9 July 2023
We proceed with our investigation of the Dembroff versus Byrne controversy by introducing three conditional versions of the assertions AHM and AHF which Alex Byrne claims to support. Although the arguments proposed by Byrne were considered deficient by Robin Dembroff, Dembroff’s response is uninformative about the validity of AHM and AHF proper. Because the notion of biological sex (b-sex) that underlies AHM and AHF might be chosen to be (sexual) transition permissive, the very existence of transsexed persons does not by itself contradict either AHM or AHF (in case one uses a transition permissive notion of b-sex).
Nevertheless in previous work we claim to have found counterexamples to AHM and to AHF that work in case of a transition permissive underlying notion of b- sex, and which might convince anyone who accepts the existence transgender (MTF i.e. transfemale or FTM i.e. transmale) individuals. Moreover, in case one assumes that the underlying notion of b-sex is not transition permissive, the very existence of MTF (or FTM) transgender persons already contradicts AHM and AHF.
By introducing conditional versions of AHF and AHM weaker assertions are obtained which are harder to reject and more easy to validate, if they can be at all. With stronger conditions the controversy ranges over fewer persons, and fewer exceptional cases are taken into account. We propose 7 conditions which give rise to increasingly weaker (conditional) versions of AHM and AHF. We provide some remarks regarding the relative merits of these assertions.