Objectivist and essentialist ontologies of gender & love

Karey Harrison
Abstract
This chapter is part of an extended project exploring the centrality of metaphoric
reasoning for understanding 'erotic connectivity' and 'embodied cognition'. In this
chapter I interrogate the ontological commitments of both objectivism and
constructivism regarding the nature of persons and society, and the implications of
these commitments for concepts of gender and love. Whereas objectivist and
essentialist categorisation of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ impose strict binaries such that
each person must be either ‘male’ or ‘female’, ‘woman’ or ‘man’, and are used to
naturalise the privileged status of men over women, nominalist and constructivist
accounts of personal identity and social constructions occlude the erotic physicality
of our embodied experience of the world, erase and de-legitimate 'women' as a
category, along with the possibility of arguing for and organising resistance to
relations of oppression and exploitation experienced by women and other
subordinate groups such as those based on race, class, and sexual orientation.
The self-interested atomism and individualism of liberal political philosophy and
economic theory leaves no room for a conception of love as mutual caring, and
ignores the fact that human wellbeing depends on such interdependencies. When
faced with ambiguity in category membership – whether of physiology, of desire,
or of behaviour – objectivism and essentialism legitimate coercive enforcement of
category boundaries: by surgery to correct ‘deviations’ from ‘objective’ biological
categories; by suppression and stigmatisation of ‘deviant’ desires; and by social
and economic sanctions for ‘deviance’ from 'male' and 'female' role expectations.
I show that the 'concrete analogies' which structure ontological beliefs about what
objects, entities, relations and processes exist rests on gestalt pattern recognition,
and that this is open to experiential disruption of established categories and
expectations which create a space for resistance to relations of domination and
exploitation.

Key Words: Gender, love, ontology, objectivism, essentialism, constructivism,

categorisation, feminist theory, political theory, abortion.

