A Neo-Aristotelian Perspective on Gender Theory
@Philosophim's discussion post about transgenderism got me thinking about gender theory; and I wanted to give my account of its faults and offer a neo-Aristotelian alternative.
Gender theory views 'sex' as 'the biological characteristics of a being that defines its procreative role in the species', whereas 'gender' is 'the socially constructed roles, identities, and expressions of people'.
The problems with this theory are as follows:
1. The divorcing of sex and gender renders gender as merely a personality type that someone could assume, which is an ahistorical account of gender.
2. The very social norms, roles, identities, and expressions involved in gender that are studied in gender studies are historically the symbolic upshot of sex: they are not divorced from each other. E.g., the mars symbol represents maleness, flowers in one's hair is representational of femininity, etc.). If they are truly divorced, then the study collapses into a study of the indefinite personality types of people could express and the roles associated with them.
When conjoined with liberal agendas, it becomes incredibly problematic because it is used to forward the view that we should scrap treating people based off of their nature and instead swap it for treating them based off of their personality type; which is an inversion of ethics into hyper-libertarianism.
How do we account, then, for gender and sex that is congruent with basic biology and essence realism?
EDIT: For the sake of clarity and to avoid political divisiveness, I am going to migrate the OP from gender and sex being equivalent to being virtually distinct; and I will keep the original text with strikeout and the new text in bold to maintain transparency into the development of this thread and its ideas. This will not affect the core of the position I purported, but I think it will help further the discussion.
Sex is 'a distinct type of substance which serves a specific role in the procreation of the species'; and gender is [s]'sex' in this sense[/s] the expression of that sex through behavior. Gender and sex are not really distinct, but are virtually (conceptually) distinct; analogous to how the trilaterality and triangularity are virtually but not really distinct in a triangle. This is semantically most connected with the historical usages and avoids confusing socially or psychologically constructed personality types with the expressions and symbolism of procreative natures: it avoids conflating the symbol representation of [s]something[/s] gender with [s]that something[/s]gender itself. The outward expression of [s]gender[/s]sex,gender, which grounds the social roles and identities of people, comes in to legitimate types: gravitational and symbolic. A gravitational gender expression [s]of gender[/s] is any expression that a healthy member of that [s]gender[/s]sex would gravitate towards (e.g., males gravitating towards being providers and protectors); and a symbolic gender expression [s]of gender[/s] is any expression which represents some idea legitimately connected to the [s]gender[/s]sex-at-hand (e.g., the mars symbol representing maleness). Both types of gender expression are grounded ontologically in the sex [s](gender)[/s] ,inseparably therefrom, inscribed in the nature (essence) of the given substance; and, consequently, express something objective (stance-independent). Any expression of a substance that does not express something objective in this manner is not a gender expression: it is a social and/or psychological expression akin to a personality type. Personality types can be, though, an expression of gender; such as men gravitating towards jobs dealing with things (e.g., engineering, architecture, etc.) whereas women gravitate towards jobs dealing with people (e.g., nursing, daycaring, etc.). Likewise, a personality type, though, can be something which is not the upshot of gender; such as being short fused in anger, being an avid basketball player, etc.
Interestingly, all tendencies and expressions that a substance with a sex[s]gender[/s] will be an admixture of both gravitational gender expression and more loosely connected personality traits that are influenced by their upbringing, culture, etc. However, it is still important to separate them conceptually to avoid collapsing gender into personality traits; and, subsequently, from collapsing social norms and roles into cultural prejudices.
What are your guys' thoughts?
Gender theory views 'sex' as 'the biological characteristics of a being that defines its procreative role in the species', whereas 'gender' is 'the socially constructed roles, identities, and expressions of people'.
The problems with this theory are as follows:
1. The divorcing of sex and gender renders gender as merely a personality type that someone could assume, which is an ahistorical account of gender.
2. The very social norms, roles, identities, and expressions involved in gender that are studied in gender studies are historically the symbolic upshot of sex: they are not divorced from each other. E.g., the mars symbol represents maleness, flowers in one's hair is representational of femininity, etc.). If they are truly divorced, then the study collapses into a study of the indefinite personality types of people could express and the roles associated with them.
When conjoined with liberal agendas, it becomes incredibly problematic because it is used to forward the view that we should scrap treating people based off of their nature and instead swap it for treating them based off of their personality type; which is an inversion of ethics into hyper-libertarianism.
How do we account, then, for gender and sex that is congruent with basic biology and essence realism?
EDIT: For the sake of clarity and to avoid political divisiveness, I am going to migrate the OP from gender and sex being equivalent to being virtually distinct; and I will keep the original text with strikeout and the new text in bold to maintain transparency into the development of this thread and its ideas. This will not affect the core of the position I purported, but I think it will help further the discussion.
Sex is 'a distinct type of substance which serves a specific role in the procreation of the species'; and gender is [s]'sex' in this sense[/s] the expression of that sex through behavior. Gender and sex are not really distinct, but are virtually (conceptually) distinct; analogous to how the trilaterality and triangularity are virtually but not really distinct in a triangle. This is semantically most connected with the historical usages and avoids confusing socially or psychologically constructed personality types with the expressions and symbolism of procreative natures: it avoids conflating the symbol representation of [s]something[/s] gender with [s]that something[/s]gender itself. The outward expression of [s]gender[/s]sex,gender, which grounds the social roles and identities of people, comes in to legitimate types: gravitational and symbolic. A gravitational gender expression [s]of gender[/s] is any expression that a healthy member of that [s]gender[/s]sex would gravitate towards (e.g., males gravitating towards being providers and protectors); and a symbolic gender expression [s]of gender[/s] is any expression which represents some idea legitimately connected to the [s]gender[/s]sex-at-hand (e.g., the mars symbol representing maleness). Both types of gender expression are grounded ontologically in the sex [s](gender)[/s] ,inseparably therefrom, inscribed in the nature (essence) of the given substance; and, consequently, express something objective (stance-independent). Any expression of a substance that does not express something objective in this manner is not a gender expression: it is a social and/or psychological expression akin to a personality type. Personality types can be, though, an expression of gender; such as men gravitating towards jobs dealing with things (e.g., engineering, architecture, etc.) whereas women gravitate towards jobs dealing with people (e.g., nursing, daycaring, etc.). Likewise, a personality type, though, can be something which is not the upshot of gender; such as being short fused in anger, being an avid basketball player, etc.
Interestingly, all tendencies and expressions that a substance with a sex[s]gender[/s] will be an admixture of both gravitational gender expression and more loosely connected personality traits that are influenced by their upbringing, culture, etc. However, it is still important to separate them conceptually to avoid collapsing gender into personality traits; and, subsequently, from collapsing social norms and roles into cultural prejudices.
What are your guys' thoughts?
Comments (601)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_history.
Quoting Bob Ross
But no one is divorcing them, just distinguishing. But still, we hippy males like to wear flowers in our long feminine hair too, and our women are martial and militant. What's the problem?
Quoting Bob Ross
Correct. Just adding that the key difference is 'biological expectation' vs 'cultural expectation'. Meaning that if there is a biologically statistical likelihood that men are taller than women, its not a gender expectation that you see most men being taller than women, that's a biological expectation. Gender would be if someone always expected every man to be taller than women or they aren't 'a real man'. That's not based on biological fact of a man as an adult human male, but a cultural slang idea of what a man is.
Quoting Bob Ross
I think this can be a criticism against changing a word's meaning, but alone it lacks any bite. Words change meaning all the time. Lets look at the term 'marriage'. 'Marriage' used to imply, and still largely does, the unity between an adult human male and female. The gay community wanted to be able to marry, but same sex. I remember there being a bit of a backlash to re-using the term marriage.
So, what ended up happening? We added an adjective to marriage to clarify what type of marriage it is. "Gay" or "Same sex" marriage are how we use the term because the historical context implies its between a man and a woman by default. Considering the transgender movement took notes from the gay equality movement, I think this is important to identify.
In reusing the term marriage, the core underlying desire was recognition of a monogamous long-term sexual relationship and partnership that would be recognized as having the same legal and civil rights as opposite sex relationships. So, lets look at the repurposing of gender.
The repurposing of gender is to let people have the same legal and civil rights as those of the opposite sex. Of course people thought of 'gender as sex', so the adjective 'trans' was added. People thought, "Oh, these are trans sexuals who are using the term gender as sex." Well if gay marriage worked why wouldn't trans gender (sexual) work as well?
If that was all the trans community strategy was, perhaps they would not have run into too many issues. Or maybe they would, because people would just keep using the term trans sexual interchangeably. For certain reasons which I do not want to go into in this thread, the strategy was to hide the term trans sexual completely. But if 'gender' means 'sex', how can you do that?
Simple. Reinvent the term 'gender' to mean something different from sex. Of course, if it is different from sex, then why should someone who is trans gender get the same legal and civil rights as someone of a different sex? Honestly, there is no reason. But it was never intended to be an honest switch. It was intended to hide the use of trans sexual and expand the legal and civil rights of cross sex identity to those who could not afford it or were willing to go through the surgery. Not only would this allow simply having the desire to be in cross sex spaces be enough to get those legal and civil rights to be there, it would expand the amount of people who you could use to get these changes pushed in society.
Quoting Bob Ross
Correct. But the trans activist community actually doesn't want them truly divorced. They want to rely on that cultural context that leaves that unconscious neuron connection to 'gender is sex' while also redefining the term to allow 'not sex' into it as well. This creates cognitive dissonance which is a very persuasive tool if you can get a person to accept it.
There was a psychologist named Leon Festinger who came up with a theory of cognitive dissonance.
"Festingers interest in cognitive dissonance arose from his observations of a doomsday cult, which believed that the world would end on a specific date. When the prophecy failed to come true, the cult members did not abandon their beliefs. Instead, they reinterpreted the situation, claiming that their faith had saved the world. This phenomenon intrigued Festinger and led him to further develop the theory of cognitive dissonance, showing how individuals often reshape their beliefs or perceptions to reduce tension and maintain psychological comfort."
"Cognitive dissonance plays a significant role in shaping political beliefs and the way people engage with information. For instance, if a person holds a strong political stance and is confronted with information that contradicts their views, they may experience dissonance. Rather than change their beliefs, individuals may engage in selective exposure, avoiding contradictory information, or seek out sources that align with their views. This behavior, known as confirmation bias, helps reduce the discomfort caused by conflicting information."
"One of the most powerful uses of cognitive dissonance is in persuasion. When people are presented with information that creates dissonance between their current beliefs and the new information, they may adjust their attitudes to reduce the discomfort. For example, public health campaigns often use dissonance-inducing techniques to encourage people to quit smoking, adopt healthier eating habits, or wear seat belts.
https://psychology.town/general/cognitive-dissonance-attitudes-behaviors/
One of the tools that a person can use to generate cognitive dissonance is morality. From both my personal and historical experience, few things generate passion and rationalization more than a question or 'attack' on one's virtue and moral outlook and reputation. Its they key to any religion's success. "God is good". A tautology that equates God as being good, so one should not doubt or question God. "Trans gender rights are human rights". Another tautology that equates the desires of trans activists to innately being good, so do not dare question or doubt what they ask.
Quoting Bob Ross
Correct, although I would personally avoid the term 'iiberal' because I most people will equate that as a political issue instead of the philosophical classification you are using. This is an underlying attempt by a small faction to persuade society to accept them through deceptive and conflationary language.
Because if we are to use this definition of gender is written, the obvious conclusion is: "If gender is purely cultural, then you do not have a viable reason to be in cross sex spaces. Gender and sex are different." But trans activists do not want this. What they want is access to cross sex spaces and to be seen as the opposite sex by the public. Obviously this is impossible without the use of cognitive dissonance that 'gender as social construct' can generate in the population.
Quoting Bob Ross
I would caution that this still serves as a means to continue the conflationary use of the term gender for equivalence fallacies between biology and culture. When we say "healthy" this should only mean biological. And unless there is biological evidence of males statistically being providers and protectors cross culture, this would be a purely cultural construct. We do not need the terms gravitational or symbolic, we simply need the division of 'sex' expectation vs 'gender' expectation. Men statistically likely to be taller than women vs "If a man is not taller than a woman, he's not a real man". The cat is out of the bag in using the term gender as 'cultural construct', so its best to be laser like in the definition of gender to avoid any attempts at conflation with sex.
Quoting Bob Ross
Gender as a cultural construct can never be objective. We can objectively note, "This is the cultural's gender expecation for a man," but it is not determined by some innate biological reality. It is instead purely a construct of subjective opinion which can vary from person, to group, to the entire culture.
The objective reality is sex, and our personal subjective opinions in how a sex should act in relation to the fact of their sex is gender. In no way shape or form, should the term gender as defined be taken as anything more than a personal and cultural opinion, prejudice, or sexism.
Quoting Bob Ross
Correct, gender is a personality type of an individual that a person subjectively expects a member of that particular sex to have. That's all it is.
Of course, this means that we have to bring back a clear and inoffensive word that trans activists have tried to hide to ensure their conflation and cognitive dissonance would be successful. "Trans sexual". Trans gender is a subjective action of someone's personality. Trans sexual is someone who actively attempts to change their biology to match the opposite sex as closely as possible. Trans sexuals are the only one's who have any possible argument of asking for access to cross sex spaces.
Of course, using the term trans sexual destroys the dissonance and lays bare what is truly being asked. This eliminates a lot of people from the ability to access those cross sex spaces who desire to do so for their own pleasure. They don't really like that, so I would expect resistance. But once someone has had their eyes cleared and has a way out of cognitive dissonance that does put their moral viewpoint at risk, the clear and definitive language gives them the off ramp that they need.
A nice, succinct take on the subject.
Quoting Philosophim
Do you think the Doomsday cult scenario in which cultists simply 'double down' on a reinterpretation of their initial beliefs is avoidable simply with greater clarity of thought and language? how does one reach a point at which they perceive their moral viewpoint to be 'at risk'?
Have you or anyone read "Mistakes Were Made, but Not by Me"? Truly a book that lived up to the hype.
I am more familiar with progressive rather than conservative thought, given that I live in downtown Toronto and taught high school, but reading "Mistakes" helped me understand why progressive people continue to insist on arguments that appear to be suffering from credibility issues.
I am sure there are equivalent conservative examples, I am just less familiar with them. I feel like I observe, or discuss, 'cognitive dissonance' more in person than I do in consuming media.
Quoting Bob Ross
Can you come up with examples of liberal agendas? There are liberals, there are agendas, but "liberal agenda" paints a unified conspiracy when political agendas always have to do with money and power.
This is fitting, as I am a merely a feeble peasant...
I appreciate your response!
I think, and correct me if I am misunderstanding, you are viewing gender and sex as distinct; whereas my model here admits of no such distinction. Granted, I think semantically someone could cut it up differently where gender and sex are virtually (conceptually) but not really distinct and I may have no major quibbles with it. I am purposefully retaining an equality between sex and gender to avoid ideological and political confusions and agendas.
Under my view, since gender and sex are the same, it is a gender expectation that men tend to be taller than women. This view is making a metaphysical distinction between the form (act) and the matter (potency) of a human being; where the form is the actualizing principle, the simple unity, the soul, which informs the body of what it is supposed to be (relative to the essence or quiddity of a human being). The soul, this form of the body, is innately gendered: there are two types of human soulsmale and female.
