Beyond Essentialist Fallacies: Fine-Tuning Ideology Critique of appeals to Biological Sex-Differences

Hufendiek, Rebekka (2022). Beyond Essentialist Fallacies: Fine-Tuning Ideology Critique of appeals to Biological Sex-Differences. Journal of social philosophy, 53(4), pp. 494-511. Wiley 10.1111/josp.12389

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A recurring claim made by evolutionary psychologists is that their opponents neglect biological explanations assuch for ideological reasons. I argue in this paper that this is a self-immunizing strategy that avoids seriousengagement with existing critique by exploiting the long history of essentialist fallacies and anti-essentialistdebunking arguments. To argue for this claim, I reconstruct the general form of the essentialist fallacy as well asthe history of anti-essentialist debunking arguments and suggest that they play a central role in the persistence ofthe ideological dimension of the nature-nurture debate. Discussing recent work from evolutionary psychology onhow hormones influence female behavior, I show how self-immunizing strategies are used to avoid engagementwith existing critique, while reproducing sexist stereotypes at the same time.

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