Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

What are sexual orientations? This question has received growing interest in analytic philosophy. Some of the recent debates focus on the following questions: (i) whether sexual orientations should be understood as dispositions to engage in sexual behaviour or as dispositions to instantiate sexual desires; (ii) whether the notion of sexual orientation should involve only the sex and/or gender of the people the subject is attracted to, or also the subject's own sex and/or gender; and (iii) whether sexual orientations can be chosen by the subject. In this talk I will review some recent answers to these questions, and I will argue that on a plausible conception of sexual orientations,  sexual orientations are not chosen.