I think under your view, and correct me if I am wrong, human beings are just a collection of organic parts; and so sex is purely the collection of organs and organic parts functioning together to provide some specific procreative role (e.g., maleness or femaleness). At this point, if we stipulate gender is equal to sex then you end up with essentially my view with respect to everything that truly matters for the political side of things; but under your view I would imagine gender is not identical to sex. Gender, as far as I cant tell in your view, is the social expectations of a person with a particular sexis that right? If so, then this is the meat of our disagreement; because I would say that, if I were to conceptually distinguish gender and sex, gender is the social expression of sex. This is important because an expectation is not necessarily the upshot of biology. I think true gender, if they be conceptually separable, is always properly connected back to biology; otherwise, like I noted before, it explodes into triviality, prejudice, and irrationality.
This is a real problem for the kind of metaphysical account of the body that I expounded for your view (which I do not profess is accurate of your position of course per se); but not a problem for mine. Why? Because in your view sex is just a collection of parts operating towards some procreative role and, consequently, there is no embodied essence of being a male or female; as each person is male or female only insofar as they sufficiently have enough of those parts and organic functions to count as one or the other. Technically, under this view, if you swap out enough sex-related parts of a human then you could achieve a sex change.
Under my view, on the contrary, human beings have a real essence embodied in themselves. This code of what it is to be a human male or female is not identical to DNA: it is really there in their soul, which is the form, the simple I, the unity, which guides their biological development. This means that each human has the full essence of being a human male or female since conception but developmental factors can thwart their essence being realized properly in time. A woman would is infertile, e.g., is still a woman because she has a human female soul: the essence is therenot merely an abstraction of a collection of body parts making her sufficiently female (e.g,. DNA, fertility, sex organs, etc.). Even if a woman were inhumanly materially changed to lack the vast majority of stereotypical organic traits of femaleness she would still be a female under this view because her soul is female and to truly transition sexes would require killing her and creating a new human of the opposite sex (because her soul is what in virtue of which she is alive).
A real man, then, is not one that is necessarily taller than a womanbecause the biological process can be inhibited or altered in ways where a woman could be tall for a woman or vice-versabut a human substance that has a male soul.
Your statement here and thereafter are very true; however, semantics do matter in colloquial and political settings. I am merely noting a political stand that we need to conserve the meanings of the words to avoid liberal ideology where men go into womens bathrooms or participate in female sports. Of course, I recognize that one could make an apolitical (virtual) distinction between sex and gender and note that sex is what really matters: I dont have major issues with that.
This is exactly my point. Semantics in colloquial speech are tools, nay weapons, for pushing agendas. You control what the average person believes by controlling the linguistics they have at their disposal. For people like me who want to conserve the meaning of marriage and do not support gay marriage, it naturally seems like a rhetorical attack to try to morph the term marriage to include other types. Of course, if someone agrees with the political agenda of giving people a wide range of marriage types, then by all means they should morph the terms.
Agreed. This is why I have chosen to explain the gender vs. sex distinction differently than conceptually separating them to avoid the liberal agenda of making them really distinct (viz., purely a social construct). If they are purely a social construct, then we need to completely restructure our society to be hyper-libertarian.
This is very interesting, and I could see this happening with all sides of debates. Thanks for sharing!
My philosophy here is politically motivated, just to clarify. I am collapsing the two conceptually to avoid people confusing them as really (as opposed to virtually) distinct; while retaining the obvious differences between the expressions of sex (what they would call gender) and sex itself (what they would call sex).
I dont think the idea that gender is purely a social construct is niche in liberalism: they tend to push agendas that affirm that gender expectations are irrational, immoral, and hateful because they are not anchored in sex. After all, if women wearing dresses is purely a social construct, then how could someone be justified in viewing a man wearing a dress as wrong? Gender theory is an attempt at ad hoc rationalizing radical freedom to push people into feeling bad for having expectations of gender roles and identities.
True, but liberals tend to view gender as what matters for public spacesnot sex. They see sex as this irrelevant nature between someone legs that should not dictate how their life should go.
Cardinal Sarah put it the best: gender ideology is a luciferian refusal to receive a sexual nature from God.
I was referring to biology there insofar as the human develops properly in accord with their nature ingrained in their soul.
Gender is the procreative type ingrained in the nature of a substance: it is not a cultural construct. What we know of and can expect out of the tendencies and expressions of different genders is culturally and individually determined, like all knowledge, but should be the upshot or expression of something objectiveit should be grounded in facts about gender (sex).
You cannot persuade a single person to come to a conclusion they do not want to. What you can provide them is an opportunity to come to a conclusion that has clear definitions, ideas, and conclusions. This provides a reasonable and socially acceptable off ramp from where they are now. But, if one does not value this over other benefits that being where they are provides them, they will choose not to leave.
Religions are a great example of group think because most people are not in the religion for clear and rational language. They are there for moral guidance, group and cultural cohesion, and internal desires of how they want the world to be. Rational language alone will not persuade most people out of a religion because they lose so much more than they think they would gain. Usually if you want someone to leave an ideology, its a multi-pronged approach. You not only need clear rational arguments why such an ideology is wrong, but you need clear emotional and social benefits provided to the individual that are more than what the ideological group provides.
This of course does not mean we don't provide rational arguments. Some people may be on the fence emotionally and culturally, and rational clarity provides the last impetus to leave. Especially in terms of moral issues which are often used to control people effectively. A clear and rational argument that demonstrates one is not immoral for leaving is very powerful. If I pointed out to you that leaving your friend behind was for the best, but you ultimately thought it was immoral to do so, you likely wouldn't leave your friend. If it can be clearly shown that leaving your friend is for the best, and its not immoral and possibly morally superior to choose so, you're much more likely to act on it.
Trans ideology has been so effective because it has set itself as a moral one without truly justifying that it is actually moral. It scooped up society with its first to market insistence, backed by a top down push from businesses and government that 'it was so'. But of course to enforce any ideology that does not wish to be questioned, you must silence speech over it. For a while you could not say, "Trans gender women are not women" without being banned, cancelled, or fired. Anyone who has studied rights realizes that this is abjectly immoral. And yet because of the top down push, people were pressured into excusing this abuse of free speech by claiming "Its moral to do so". Legislated and forced moral assertations are the tools of people who want to fight against actual moral outcomes and assert control.
That is not to say that some aspects of transgender ideology are not actually moral. Any good measure of control and manipulation understands that there should be some truth to what one is pushing. Should an adult have the bodily autonomy and right to transition? Absolutely. Just like there are usually good things taken in isolation in any ideology. But what is important is to analyze what an ideology is saying rationally as much as possible without appeal to emotions to be free from the manipulative and prosthelytizing pressures that ideologies put forth.
Quoting Jeremy Murray
Pride in not being wrong is a fantastic motivator that rational argumentation will often fail against. Only if such a person can be convinced that switching is truly the superior intellectual solution, and they can be excused by believing they came to their original conclusion to outside circumstances that 'anyone' would fall to, will they be likely to switch.
Quoting Jeremy Murray
I do not believe this is a liberal vs conservative issue. This is a people issue. Politics on either side effectively use what they can to manipulate and convince people that 'their' side is the correct one. The question really is whether it also happens to be that it is more rational to pick one side or the other.
Liberalism in America tends to want the social and legal acceptance of:
1. Sexually deviant, homosexual, and transgender behaviors and practices;
2. The treatment of people relative to what they want to be as opposed to what they are (e.g., gender affirmation, putting the preferred gender on drivers licenses, allowing men to enter female bathrooms, allowing men to play in female sports, etc.);
3. No enforceable immigration policies;
4. Murdering of children in the womb;
Etc.
The fact that you called it feminine concedes that you do think gender is tied to biology .
It is tied, loosely. I concede the fashions are the fashions, no more. Just as lesbians and gays come in different flavours, butch and fem, so straits can likewise be more or less conformal to stereotype.
But since I am a male, and a man, and have procreated as proof, I declare that long hair and flowers are male traits and symbols, and whatever behaviour I demonstrate is by definition masculine behaviour, and therefore your symbols of femininity must be wrong.
A good point. If "masculine" and "feminine" are just socially constructed roles, then one must dispense with the idea that such things represent two halves of a whole, or that they are somehow binary. As far as I can tell, this is not the way that the terms are used now nor have ever been used.
Quoting Bob Ross
That's right. If an alien wanted to objectively understand humankind and human language, they would quickly recognize that the notions of sex and gender are deeply interrelated, and he would come to the conclusion that activists who are trying out linguistic theories which favor their agenda are not providing a factual account of human language. It's not even clear that the activists would disagree with me on this point, given that they are attempting to change human language and human life at a very deep level.
The etymology of gender bears this out in very obvious manner.
Quoting Bob Ross
I would guess that a lot of the confusion derives from "the linguistic turn" in philosophy. Presumably the activists are basing their account at least in part on the idea that language is often gendered yet with subjective criteria (e.g. the Spanish word for giraffe (jirafa) is feminine, but this strikes English speakers as arbitrary). So an argument could be
Edit: A young theologian who has done a few explanatory pieces in this area is Jordan B. Cooper. For example, "Judith Butler on Gender Performativity."
1. i personally think it has to do with differences in terms of what rights people think they should have have...for example, lots of completely heterosexual liberals want people to freely practice "those deviant behaviors", but are indifferent as to whether or not they do it, it's a matter of what they should be allowed to do, rather than enforcing homosexuality...etc.
2. transgenderism in a legal framework, no unified agreement...not something i hear a lot of liberals advocating besides transexuals and their supporters
3. the "no enforcible immigration policies" is an extreme left-wing or anarchist point of view, it's not the kind of thing advocated by your typical liberal. Biden and Obama both intensely enforced immigration policy, the severe drop in mexican immigration we see now started at the end of the Biden administration...
I personally am against any kind of immigration enforcement, as i think people should be free to move where they need to, but "liberal" tends to mean accepting immigration enforcement but with a softer framing.
4. That's a fairly loaded way to discuss abortion, it's a purely moral framing as opposed to a consequentialist or ecnomic/social way of looking at the problem.
These are all differences in how people think policies should be shaped, none of them are really "agendas" unless you apply the same logic in reverse (i.e., opposition to gay marriage is a "conservative agenda"), it's a basic part of representative democracies for differences in opinion to exist.
From my perspective your language seems bigoted and cruel. But I do understand that people think this way.
I think progressives around the world would probably want:
1) For individuals to live free of bigotry and for homosexuality and trans people to be able to live as they want.
2) A woman's right to have bodily autonomy and self-determination.
I would agree with these too. I do believe in immigration policies, so lets set that one aside.
Im not a theorist, nor do I much care for the curlicues of argumentation about essentialism, sex, or whatever else people bring into this debate.
At its core, the trans issue is a matter of pragmatism. Trans people exist, have always existed, and will continue to exist, denying them serves no one. Why not simply accept this reality?
No doubt there are ways of regulating and incorporating trans people into society that work for most. Minor issues, such as prisons, toilets, or sport, can be resolved and are distractions from the deeper question of identity. I'm not interested in how we choreograph prisons or sport to accommodate an evolving understanding of gender. Let's leave those to social policy processes.
What do you have against trans people? Is it ultimately that you believe they go against God?
That's a thin dismissal, void of any real argument or engagement. Beyond that, not a few have pointed out that your own approach is very limited in its exposure. Aristotelianism and Neo-Aristotelianism is one of the most influential philosophical traditions in all of human history, and it continues to flourish today even outside of the English-speaking world.
And who is the arbiter of this "nature"?
The presumption that the contents of one's underpants ought determine one's social role is morally bankrupt.
This is what gender ideology believes. In any modern day conversation about gender and regarding 'trans gender', the definition of sex and gender as written are completely separated.
Quoting Bob Ross
And that is an argument you can make. I'm simply noting that even if it were rationally a better decision, the genie has been let out of the bottle at this point and gender has also split off in these contexts as a cultural expectation of non-biological behavior for a sex. To insist we do not use this term of gender is to argue against a tsunami that it shouldn't crash on the land. The only thing to be done at this point is to establish the definition and context clearly. Meaning that if a conversation about gender is implying it in a cultural sense, it must be immediately exposed and countered if the term is switched to be synonymous with sex to avoid an equivalency fallacy.
In other words, there is nothing wrong with having different definitions for terms as long as that underlying meaning is clearly defined and unambiguous in its context.
Quoting Bob Ross
Correct. And I am not saying there is anything wrong with taking the historical view of gender as equal to sex. I still think it can be used that way as long as everyone agrees on that definition in context. I am simply noting that there is a definition of gender that is not the same as sex, nor can ever be conflated with sex.
Quoting Bob Ross
Lets look at the terms side by side. You have gender as equal to sex, which is fine in many contexts. In the context I'm noting gender is completely separate from sex. So how would I define social expression of sex in the context of the terms being divided?
Sex - Expected social behavior based on biology. It is statistically more likely for men to be aggressive.
Gender - Expecting a man to be aggressive and thinking, "You're not a man if you're not aggressive" even though it is a statistical reality that there will always be men who are less aggressive than women on average. The expectation is not based on biological likelihood, but cultural prejudice and expectations despite biological reality.
Quoting Bob Ross
In the definition above, anything connected back to biology is simply a biological association that naturally occurs. Gender is merely a separate decision of culture. Is that trivial, prejudice and irrational? I wouldn't argue that it isn't. :) However, for some culture is important. There is no biological reason for a woman to wear a dress or ribbons in their hair for example. Some people might be bothered by the fact of a man taking on culturally associated feminine clothing. Is that trivial? I think so, but I would be interested to hear other's take on it.
Quoting Bob Ross
Correct. If you could switch the reproductive organs in two bodies, then according to the definition of sex in biology, this would be an actual sex change. There are some animals that change sex in nature, and the primary definition of that sex change is a change in functional reproductive purpose. Of course, there would still be the DNA difference, bone structure, etc., and this would not be a natural change, so I doubt society would equate it to a 'natural male or female'. Currently the technology isn't there yet to have a serious debate about a sex change 'actually changing a person's sex'.
As for the embodied essence of male or female, its literally based on bodies. Take a sample of 100,000 men and you can get a predictable statistical analysis of the human male body. Height, voice, weight, etc. will fall into statistical norms and outliers. These expectations are not gender as I'm noting, they are simply biological realities of being the bodied sex you are.
Quoting Bob Ross
I understand the idea and I cannot say you are right or wrong. Only that I do not believe in a soul, so cannot hold this view.
Quoting Bob Ross
If gender and sex are separate as defined, then there is absolutely zero rational connection between one's gender having any justification for being in cross sex spaces.
Quoting Bob Ross
True, you do control what the average person is allowed to think about by controlling the linguistics that they have at their disposal. But does that justify control from a religious viewpoint to a secular declaration of marriage? I would argue linguistic limitations to control thoughts is wrong no matter who is in control. The purpose of language is to give clear definitive thoughts for the purposes of communication. Any use of words which deviates from that is definitely open to criticism, but I think the definition of words themselves as a means of control is wrong.