*****

This chapter builds on post-positivist critiques of objectivist conceptions of

science1 and feminist arguments for situated and embodied scientific knowledge. 2
Drawing on research into human cognition3 I developed an account of erotic reason
that takes human embodiment as central to our understanding of reason,
truth and self.4 In this chapter, I apply the principles of metaphoric analysis
developed in my larger project to an analysis of the 'concrete analogies' that
4 Objectivist and essentialist ontologies
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structure the ontological beliefs about gender and love in both objectivist and
feminist discourses.
The principles of metaphoric analysis applied in this chapter, and the account of
embodied cognition it rests on, complements Barriteau's5 linking of love to
epistemology and ontology (this volume) with my development and application of
a theory of rationality and knowledge that 'moves from the concrete to the abstract'
and is derived from lived embodied experience.6 Like both Davis (this volume) and
Barriteau7, I am working to develop an epistemology and ontology that does not
obliterate difference, whilst being compatible with building allegiances and
communities of action against oppression and discrimination.
While many gender theorists discuss ontological claims in relation to gender
and sexual identity without providing a description of what they mean by
ontology,8 Jónasdóttir9 and Jones10 helpfully refer to Laudan's definition of
'ontology' as 'the types of fundamental entities which exist in the domain [of the
research tradition]'.11 While Jónasdóttir and Jones are referring to ontology in the
context of raising 'philosophical premises about the nature of human existence', 12
Laudan's definition has more in common with the way 'ontology' is discussed in
information systems (IS) research13 than with how it is used by philosophers.14
Whereas philosophic inquiry about ontology asks 'what really exists', feminist
research, like IS research, is concerned with 'perceived' 15 or 'experienced'16 reality,
rather than making claims about ontological realism.
I show that insights about human perception, cognition and language drawn
from psychology that are useful for IS research in developing strategies for
comparing competing ontologies17 can be just as useful for feminist research.
Cognitive linguistics treats semantic categories and ontologies as fundamentally
metaphoric in character.18 When we 'pick out parts of our experience and treat
them as [if they were] discrete entities or substances of a uniform kind' we have
created an 'ontological metaphor'. 19 An analysis of the kinds of ontological
metaphors implicit in different approaches to a field can expose both shared
ontologies that cut across apparent differences in theory and method, as well as
unrecognised incommensurable ontologies.
I demonstrate in this chapter that evidence about human reasoning from
psychology and cognitive linguistics supports Moi's contention that we don't need a
distinction between sex and gender to avoid the essentialist and objectivist
accounts of women that naturalise their subordination to men. 20 This means we can
accept Butler's rejection of 'ontologically necessitated' conceptions of gender and
'the very notions of an essential sex' without accepting her counter proposal of a
concept of sex and gender reduced to 'appearance' and 'performance'. 21 Fraser
argues that the strong version of 'relentless nominalism and antiessentialism [of the
sort promoted by Butler] would evacuate and delegitimate the category of
“women,” thereby undermining the basis of female solidarity and of feminist
movements’.22 Barriteau provides evidence that this is not just a hypothetical
 Karey Harrison 5
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possibility, but that discourses of gender are in fact erasing 'women as subjects' in
Caribbean feminist scholarship,23 and that the shift to 'gender' discourses has
undermined feminist research oriented towards 'revealing unequal relations of
power'.24
Barriteau implicates 'the postmodern view that “reality does not exist”' with this
erasure of 'woman' and the feminist focus on problems of oppression. 25 Butler's
privileging of linguistic metaphors places her squarely within the 'linguistic turn'
taken by postmodernism.26 Fraser asks, 'If we are no more than the sum total of
gendered performances, how can we possibly rewrite the script?'27 And where are
the sources of resistance to such apparently totalising culturally constructed
meaning systems as that proposed by Butler?
Postmodernists like Butler rely on a post-structuralist interpretation of Saussure
for their account of language.28 Like Saussure, they reject the objectivist belief that
our mental categories simply match the kinds of things there are in ‘reality' – that
our categories and concepts 'carve nature at its joints,' 29 rather than reflecting
theoretical and cultural agreements which are 'codified in the patterns of our
language'.30 Butler31 relies on Saussure's32 argument that the meaning, or 'value', of
an individual sign is 'arbitrary' in the sense it depends purely on its relationship to
other signs in the same system and is not fixed to any reality outside that system;
that individuals cannot fix 'a single value' in the category system; and that every
time an individual uses a sign they unavoidably renew its value within the sign
system.
While Saussure's theory of language is influential amongst post-modernists, it
has no standing in linguistics. Incorporation of the insights of current research in
linguistics provides an alternative to essentialism that avoids the anti-realist
conclusions of post-modern feminism. Cognitive Linguistics argues that rather than
being arbitrary,33 both concepts and grammar are embedded in our general
perceptual and cognitive capacity for pattern recognition. 34 Linguistic categories
are organised in terms of basic concrete sensori-motor images which have gestalt
structures, and more abstract schemas derived from these images. 35 Sensori-motor
images 'map' complex embodied sensori-cum-motor enactments or 'performances'.
The structure of neural connections in our brain can be understood as a system of
topological maps of the sensory and motor nervous pathways in our body. 36 Such
images and schemas are simultaneously physical and social. They are structured by
our embodied experience of the physical world, experiences which are themselves
structured by the social practices and expectations of the specific social world we
are born into or move to. This fundamentally interactional account of experience
provides us with an account of motivated but under-determined systems of
knowledge representation.37 What we can do with our bodies in the world depends
not just on social and cultural expectations and ontologies, but also on the nature of
our bodies and the way the external world works independently of our desires or
expectations.
6 Objectivist and essentialist ontologies
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Figure 1: Gregorian calendar

Figure 2: Babylonian calendar

Lakoff38 shows that while the meaning of signs depends on their relation to
other signs within the system, this relationship is not arbitrary, but based on
ontological, structural, and orientational metaphors and networks of similarity
between signs. Langacker explores the network of similarity relations between the
concept of 'tree' as an example of a system of concepts connected by similarity
relations between signifieds.39 The calendars in Figures 1 and 2 show how
concepts like 'month', and 'year' depend for their meaning on the relations
between concepts within the system. However, neither system is arbitrary. Both
calendars are structured by the astronomical facts, but lunar facts are given greater
 Karey Harrison 7
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priority in the Babylonian calendar, while solar facts relating to equinoxes and
seasons have priority in the Gregorian calendar most of us are more familiar with.
Lakoff argues that the belief in objective categorisation can itself be shown to
be a product of our embodied experience of the world, rather than being an
objective reflection of reality as it claims for itself. Lakoff argues that the bodily
basis of this CONTAINER schema is not only our experience putting things into
jars and boxes, but also that we experience our own body as a container. 40 Liberal
political theory,41 neo-classical economics,42 and modernist ethics43 reflect a
mapping of the container and mechanical causation schemas onto beliefs about the
nature of society and human beings. The view that 'rationality' and 'autonomy'
underpin human action and belief44 is structured roughly by the following complex
metaphor:45

Figure 3 – Mechanistic & atomistic model of society & self



Individuals are (seen as) free floating atoms.
Individuals (like atoms) are independent from each other


(harm to A is not harm to B).


