Sexual Desire A Pragmatic Reconstruction of Scientific Explanation

Sexual Desire: A Pragmatic Reconstruction of Scientific Explanation Sharyn Clough Phronesis Lab Oregon State University in collaboration with Mark Tschaepe Prairie View A&M University AIDS Foundation Houston Based on a presentation given at ISSHPSSB July 5 -10 2015 University of Quebec at Montreal

Science and sexual desire Philosophers of science have not said much about the sciences of sexual desire. Perhaps because there is not much to be said about “sexual desire” as a discrete phenomenon out in the world that is ready-made for scientists to examine.

Science and sexual desire But many scientists certainly proceed as if they have something to say about it. Perhaps even A Billion Wicked things. © Leading to “the true differences between male and female desires” (Ogas and Gaddam 2011). Or the Science of Desire [as] The Search For the Gay Gene (Hamer 1993). Or the potential for flibanserin, the new drug for women diagnosed with low sexual desire (aka “women” “diagnosed” with “low” “sexual” “desire”). Coming soon to a pharmacy near you.

Science and sexual desire To be sure, philosophers of science have occasionally responded critically to these kinds of studies. On these occasions, research has usually focused on a host of frustratingly ubiquitous methodological problems. Such as misunderstandings/misapplications of the notion of heritability. Or problems with the methodological assumptions underwriting twin studies. Or the use of non-human animals as model organisms.

Science and sexual desire But typically our critical methodological focus has been on the sciences of human behavior more generally With concerns about the sciences of sexuality and desire used only as examples. And of these examples, most of our critical commentary has addressed sexuality solely in terms of “homosexuality” And is usually restricted to a focus on males.

Science and sexual desire There are three sustained criticisms of the sciences of (male) (homo) sexual desire in the philosophy of science literature: ● 1981 special issue of the Journal of Homosexuality, edited by Noretta Koertge, published as the book The Nature and Causes of Homosexuality: A Philosophic and Scientific Inquiry (1982) and reprinted as Philosophy and Homosexuality (1985); ● The Mismeasure of Desire: The Science, Theory, and Ethics of Sexual Orientation, Edward Stein (2001); ● Most recently Helen Longino’s Studying Human Behavior: How Scientists Investigate Aggression and Sexuality (2013).

Science and sexual desire Elisabeth Lloyd’s The Case of the Female Orgasm (2006) is a notable exception, of whom more shortly. In general though, we can and should do more, and better.

Science and sexual desire As we critically examine different scientific studies purporting to explain “sexual desire” We should (more often) back up a step or two to consider some of the pragmatic, contextual issues Such as those revealed by recent feminist studies of ignorance, testimony, and trust.

Science and sexual desire A good example of the consideration of pragmatic and contextual issues is Nancy Tuana’s essay, “Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistemology of Ignorance” (2004), published in Hypatia. As Tuana argues, ignorance, in this case ignorance of women’s sexual pleasure, is not “a simple lack” of knowledge. Rather “it is often constructed, maintained, and disseminated and is linked to issues of cognitive authority, doubt, trust, silencing, and uncertainty. ” Unfortunately her essay has received little uptake by the larger philosophy of science community.

Science and sexual desire In line with Tuana, the sorts of questions we should be asking include: What features of the various phenomena that we have come to associate with human sexual desire catch the attention of scientists? What kinds of interventions are imagined? What seems problematic and to whom? Who gets to diagnose the problem? What circumstances reliably produce problems of this kind? What and who makes a sexual phenomenon into a sexual problem? Why is some inquiry permitted, while other inquiry is ignored or forbidden?

Science and sexual desire The pragmatic reflection we’re endorsing is NOT meant to suggest that there are facets of human sexuality that are, by definition, inappropriate targets of scientific research. Indeed we need to confront and examine the popular resistance to the idea that features of our human sexual desires can only be addressed from one perspective or cannot be addressed at all.

Science and sexual desire Lloyd’s The Case of the Female Orgasm (2005) confronts exactly this kind of resistance. She doesn’t argue against the possibility of scientific research on women’s sexual desire. In fact she presents what she takes to be a wellconceived scientific study of adaptationist accounts of sexual desire Namely, women’s heterosexual desire for men with particular immunity profiles.

Science and sexual desire But when Lloyd argued that there was no good evidence that orgasm in women was a product of natural selection She received some ambivalent reviews, even from women, some from self-identified feminists Who expressed concern that evolutionary accounts were needed to legitimize female pleasure, or that arguments against evolutionary accounts might lead to a devaluing of orgasm in women.

Science and sexual desire This kind of ambivalence can be explained only if we inquire into a number of pragmatic considerations by asking questions like: Why are evolutionary accounts rather than, say, folk psychological accounts appealing to the importance of pleasure and desire, seen as more valuable? And to whom?

Science and sexual desire One way forward is for us more consistently to highlight what we all know very well: Scientific explanations are tools for solving particular problems. As philosophers of science, we need to make the particularities of the problems more explicit. We need more often to investigate which contingencies have led some sexual phenomena to be considered problematic while others are not so considered.