Quoting Bob Ross
That's perfectly fair and your right. I bow out of political discussions as I'm more interested in the philosophical understanding of words and terms, not means of control. Further, I enjoy discussing with people of all political persuasions, and am much more interested in their reasoning than their politics.
Fantastic discussion as always Bob! We may be taking different viewpoints on some of this, but I do understand where you are coming from. Your political views are your own and I am fine with whatever they are.
As a side note, I commend and congratulate you on having a kid (or kids): having kids is a wonderful and challenging thing.
Your argument is not valid, though ):
You are arguing that if a father exhibits a trait, then it must be masculine; but this divorces masculinity from the nature of man and swaps it for whatever subjectively any given father does. As a clear demonstration of this absurdity, it leads to obvious contradictions: if father A plays chess, then chess is masculine; and if father B is against playing chess, then chess is not masculine. Now in the event that A and B are fathers it follows that playing chess is both masculine and not masculine.
Well, let's see...
Quoting Bob Ross
Quoting Bob Ross
My thoughts are that all you're doing is cloaking bigotry with philosophy to give it the appearance of intellectual depth, as part of a hateful and destructive reactionary political and religious movement.
Thanks to @Banno and @Tom Storm for alerting me to this.
Yes. That's what the OP deserves. In essence, it says that "if I ignore the difference between sex and gender, I can continue in my bigotry".
Yes: this fits their liberal agenda of providing people with maximal choices to choose from and autonomy: the selling point of liberalism is that ethics is supposed to be divorced from politics. My point was that there are liberal agendas: you are shifting the goal-post.
What do you mean by transgenderism being a legal framework? Its a ideological view that one can convert to a different gender.
Liberals are advocating for transgender rights, drag shows, etc. in America rit large: this is not a niche position that liberals support people having affirming gender care and being able to transition.
Thats true; but right now we see people actively supporting illegal immigrants, even to the point of helping them evade ICE, and condemning mass deportations. Liberals dont really support deportations in practice.
Consequentialism is a family of normative ethical theories; and morality is the only way to properly evaluate abortion. Economic and social aspects of the discussion only supplement the position one holds relative to ethics.
An agenda is the underlying intentions or motives of a particular person or group. Unless you think that liberalism doesnt by-at-large forward those positions, then I dont know why you think it isnt an agenda. Likewise, I agree that conservatives have agendas: I have agendas. Everyone has an agenda.
Lmao. You always do this: you posture without actually engaging with me. If you think there is some metaphysical theory out there that is better than my own view, then I am all ears as usual. You never provide any.
To be clear, I am not interested you just name dropping a book: I want you to forward a position that you find plausible that I can discuss with you. If you aren't up for the challenge, then I don't get the point in you posturing.
There's a bit of this around these days. Metaphysics is a good place to hide.
No, you are not. I can lead you to the water, and so on. Read some modal logic. Or read my many many posts on the topic. Essences are stipulated, not discovered. You are stipulating that there are two genders, determined by sex, and then pretending that this is a discovery, that it could not be otherwise.
True, but this is the underlying reason why they support some of the agendas I gave: you are just supporting my claims here. I understand some of my language they would not agree with because it begs the question (like calling abortion murder), but generally those claims do hold.
Yes, at the expense of murdering a child. Having an abortion is like hiring a hit man to solve your problems. Im tired of people acting like abortion is a niche and complicated issue: by historical standards of murder, it is murder. No one would argue that, e.g., I didnt commit murder if I used someone against their will as a shield to jump out of a window of a burning building to successfully save myself from the excruciating suffering of burning alive...even if it was the only way for me to save myself...and yet if a womans life is on the line in pregnancy its fine to directly intentionally kill the innocent person in the women.
The only complex aspect of abortion is whether or not one believes personhood begins at conceptionnot if autonomy trumps the right to life.
I am not, nor is any mainstream conservative, arguing that trans people dont exist: that would be silly. Trans people exist as a person of the gender they have independently of which gender they want to be: they exist as mentally ill people who desperately need our help to cure them. They have really high anxiety, depression, and suicidality that is needs to be addressed. Now, a liberal might argue that pragmatically the best way to deal with those symptoms is to affirm their gender: to conform their body to their mind; for me it is to conform their mind to their body.
For you, then, what are the major issues related to transgenderism?
I have love for transgender people as all people. I want them to be able to live their best lives; but living a good life is relative to the realization of their essence in existencenot bending reality to what they desire. I think we should have government programs for studying transgenderism to cure it and they should have programs that help transgenders be cured. Admitting that affirming transgenderism is immoral does not mean that we should stigmatize it and make it completely illegal to talk about it. We need to make transgender people feel welcome and safe enough to get help; just like we do with schizophrenics.
I'll leave the thread to you for now.
In my view the substantial form of the body, the soul, is what accounts for the nature of a human....
Instead of making baseless accusations, I would challenge you to actually contend with the points I made. It is uncontroversially true in America that what I explicated is the liberal agenda (although, as I noted to @Tom Storm, some of the language they will disagree with [like calling abortion murder]).
The fact you will never engage with me on any topic and continue to gate-keep, superficially name-drop, and posture makes me believe, if I am being honest, that you don't have a metaphysical theory you adhere to.
I think I have built enough rapport with you for you to know that I am sincere in my efforts and I will happily and unapologetically concede any points I think are good from my opposition. You are saying, as many times before, that I am simply ignorant of some newer metaphysics that would swipe Aristotelianism off its feet and I am, as usual, asking you for what they are. You refuse to lead the horse to water, and the horse is parched....
The examples you gave of playing sports with the opposite sex, going in women's bathrooms, and changing the sex on a drivers license are legal in the sense that these conventions already shape what we're allowed to do and not. It's actually certain feminists (who tend to be overwhelmingly liberal) who reject the idea of transwomen being in their bathrooms, or getting social services as women...these women tend to be insulted as "T.E.R.F"s by trans supporters (trans exclusionary radical feminists). With the sports, its always a case by case basis, and i personally am fine with that and trans women should not always expect to be able to compete with women...it's up to them. The bathroom issue is a liitle more dicey, because kicking them out of women's bathrooms means forcing them to use men's bathrooms, something people shouldnt do to each other. If i really have to take a crap, im running to whatever is there.
I dont get hostility towards putting something different on your drivers license or the drag shows: in the former, it just makes it even easier for the police to identify you (i.e., sally with a beard, or explicit trans labeling), and drag shows are only entertainment, i don't get why people get offended....
Re abortion: I'm not concerned where life begins.
The issue for me is that no one has the right to use another persons body without their consent, even to preserve life. For the pregnant, this means a person is not morally obligated to sustain a fetus, regardless of whether it is considered a person, because a right to life does not include the right to forcibly use someone elses body. And this principle applies universally: just as no one is required to donate a kidney or remain attached to life-support to save another, no one can be compelled to maintain a pregnancy, making abortion permissible on the basis of bodily autonomy and self-ownership.
Quoting Bob Ross
Well, unlike you, I dont have any major issues with trans people. Its pragmatic: social policies can negotiate this one. Let them be. Are there some assholes and bizarre activists among them? Sure. But the same can be said of Christianity, Islam and almost every identity.
Your idea that we can cure them seems antediluvian or Stalinist. Lets cure gay people too, huh?
Do you think gay folk need to be cured of their homosexuality?
Do you get your moral views from a particular interpretation of Christianity?
Oh, you mean I can be a man but not masculine? Fuck! That's weird! It's almost like they're not the same thing!
Quoting Philosophim
What biological mechanisms make men more likely to be aggressive than women? Would you say its the same mechanisms that produce myriad sex-based social behavioral differences between males and females in other species? What do you make of animal findings showing that hormonal exposure can feminize or masculinize neural circuits? For instance, certain brain regions, such as the hypothalamus, bed nucleus of the stria terminalis and amygdala, show sex-related patterns that are influenced by hormones.
Animal research shows that sex hormones organize and activate the brain systems underlying many sex-typical behaviors, such as mating motivation, aggression and territorial behavior, empathy or affiliative tendencies and caregiving. In songbirds, estrogen exposure in males can alter or reduce song patterns that are normally testosterone-driven. In some cases, it can alter vocalizations to produce simpler songs or calls more typical of females. In mammals, male parental behavior, such as grooming or caring for pups, can increase when estrogen is introduced. Female maternal behavior can be enhanced by estrogens and progesterone in combination.
Some studies in humans have shown that prenatal exposure to sex hormones influences later interests, play preferences, and some aspects of sexual orientation. Some neuroimaging and postmortem studies suggest that in transgender individuals, the structure or activity of brain regions sensitive to sex hormones may more closely resemble the gender they identify with than their sex assigned at birth.
I recognize that gendered behavior in humans is strongly influenced by social-cultural processes which are absent in other species, but arent you contradicting yourself when you assert that, on the one hand:
1) Expected social behavior is based on biology. It is statistically more likely for men to be aggressive ,
and on the other hand:
2)It is cognitive dissonace for factions within the trans activist community to argue that gender is sex' while also redefining the term to allow 'not sex' into it as well.
Why is it cognitive dissonance when some trans activists claim that both biological and social factors are involved in sexually-related social behavior but not when you make the same claim?
Nature. Have you never heard of Natural Selection?
Quoting Banno
You're so predictable.
Quoting Bob Ross
And what do we actually mean when we say that "gender is a social construction"? Wouldn't that mean that for a person to transition between genders they would have to transition between societies (as in moving from one country to another, or from one region to another)?
And how is a social construction equitable to a personal feeling? By declaring gender as a social expectation we are defining gender as the expectations of society as a whole, not the feelings of an individual that run counter to those expectations. The whole transgendered movement is based on a misuse of terms.
I believe testosterone, sex hormones, and brain structure. This aggression is also focused in certain areas like mate seeking and physical altercations, so 'aggression' overall isn't necessarily accurate. If it helps, a better example would be overall average height differences. The point is that any points about a sex that are based on biology are sex expectations, not gender. Gender is only cultural.
Quoting Joshs
No, because in this context a man and a woman are human adult males and females.
Quoting Joshs
Nothing. First, the female/male brain dichotomy is still nascent. Some papers see clear distinctions while others do not. Its obvious that the introduction of any hormone which affects brain tissue will affect the brain. Most any drug which emulates or provides hormones that pass through the blood brain barrier all effect the brain. Depression meds, opiods, psych meds, etc. all change the brain.
Quoting Joshs
That is biological expectation, not gender.
Quoting Joshs
I have checked a few of these studies. First, there's an issue of labeling a brain as masculine or feminine as I noted prior. Three factors need to be taken into account. Sexual orientation, non-transitioned brains, and post transition brains. The reason sexual orientation needs to be considered is that gay men's brains have areas of the brain that are more 'feminine' then straight men. Of course, we wouldn't say that gay men are females right? That would be homophobic.
When non-transitioned brains of gender dysphoric individuals are analyzed and compared by sexual orientation, there is no difference in the brain between a person with gender dysphoria barring a very slight statistical variation in one area of the corpus collosum. Other than that, the brains are identical. Gender dysphoric brains are not feminine brains.
Post transition, hormones affect the brain and bring more 'feminine' brain areas. But its the drugs that do it, not that the brain itself was a female brain to begin with.
Regardless, all of this is biology, not gender.
Quoting Joshs
No, because that's not what I claimed. I claimed that gender is a non-biological cultural expectation of a person's behavior in relation to their sex. Biological factors that affect behavior are not gender, period. The cognitive dissonance is defining the term gender from a synonym of sex into something completely divorced from biology, but then implying that in cases where it is convenient to them, that it somehow also applies to biology.
So yes, I agree that biological and social factors go into a person's behavior in relation to their sex. Biological patterns of behavior are sex behaviors, not gender behaviors. Social factors are gender behaviors, not sex behaviors.
Yes I have: whats your point?
Not necessarily; but I am not interested in defending gender theory. My position was against gender theory; and your role as a critic would be to defend it (unless you are agreeing with me or have an alternative theory).
Its a confusion of both. The individual sees that other people are treated differently than them based off of their nature (e.g., a man noticing a woman can wear a dress); they want to be treated that way (e.g., he wants to wear a dress); so he starts mimicking what normally would be associated with being female. Gender theory tries to rationalize this by saying that gender is just those social cues and expressionsnot the expectations of societyand so someone can legitimately present themselves and thereby be that other gender (so now you are allegedly irrational for thinking the man should not be wearing dresses because he is a woman now qua gender). Its sophistical nonsense.
Maleness and masculinity aren't the same and I never suggested otherwise: they are conceptually distinct. Gender and sex, under my view, are not. Being male is having a nature of the procreative type that serves the role of providing, protecting, impregnating, etc. a female: it is based off of sex. Masculinity is the traits that males naturally gravitate towards, but are not traits that only males could exhibit: same for femininity. Everyone that is male is a male fully in essence but is imperfectly one in existence.
I don't know why @Banno never wants to engage. :confused:
That was a response to Banno's quote, not yours.
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, I was agreeing with you - at least the part of the OP I was responding to - and I was just elaborating on the confusion of transgenderism as stemming from a misuse of terms.
The difference between us, I would suggest, is that I dont think you are a bigot for thinking there is a difference between gender or sex; or even holding stereotypical liberal views I reject (if you do). A bigotry charge is a serious accusation: why do you think people who disagree with your political views are all bigots? Or is just those who reject gender theory? Or perhaps my account of gender and sex?
I hear where you are coming from; but you are overlooking a consideration of how one can uphold their rights. You are not wrong that one has the right to not have their body used against their consent; but this doesnt mean that someone can do anything they need in order to avoid their body being used against their consent. By analogy, I have a right to life: I have a right to not be directly intentionally killed when innocent. However, I do not have the right to do everything in my power to avoid getting murdered. For example, imagine someone is going to kill me but gives me the option to go murder someone else to get out of it; and lets say I know with 100% certainty that I will get murdered if I do not commit this murder (so I cant escape or something) and if I murder this other person then they will honor the agreement (thereby avoiding my own murder). Can I do that? No. The ends do not justify the means. What you are missing here is that a person is not permitted to violate someone elses rights to uphold their own.
For example, if you were kidnapped by an evil scientist and this scientist surgically connected you to another innocent victim whereby you could live without being connected to the other victim but NOT vice-versa. If you were given the option to either surgically remove this other victim from you and thereby re-gain your bodily autonomy (assuming you do not consent to the situation) OR you have to continue to have your bodily resources being used to supply life to this other innocent person, is it morally perimissilbe for you to cut the cord? Of course not. You cannot violate this other persons right to life to uphold your own rights: thats a bad means for a good end.
I dont support Stalin: thats a blatant straw man. Wouldnt you agree that being homosexual or transgender is a result of socio-psychological disorders or/and biological developmental issues? Do you really believe that a perfectly healthy (psychologically and biologically) human that grows up on an environment perfectly conducive to human flourishing would end up with the desire to have sex with the same sex? Do you think a part of our biological programming is to insert a sex organ into an organ designed to defecate?
I get it from Aristo-Thomism.
Banno, if you were paying attention, you would know I have noted many times in this thread that someone could make a virtual but not real distinction between sex and gender and I wouldn't have any major issues with it. The bottom-line is that gender is not a social construct.