Individual work (motion) creates property.
Self-interest is the mechanistic force governing interactions
(impact) between individuals. Society is the sum of
individual proprietors exchanging self-generated property.

This image structures objectivist ways of thinking, talking, and reasoning about
'selves'. This metaphoric ontology denies the existence of any intrinsic
connections between people, such as the networks of interrelationships based on
affection, mutual obligation, and interdependency. This atomistic conception of
self creates a dualistic opposition between 'altruism' and 'self-interest', and makes
love inexplicable.
Figure 4 shows how this model of self conceptually separates one person’s
well-being from the well-being of another, so that whatever hurts or pleasures B
suffers are felt only by B. Because A’s well-being is conceived of as being
8 Objectivist and essentialist ontologies
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independent of B’s, what happens to B does not directly affect A. When hyper-
separate self A does something to benefit B, it is by definition at A’s expense, and
hence is 'altruistic'. Benefiting self and benefiting another person are created as
opposites by this atomistic conception of self. Mechanistic atomism has an
ontological commitment to treating interests and desires as the same kind of thing
as the physical properties of mechanical objects - that is, such properties are fixed
and have an objective existence independent of the properties (interests) of other
objects (persons).
This conception of self, however, is grossly inadequate for accounting for the
dynamics of 'love'. When we love someone, we care about their well-being. If
something good happens to someone we care about we feel happy because they are
happy, if something bad, we feel sad because they are sad. Our well-being in part
depends on the loved one’s well-being.

Figure 4 – Competitive individualism

Figure 5 shows how A’s well-being increases when B’s well-being does. When
we do or risk something for someone we love, our loss is simultaneously our gain,
because the happiness we give them also gives us happiness. Love creates an
intrinsic connection between self and others, thus turning the opposition between
'altruism' and 'self-interest' into a false dichotomy. When we care about others we
do not simply act so as to maximise our pleasure and our accumulation of property,
but nor are we denying or acting against our own desires or feelings. Harrison et
al.46 extended application of this analysis in the context of medical ethics and an
ethics of care demonstrates the relevance of this approach to Navneet's analysis of
love and moral philosophy (in this volume).

Figure 5 – Love & happiness

 Karey Harrison 9
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Debates over abortion are also structured by the atomistic conception of self
shown in Figure 6. The positions of both ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’ proponents
only make sense from a commitment to this objectivist ontological perspective.
The arguments of 'pro-life' proponents that the life of the foetus should be
protected no matter what, assumes that its welfare is independent of the welfare of
anyone else. 'Pro-choice' proponents argue in terms of 'individual freedom of
choice' as if her choice is independent of everyone else. Figure 6 shows how in
fact, actions chosen by a pregnant woman C in pursuit of her self-interest can
unavoidably harm the foetus D, while protecting the interests of the foetus can be
unavoidably at the expense of the interests and welfare of the woman. The problem
is that woman and foetus are interdependent, not independent, and actions taken on
behalf of one unavoidably impact the other. Both ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’
positions on abortion derive from a flawed objectivist ontology.
The reality is that when a woman is pregnant with an unwanted child, all
choices lead to harm: keeping the baby harms the woman; while having an
abortion harms the foetus. More often than not, whatever the choice the woman
makes, she will experience grief, while the birth of a child who is not wanted –
whether they are kept or adopted – may also lead to grief and unhappiness.

