Empty Selves, Social Persons: A Buddhist Account of the Social Construction of Human Kinds

This dissertation is a case study in the practice of fusion philosophy first developed by Mark Siderits. The basic idea is that philosophers should make use of any theoretical tool that helps them think through a philosophical problem, regardless of the context out of which it arose. Here, I take up a line of reasoning from the work of Dharmakīrti (c. 7th century CE), arguably the most influential Indian Buddhist philosopher, and bring it to bear on contemporary questions in feminist analytic philosophy. I draw on Dharmakīrti’s theory of perceptual ascertainment (niścayajñāna) as formulated in the Pramāṇavārttika and its autocommentary, the Pramāṇavārttikasvavṛtti, as well as the conferralist account of social construction developed by Ásta in Categories We Live By (2018) to develop a novel account of social construction. I then use this Dharmakīrti-inspired account to theorize about the construction of gender categories and to identify a lacuna in Ásta’s account regarding the phenomenon of misgendering.

This dissertation unfolds in three parts. Because it has a wide range of potential audiences—social ontologists, Buddhologists, scholars of Indian philosophy, and scholars of philosophy of religions—Parts One and Two are dedicated to intelligibility. Part One familiarizes the reader with Dharmakīrti’s religious and philosophical contexts as well as his foundational metaphysical and epistemic commitments (Chapter One) and provides a streamlined interpretation of his notoriously difficult theory of perceptual ascertainment and the apoha-based theory of concept formation contained therein (Chapter Two). Part Two begins with a review of relevant literature in the field of feminist analytic metaphysics with a focus on foundational theories of and debates about social construction (Chapter Three). This literature review provides important context for my rehearsal of Ásta’s conferralist account of social construction (Chapter Four).

The constructive work of this dissertation is found in Part Three. I first use Ásta’s conferralist account to expand on Dharmakīrti’s theory of perceptual ascertainment to include persons as objects of perception (Chapter Five). Expanding his theory in this way demands some revisions to his account of error. I argue that, on this Dharmakīrti-inspired view, there is a form of perceptual error, which is distinct to cases in which the object of perception is a person, that undergirds all attempts at the categorization. What is interesting about this form of error is that contrary to other forms of perceptual error that disrupt our perceptions of both animate and inanimate objects, it often still facilitates successful practical action, the hallmark of nonerroneous cognition. It is also the case that, when persons are objects of perception, conceptual errors do not necessarily hinder practical activity. This is confusing because the Dharmakīrtian hallmark of erroneous cognition is the ability to achieve everyday object-oriented activity. I conclude by arguing that, to make sense of these cases where cognitive error does not lead to practical failure, there must be an alternative criterion for determining whether a cognition is erroneous.

Next, I use the Dharmakīrti-inspired account of social construction developed in Chapter Five to analyze the phenomenon of misgendering (Chapter Six). I argue that, when a person is the object of categorization, there emerges a new form of conceptual error that results in miscategorization. Whereas Dharmakīrti recognizes a form of conceptual error caused by one’s insufficient habituation to form certain concepts in certain situations, this new form of conceptual error is caused by warped habituation. It is warped, not insufficient, habituation that results in malicious instances of miscategorization.

This leads me to identify an apparent gap in Ásta’s conferralist account. She claims that her account is superior to other theories of social kind construction because it can explain the phenomena of misgendering. I argue that, although conferralism can potentially account for one type of misgendering, it cannot account for the type that worries feminist philosophers, i.e., that which is intended to do harm. I contend that her account is unable to do this because, unlike the Dharmakīrtian account, it leaves the epistemic relationship between people and their social properties under-theorized. I conclude by arguing that if the conferralist account is to offer a story of pernicious misgendering, it must include a theory of perception that explains how ideological habituation shapes the epistemic relationship between people and their social properties.