Quoting Bob Ross
"Liberal agenda" in the true sense of the phrase appears to be an oxymoron, as liberals (in the true sense of the word) often disagree on many things. It is only their shared view that we are all entitled to our own opinions and freedoms, but those freedoms stop when they infringe on another individual's freedoms, that unite them, or would be considered a "Liberal agenda".
Libertarians are true liberals, not the leftists masquerading as liberals while imposing limits on speech and thought (speech and thought that does not line up with their views) and their identity politics.
If you are a man and want to wear a dress then wear a dress. But your freedoms stop when they involve telling others what they can or cannot say, or reinforces your views at the expense of their own.
And, just to be reiterate what I have said before, society's acceptance of a man wearing a dress just means society no longer has those expectations. It means that society is now gender-neutral, which means that there is no longer a spectrum of binary expectations to transition between, which effectively leads to the extinction of transgenderism.
There are some groups of secular people who have imbibed certain moral/social doctrines in a quasi-religious way. In religious contexts a central dogma is usually protected by concentric "fences." So for example, in Judaism one is not allowed to speak the sacred name, and because of this a "fence" is erected by replacing that word in the sacred texts with "Lord." This makes it that much easier to follow the dogma.
What your OP does is transgress one of the fences of the religious beliefs of the secular left. The central dogma is something like, "Trans people must be respected" (which is of course fine at far as it goes). One of the fences is something like, "Trans people's claims about what they are must be accepted as true," and that fence in turn requires that one draw a very strong distinction between sex and gender. The distinction must be sufficiently strong to support the trans person's claim that they are a man or woman. This is done by making the claim a gender claim, and this of course requires separating gender from sex. This is but the most common way to logically justify that self-identity claim.
In any case, you are in effect committing heresy against one of the fences which sits around a dogma of the secular left, and that is why you are being attacked and insulted. The response one would give is salutary, "But why must I believe that trans people's claims are true in order to respect them?," but the religious reason for erecting the fence is not logical per se. Instead it is practical or communal or a matter of sacred centres. What is at stake is not exactly a logical entailment so much as a matter of protecting a quasi-religious dogma. The core of the issue probably turns on disambiguating what is meant by the word "respect" within the central dogma that is driving the whole fence system, but it should be seen that for the one who reads the claim in a dogmatic or sacred sense, "respect" must be given the broadest reading possible, in order to provide the dogma with sufficient life-shaping force.
I touched on the rationale for refusing to rationally justify one's dogmas or taboos in <this post> as well as in the following one. That move actually exists in all religious and quasi-religious traditions to different extents. Usually, though, we see a healthy religion as one which does not impose its views by force on those who do not accept them, and that is why I believe that the religion in question is unhealthy.
Quoting Bob Ross
That's true, but outside of the context of American politics liberalism qua philosophy refers to classical liberalism, and classical liberalism requires one to provide reasons and arguments for their position. For this reason what is happening on the secular left with their quasi-religious fences is quite different from classical liberalism, and this is why classical liberals of various stripes have opposed the secular left or the progressive left (e.g. Steven Pinker, Sam Harris, Jonathan Haidt, and even pundits like Bill Maher). A well-known conservative classical liberal and professor at Princeton is Robert P. George, who was recently interviewed by Jordan B. Cooper. At one point in the interview George is talking about the way that non-sectarian and sectarian universities both have a place within society. From about 52:24-54:38 he speaks to the question of whether there could be a sectarian university which favors the quasi-religion of what I have called the "secular left," and what he says there is much to the point in understanding the difference between classical liberalism and the secular forms of sectarianism that are often called "liberal" in the American political context.
If you are interested in the arguments and philosophy undergirding the sacred cow then I would encourage you to have a look at Cooper's video on Judith Butler that I linked <here>. There are philosophical antecedents and groundings for these views, even if they are not being enunciated by the folks who are attacking you within this thread.
It certainly trumps a right to life in cases of rape. Would you force people to stay hooked up to the violinist?
Quoting Philosophim
You seem to be making two points . First, that the aspects of social behavior which are purely cultural and those which are due to biological factors are cleanly discernible through observation. Second, that practically none of what are considered feminine or masculine social behaviors in humans are related to the pre-natal effects of sex hormones on brain function.
Quoting Philosophim
Using gay men as an example, I consider examples of such sexual behaviors as having a feminine voice, throwing like a girl, gestures, postures and ways of walking which appear feminine, being predominantly sexually attracted to other males, choosing professions which tend to be more associated with women, etc. Do any of these behaviors by themselves indicate a biologically-produced sex disposition? No, it is the larger pattern that points to a sex-associated behavioral style. Are professions and behaviors which used to be categorized rigidly by gender now in the process of dissolving their rigid categorical boundaries? Yes, absolutely. Do the very definitions of the masculine and the feminine change over time? Indeed they do.
But this doesnt mean that when a gay child says that they have known they were gay as long as they can remember, that they didnt choose to be gay, that they didnt learn to be gay by absorbing it from their culture, that they are talking about gender as opposed to sex. And when they say that what it means to be gay for them is much wider than simply who they are sexually attracted to, that what others them with respect to their males peers are a wide range of feminized behaviors they may despise and certainly have no control over, what they are referring to is predominantly sex-based rather than culture-based gender.
Straight man like anal sex too. In fact, men of all sexual persuasions will often stick their organ into just about any orifice handy.
No, I'm not implying they are cleanly discernible through observation. I think they require scientific reference to clearly delineate what is biological vs sociological.
Quoting Joshs
I don't see how you concluded that. If its known that men are taller than women biologically, it may be an uncommon surprise to see a man shorter than most women. Vice versa with a female taller than most men. This is not a cultural expectation, this is a biological one. The cultural expectation would be, "You are not a real woman unless you are shorter than most men." That has nothing to do with biology, but a subjective view of what a woman should be. There's a difference between biological expectation, and cultural expectation. You can have behaviors that are sex expected behaviors vs culturally expected behaviors.
In some areas, the expected behavior may be dominated by sex or gender. Lets look at clothing as an example of gender dominated behavior. There does not seem to be any biological reason why a man would not wear a bow in their hair, while a woman would. Make up is another clear example of gender. While a female will use makeup to enhance attractive biological features on a female, men could just as easily do the same to enhance features that are considered attractive as males. Society generally does not expect men to do this, so many don't.
Of course, a bra is a culturally accepted bit of behavior that relies on biology. A bra is used to hold breasts in place. Men can grow large and fatty pecs, yet they would be socially discouraged from wearing anything that would keep them in place. The biology in this case is having a chest area that needs to be kept in place, the social expectation is that only women wear something to keep them in place. So while breasts are sexually expected of women, the expectation that only women wear a strap to keep the pec area in a certain form is a gendered expectation.
A man should hold a door open for a lady. There is no biological reason for this. A man should give up their seat for a woman in public if there is no more room. No biological reason for this. A man should act aggressive even though they naturally aren't. That's a cultural expectation. A woman should be demure despite naturally being confrontational. Not a biological imperative.
But, if a woman is pregnant, there can be a biological reason beyond cultural expectation to let a woman have your seat. A woman in late pregnancy is in a more physically compromising position than a healthy man. It makes sense from a biological perspective to allow someone in a more compromising physical state to sit down. We would more often give this to pregnant women over men, as men are not often in physically demanding positions when standing.
Quoting Joshs
First, lets assume for the purposes of reasoning this through, that these are biological behaviors. These would be biological behaviors that are not normally expected by a member of the male sex. Does that mean that men cannot have these biological behaviors? Of course not. Its a sex expectation that is simply not met because this is not the norm. That doesn't mean that it is unexpected that there will be men who biologically have these behaviors without cultural intervention.
The cultural aspect would be whether society expected, as a matter of being male, to suppress their biological behavior because the cultural idea of a man should never act that way. There is no biological reason why a male should not have those behaviors. Society frowning on that is purely cultural and subjective, and a subjectivity that counters the objective reality of those men's biological nature.
A sex expectation is only that, "An expectation". It is not an assertion of what must be to define the behavior and actions of a sex. A gender expectation does not care about biology beyond the sex that is observed. A gender expectation is an assertion of a cultural norm. It is cultural prejudice, discrimination, and/or sexism, and not based on biological reality at all.
Quoting Joshs
Correct, because these professions and behaviors were not constructed due to expected biological differences, but cultural gender expectations. And if there's anything we've learned over the past few decades, discrimination, prejudice and sexism are terrible things to encourage in society.
Quoting Joshs
Sexual orientation has nothing to do with gender. It is biological. It is not 'gender orientation'. It is 'sexual orientation'.
Quoting Joshs
First, being gay only means your sexuality is oriented primarily to members of the same sex. That's it. Though we assumed these behaviors were biological to reason through a point, an actual claim of biology would need study. Is it the case that every single gay person in existence has a biological reality that naturally makes them talk in a feminine way whereas all straight men biologically only speak in a masculine way? Because in inner city black communities, men often speak with what many other Americans would consider a feminine manner. We have to be very careful when we make claims of biology without carefully ensuring that it is not cultural. That's the conflation, the cognitive dissonance that confuses people into thinking cultural behavior is actually a sex based outcome.
Quoting Philosophim
Now were getting somewhere. How do you imagine a brain mechanism works to produce sexual orientation? Any hypotheses? What I am arguing is that such a brain mechanism shapes and organizes how we process affective and perceptual information, giving each of us a perceptual -affective style which is both biological and subject to cultural shaping, and shapes much, much more that sexual orientation. Put differently, sexual orientation is one among many results of a brain filter which gives us a certain sex-based style of perceiving . Think of it as akin to Chomskys transformational grammar. Just as he theorized a brain module which filters , processes and organizes language into patterns which can be assessed statistically, I am arguing that your brian mechanism for sexual orientation is such a module , and that youre missing the organized, patterned way in which experience is filtered and processed by this biological module when you look at biological sex-based behavior reductively.
Its as though I hand you an intricately patterned glass sculpture, and you throw it on the ground and shatter it into a thousand fragments. You then study those fragments individually and look for statistical patterns in the arbitrary behavior of each fragment to explain the nature of the sculptures overall pattern. Thats how Skinner studied language before Chomsky came along. You look at fragments of a pattern and , without recognizing what organized those fragments into the patten in the first place, treat them as independent. Here we have sexual orientation. There we have aggression. Elsewhere there are myriad other behaviors, each of which is seemingly arbitrary and unconnected to a larger originating processing module which could tie them all together on the basis of a single organizing principle. We the. apply our statistics to this assumed random and arbitrary pile of behavioral fragments. What we get out of this is what we put into it: people randomly falling into social roles and behaviors.
There are some, but last I looked we truly don't know the full picture. Do we know that sexual orientation is biological? I believe there is more than enough evidence to demonstrate that in the majority of cases, sexual orientation is biological and not culturally enforced. Regardless, sexual orientation would be an orientation towards a sex, gender orientation would be an orientation towards a gender.
We can see this clearly in culture. If you are attracted to women, there is no biological underpinnings that women shave their arm pit hair or must dress a certain way. Yet society may frown on a person who would be attracted to those things, and the person may deny their sexual orientation for a gender orientation. A gay person forcing themselves to sleep with a woman is probably the clearest example of gender orientation vs sexual orientation. Sexually, gay people are attracted to members of the same sex. Culturally, society may frown on this and expect them to have sex with members of the opposite sex despite their sexual orientation.
I confess I did not understand the rest of your post. With what I've posted above, does this address or help you to clarify what you were trying to tell me?
It is rather difficult to make sense of all this decarative definitional stuff, because your definitions are not clearly distinguished, and at the same time fail to account for the variety of human behaviour and social relations. Males can include gays, cross dressers, celibates castrati, none of whom tend to 'serve the role of providing, protecting, impregnating, etc. a female.' The best I can understand is that your 'essence' of maleness is a moral ideal that you present as if it were a natural fact, from which every deviation is an 'imperfection' - by what fiat, I do not know.
And again, the argument is not that every male must perform the act of begetting/impregnating in order to be a male, but rather that begetting/impregnating is a male role which is inaccessible to females, and therefore there do exist social roles restricted by sex. One cannot beget/impregnate without being a male and one cannot become pregnant without being a female. In Aristotelian language we would say that males have the power of begetting/impregnating precisely in virtue of their maleness; precisely in virtue of their sex.
Why do you want to say that impregnating is uniquely performed by males? Why do you want to call it a role? Do you not think that women have a rather larger 'role' in impregnation than men? I'm not so much arguing with you here as bemused and befuddled. As if sex is what men do to women, and what women do is 'lie back and think of England' (other nationalisms are available). And anything else is a deviation, and thats why it's called "the missionary position".
Because I do not think non-males impregnate. Do you?
Quoting unenlightened
Females (or if you like, women) do not beget/impregnate, but are rather impregnated. The small, mobile male gametes move to the female's large, immobile gametes rather than vice versa. The male's gametes are given; the female's gametes receive what is given by the male. The male is the active giver of gametes; the female is passive receiver of gametes. The sperm moves from the male into the female, in order to fertilize the ovum. This is what it means to say that the male begets/impregnates and the female becomes pregnant, and it is basic scientific biology.
Is there something in this account that you object to? Or is all this talk about "lie back and think of England" an emotional red herring?
You claim your approach is neo-Aristotelian, but apart from the name, there's nothing to indicate why. I'd presumed you were making some reference to essences, but you might like to explain what you mean.
You say sex is "a distinct type of substance", a very odd phrasing; as if we could put sex on a scale and measure it's mass, or wash it down the drain. You appear to claim sex and gender are the the same substance, whatever that could mean. Anachronistic Aristotelian bullshit, it seems.
More recent work uses possible world semantics and talks of essential properties rather than substance. An essence here becomes a predicate attributed to an individual in every possible world in which it exists. That is a much more workable definition than the nonsense of "that which makes something what it is, and not something else".
Do you follow this? Should I dumb it down a bit more? Sex is physical, gender is social. Your insistence that they are the same substance is ridiculous.
And there's this: "The divorcing of sex and gender renders gender as merely a personality type that someone could assume, which is an ahistorical account of gender", which is inaccurate. The latin genus referred to the classification of nouns masculine, feminine, or neuter. So historically, neuter is one of the categories that gender originally encompassed.The original meaning of gender already included the notion of neither male nor female. "Sex", from sexus, is historically binary.The terms are not interchangeable.
So again, you are stipulating that there are two genders, determined by sex, and then pretending that this is a discovery, that it could not be otherwise. Your basis for this is the resuscitation of an ancient metaphysics and logic that relies on ill-defined notions of essence and substance. Not that strong a case, it seems.
Quoting Leontiskos
That had me laughing out loud. No way to talk about our god-king Horus, though.
I'm not saying you are a bigot i said what you wrote was bigoted. But you may well be a bigot too.
Notice your language:
Quoting Bob Ross
Quoting Bob Ross
Both of these read like bigotry. "Let's cure those deviants."
Quoting Bob Ross
I didnt say you support Stalin, I compared that re-education approach to a Stalinist one. I think thats fair; he was big on re-educating dissenters. What you think about Stalin is irrelevant to my point.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, and this is another bigoted position.