Figure 6 – Pregnant woman & foetus

Agnes Heller describes situations like this, in which whatever is chosen will
cause harm, as unavoidably tragic because the choice is between 'bads', not a
choice between good and bad or right and wrong. 47 She points out that when a
choice is between conflicting bads, no one else can recommend to the person
facing the choice, which of the 'bads' they should choose. Only the person who has
to live with the consequences can decide what they can live with. No one else can
tell a pregnant woman in this situation what to do, not because she has the 'right to
choose', but because no one else can tell her which grief she can live with in a
situation in which her choices unavoidably impact another. An alternative ontology
– of interdependence, interconnectedness, and non-objective categories – supports
10 Objectivist and essentialist ontologies
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an analysis of abortion in terms of ‘tragic choices’ rather than ‘rights’ and
‘wrongs’.
Kuhn's analysis of scientific theory change and paradigm shift shows us how
we can escape Butler's and Fraser's constructivist impasse. While we try to impose
our category systems on the world of experience, that world is messy and
uncooperative, confronting us with perceptions and experiences that do not fit our
expectations. Kuhn demonstrated that analogy, metaphor, and models are critical to
understanding human cognition and categorisation; and that the transformation of
our perception, categorisation, and understanding depends on our action – doing
things in the world, not just passive observation. 48 Kuhn's concept of paradigm and
his description of paradigm change shows that we are not locked into the ontology
and categories reflected in 'the codified pattern of our language', but that in the
right circumstances, properties of the material world that conflict with our category
system can disrupt cultural agreements to 'cut nature up, organize it into concepts,
and ascribe significance as we do'.49
Whilst the persistence of a paradigm – in the face of data that do not fit – is
contrary to positivist and falsificationist conceptions of science, the eventual
collapse of a paradigm – in the face of mounting problems fitting the data, and an
alternative that can comfortably accommodate the problematic data – it is also
incompatible with constructivist and subjectivist epistemologies.
The brief display of a set of playing cards to subjects, some of which were
anomalous, as shown in Figure 7, is an example of a simple experiment that Kuhn
referred to in order to demonstrate the relevant features of our perceptual
processes. Subjects initially saw what they expected to see: 6 red hearts or 4 black
spades, but as the cards from the pack were re-played, subject would display first
confusion, then correct description, modifying their ontology. 50

Figure 7 – Anomalous cards

Conventional categories can be reconfigured to accommodate disruptive

perceptions and experience.
 Karey Harrison 11
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The example illustrated in Figure 851 shows that species membership – defined
in terms of members of a species mating with one another- , is not an objective
category because 'same species as' is not transitive, as objectivist categorisation
would require.52 In the case of Ensatina salamanders in Figure 8, A can mate with
B, B with C, and C with D. Similarly, A can mate with E, E with F, and F with G.
But where the two ends of the ring meet (G and D) they do not normally
interbreed. So, A is the same species as D, and A is the same species as G, but D is
not the same species as G.53 However, the non-transitivity is not an arbitrary social
construction, but reflects actual behaviour of members of this 'species'.
The salamander example in Figure 8 generates non-transitive species categories
as a result of the biological processes of branching evolutionary pathways.

Figure 8 – Ensatina salamanders – Photo: Tom Devitt

Similarly, the fact that non-transitive sex categories emerge from

developmental pathways that display multiple branch points – shown in Figure 9,
means 'sex' is a non-objective category without our sex categories being arbitrary
as constructivists argue.
Observable patterns of biological differentiation motivate our sex categories,
just as they do most of our category systems. As Figure 9 shows, the physical
characteristics we develop are not determined by our genetic make-up alone. How
we develop depends on physical environmental influences, as well as on cultural
12 Objectivist and essentialist ontologies
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factors that constrain our activities, and economic factors that determine e.g. who
ends up living near industrial sources of environmental contaminants that have
hormone like properties.
Because there are multiple causal pathways, operating at different points of
foetal development, sex is obviously not 'objectively' binary. However, in terms of
frequency of observable secondary sexual characteristics being similar enough to
fit within the 'male'/'female' prototypes in the order of 98% of the time 54 and the
importance of reproduction for kinship, patrilineal inheritance, and property
relations, it is not surprising that many societies impose a binary structure on a
physically diverse appearance – to the extent of killing or mutilating 'deviant'
infants. The fact that a number of societies recognise three sex categories shows
that this is not determined by biology,55 even though both binary and triune
systems are motivated by it.

Figure 9 – Physical sexual development

Many of the chapters in this collection are empirical studies documenting the
many and varied disciplinary techniques constraining individuals to conform as
much as they are able or are willing to culturally restricted sex and gender
 Karey Harrison 13
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expectations. The development of scientific techniques and technology that make
previously imperceptible differences visible, such as X-rays and ultra-sounds to
display internal organs, gene typing, hormone measurement, brain scanning, etc.,
intrude into and disrupt attempts to maintain category systems such as binary or
even triune sex coding. The intrusion of a discordant physical reality, whether it be
nontypical physical properties unsettling binary sex categorisation; or
nonconforming desires, capabilities, and talents disrupting cooperation with binary
gender classifications, provide resisting individuals with tools to use in gender and
sex contestation.
Instead of the post-modern emphasis upon logical relations of identity
(repetition) and difference derived from Saussure56, the metaphoric analysis above
emphasises pattern recognition and logical relations of similarity.57 Both
positivism and semiotics emphasise boundaries and exclusion/inclusion, whereas
metaphoric analysis emphasises connections and relations. Categorisation based on
similarity, rather than identity, allows us to avoid 'the exclusionary logic of the
habitual social polarities black/white, straight/gay, and man/woman',58 and
provides a conceptual basis for forming political alliances that reach across the
differences between us.59

