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Conceptual analysis works something like this: philosophers who are interested in discerning the true essence of some concept C present candidate definitions to a tribunal of virtues. For one, it is virtuous for a definition of C to include all those things that intuitively instance C and exclude all of those things that intuitively don’t. Thus, the conceptual analyst may discriminate between candidate definitions by prodding their susceptibility to intuitive counterexamples, as Gettier does when he formulates his counterexamples to JTB analyses of knowledge. It is also virtuous for a definition of C to be simple. William Ramsey writes that, “[i]f an analysis yields a definition that is highly disjunctive, heavily qualified or involves a number of conditions, a common sentiment is that the philosopher hasn't gotten it right yet. … To borrow a technical phrase from Jerry Fodor, analyses of this complex sort are commonly regarded as ‘yucky'” (Ramsey 1992, p. 2). Equipped with to...

Thjs post is a series of notes I took while making my way through the philosophy of gender. Since writing it about 6 months ago I've done a lot more reading into epistemology and the philosophies of science and language, and there's a lot of revisions I'd like to make. In other words, I now think much of the content of this post is dubious but I'll keep it up for the time being as it might serve as a helpful resource for understanding the literature. The post is about the philosophy of language, the question "what is a woman?" and taxonomizing positions in th e philosophy of gender. Metasemantics and Methodologies 1.1 The dictionary . A natural starting place for answering questions like “what is a woman?” is the dictionary. But what can the dictionary actually tell us? Quine writes: The lexicographer is an empirical scientist, whose business is the recording of antecedent facts; and if he glosses 'bachelor' as 'unmarried man' it is because o...