Quoting Bob Ross
I dont know you to establish how seriously you offer this, but that sentence reads like something a child would write, surely? I can't help but feel some compassion for you that your religion appears to have made you so reductive and homophobic.
I could be wrong but from what I read here my view would be that it might benefit you to stop hiding behind theories, metaphysics, and fundamentalist religion, and get out into the real world. Spend time with lots of different kinds of people for a few years. Maybe some real-world exposure will help you understand the diversity and beauty in people who differ from your prescribed notions. And that perhaps what needs to change is you, not them.
Either way, it may be that we dont share enough foundational axioms to have a fruitful discussion. All I really wanted to do here was point out that your outlook looks bigoted on this matter and (since hating on trans people is a popular sport for many) to express a different view from yours. Job done.
That said, Im glad you feel confident expressing your opinions here for us all to explore. Its interesting to see what comes out in response, Perhaps it reveals a little more about the true nature of some of our members.
Thats fine, but I dont think that is how gender theory nor my theory uses the terms.
There is. Women tend towards things that are feminine. You are viewing gender in a sense of something that is purely a social construct, which is what liberals want because they can make these exact arguments. If there is no biological underpinning for women wearing dresses, then it is irrational and prejudicial to socially condemn men that wear dresses.
Fair enough.
For liberalism, the argument tends to be that we should only care about gender for treating people. This is why they push for bathrooms to be segregated on the basis of gender instead of sex; allowing transgenders to put their gender as the opposite on their drivers licenses; allowing men to play in womens sports; etc.
I completely agree with you that we should care about sex and not gender if we are using the term gender to refer to something completely divorced of sex.
I partially agree. Firstly, I think politics is an upshot of ethics; so this secular idea of making ethics a personal hobby doesnt make sense to me. I dont think ethics and the nation are truly separable, although I agree with the original intent behind separation of church and state.
I agree, secondly, that we should try to be intellectually virtuous in politics; but unfortunately, pragmatically, rhetoric is really important to explaining things to the average person. Normal people dont do philosophy like you and I where we dissect ideas and follow rationally what we believe is correct: most people just listen to political debates online or on the media that are fully of fallacious thought and convince them of one position or another. Most people are sadly moved by emotion and not reason.
Think of it this way. If you needed to convince people in a public political debate of your position, you will not succeed by trying to have a robust conversation like we are doing now. You will succeed by using loose terminology, simplifying it down, and being a good debater (speaker). The consequence of using loose terminology is that you have to reject your opponents terminology instead of being charitable. Ive learned that politics is a much muddier and bloody process than philosophy.
I agree in the sense that we should be aiming to provide precise definitions and get at the truth; but political debates dont allow the time or resources to be able to have a super robust conversation like in philosophy. What I am doing here is attempting to help people by using language that helps them avoid the conflations and sophistry meant to deceive them in gender theory: Im trying to help them but in an oversimplified way to reach the average person.
You too, my friend!
Thats fair, but modern fourth-wave feminism tends to support transwomen. Traditional women that are of the earlier type of feminism are the ones insulted.
Why not? You are a man: you should use the mens bathroom. You are a woman: you should use the womens bathroom. Should we create a bathroom stall for every gender they make up? Should we have one family bathroom that everyone has to take turns using?
It hinders the police in their investigations: every important trait of a person that they can generalize is tied to sex and not this gender as a personality type. Police officers dont care what you identify as or how you decide to dress or present yourself: they want to know when they come to scene if they are about to deal with a male or female to be able to tell how hard it will be to detain or arrest this person. Dealing physically with a male is generally wildly different than a woman.
I think there should be some record of peoples known mental disorders. It is useful for police to know, e.g., that this person is schizophrenic.
I wouldnt say it needs to be a specific note on the drivers license that they are trans or that they are mentally ill, of course; but when they look up the license it should tell them of any past history of mental illness (which I would imagine they already do).
I dont think drag shows should be legal. They expose children to sexually degenerate, explicit, and dangerous content and behavior that is unhealthy for them. Likewise, I dont think adults should have to experience that either.
You are splitting hairs here. Everyone knows that liberalism as a popular movement in america has agendas just like conservatives do.
Yes. You are suggesting that if the negative consequences of doing the right thing are too great, then we shouldn't do it. If I could only save myself from extreme torture as opposed to simply getting murdered by murdering someone else, that wouldn't magically make me murdering someone permissible. What if me murdering this person saved the rest of humanity from endless suffering? Still not permissible.
You are right: I am claiming that maleness and femaleness are a part of the real nature of men and woman; and this is different than the modern metaphysics smuggled into biology (although I wouldn't say either are incompatible with biology).
As Leontiskos said here, a male has the essence of maleness independently of how imperfectly he instantiates it in his existence. There is a metaphysical distinction between the form (act) and matter (potency) being made here that really helps clarify how gender and sex operate (irregardless if one believes they are conceptually distinct or not).
I am glad to hear that, believe it or not (:
Next time, please tag me in the post so I get a notification. I just happen to see this post and otherwise wouldnt have responded at all.
Unless @Jamal would like to make the horrifying but typical liberal mistake of censoring those that have different philosophical views than them that help further the discussion on major political issues in America, I would suggest that the best response to a view that one gravely disagrees with is to contend with it and dismantle it for all to see instead of trying to put it in pandoras box.
I would like to also say that I am disappointed that you decided to report the thread instead of contending with the ideas; especially since this touches on a very interesting debate between liberals and conservatives in america right nowthis isnt a niche position I am taking here (at least in America). The fact you would prefer it get censored is disheartening to me.
Good question! It is Aristotelian because I am using his metaphysics through-and-through here, albeit it more Aristo-thomistic. The key metaphysical distinction I am making between the form and matter of a human is Aristotelian; and the very concepts of substance, soul, etc. I used are Aristotelian.
Interesting you would say that, considering I am openly using Aristotles metaphysics. A substance for Aristotle is an essentially ordered unity that exists by itself (e.g., water, iron, etc.) as opposed to an unessentially ordered unity for another (e.g., a chair, a table, etc.). Essentially vs. unessentially ordered unities is an essential aspect of Aristotelian thought.
Thats fine, but this would also be true for an essence as used in Aristotelian thought if one accepts possible world theory. I personally dont, but I am willing to grant it for the sake of our conversation to see what you are thinking. An essence is just a quiddity: it is that is essential to a thing that makes it that thing. This is perfectly compatible with your description (although it is not a definition), given possible world theory, that it is about predicates attributed to an individual in every possible world in which it exists. That is just to reiterate, without defining an essence, that an in every possible world in which a being exists it would have to have its essential properties.
Its just a broader definition that doesnt require possible worlds theory. PWT has many issues with it.
CC: @Leontiskos
If you and I were in the middle ages, I would imagine you as a priest and me as a peasant and you would be mocking me for not being able to read the Bible while also refusing to teach me how to read.
I am not interested in throwing insults back and forth, but I do want to note that you suggested I am too stupid to understand possible worlds theory in modal logic and then blatantly used the term substance incorrectly. Neither gender nor sex are a substance
Irregardless: why do you believe gender is social? How would you define each?
Yeah, but that wasnt applied to people (except in rare cases); and it was used to refer to something other than a person that couldnt be meaningfully given a gender. Neuter doesnt refer to an actual third gender: it is a lack of gender.
Banno, I noted many times in this thread that I dont mind if someone wants to make a virtual distinction between sex and gender: I am purposefully collapsing them to avoid confusion. Someone could make essentially the same view I am but conceptually separate gender and sex. The issue liberals have is that they try to make them really distinct as opposed to virtually distinct.
It should be made explicit that the views advocated in the OP are not only fraught with philosophical difficulties, but that they are ethically questionable. You and I have discussed elsewhere how there is a tendency amongst conservatives, and especially Christian conservatives, to think of themselves as the arbiters of morality, as possessing a special moral authority. It is well worth pointing out that their views on topics such as gender, abortion, capital punishment, race and so on are widely considered immoral.
We ought point both to the inconsistencies in their account, and also to the poverty of the underlying sentiment.
The core here is that the contents of one's underwear is not generally a suitable justification for one's role in society. The lie being promulgated is that of illegitimately inferring normative obligations from biological facts.
My apologies - that was not intentional.
Jamal will do as he pleases. I was simply wishing to stay out of his way.
Quoting Bob Ross
I did no such thing. However to be clear, if it were in my power I would delete the thread as failing, under the mentioned guidelines. But it's not my call.
Perhaps my concern with regard to Aristotelian substances would be clearer if it were treated as a rhetorical critique: It seems to me, and I suspect to others, that your OP seeks to justify an immoral position by invoking an antique, superseded metaphysic. Not a strong move.
"Quiddity" treats essence as a thing to be discovered. Few would now take such an account seriously. There's a good few problems with that approach. How are we to understand quiddity apart from our conceptual apparatus - apart from our use of language? Possible world semantics makes no such metaphysical commitment. But further, it's not a question of choosing or rejecting possible world semantics, as if it were a mere dogma of modality; it is, whether you like it or not, the very language in which modality is made coherent.
Quoting Bob Ross
And yet the result of that "purposeful collapse" is an inability to distinguish constructed social role from biological fact, and the claim to have demonstrated that biology determines social role.
You do no have to attend a drag show, but you have not given good reason to prevent others from doing so.
There is a moral arbiter here, but you've not identified him. He is the one always working behind the scenes to try to censor the things he disagrees with instead of arguing against them.
Quoting Banno
So would you argue with that the role of fertilizing ova does not belong to males and the role of bearing children through pregnancy does not belong to females? Let's see some arguments instead of ad hominem insults and the casting of aspersions. If you can only produce such sub-rational censorship, then it's no wonder the world is not buying what you're selling. The vast majority of people in the world and even in your culture are well aware that there are distinctively male acts and distinctively female acts, such as fertilizing ova and bearing children through pregnancy. Pretending everyone who disagrees with you is a bigot won't change that.
-
- Good points. :up:
Again, I did not report this thread. And I am here, presenting arguments. And again, you would make this a thread about me, fabricating responses instead of reading them - as exemplified in your quite irrational main paragraph. Fertilising an ovum and bearing a child are not social roles. Un already pointed this out. It's you who repeatedly relies on ad homs.
Blatantly, it is you who is not responding to the arguments here.
Your vindictiveness is a bore, Leon.
One's penis can go anywhere one chooses (with consent). But anal sex is not compulsory, right? No one is saying it is, although it's a common heterosexual activity. And a question of 'design' has not been demonstrated. A penis fits inside holes. Are you also against sticking a penis in a woman's mouth? Where do you get the idea that any particular kind of sex act is somehow wrong?
Thomson's violinist analogy is so obviously right in its conclusion, I can't fathom the thought processes required to come to the conclusion that, yes, you should be forced by the state to stay bedridden for 9 months after being kidnapped and hooked up to a person. That it should be illegal and you should be punished for choosing to unplug from that situation. Just to be clear, is that really your position?
My point is that gay men aren't the only ones with the desire to put their sex organs into questionable orifices. The fact that they desire anal sex with other men cannot be held against them (as you obviously intended it to be) since straight men also have the same desire.
https://www.cjonline.com/story/news/crime/2018/05/03/kansas-man-arrested-for-attempted-sex-with-car/12322358007/
I don't know if the guy in the story was straight or not, but it really makes no difference, since it's equally plausible that a gay or straight man would try and fuck a car.
Correct. What I'm espousing is the definition of gender according to modern day gender theory as I understand it. It is fine to disagree with it.
Quoting Bob Ross
This is an easy mentality for intelligent and learned people to fall into. I fell into this mistake once as well, so I speak from experience. We are moved by both emotion and reason. Some people are more invested emotionally, others rationally. But we all serve different purposes. I'm not sure what religion you follow, but regardless in Christianity Jesus' continual message was to not think that we are above other people because we are superior to others in our own way. Knowing about Jesus did not make his disciples better than other people, it was that they had the gift of knowing the sacrifice of forgiveness and this grace was to inspire them to spread the message despite personal hardships in doing so.
His disciples bickered over who they thought would be at Jesus right hand when he ascended to heaven. The Pharisees and Saducees, Jewish priests of their day, thought that their knowledge put them above the common people. Jesus admonished them all. In Christianity, Jesus is essentially God. And yet he washed the feet of unclean women, forgave the low and despised in society, and literally died for what are essentially bugs beneath Gods feet. That was the lesson. Might, reason, beauty, power are to be of service for each other. We cannot look down on one another because of our differences. We are all in it together under God. Whether you believe that particular religion or not, there is a powerful message of what a divine being would be like and how it views us.
Quoting Bob Ross
Having spoken with you over the years I am sure you have nothing but good intentions. However, this is a philosophy board and not a political one. Being simple in language is a virtue, but treating people here as simple is not. People want to be inspired by thinking about something in an enlightened way, not riled up against a perceived enemy. The enemy is not other people here, but unclear thinking captured by unwarranted assertions and unexamined assumptions.
You personally see trans people as deviant. I see trans people as people with the free choice in how to live. Others think trans people should get to change the rest of how society lives and thinks. But are we talking with each other, or at each other?
Some of the push back against you here I see as unwarranted, but some of it is warranted. Declaring without a carefully reasoned and referenced view as to why trans people are sexually deviant is an attack on a section of people, which I feel we should all be careful in doing in a thinking forum. What makes them deviant? What studies and or moral theories lead to this conclusion? Is this really the point and focus of your OP? Politics is about assertions and control. Philosophy is about questioning, exploring, and understanding. It is why I avoid politics in philosophical discussions, because I feel the two can rarely meet together properly.
Just a reminder not to get too wrapped up in passion that we forget the role of philosophy here. Careful definitions, attacks on words and not people, and listening to and addressing others concerns even if it appears they are not being charitable back.
Quoting Banno
Why not? Do you have any arguments, or only assertions?
Given your continual lack of argumentation and philosophical engagement, I will guess at your rationale, as it always proves futile to try to get you to give an argument yourself:
The probable reason you reject bearing children (and fertilizing ova) as social roles is because you are begging the question. You think:
(At this point in the conversation your usual route is to fault me for guessing at your arguments, and you will call my guesses strawmen. But again, if you are not willing to provide your own arguments then I can do little more than guess. If what I have presented are strawmen, then you will have to offer the alternative to the strawmen. If you cannot offer any alternative, then there is no reason to believe my guesses are strawmen.)
Well, would you concede that coitus is more reproductively advantageous than anal sex, and therefore better insofar as the reproduction of the species is concerned? And if one accepts the theory of Darwinian evolution, then they would probably also concede that because coitus contributes more to a species' survival than anal sex, evolution therefore favors coitus in a special way. This is why a Darwinian evolutionist such as Richard Dawkins is also quite skeptical of the claims of gender theory, particularly when those claims are taken to the remarkable conclusions which many activists promote. If a species does not enact and favor the uniqueness of coitus, then they fail to understand their own reproductive means.