Notes
1
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; 2nd Edition (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1962); Imre Lakatos, ‘Falsification and the
Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes’, in Criticism and the Growth of
Knowledge, eds. Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1970), 91-196; Mary B. Hesse, Revolutions and Reconstructions
in the Philosophy of Science (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980); Margaret
Masterman, ‘The Nature of Paradigm’, in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge,
eds. Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1970), 59-89; Ian Hacking, Representing and Intervening: Introductory Topics in
the Philosophy of Natural Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1983); Nancy Cartwright, How the Laws of Physics Lie (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1983); Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science,
Hermeneutics and Praxis (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983); Dudley Shapere,
Reason and the Search for Knowledge: Investigations in the Philosophy of science
(Boston and London: Dordrecht, 1984); Rom Harré, Modeling: Gateway to the
Unknown: A Work, ed. Daniel Rothbart (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2004).
2
Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reaso: ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in Western
Philosophy (London: Methuen, 1984); Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender
and Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); Susan Bordo, The Flight
to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture (Albany: SUNY Press, 1987);
14 Objectivist and essentialist ontologies
__________________________________________________________________

Donna Haraway, ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and

the Privilege of Partial Perspective’, Feminist Studies 14, No. 3 (October 1988):
575-599; Sharon Traweek, Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy
Physicists (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988); Helen E. Longino, Can
There Be a Feminist Science? (Wellesley: Wellesley College, Center for Research
on Women, 1986); Sandra Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking
from Women’s Lives (Ithaca: Cornell Press, 1991); Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile
Bodies (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1994).
3
Charles J. Fillmore, ‘Frame Semantics and the Nature of Language’, Annuls of
the New York Academy of Sciences 280, No. 1 (October, 1976): 20-32; George
Lakoff, ‘The Metaphorical Structure of the Human Conceptual System’, Cognitive
Science 4 (1980): 195-208; Peter Mühlhäusler, ‘Towards an Explanatory Theory of
Metaphor’, in The Ubiquity of Metaphor: Metaphor in Lanugage and Thought, eds.
Wolf Paprotté and René Dirven (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1985), 57-84;
Christopher Cherniak, Minimal Rationality (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986); Mark
Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and
Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); George Lakoff, Women,
Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1987); Ronald W. Langacker, Foundations of
Cognitive Grammar: Theoretical Prerequisites, Vol. 1 (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1987); Andrew Ortony, Metaphor and Thought (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993); Rom Harré and Grant Gillett, The Discursive
Mind (Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 1994).
4
Karey Harrison, ‘Eros and Rationality: From an Algorithmic to an Erotic
Conception of Reason’ (Philosophy Phd thesis, Latrobe University, 1992),
http://www.academia.edu/attachments/9299774/download_file. .
5
Violet Eudine Barriteau, ‘Disruptions and Dangers: Destabilizing Caribbean
Discourses on Gender, Love and Power’, in Love and Power: Caribbean
Discourses on Gender, ed. Violet Eudine Barriteau (Kingston, Jamaica: University
of the West Indies Press, 2012), Kindle.
6
A play/reversal of her wording in Violet Eudine Barriteau, ‘The Relevance of
Black Feminist Scholarship: A Caribbean Prespective’, Feminist Africa 7 (2007),
http://agi.ac.za/sites/agi.ac.za/files/fa_7__feature_article1.pdf, 17.
7
Dawn Rae Davis, ‘Love and the Feminist Subject: Decolonial Logics of Not
Knowing’, 2nd Global Conference: Gender and Love, Oxford, United Kingdom,
2012.
8
Barriteau, ‘The Relevance of Black Feminist Scholarship: A Caribbean
Prespective’, 14; Violet Eudine Barriteau, ‘Issues and Challenges of Caribbean
Feminisms’, Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity 17, No. 58 (2003):
38.
 Karey Harrison 15
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9
Judith Butler, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in
Phenomenology and Feminist Theory’, Theatre Journal 40, No. 4 (December,
1988): 528; Nancy Fraser, Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the
‘Postsocialist’ Condition (New York: Routledge, 1997), 214; Stephen K. White,