Science and sexual desire When (an element of) human sexual desire is taken up by scientists as an appropriate object of investigation The phenomenon as investigated has already been separated out as some thing. There is something about the phenomenon that has caught the attention of researchers in a particular context.

Science and sexual desire We philosophers can help make clear scientific investigation of sexual desire is a practice of historically-situated embodied persons with beliefs and (sexual) desires. This is part of accounting for the pragmatic considerations of scientific inquiry and explanation. Pragmatic considerations are, generally speaking, those specific factors within an explanatory situation that determine what elements are taken to be problematic and what elements are normalized.

Science and sexual desire Acknowledging pragmatic considerations entails recognizing that such considerations contribute to explanations that function as tools for describing, solving, or preventing problems that inspired inquiry.

Science and sexual desire For instance, Lloyd showed us that the realm of sexual desire is a field laden with scientific elements to be considered, examined and reexamined. For better, as in the case of selection for heterogenous immune profiles, Or worse, as in the case of the selection of orgasm in women.

Science and sexual desire But we should also emphasize that the very objects of scientific inquiry are laden with the historical, political, moral, and socialpsychological… … all the way down. Accounting for pragmatic considerations acknowledges this.

Science and sexual desire Some of the work on pragmatic considerations that we are referencing here is spelled out more carefully in Mark’s 2009 essay “Pragmatics & Pragmatic Considerations in Explanation, ” Contemporary Pragmatism.

Science and sexual desire As a point of contrast with this pragmatist approach Let’s return to Longino’s latest book Studying Human Behavior. Longino surveys a variety of explanatory approaches to the study of human desire Which quickly, and with little explanation, gets reduced to a discussion of male homosexuality.

Science and sexual desire She argues that we philosophers of science have no reason to prefer some explanations for behaviors to others explanations. She calls for pluralism across all approaches because we cannot know which approach is epistemically stronger. The explanatory strength of each approach can only be assessed against an assumption that the effects appealed to by and all other approaches can be held constant (p. 204) Which, of course, they cannot.

Science and sexual desire Now, if the explanatory strength of each approach can only be assessed against an assumption of constancy, then it is true that they are in some sense on a par. But surely there are other ways to judge the effectiveness of competing explanatory approaches.

Science and sexual desire Indeed in earlier sections of her book she discusses the (many) methodological weaknesses of heritability claims about male homosexuality based on twin studies (e. g. pp. 30 -35). Including the unsupported assumption in heritability studies that “environment” and “genetics” can be meaningfully separated. She also acknowledges the “contested” nature of how (homo) sexuality is operationalized in these kinds of studies (p. 206).

Science and sexual desire But her calls for pluralism seem in tension with the very weaknesses she iterates. And she also leaves unexamined the pragmatic, contextual issues on which we want to place more emphasis.

Science and sexual desire Increasingly, specific types of explanations, such as the biological, receive more financial, institutional, and rhetorical support than do others, such as the sociopolitical. Additionally, the biological realm seems to some scientists, lay people, and the NSF, to be (somehow) simpler and more tractable, than the socio-political realm. Explanations that do not easily admit of quantification, such as those that appeal to social/political factors, are often described as less “real” than those that appeal to biological metrics of various kinds.

Science and sexual desire This means that there is greater inductive risk associated with errors in biological explanations. Because there is more at stake, financially, rhetorically, indeed, politically. This is a point that Longino does not critically assess when she compares different explanatory approaches to sexual behavior. Advocating a pluralism across explanatory frameworks in the face of these kinds of differences seems unwise.

Science and sexual desire Of course quantified and measurable explanatory accounts can be helpful for explaining sexual desire in some contexts. But we need to encourage the relevant publics and players to reconfigure sufficiently what is meant by objects and processes demarcated as sexual In ways that account for the pragmatic considerations by which certain features appear salient to those who study them.

Science and sexual desire Salience is a political, historically-situated predicate. As philosophers, we can serve to remind each other and the scientists with whom we work that the features of sexual desire we’ve chosen to isolate are contingent upon the very processes of inquiry that isolate those features. There is no natural or value-free state of sexual desire to which investigators arrive as separate entities.

Science and sexual desire We also need to work to break down the reification that sometimes accompanies the identification of a successful scientific tool. Just because scientists have developed new shiny hammers doesn’t mean every sex problem is a nail.

Science and sexual desire Scientific explanations are tools for solving particular problems. As philosophers of science, we need to make the particularities of the problems more explicit. We need more often to investigate contingencies that lead to some sexual phenomena being problematized while others are not. There is a lot of work to do.

Science and sexual desire Forthcoming from the Tschaepe/Clough “Pragmatic Reconstruction And the Science of Sexual Desire” Project Neuroscientific Explanations of Monogamy Presumptions in Public Health: Concerning “The Homosexual Lifestyle” and Risk Personhood, Personal Responsibility, and Pedophilia Science and the Problem of Pornography

Acknowledgments Jesse Prinz, CUNY Grad Center Christian Matheis, Virginia Tech Sari van Anders, University of Michigan And the members of Phronesis Lab at OSU ● Stephanie Jenkins ● Jonathan Kaplan ● Bradley Boovy sharyn. clough@oregonstate. edu mdtschaepe@pvamu. edu