This is an instance of what Gad Saad calls "suicidal empathy," e.g. the desire to be so "empathetic" that one no longer recognizes any reproductive difference between the act of coitus and other sexual acts. The reasoning goes:
Yes, but just because something is more reproductively advantageous does not mean it's moral, or the people doing the reproductively advantageous acts are "better" in any way. You and Bob seem to be implying gays are inferior or need to be "cured" because they are not maximizing reproductive efficiency. And if anal sex is reproductively disadvantageous, what about contraception? Abortion? Masturbation? Oral sex? Vasectomies?
What part of my definitions were not clear?
On the contrary, it accounts for the behavioral aspect of gender by noting that it is the upshot ones nature; thusly avoiding the critical confusion of thinking gender is divorced from sex.
To be honest, I might just opt-in for the other schema I was playing with, of which I noted also depicts essentially the same ideas I am noting with the equality of sex and gender, that holds gender and sex as conceptually but not really distinct. That might help people avoid this (invalid) rejoinder that I am not accounting for the social aspects of how biological sex will tend to express itself.
Yes, but they are fully men because they have male souls; and they simply arent, in existence, properly living up to their nature.
This is an important distinction, but my rejoinder would be essentially the same. I dont think you are writing bigotry by opposing stereotypical conservative values and beliefs. It seems way to convenient to label your most prominent opposition in America as all writing bigotry by noting that homosexuality, transgenderism, and sexually degenerate behavior is bad (for those participating in it).
Imagine someone believed that transgenderism was a mental illness called gender dysphoria, akin to (but not identical to) someone with schizophrenia. Would you consider them a bigot or purporting bigotry by noting that we should help cure people with transgenderism just like we help schizophrenics???
I dont believe in re-educating dissenters. I am fine with free speech; however, it is commonly accepted that people who are extremely mentally (or/and physically) unwell need desperate help and they may be confined for a while for their own safety to themselves (like suicidal people for example). Should everyone who has a mental illness be put in a camp? No.
Then you are, in fact, labeling your opposition as bigoted instead of refuting their position. I could easily say the same thing about your views: it doesnt help further the conversation.
Notice that you didnt engage with what I said because it is obviously true. A sex organ is not designed to be inserted in an anus; even if you believe that it is morally permissible to do so. The fact you resort to name-calling as an evasion technique instead of rebuttling my position is saddening.
Instead of making baseless assumptions about my life, begging the question, and name-calling; why dont you just contend with the view?
You do understand that the hugely popular conservative view right now in America is that transgenderism is a mental illnessright? You keep pretending like this is a crazy, outlandish, bigoted, and transphobic position to take; and keep straw manning the position with name-calling and baseless assumptions to evade engaging in the discussion. Acknowledging that something is a mental illness does not entail that one hates people who have it .do you really not believe that???
With all that being said, I am always open-minded and would be glad to discuss the OP with you if you ever decide to engage with it instead of straw manning it with baseless name-calling. If not, no worries and I wish you the best Tom!
I apologize: I thought Jamal said you didI must have misunderstood.
Ok, but this goes back to my main point: it is saddening that you are so anti-free-speech. What you are advocating for is to censor anyone who comes up with an alternative view to gender theory. This is a discussion with major philosophical backdroppings that needs to be sorted out in America and has profound influence on the rest of the world.
Correct; and to be clear: you are an anti-realist about essences if you disagree with the above quoted statement. You would have to be nominalist...thats not a trivial commitment to have.
Linguistics isnt identical to conceptualizations; but, beyond that, yes: if you are a realist about essencesif you are one of the many people in the world who think that, e.g., two humans really share a naturethen you have to explain how that works. The only way it works is if there is a unitya wholeto a being which provides its intelligibility: there must be an actualizing principle. This provides the essences to things.
Your view seems very centered around possible world theory...which is fine; but, again, if you disagree that essences are real then you are saying that humans do not share a nature, two chairs dont share a nature, etc.---viz., you are a nominalist.
This is just the age-old debate between nominalism and form realism rehashed.
Firstly, I reject possible world theory (but we can discuss that if you would like). Secondly, why would we need to reject that, e.g., two humans share the same nature in order to accept that, e.g., possibly X is equal to X existing in some possible world?
It doesnt collapse in this way because I am claiming that the only social aspects of gender that are legitimate are those that are the upshot of ones procreative nature; so there may, and usually are, social expectations and views of gender that are patently false that a society may have.
In your view and the modern gender theory view, it is impossible for a society to get a gender wrong; because it is purely a social construct. Sure, you may quibble with epistemically how to hash out when it is a true social norm that X gender does such-and-such and presents themselves in this-and-that manner; but fundamentally gender is inter-subjective on this view. It is anti-realism about gender akin to anti-realism about ethics: e.g., people who debate whether men should wear dresses are not giving judgments that express something objective no different than how people who debate whether killing babies for fun is wrong are not giving judgments that express something objective (under moral anti-realism).
Because it is:
1. Harmful to children and incentivizes them to harm themselves;
2. Gravely harmful to the adults (participating); and
3. It exemplifies grave evil that society should not be condoning.
@Banno, I try my best to avoid making serious accusations against my opponents and I want to be as charitable to them as possible, but given the staunch hatred I am getting on this thread for trying to discuss a basic and prominent topic I am inclined to agree here. This thread has unintentionally exposed members of this forum that are pro-censorship and that favor name-calling over intellectual conversations. With that being said, I truly commend @Jamal for respecting free speech here, although they disagree with the OP.
To clarify, are you answering no to my question?!? You really dont believe that a penis is not designed to be inserted into an anus?
I get that design might be a strong word for you; but wouldnt you say it at least is contrary to the natural functions of the penis?
I am saying a particular kind of sex act is wrong if it is contrary to the natural ends and teleology of a human. I think this even holds in atheistic views that are forms of moral naturalism like Filippe Footes natural goodness.
Is it?
Well, thats a problem. I understand why someone would conclude that they could cut the cord...otherwise I couldnt really say that I am right in my conclusion that they are wrong. How do you know I am wrong about it being immoral to murder the violinist even towards the good end of saving yourself if you dont understand why someone would take that position?
P1: Murder is the direct intentional killing of an innocent person.
P2: It is wrong to murder.
P3: Directly intentionally killing the innocent violinist is murder.
P4: Therefore, directly intentionally killing the innocent violinist is wrong.
What you are saying is:
P1: Involuntary use of a persons body is a violation of a persons right to bodily autonomy.
P2: A violation of a persons right to bodily autonomy is wrong.
P3: The innocent violinist is using a persons body without their consent.
P4: Therefore, it is wrong for the innocent violinist to use the persons body without their consent.
What you are failing to understand is that the violinist is not the one violating this persons bodily autonomy: it is the person who hooked them up to them that committed the violation and consequently the immoral act. Now, the violinist and the other victim are stuck in a predicament: how do they go about resolving it? Can they do something immoral to resolve it? No, but you are arguing yes: you are saying this victim can murder the violinist to resolve the situation. Thats wrong: two wrongs dont make a right. Wouldnt you agree?
That's utterly irrelevant to what I was saying. I was arguing that inserting a penis in an anus violates the natural ends of both organs.
Take the thought experiment to its logical conclusion: instead of the violinist being hooked up to you for 9 months, he's hooked up to you for 45 years and during that time, you're in total physical agony. And also, he's not just hooked up to you, he's hooked up to a thousand other people, all necessary to keep him alive. But why stop at a thousand? Let's say it's a million people. A billion. Is your position still that it's immoral for any one of those people to unhook themselves and end all the suffering? After all, two wrongs don't make a right. At some point, you must realize your position becomes untenable.
Why were you arguing that? It seemed that you were implying gay people are defective or need to be "cured" because they like anal sex, which is why I replied that plenty of straight people like it too. What was your point?
it pretends to allow anyone to say what they please, the practical outcome of which is to have speech controlled by the very rich. As the criticism of Feyerabend says, "anything goes" just means that nothing changes. Do you think that the forums should drop the rule agains posting bigotry and racism? That would quite radically change it's nature. But it's what is implied by insisting that there be no restrictions on what can be posted. All of that is a side issue, and here, it's @Jamal and @Baden who decide what stays and what goes, whether we like it or not.
Quoting Bob Ross
Not quite. It's not uncommon to presume that either realism is true or nominalism is true. But the two are not exhaustive, nor mutually exclusive. There are intermediate or alternative responses that avoid the simple binary. For example, Kant's conceptualism, Ramsey's pragmatism and Davidson's linguistic deflation all challenge the supposed dichotomy. We choose to talk of essences in a way that works for us.
So your
Quoting Bob Ross
imposes a nature as much as it shows a nature. What you are doing here is stipulating that certain characteristics determine who is human and who isn't, and then insisting on explaining away any falsification of your stipulation as aberrant. Now that might be acceptable, if you acknowledged that this was what you are doing. But instead you insist that your stipulation is fact.
Quoting Bob Ross
Then you reject the most coherent semantics for modal language, a framework that allows modality to be expressed without incoherence or circularity. What is your alternative?
Now have a close look at
Quoting Bob Ross
Can you see how this mixes factual and normative language? I've bolded the normative term for you. It's you and I who decide what is legitimate, not biology. It's an attitude, not a fact. That't the is/ought barrier being broken by your rhetoric.
Here's the same thing, again:
Quoting Bob Ross
...the pretence of a normative teleology on a par with brute fact.
Quoting Bob Ross
Not quite; gender is fluid, because like all social artefacts it is the result of a "counts as..." statement (this is what @Leontiskos is missing). See my thread on John Searle if you need more explanation of this. One gets an institutional fact wrong when one breaks the "counts as..." convention that inaugurates that fact. You apparently want sex to count as gender, failing to notice the very many differences between our uses of the two terms.
When we fail to recognise the difference between institutional facts and brute facts we become vulnerable to satire. This explains the damnation heaped on drag by conservatives - "you can't do that! It's against nature!" No it isn't - it's against what was presumed to count as natural, but which doesn't. No force of nature prevents a male from dressing in drag. That's down to convention.
Quoting Bob Ross
To be clear, I don't hate you. If you are every over this way I would buy you a beer and have a chat with you. But I do wish you to be aware that what you are advocating is seen by many as immoral. Hence the strong language.
That accusation of name-calling - I'm here, and I've just spent a half-hour responding to your post with an extended account of why I think it problematic. That's a lot more than just name-calling. Don't fall into @Leontiskos's lack of intellectual engagement when challenged.
Added: I'll reinforce one particular point here. You are welcome to your views, and you are welcome to express them. What is objectionable is the pretence that your attitudes are natural, such that they are the inevitable outcome of how things are. They are not; they are an ought imposed by you over and above the is of how things are. And there are alternatives to your attitudes, with equal legitimacy.
I agree with everything said here; but it doesnt address my point. I am not trying to convey that we should have a superiority complex, posture, or gate-keep: I am saying that how one conveys message is contextual to the audience that they are trying to receive it. You have to convey things in a simplified way to the average person to get them to gravitate, or even think about, your view. If you sit down and give an elaborate theory philosophically in front of the average, hard-working American; they are not going to understand you: not because they are stupid, but because they lack the education on that specific topic. We are all affected by this too: theres plenty of topics I am grossly uneducated on as well and someone educated on it would have to dumb it down for me too.
Over-simplification is not a virtue; but being able to convey a message in a contextually useful way that is simple for people to understand is...and that is what I am advocating for. I do see and agree with your point: I agree that we should be intellectually virtuous, and I am not suggesting we should do otherwise. I am pointing out that you have to make your message receptive to your audience, and also helpful for them to avoid semantic traps. Gender theory is a gigantic semantic trapas you yourself even admitted (if I remember correctly)and I am providing an alternative view that uses a different schema to help ward of that trap.
Since I think people on this forum (excluding some like yourself of course) seem to be incapable of dealing legitimately with an opposing view that they adamantly disagree with; I am going to rewrite the OP, while preserving the original content, to use the schema that conceptually separates gender and sex to help them understand my position better. At the end of the day I am only interested in furthering the discussion to get at the truth; so if rewording it helps then I am fine with that.
Firstly, this wasnt in the OP: I mentioned this to someone on a broader discussion about politics. This is not a claim I am making that is pertinent to the OP.
I think the LGBQ+ community is a community of sexually deviant people: they embrace sexuality in an grossly overly-exhalted way and engage in what would be normally considered sexually extreme or deviant acts. Granted, sexual deviancy tends to be evaluated inter-subjectively (on what the social norms currently are); but having oral sex, anal sex, engaging in pornos, having orgies, enjoying sissification, BDSM, etc. are all sexually deviant acts that are a part of and quite closely connected to that community. Even in the case of less deviant people, like a less deviant homosexual couple for example, they tend to do deviant sex acts (like anal sex, for example). There are sexually deviant straight people too.
The problem with this is that philosophy is supposed to inform politics. My metaphysics on gender and sex are informing my political views on gender theory and vice-versa for my opponents. Politics is not separable from philosophy.
Fair enough and I agree!
Calling people degenerate is bigotry. To use your terminology, this much is 'obviously true'. If I said theists are delusional and need to be cured of their magical thinking, that would be the same thing.
Quoting Bob Ross
Notice that you haven't presented an 'argument' to refute. You made a belief claim that you havent demonstrated to be true, and I pointed this out. First, theres the problem that you havent demonstrated that any part of us is designed, and youve also failed to make the case that a sex organ is not designed to be inserted into an anus, youve merely stated an opinion. We use our parts of our bodies for any number of things. And you never answered my question: when a man puts his penis in a womans mouth, is that also a violation of design according to you? Or using fingers for typing? Who decides what counts as a violation of usage and who decides what counts as design?
Now, even if we take a neutral view that human bodies evolved over time to have certain functions, that still doesnt amount to an argument against using a penis for anal sex. People can use their bodies in surprising, eccentric, and creative ways to experience pleasure from dance to sex. Who gets to decide what counts as unnatural? In most cases, if it can be done, it's natural.
Quoting Bob Ross
This is disingenuous. Comparing someone who might be suicidal or violent (or 'extremely mentally unwell") to someone who is gay or trans is just a case of you applying a label of mental illness on a phenomenon what you dislike or are afraid of. It would be no different to me claiming that Christians who are deluded into thinking theres a magic sky wizard should be given counselling to remove their faith and become normal.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, that seems to be another bigoted position.
Quoting Bob Ross
Not really. If you say gay and tans people are deviant, you are saying bigoted things. You are presenting a moral judgment founded in bias and stigma. It's textbook bigotry.
Quoting Bob Ross
That's just an example of argumentum ad populum. I'm sure as many Americans probably think the world is only 6,000 years old. Who cares how many think something? And by the way, I didn't say that these pejorative views were "outlandish" or "crazy" I said they were bigoted. I am well aware of positions held by some in the Right. And I don't live in America.
Im not evading anything, youre simply failing to offer any coherent reasoning for a position. Saying the penis isnt designed for anal sex isnt an argument; its just an unsupported assertion. If thats the level of reasoning being offered, what exactly is there to engage with? Pointing out the lack of evidence or logic isnt evasion.
And theres a broader problem: conflating anal sex with homosexuality is primitive. Many gay men do not like or practice anal sex, and there are lesbians for whom this framing is entirely irrelevant. Your view on lesbians? Reducing homosexuality to a particular sex act is a crude simplification. The point people have been making (and that you seem to be evading) is that anal sex is a sexual act that transcends sexual preference. You cannot use it to portray gay people as somehow inherently 'against nature' or whatever it might be.