Sustaining Affirmation: The Strengths of Weak Ontology in Political Theory.
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 76; Sara Salih, Judith Butler (New
York: Routledge, 2002), 142; Terry Lovell, (Mis)recognition, Social Inequality
and Social Justice (London: Routledge, 2007), 4; Gabriel Rockhill, Alfredo
Gómez-Muller and Seyla Benhabib, Politics of Culture and the Spirit of Critique:
Dialogues (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 86.
10
Anna G. Jónasdóttir and Kathleen B. Jones, ‘The Political Interests of Gender
Revisited: Reconstructing Feminist Theory and Political Research’, in The
Political Interests of Gender Revisited: Redoing Theory and Research with a
Feminist Face, eds. Anna G. Jónasdóttir and Kathleen B. Jones (New York: United
Nations University Press, 2009), 3.
http://i.unu.edu/media/publication/000/002/330/political_interest_of_gender_revisi
ted_web.pdf.
11
Larry Laudan, Progress and Its Problems: Towards a Theory of Scientific
Growth (Cambridge: University of California Press, 1978), 79.
12
Jónasdóttir and Jones, ‘The Political Interests of Gender Revisited:
Reconstructing Feminist Theory and Political Research’, 3
13
Thomas R. Gruber, A Translation Approach to Portable Ontology Specifications
(Knowledge Systems Laboratory, September 1992),
http://tomgruber.org/writing/ontolingua-kaj-1993.pdf, 2.
14
David John Chalmers, David Manley and Ryan Wasserman, eds.,
Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2009).
15
Joerg Evermann, ‘Towards a Cognitive Foundation for Knowledge
Representation’, Information Systems Journal 15, No. 2 (2005): 149.
16
Barriteau, ‘The Relevance of Black Feminist Scholarship: a Caribbean
Prespective’, 17.
17
Evermann, ‘Towards a Cognitive Foundation for Knowledge Representation’,
150.
18
Mühlhäusler, ‘Towards an Explanatory Theory of Metaphor’ argues that whereas
literary theories of metaphor treat literal meanings as primary and metaphoric uses
of language as secondary, his research in cognitive and developmental linguistics
shows that metaphor is primary and that literal meanings are secondary cultural
creations.
19
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1980), 25. Ontological metaphors are not to be confused with
16 Objectivist and essentialist ontologies
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‘literary metaphors’. Their account of ontological metaphors shows how we

constitute the ‘literal’ through our categorization practices.
20
Toril Moi, ‘What Is a Woman? Sex, Gender and the Body in Feminist Theory’,
in What Is a Woman? And Other Essays, by Toril Moi (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999), 6–40.
21
Butler, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution’, 527–528.
22
Fraser, Justice Interruptus, 213.
23
Barriteau, ‘Theorizing the Shift from “Woman” to “Gender” in Caribbean
Feminist Discourse: The Power Relations of Creating Knowledge’, in Confronting
Power, Theorizing Gender: Interdisciplinary Perspectives in the Caribbean, ed.
Violet Eudine Barriteau (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2003), 36.
24
Barriteau, ‘Issues and Challenges of Caribbean Feminisms’, 40.
25
Barriteau, ‘The Relevance of Black Feminist Scholarship: a Caribbean
Prespective’, 16.
26
Fraser, Justice Interruptus, 214–221.
27
Ibid., 214, emphasis mine.
28
Fraser, Justice Interruptus, 215; Salih, Judith Butler, 35–36.
29
Plato, ‘Phaedrus’, para. 265d–266a.
30
Whorf 1956, cited in Parker, ‘The Myth of the Heterosexual: Anthropology and
Sexuality for Classicists’, Arethusa 34, No. 3 (Fall, 2001): 320.
31
Salih, Judith Butler, 31.
32
Saussure, Course In General Linguistics, eds. Charles Bally, Albert Sechehaye
and Albert Riedlinger, trans. Wade Baskin. 1st Edition (Philosophical Library,
1959), 109–116.
http://ia700304.us.archive.org/23/items/courseingenerall00saus/courseingenerall00
saus.pdf.
33
As Saussure, Course In General Linguistics and; Chomsky, Aspects of the
Theory of Syntax (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1965) claim.
34
Langacker, Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, 1:13.
35
Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the
Mind, 5–154.
36
Patricia Smith Churchland, Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the
Mind-Brain (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988), 403-479.
37
Kathleen Fahy and Karey Harrison, ‘Constructivist Research: Methodology and
Practice’, in Methods of Research in Sport Sciences: Quantitative and Qualitative
Approaches, eds. Gershon Tenenbaum and Marcy P. Driscoll (Oxford: Meyer &
Meyer Verlag, 2005), 660-701; Karey Harrison, and Kathleen Fahy, ‘Postmodern
and Feminist Qualitative Research Methodology, Methods and Practice’, in
Methods of Research in Sport Sciences: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches,
eds. Gershon Tenenbaum and Marcy P. Driscoll (Oxford: Meyer & Meyer Verlag,
 Karey Harrison 17
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2005), 702-740, http://tinyurl.com/karey-metaphor-reason.

