Emergence refers to the way complex processes arise spontaneously from interactions of simpler parts, and how those complex systems then constrain and shape their individual parts in turn. Dynamic co-emergence: "In an autonomous system, the whole not only arises from the parts, but the parts also arise from the whole," mutually specifying each other. e.g. A cell has emergence. Local-to-global: individual molecules (proteins, lipids, nucleic acids) interact chemically. These interactions collectively form organized structures (cell membrane, organelles), giving rise to the cell's overall functions like metabolism and growth. Global-to-local: the cell membrane or nuclear environment selectively control which molecules can enter or leave, guiding local interactions. ###### Embodiment Embodiment means cognition isn't isolated to the brain, but fundamentally tied to the body's sensory and motor interactions with the environment. e.g. Learning to ride a bike is about physically experiencing balance, motion, and coordination and can't be learned purely intellectually. ###### Experience Experience is the subjective, first-person sense of what it's like for an organism to engage in adaptive interactions within its environment. It is fundamentally embodied, affective, and relational. e.g. Feeling anxious walking alone at night based on past experiences or social messaging isn't purely intellectual; it's a lived, embodied experience. ### The Social Dimension The enactive approach emphasizes that all cognition inherently involves evaluation—meaning is actively created and discovered simultaneously through our embodied interactions. **Participatory sense-making** is the coordinated, interactive process by which individual cognitive activities influence one another, creating social meanings and domains of understanding that individuals cannot access alone. >The social and cultural dimensions of the human lifeworld are the product of participatory sense-making, and this sense-making is itself shaped by sociocultural structures. Thus, the social meanings of gender, race, sexual orientation, class, and so on are also co-enacted in and through embodied, perceptual, affective, and cognitive processes. ### Gender Performance as Sense-Making Gender provides an example of how social meaning are enacted through and in human bodies. Gender is multivalent: having multiple layers of meaning and significance. It varies between historical, social, and personal contexts. Gender is a form of participatory sense-making: the interactive process by which individuals coordinate their behaviors, collectively generating shared meanings and understandings. >Gender performance can be understood as a multivalent form of participatory sense-making. Individuals interpret and perform within a “gendered script,” meaning certain actions become “sensible” or acceptable within cultural norms. While cultural scripts constrain gender expression, individuals retain active agency—making sense of and responding to a culturally defined yet flexible array of gendered possibilities. (Yes, this is self-consciously Butlerian.) We are not heteronomous systems (i.e. externally controlled, lacking autonomy), but systems that actively shape their identity in relation to, and constrained by, their environment, and also reciprocally reshape the environment too. >We are not, in enactivist terms, merely heteronomous systems, but rather relationally autonomous systems enacting our identity in precarious conditions. While the environment limits sensible options, our enactment of proscribed choices comes to effect—that is, produce, constitute, and define—the environment. ### Social Practices and Power # 15. _Which Bodies Have Minds? Feminism, Panpsychism, and the Attribution Question_ by Jennifer McWeeny [Useful ChatGPT summary and overview.](https://chatgpt.com/share/67e80a32-f89c-8002-8b88-84c9f6e5cfd3) This chapter argues that mental attribution (deciding which entities have minds) isn't just metaphysical, but also deeply social and political. Historically, feminist, decolonial, and race theorists show how marginalized groups (women, people of color, non-human animals, etc.) have been denied full mental attribution. Three key dimensions of attributing mentality: | **Component** | **Explanation** | **Examples of Oppression** | | ---------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------- | | **Ratio** | Who gets a mind? All bodies or only select bodies? <br><br>"Ratio" refers to the number or proportion of bodies that are attributed mind. An unequal ratio might attribute minds to only humans or certain animals. | Women portrayed as body-only, lacking full minds. | | **Comparison** | Are minds ranked hierarchically or equal in value?<br><br>"Comparison" refers to judging the relative quality or worth of different minds. For example, human minds might be considered more advanced than animal minds. | Colonized people viewed as “less rational.” | | **Constitution** | What is the mind made of and how does it function? Is the mind mechanistic (Newtonian, reducible to parts) or organically holistic (irreducible relational,, non-Newtonian).<br><br>For example, a watch can be broken into discrete, mechanistically working parts, while a flower can't be reduced to parts without losing something essential about it. | Workers’ minds treated as interchangeable “cogs.” | Two panpsychisms highlight these dimensions: | **Attribute** | **Russellian Panpsychism** | **Cavendishian Panpsychism** | | ---------------- | ----------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------- | | **Ratio** | Unequal—Only certain bodies have minds | Equal—Every body has a mind | | **Comparison** | Minds exist on a spectrum (more or less mental) | Minds differ in kind, equally valid | | **Constitution** | Mechanistic, atomistic, Newtonian | Organicist, holistic, irreducible |