Anyway, I'll let you have the last word since this seems to be going nowhere. I suspect that we don't have enough in common to build a productive conversation. I have nothing against you as a person and wish you well. I have no doubt that you are sincere and doing the best you can with your thinking and I would say the same applies to me. Id be interested in a thread soem time about how we can have conversations with people who dont share basic axioms or frameworks, and how we can develop a society that allows for pluralism.
No? Wouldn't you say that someone who does something that is more reproductively advantageous is better at reproducing than someone who doesn't (ceteris paribus)? If you disagree, then I would have to know how you are defining "better."
Your objection seems to rest on the claim, "X is more reproductively advantageous than Y, and X is not better than Y in any way." This is a common claim (contradiction) underlying your position. Your position seems to commit you to denying or overlooking obvious truths, such as the truth that if X is more reproductively advantageous than Y, then X is better than Y in one way.
Quoting RogueAI
That's a strange leap. No one has said anything to that effect. But it is the sort of non-sequitur that is operative when someone wants to impute bad motive.
Quoting RogueAI
They are relatively reproductively disadvantageous as well. They are examples of the "other sexual acts" I referenced here:
Quoting Leontiskos
And is there sex in heaven?
Even if it really is degenerate? This is the basic, colloquial definition of bigotry:
obstinate or unreasonable attachment to a belief, opinion, or faction, in particular prejudice against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.
You are begging the question because you are presupposing that my belief that, e.g., engaging in BDSM is sexually degenerate is true is unreasonable and false; but thats the whole point in contention here, and what you are doing is labeling me with a word that no one wants to be labeled with so that it is easier to evade contending with my claim.
Do you think engaging in BDSM, e.g., is not sexually degenerate? If not, then what would count as sexually degenerate under your view and would any concession of the possibility of sexual degeneracy be considered bigotry on your view?
Firstly, I dont think all members of the LGBTQ+ community are delusional. Secondly, you could very well make the claim that theists are delusional and I would ask you for your reasons why and contend with them without name-calling.
This isnt directly relevant to the OP: you ended up critiquing a claim I made to someone else on here. The natural ends of a sex organ, as a sex organ, is to procreate; which is exemplified by its shape, functions (e.g., ejaculation, erections, etc. for a penis), and its evolutionary and biological relation to the opposite (supplementary) sex organ of the opposite sex.
Your contention seems to be:
A function is just the modern term for design; and I understand that I didnt make an argument for why it is wrong. I was giving you an example to demonstrate that it is bad. Badness is the privation of goodness; and goodness is the equality of a beings essence and esse. Rightness and wrongness are about behaving in accord or disaccord with what is good (respectively). If you dont agree with me that it is a privation of the design (or function) of the human sex organs to be put in places they are designed to go, all else being equal, then we need to hash that out first.
Not everything that is done is natural. By natural, in natural law theory, we mean that it flows from the nature of a given being.
Agency allows beings to freely will against their nature; so it cant be true that every act is natural.
Yes.
Fingers are designed to be used to press, pull, and grab things: thats there evolutionary purpose. Thats why thumbs are so awesome.
Not who, my friend, what. The nature of a being is ingrained in them. We can come to know that nature through introspection, science, metaphysics, etc. E.g., we can see, through studying biology and empirically living in the world, that humans are supposed to have two arms: this is a part of what it means to be a human being as opposed to, e.g., a dolphin.
You are just begging the question: why is it a bias and stigma? I presented non-biased, rational, and cogent reasons for, e.g., homosexuality being a privation of human nature. We havent dived into transgenderism as a mental illness that much yet; but the same can be done there too. Why do you so conveniently assume your opposition is operating under a bias and prejudice? What if I just assumed right back at you that you are being biased against my view and biased in favor of LGBTQ+?
I am not suggesting that it is true because a lot of people believe it. I was bringing that up because you seemed to be evading the discussion by name-calling and acting like this view is niche in America. I am just noting it is not niche at all.
My friend, every claim is an assertion; and every premise of an argument is an assertion. You ask me why homosexuality is bad and I give you a cogent example: its fine if you dont agree with it and we can dive in deeper, but this idea that because it is an assertion it is baseless isnt legitimate. Every statement is an assertion. Reason works by working finitely at an argument: it starts with first-order reasons, then second-order, etc.
I wish you the best as well and I have no doubt that you are genuine and sincere in your pursuit of the truth. I think we could try to find some common ground if you would like.
Homosexuality is defective: it can be defective biologically and/or socio-psychologically. Heterosexuality is defective sometimes socio-psychologically.
Homosexuality is always defective because, at a minimum, it involves an unnatural attraction to the same sex which is a privation of their human nature (and usually of no real fault of their own); whereas heterosexuality is not per se because, at a minimum, it involves the natural attraction to the opposite sex.
Now, heterosexuality can be defective if the person is engaging in opposite-sex attraction and/or actions that are sexually degenerate; but this will always be the result of environmental or/and psychological (self) conditioning. The underlying attraction is not bad: it's the lack of disciple, lack of habit towards using that attraction properly, and (usually) uncontrollable urges towards depriving sexual acts.
With all due respect, my friend, I think you are not appreciating what I am saying: I already addressed and anticipated this rejoinder. Even if the consequences of not murdering the violinist were the most grave and insufferable that a human can conceive of, it is still immoral to murder; so it is immoral to do so.
Even if everyone else was perpetually hooked up to this terrifying scientific experiment, it would not make it permissible to murder someone. What you are arguing is that murder is wrong and simultaneously but if the consequences of doing the right thing are too grave, then murder is not wrong.
So this depends on if the killing is directly intentional. I am assuming here, for the sake of my point, that unplugging is an directly intentional act to kill the other people hooked up. If so, then thats murder and is immoral.
Nature, it seems is unnatural.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals
I appreciate that, and I do not hate you either.
It seems like you are conceding you have name-called but that you are engaging with the discussion simultaneously: as of now, I agree with that. My complaint was twofold: you dont usually engage with me on the topic-at-hand and you name-call. Either way, I appreciate you responding and engaging with the discussion: that is what really matters and is respectable.
I forgot that you are a moral non-naturalist: this OP is presupposing a form of moral naturalism. I dont accept Humes guillotine. We can discuss that if you want, but I do need to address:
Moral naturalism shouldnt be objectionable to you in a way where one resorts to name-calling and censorship. All the above amounts to is you being compelled by moral non-naturalism to reject moral naturalism, which is perfectly fine and we can have a robust conversation about it.
I think all countries would be better off mirroring American values. Free speech is essential to exercising our minds properly which the nation-state should be facilitating; and it allows for healthy dissent against the government.
Capitalism and corportism is what causes the rich controlling the media and manipulating the massesnot free speech. Even in a heavily censored and rich-controlled media, as we have seen in America, people are able to voice their beliefs without fear of governmental backlash; and people prevail against social backlash for exercising free speechthey get fed up with liberal censorship.
As a philosopher, I am surprised you reject american-style free speech: I would have imagined you to support the free exercise of our intellect to help further ideas and shape peoples views with critical thinking.
Firstly, I cannot emphasize enough that this thread is not an example of either of those. Secondly, I would say that the rules should allow for a free marketplace of ideas and the free conversing and exchange of them (intellectually). The purpose behind free speech in America is not to have absolute free speech (like some conservatives think): its to allow us to freely exercise our minds natural ends through intellectual pursuits.
With that in mind, the rules should ban the exercise of speech that is not aimed at the exercise of the intellect (through free exchange of ideas) and are harmful. This would include exercises of speech like obvious trolling, bullying, inciting of violence, etc.
This thread is obviously only attempting to defend and discuss an alternative view of gender theory as well as, it developing into a discussion of, defending conservative views that relate to the philosophical position at hand.
The categories you gave dont cleanly fit into this dichotomy. For example, take racism: what if someone wanted to have an intellectual discussion about race realism vs. anti-realism? Thats technically a differentiation based off of race, which meets the modern definition of racism; but it would be an intellectual pursuit. What if, on the other hand, someone opened up a thread to just bash a particular race? That seems inappropriate, as it is not ordered towards intellectual exchange of ideas.
Read the OP again: does it resemble more the attempt at an intellectual exchange of ideas or a bashing of liberals?
I even updated it to change the semantics to help further the discussion (while retaining the original content in strikeout)!
Categorically, either ontologically there are real essences to things or there are not: those are exhaustive. The other options you gave arent about ontology: they are epistemic. Kant famously denied knowing anything about the things-in-themselves: he was an agnostic on the true debate between nominalists and realists to the strongest extent of thinking we cant ever know; and shifted the focus to the a prior modes by which we cognize reality.
Are you taking a Kantian approach here?
I havent heard anything from you that is something that falsifies my view. I am more than happy to entertain it if you provide some.
Two main reasons I reject PWT:
1. Under this view, possibly necessary ? necessary ? existence. This exposes the fatal flow in thinking of these modalities in terms of conceivable worlds.
2. It conflates conceivability with modality. Something is not merely possible because I can conceive of it in a possible world. In fact, no human can know exactly what is possible and what isnt. This is why I prefer to use the modalities in a stricter, negative sense of evaluating it relative to whether or not it violates the mode of thought. For example, X is possible under M IFF under interpretation M X does not violate the laws therein. Viz., it is logically possible IFF it doesnt violate the theory of logic being used; it is metaphysically possible IFF it doesnt violate the theory of metaphysics being used; it is actual possible IFF it doesnt violate the theory of nature (the universe) being used. This protects us from falling into the trap of conflating conceivability with possibility, necessity, contingency, etc.
I dont think moral non-naturalism works as it appeals to an unknown, incoherent source of morality (such as Moorean thought) and essentially is just moral anti-realism with the false veil of objectivity (no offense!).
Goodness, under the Aristotelian view, is the equality of a beings essence and esse; which is identical, given the form vs. being distinction, to being as convertible with goodnessas the more being a thing has the more realized it is at what it is.
So the way reality is, in formin essence, does dictate how things ought to be.
E.g., a good farmer is not hypothetically good at farming; nor is he subjectively (non-objectively) good at farming: he actually is good at farming. He is objectively good at farming because he embodies the essence of farming in virtue and deed. His being is realizing the essence of farming properly.
This is interesting, but I didnt quite follow: can you elaborate on it more?
Ok, so, in good faith, I altered the OP to make a conceptual but not real distinction between gender and sex to account for this and help avoid other confusions other people have been having. Please take a quick look at the OP and let me know what you think: I kept the old text in strikeout and the new in bold. The semantics dont really matter that much to the underlying content I am conveying. The point is that gender is not a social construct.
This begs the question: I am saying it really counts as a part of their nature because they really have a nature. You are denying they really have a nature and your rebuttle here is to presuppose that they dont really have a nature and that I am just counting it as a nature when it isnt. Thats the whole point in contention, though.
Probably not. There's no marriage in heaven, so I would presume there's no genders.
Agents can do things that go against their nature. This is an age-old liberal point that is false. Just because animals have the agency to go against their nature it doesn't mean that it is in their nature to do it. You would have to commit yourself to the absurd view that everything a natural organism does is natural.
I'm not. You completely missed the point. There can be misuses of language by a large number of people that simply repeat what they hear rather than integrating what they hear with the rest of what they know (that if Socialists are "liberals", then what does that make Libertarians?). Both sides are liberal on some issues (social vs economic). It is only Libertarians that are liberal on all issues, so why call either side "liberal" when we have group that fits the term better than either the left or the right?
It's not murder. Innocent people sometimes can be justifiably killed. In the violinist analogy, if you remove the tubes from yourself that are keeping the violinist alive, you are not actively killing him, you are failing to render aid. You do not have a moral duty to render aid to people that are hooked up to you without your consent.
This sounds like the kind of thinking that "smart" and "learned" Germans engaged in to rationalize going along with the Holocaust: Jews and queers are just naturally defective. They're a bunch of deviants, abominations of nature. At the very least, they should be removed from the normies of society, lest their deviancy spread.
This makes no sense. Determinism can be the case and everything you do is by the will of your own nature - which includes your past experiences and learned behaviors. Determinism does not mean that you are forced to make decisions you don't want to. It means that you will always make the same decision given the same information/choices, and that it will be a natural choice - one that you want given the options you have at any given moment. We can only ever do what is natural for each of us.
What is "degenerate" is subjective. Many species have repurposed their physiology for different purposes, like our hands from climbing to tool-making. Would you say that tool-making is an unnatural use of the hands, or an ostrich's use of their wings in mating practices unnatural?
My response was using a leeway conception of freedom.
What unnatural usages of hands? Can you give an example?
Wings arent just for flying: they can be for steering, mating rituals, etc.; just like lips can be for kissing as well as speaking.
Some species may have aspects of their nature that are just the residual affects of evolution; and so they may not have as much of a use, although they would still be designed that way, comparatively. E.g., an ostrichs wings arent quite as useful as a normal birds wings. You are confusing utility with teleology: there is nothing random about evolution.
@Banno, this the kinds of baseless hate I get on here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1021010. Now RogueAI, instead of dealing with my response, is trying to paint me as a Nazi now (apparently).
I do not condone Nazism: period. Wanting to help people who have illnesses and deprivations of their nature, out of love and compassion, is not the same as trying to exterminate people on the basis of sexual orientation, transgenderism, etc. I am not advocating to send people to camps; or to forceably inject them with experimental drugs or something. This is all just a convenient way for RogueAI to evade a discussion with my views by labeling me as an extremist.
This is no different than how a person can argue that we should try to find a cure and help schizophrenics without committing them to the view that schizophrenics should be sent to concentration camps. This should be painfully obvious to everyone.
I agree that innocent people can be justifiably killed; but only when it is indirectly intentional (in some cases). You are (directly) intending to kill them by pulling the plug knowing that they will die and that this is a means towards your end of detaching your body. You are not failing to render aid: that would be an inaction (e.g., not helping someone that is drowning) or an act that fails to achieve its end (e.g., you are trying to help the drowning person but they end up drowning anyways)neither are the case in this case. You are acting by pulling the plug: thats an action. You might argue that this action is justified, but then you are committed to the view that directly intentionally killing an innocent person is not always murder.
Lets make it even more explicit what I am arguing. Imagine to pull the plug you had to walk over to the other person and put a bullet in their head to kill them off before pulling it. Would you find that morally permissible? Is it distinct from merely pulling the plug under your view?
I never said, or implied, there was.
It's an action, but it's not an action taken against them. I am allowed to remove tubes that were put into me without my consent. Suppose instead of tubes connected to me, the violinist was being kept alive from blood running from an open wound on my side into him. Closing my wound would be an action but is your position that closing my own wound would be morally impermissible if it results in the violinist's death?
Quoting Bob Ross
I'm OK with that. If a psychotic innocent person is trying to kill me, and I directly intentionally kill them in self defense, it's not murder, right?
Quoting Bob Ross
I would prefer to unplug them and let them die naturally of whatever was killing them before they were hooked up to me, but if shooting them is the only way to do it, it's morally permissible.