38
Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the
Mind.
39
Langacker, Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, 1:374–386.
40
Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, p.271.
41
Karey Harrison, Representative Vs. Indirect Democracy: Building and
Maintaining Participatory Democracy for Large Organisations (Queensland and
Australian Greens: Report, 2003), http://tinyurl.com/karey-democracy-models;
Karey Harrison and Drew Hutton, ‘Rebuilding the Ship: a New Model of
Democracy in Emergence’, in Ecopolitics XVI: Transforming Environmental
Governance for the 21st Century, edited by Cassandra Star. (Brisbane, Australia:
Ecopolitics Association of Australasia/Centre for Governance and Public Policy,
2005),
http://eprints.usq.edu.au/841/1/Harrison_Hutton_RebuildingTheShipKHDH.pdf.
42
Karey Harrison, ‘Ontological Commitments of Ethics and Economics’
Economics in Society: The Ethical Dimension, 2012,
http://weaethicsconference.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/final-
kh_economic_ethics_weadec2011.pdf.
43
Kathleen Fahy, Faye Thompson and Karey Harrison. ‘Do We Need a Different
Ethic for the Midwifery Partnership?’, in 9th Annual International Critical and
Feminist Perspectives in Nursing Conference (Adelaide, South Australia: Flinders
University, 1998),
http://www.academia.edu/attachments/9324026/download_file
44
Jean Bethke Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and
Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 120.
45
Harrison, ‘Categories as Containers: Classification and the Type-hierarchy
Explanation of Models’.
46
Karey Harrison, Kathleen Fahy and Faye Thompson, Case Studies in Midwifery
Ethics: Discourses in Knowledge and Power (Flinders University, Adelaide, South
Australia, 1998).
47
Heller, Radical Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).
48
Laudan, Progress and Its Problems, 73-76, ignores this central element in
Kuhn’s account of paradigm shift in his Structure of scientific revolutions.
49
Whorf 1956, cited in Parker, ‘The Myth of the Heterosexual: Anthropology and
Sexuality for Classicists’, 320.
50
Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 63.
Tom Devitt, ‘Ensatina’, in Highlights from Understanding Evolution, by Jennifer
51

Skene (University of California Museum of Paleontology), 15 March 2010,

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/blog/archives/tag/understanding-evolution.
18 Objectivist and essentialist ontologies
__________________________________________________________________

Holtz, ‘GEOL 331 Principles of Paleontology Fall Semester 2008 Notes’ says
52

‘we want to be able to define species with precision when, in nature, their
boundaries are fuzzy, indistinct, and best described probabilistically’. Thomas
Holtz, ‘GEOL 331 Principles of Paleontology Fall Semester 2008 Notes’
(University of Maryland, College Park, 2008),
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/G331/lectures/331speci.html.
See David Wake, ‘Incipient Species Formation in Salamanders of the
53

Ensatina Complex’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the

United States of America (PNAS) 94, No. 15 (22 July, 1997): 7761-767.
54
Although not definitive Brain, ‘Today’s Battles’ this guesstimate provides an
order of magnitude.
55
Parker, ‘The Myth of the Heterosexual: Anthropology and Sexuality for
Classicists’, 328.
56
Saussure, Course In General Linguistics, 122.
57
Renford Bambrough, ‘Universals and Family Resemblance’, in Wittgenstein:
The Philosophical Investigations, ed. George Pitcher (New York: Anchor Books,
1966).
58
Lester C. Olson, ‘The Personal, the Political, and Others: Audre Lorde
Denouncing “The Second Sex Conference”’, Philosophy & Rhetoric 33, No. 3
(July 2000): 264 citing Abou-Rihan, 257.
59
Patricia Hill Collins, ‘Black Feminist Thought in the Matrix of Domination’, in
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of
Empowerment (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990), 221-238,
http://media.pfeiffer.edu/lridener/courses/BLKFEM.HTML.

