Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

Talk about sexual orientations is widespread: in political debates, in pop culture, in the social sciences and the humanities, and in the natural sciences. For many people, their sexual orientation is a central feature of their identity. And still, very few analytic philosophers have paid attention to the issue of the nature of sexual orientations. (Some important exceptions include Edward Stein, Cheshire Calhoun, William Wilkerson and Robin Dembroff.) In this talk I would like to provide a careful analysis of the notion of sexual orientation. In particular I will focus on the following questions: what are sexual orientations? Are they real features of human beings? If so, what do they consist in? I will discuss several accounts of the nature of sexual orientations that have been proposed in the literature, such as behaviourism (i.e. the view that sexual orientations should be identified with kinds of sexual behaviour), dispositionalism (i.e. the view that sexual orientations should be identified with dispositions to engage in certain kinds of sexual behaviour, not necessarily manifested), and the view that sexual orientations should be identified with a certain kind of mental state, namely, sexual desires. I will provide some objections against behaviourism and dispositionalism, and I will develop and defend the view that sexual orientations are identical to certain kinds of mental states. Finally, I will argue that the most useful concept of sexual orientation is one based on self-identification.