A philosophical census
"Smith" and "Jones" are family names, not given names, at least usually; they can belong as easily to women as to men, and I would guess have belonged to women and men in roughly equal proportion in actually existing life. However in philosophical examples it seems that by far the majority of Smiths and Joneses have been men, or at least male. There presumably exists no high-minded justification for this practice, such as Velleman offers here and there for using "he" and friends as gender-neutral third-person pronouns and adjectives. We could come up with some low-minded explanations, though:
1. Philosophical examples take place in a world quite like our own, except with stricter rules regarding the disposition of surnames; in particular, the initial population of Smiths and Joneses in this world was all male, women keep their surnames on marriage, and no Smith or Jones has ever had a daughter (or perhaps daughters inherit the surnames of their mothers and sons of their fathers). Examples which concern naming customs, of which I'm sure there must be some, are governed by extremely complicated rules.
2. The Smith referred to in these examples isn't a cipher at all, but rather Michael Smith. What began as a joking practice in some seminar ("suppose", says one student, "that Smith here did such and such. Then obviously ...") took off and has propagated throughout the philosophical community, to the point that most people have no idea about whom they're really making these sometimes quite scurrilous suggestions. Jones is Indiana Jones, or maybe Sellars' Jones, who proved himself so useful when he first appeared and who has therefore been recruited by other ambitious philosophers somewhat in the fashion of whichever of the characters in At Swim-Two-Birds it is who does this.
3. It is a reflection of the assumption that arbitrary or anonymous ("Smith" at least being famously not very specific) persons are male.
4. "Smith" and "Jones" are actually given names in these examples. While they are relatively uncommon as given names in actually existing life, we do know that in some societies there exists the practice of giving a son his mother's maiden name as his first name (or middle name, but one can certainly go by one's middle name); I believe that (William) Robertson Davies was named in this fashion, and that his character (Percy) Boyd (later Boy) Staunton was as well. So it's certainly possible that these people are named, say, Carol Smith Fitzwilliam or Jones P. Cooper.
Comments
on 2008-10-29 17:47:37.0, Jeff Rubard commented:
- "Jones" is a verb (the most charitable explanation by far).
and, further, on 2008-10-29 22:13:43.0, Daniel commented:
I figure the real reason is "philosophers tend to forget there are women because there aren't any in their department", but as a less-snarky/depressing answer:
Men often refer to one another by their last names. I've never noticed women doing this, and the guys I've known who generally referred to other guys by their last names generally referred to girls by their given names. (Maybe this is related to athletics? Coaches generally refer to their players by their last names, and it's what's printed on your jersey. More men than women play football or w/e that has coaches that bark out "LINDQUIST!" and things like that.)
If my case is not idiosyncratic, then this might offer some sort of excuse for thinking that whoever it is that's referred to by their last name is probably male. "This is Smith, and his lovely wife, Janet" strikes me as a reasonable thing for someone to say. Even if Smith's given name is Henry or something.
and, further, on 2008-10-31 2:07:08.0, bitchphd commented:
Ah, but the "men use each other's last names, but women's first names" thing is just pushing the question back on degree: why?
Hm. Stumper, that. Not.
and, further, on 2008-10-31 9:24:42.0, Jeff Rubard commented:
Okay, having mangled parts of speech and presented a video the visual signature of which was probably once more "okay" than it is today, I'll attempt a serious answer (because you're worth it, Ben).
I think the real clue is in the deep structure of sex-coded speech genres and not necessarily contemporary academic gender politics; who was ever uncomfortable with the "Barcan formula"? Although it is true that we can trace various periods of expanding and contracting acceptance of women in academia (contracting in the 1930s), I think the genteel version of literary language that moves academics is the real motivation.
That is: to run along with the Levi-Straussian argument that kinship norms always preserve symbolic capital, though without drawing his conclusion that all societies are patriarchal in this respect, I think the case is something more like this. "Hegel, Kant, Marx, Spinoza" are the only ones of their kinds you need to know about, whereas women in a distinguished family are defined a la "signifiers" in terms of the other women (the Alcotts, the Brontes, the Mitfords).
I think this is the norm being honored by the double standard; the "theory of the middle range" for this is left as an exercise. As for the "norm" being "honored" by Sellars, the fun being had with Jones quite possibly originates from this.
and, further, on 2008-10-31 10:36:31.0, ben wolfson commented:
I love that song.