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Philosophical Investigations, edited by George Pitcher. New York: Anchor Books,
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Commonwealth Caribbean’. In Confronting Power, Theorizing Gender:
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Kingston: University of West Indies Press, 2003.
 Karey Harrison 19
__________________________________________________________________

———. ‘Disruptions and Dangers: Destabilizing Caribbean Discourses on Gender,

Love and Power’. In Love and Power: Caribbean Discourses on Gender, edited by
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——— . ‘Issues and Challenges of Caribbean Feminisms’. Agenda: Empowering

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———. ‘The Relevance of Black Feminist Scholarship: a Caribbean Prespective’.

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———. ‘Theorizing the Shift from “Woman” to “Gender” in Caribbean Feminist

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Violet Eudine Barriteau, 27–44. University of the West Indies Press, 2003.

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content/uploads/2012/07/davisrlpaper.pdf

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Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981.

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Representation’. Information Systems Journal 15, no. 2 (2005): 147–178.

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http://www.academia.edu/attachments/9324026/download_file.

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 Karey Harrison 21
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———. ‘Categories as Containers: Classification and the Type-hierarchy

Explanation of Models’. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, USA, 2002.
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———. Representative Vs. Indirect Democracy: Building and Maintaining

Participatory Democracy for Large Organisations. Queensland & Australian
Greens, 2003. http://tinyurl.com/karey-democracy-models.
22 Objectivist and essentialist ontologies
__________________________________________________________________

‘———. ‘Ontological Commitments of Ethics and Economics’. In Economics in

Society: The Ethical Dimension, 2012.
http://weaethicsconference.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/final-
kh_economic_ethics_weadec2011.pdf.

Harrison, Karey, and Kathleen Fahy. ‘Postmodern and Feminist Qualitative

Research Methodology, Methods and Practice’. In Methods of Research in Sport
Sciences: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches, edited by Gershon Tenenbaum
and Marcy P. Driscoll, 702–740. Meyer & Meyer Verlag, 2005.
http://tinyurl.com/karey-metaphor-reason.

Harrison, Karey, Kathleen Fahy, and Faye Thompson. ‘Case Studies in Midwifery
Ethics: Discourses in Knowledge & Power’. Flinders University, Adelaide, South
Australia, 1998.

Harrison, Karey, and Drew Hutton. ‘Rebuilding the Ship: a New Model of
Democracy in Emergence’. Brisbane, Australia, 2005.
http://eprints.usq.edu.au/841/1/Harrison_Hutton_RebuildingTheShipKHDH.pdf.

Heller, Agnes. Radical Philosophy. Blackwell Pub, 1986.

Hesse, Mary B. Revolutions and Reconstructions in the Philosophy of Science.

Harvester Press, 1980.

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Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge,Consciousness, and the Politics of
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Johnson, Mark. The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination,
and Reason. University of Chicago Press, 1987.
 Karey Harrison 23
__________________________________________________________________

Jónasdóttir, Anna G., and Kathleen B. Jones. ‘The Political Interests of Gender
Revisited: Reconstructing Feminist Theory and Political Research’. In The
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and the Spirit of Critique: Dialogues. Columbia University Press, 2011.

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Albert Sechehaye, and Albert Riedlinger. Translated by Wade Baskin. 1st ed.
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saus.pdf.

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Harvard University Press, 1988.
 Karey Harrison 25
__________________________________________________________________

Wake, David. ‘Incipient Species Formation in Salamanders of the

Ensatina Complex’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
United States of America (PNAS), 94, no. 15 (July 22, 1997): 7761–67.

White, Stephen K. Sustaining Affirmation: The Strengths of Weak Ontology in

Political Theory. Princeton University Press, 2000.

Karey Harrison is Senior Lecturer in Communication Studies at the University of

Southern Queensland. Her current research focuses on the ontological metaphors
structuring institutional discourses of science and technology, economics, politics,
gender and ethics.