Yep, great points. 's claim that anyone who calls someone "degenerate" must be a bigot is false. The irony is that it is often the people using the word "bigot" who are involved in bigotry. For example, it is bigotry to try to vilify anyone who thinks coitus is procreatively superior to other sexual acts with the slur "bigot" or "homophobe." Similarly, it is bigotry to obstinately persist in the claim that religion or faith must be irrational while continually failing to produce arguments for one's claim (link). "Bigotry" is thus becoming a meaningless word - a mere token in service of shibboleths.
The point <here> about "material positions" is very much bound up with bigotry. Those who answer SQ1 affirmatively are very often involved in bigotry, though not always.
Quoting Bob Ross
Too many people on TPF focus primarily on ways to avoid contending with positions that they dislike.
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Quoting RogueAI
The reason such fantastical analogies are pointless is because the only people who think the analogies are analogous are the ones who already believed the conclusion that the analogy is supposed to support. They don't convince anyone; they just confirm some in their own beliefs. The reason the purported analogy is disanalogous is because it depends on coercion, which is not present in pregnancy (except in cases of rape, which are relatively rare).
---
Quoting Banno
This is yet another failure to engage in .
But in cases of rape, what say you about abortion? Would you force the 12 year old raped girl to have the rapists baby? Even if it's her dad or older brother or uncle who raped her?
Same question to you, Bob.
Let's stay on topic for a moment in a thread that seems to move quickly from topic to topic.* Is an analogy valid if it is disanalogous in 95% of the cases it is meant to address?
* Some folk are very concerned to keep certain threads "on topic" while being very concerned to keep threads such as this one off topic.
Thomson's violinist analogy was specifically about abortion in cases of rape, so it's not disanalogous to the 95% of abortions. It wasn't meant to address those.
But Bob and I have been going back and forth on it for awhile now, and it's his thread, so obviously he sees it as "on topic". So, what say you about the 12 year old pregnant raped girl?
Okay, supposing for the sake of argument that that is true, then the analogy is only analogous to 2-3% of abortions. My point is that an analogy that is only analogous to 2-3% of abortions cannot be a valid analogy with respect to abortion (generally). Why is an analogy that is only analogous to 2-3% of abortions continually trotted out as a good analogy vis-a-vis abortion?
Because it establishes a moral principle: even if we concede the fetus is a person, abortion can still be permissible.
Why are you pussyfooting around my example of the 12 year old raped girl? You and Bob love to extol manly virtues. Stop being a coward and answer my question about whether she should be allowed an abortion or not.
Okay, and that's a reasonable answer. :up:
Quoting RogueAI
Because you keep changing the subject to avoid answering difficult questions. For example, you didn't even manage to "pussyfoot" around <my last response to you>. You just ignored it altogether. It is not philosophically upright to ignore every response that is difficult and insist that that your interlocutor must now address some new topic that you've thought of.
Beyond that, you are engaged in emotive jumps. The proper tangent is not, "Is abortion permissible in cases of rape," but rather, "Does Thomson's analogy succeed in defending abortion in cases of rape?" Certainly Thomson's analogy is analogous to cases of rape such that my "coercion" objection fails in the case of rape. If I wanted to assess the analogy-argument with respect to the case of rape, I would need to see the actual text of Thomson's argument. Do you have that?
I didn't want to spend an hour writing a response to it. I'm backing out of the homosexuals-are-deviants arguments you and Bob are making. You two sound like you're trying to justify treating them as subhuman. We've all seen where that can go. I've said my piece.
Quoting Leontiskos
https://media.lanecc.edu/users/borrowdalej/phl205_s17/violinist.html
As I said, I was going to leave you with the last word on this, but I wanted to correct something. You are right. I misspoke - my sentence above is wrong. One can presumably use degenerate to accurately describe some peoples activities.
Of course, I would not include gay people or most sexual acts, like fellatio, as you do. Calling gay people and their preferences morally corrupt or less than human, which degeneracy implies, would qualify as bigotry.
Quoting Bob Ross
Im not someone who reaches for degenerate as a descriptive term in most serious discussions. What consenting adults do is not my business. One might be able to apply the term upon the actions and lives of Trump or Epstein.
I'd like to start a thread on disagreement.
No worries! This is what I was trying to get you to see, because all you are doing is begging the question with:
Firstly, as I noted to you in a DM, I understand that the term degenerate is provocative but it is not bigoted. I usually avoid using it, especially with people from the LGBTQ+ community, because it is provocative; but I do think it is degenerate, bad (as a sexual orientation), and immoral (as an act). I would like to note that I did not use that term in the OP: I used it in a side conversation with a fellow in the thread (about a loosely related but not identical topic).
I mean degenerate in the sense of ~having lost the physical, mental, or moral qualities considered normal and desirable; showing evidence of decline. This is standardly true for homosexuality if one believes it is bad and immoral. This does not mean that human beings that have homosexual tendencies are less than human in their dignity or that we should persecute them. In fact, this is why I keep using schizophrenia as an analogy: we would never say that schizophrenics have less than human dignity because they are inflicted with a condition that deprives them of realizing aspects of their human nature. Human dignity is grounded in the human nature someone has, which is grounded in their substantial formtheir soul, and not how realized they are at that nature. Every human is fully a human; even if they are missing limbs, are disabled, have diseases, are ill, have mental issues, etc. because they fully have the form of a human.
Like I said before, you are presupposing that it is true that homosexual acts are not morally corrupt; and then based off of that saying it is not degenerate. I understand from your view that makes sense, but in mine it doesnt because it is immoral (viz., morally corrupt). What we would need to discuss is why.
I wasnt using it as a descriptive term in any heavy sense on here either. Somehow someone saw one post I made to one person about an unrelated topic and now we are going down a rabbit hole about degeneracy. The OP is about gender theory, and makes no reference to degeneracy.
Why am I not surprised. I suppose you have your "reasons", the upshot being that your attitudes amount to natural law. Now a "bigot" is someone "obstinately attached to a belief or opinion" - like someone who would reject a rule of logic in order to insist that homosexuality was degenerate. Hmm.
All this by way of saying, if you do not understand the difference between something being the case and something's being an attitude, then there's not much point in doing ethics with you. Physics is not ethics.
Quoting Bob Ross
Parochial chauvinism. The US is in a right mess because it has rejected its own values. At the very least, even you must be able to see that that those values are in, shall we say, a state of flux.
Free speech is always tempered. Your rejection of Hume's Law in order to maintain belief in your immoral comments is symptomatic of "obstinately attached to a belief or opinion". The parochial attitude you are displaying in the post to which I am replying reinforces that assessment.
Quoting Bob Ross
It's more an attempt to close down gender theory as a topic for discussion by pretending that gender is sexuality. A failure to acknowledge the distinction between biological sexuality and social gender is a closing of one's mind. Your post is a set piece, intended to justify forcing obligations on to others - for them not to express who they are, be it homosexual, trans, drag and so on. It's an attempt to justify conformity. The pretence of encouraging freedom is a shame.
Quoting Bob Ross
Repeating the Aristotelian view is not arguing for it. You continue to frame the issue as ontological. That's part of your error.
With regard to possible worlds, your (1) is blatantly incorrect; the outermost mode determines the overall mode, so it would be possibly necessary ? possibly; and there is no link from there to existence. Nor is there a conflation of conceivability with modality. Possible because it is so brief, the reasons given here appear muddled. If you are going to reject an accepted part of modern logic, then you ought provide good, clear reasons.
Quoting Bob Ross
How odd. So instead you take your own attitudes as being necessarily universal. I guess that has the advantage of simplicity, and saves you time and effort.
Quoting Bob Ross
I already have, in the post I already linked.
Quoting Bob Ross
What a terrible argument. A woman wearing a dress is not like a triangle's having three sides. There are no triangles that do not have three sides, but there are women in trousers.
It's not baseless. You would oblige others to express only your attitudes. Have a think about why folk might draw this sort of comparison, even if unjustly.
Think about that. Which of us, Leon or I, is failing here.
Yes, I think this is the nub of it.
Would you say that homosexuality falls into this category because, in your view, God is against it? And does your reasoning come post hoc, have you used reason to shore up a religious view you already held?
The problem with reason, for me, is that although it's difficult to escape its use, rationality can be used to justify anything. In the end, it often comes down to whether one is convinced or not and that may be informed more by our affective judgements and intuition than reasoning.
Would it be fair to say that you have an almost Thomist veneration of reason?
Give me a fucking break with your faux innocence. Calling an entire class of people mentally ill couldn't be more bigoted. Try applying that to any other group.
It's extraordinary stuff.
At any cost? With any means?
Thats a good question. I would say that it would be indirectly intentional because their death would be a (bad) side effect of the means (of closing the wound); and the principle of double effect has to be used to determine its permissibility or impermissibility. This is important because this is disanalogous to abortion: an abortion is where the human in the womb is directly intentionally killed (analogous to shooting the violinist in the head).
I think, in this case, it would be permissible because it is:
1. A good end;
2. There is no other means to facilitate that end;
3. The means is not bad; and
4. The good end outweighs the bad effect.
In the case of abortion, #3 is necessarily false.
This is the difference between, for example, the permissibility of performing a hysterectomy on a pregnant women with terminal cancer to save her from that cancer which will inevitably lead to the human in the womb dying; vs. an abortion where the human in the womb is directly intentionally killed to facilitate the end of upholding the womans bodily autonomy.
I would say they are innocent in the sense you mean of not intending to do you harm but they are not innocent in the relevant sense of being unworthy of being killed. This is a really good thought experiment though, as it challenges my idea of innocence.
But, then, you are advocating that murder is permissible in some cases. Wouldnt you agree that killing them by putting a bullet in their head is murder?
I didnt reject a law of classical logic...unless you are suggesting that everyone needs to accept every theory of logic availableincluding paraconsistent logic?
Likewise, rejecting modal logic does not mean I am obstinately attached to my beliefs: an obstinate attachment is a stubborn and unreasonable attachment to somethingyou know that, Banno.
Moral naturalism doesnt claim that physics is ethics.
It is ontologically: it is a question about whether or not essences are real. You cannot sit here and claim that essence realism is about whether or not essences are real and hold that it isnt ontological. Thats what ontology is: the study of reality (being). I am surprised you are claiming it isnt ontological: what is it then for you? Epistemic?
Thats blatantly not true, my friend! S5 modal logic is the most commonly accepted version of modal logic; and in that theory possibly necessarily X ? necessarily X ? X. In other words, possibly X equates to X exists in at least one possible world; necessarily X equates to X exists in all possible worlds"; consequently, possibly necessarily X equates to X exists in at least one possible world as necessarily X; which, in turn, equates to X exists in at least one possible world such that X a necessary being in it; which, in turn, equates to X exists in all possible worlds (since X exists as a necessary being in this possible world); which entails that X must exist in the real world being that it is one of those possible worlds.
I gave a clear explanation of an alternative view that is common. Possible worlds are conceivable worlds unless you are suggesting that we have a sound methodology for determining when a world is possible (that I am not aware of).
Thats not what I said. Moral non-naturalism suffers from being incapable of explaining what the property of goodness refers to exactly because it cannot equate it with a natural property. What is goodness under your view? What ontologically grounds it?
This gets at your other post:
I am glad you are engaging in the thread, but you are refusing to explain your theory to me and instead are trying to book-drown me. It is a form of refusing to engage to try to tell someone to read these 50 books and get back to me, then Ill respond. If someone doesnt understand Aristotelianism and I am conversing with them, there is a difference between me suggesting books for them to read and engaging with them vs. refusing to engage by gate-keeping via trying to force them to read 20 books before I will engage with them.
I dont think you are appreciate fully what I said. When a woman wears a dress it isnt itself a part of their gender: it is the symbol which represents their expression of their sex (i.e., the symbol that represents their gender). You can separate the dress-wearing from femaleness, but you cant separate the feminine expression of femaleness that it represents from the sex (femaleness) that it represents. Thats the part that is virtually distinct.
Again, you are thinking gender is separable from sex; and this is where your objection really lies here.
They are drawing it so they can conveniently evade discussing gender theory with me: instead, they find some super vague and unwarranted correlation between viewing transgenderism as a mental illness and horrific deeds done by Nazism and decide to blatantly mischaracterize my views as Nazi. The Nazis were not just viewing transgenderism as an illness to be cured: they were hateful towards them and persecuted them. It is unacceptable to label my view as Nazi. Surely you can see that, right?
Hypericin, my friend, if that is true, then the acknowledgement of any mental illness is bigotry; for every recognition of a mental illness in principle applies to an entire class of people affected. Is that really what you believe?
I am making a very reasonable claim that recognizing something as a mental illness does not entail that one is obstinately or unreasonably or stubbornly attached to a the belief that it is (I.e., is a bigot about it being) a mental illness nor that they hate those who have the illness. This honestly should be a point we can find common ground on.
The logical law I referenced was Humes' Law - the illicit move from ought to is.
But you rejection of possible world semantics is of a par with, say, accepting algebra but rejecting calculus. PWS is what links model logic to model theory. It is quite central to modern logic. It is the very instrument that demonstrates soundness and completeness. It is quite central to modern logic. Not really optional.
Quoting Bob Ross
But you are in effect claiming that your preferences are built in to the world. That they re physical. YEs, it's ridiculous, but it is a direct consequence of ethical naturalism. If you do not like the consequences of your own ideas, best reconsider them.
Quoting Bob Ross
You do understand that differentiating S5 from S4 requires possible world semantics, don't you?
Sure, ??P ? ?P is valid in S5, the very definition of which is that every possible world may access every other possible world. It is invalid in other systems such as S4. But further, supposing that ?P?P threatens modal collapse, if the claim is that P is true in the actual world... S5 assumes that every possible world is accessible from every other world, so if X is necessary in some world, it is necessary in all worlds. That part of your reasoning is formally correct. However, your next step asserting that ?P implies that P must exist in the actual world is not automatically justified. ?P only entails that P is true in all possible worlds; it does not by itself specify existence in the actual world unless P is an existential proposition. Modal logic distinguishes between truth across possible worlds and existence in the actual world. SO yes, it's valid in S5, but at the cost of modal collapse if P is an existential statement.
But good to see you making use of possible world semantics.
I can conceive it?It is possible in S5 is an error. Keep psychology away from modality.
Quoting Bob Ross
It is what your view entails. Again if that is not acceptable, you might do well to reconsider.
Quoting Bob Ross
If by that you mean I am showing you what is problematic in your account by pointing to the literature, then I'm guilty.
Quoting Bob Ross
Muddled. You are here confusing the biological category with its social expression. Here's an idea: lets' seperate the biological category from its social expression - to make this clear, we cpoudl call the former "sex", and the latter "gender"... that will avoid the circularity of Feminine expression is inseparable from femaleness ? therefore feminine expression must reflect biological sex.
Quoting Bob Ross
No. They are drawing it so that they can continue to discuss gender theory as distinct from biology.
I'm not saying you're a Nazi, I'm saying you're going down an intellectual path of dehumanizing that the Nazi intelegentsia went down to rationalize their actions and support of the regime. If a group of people is naturally defective and deviant, that's just a stone's throw away from subhuman, and once they're subhuman...
Quoting Bob Ross
I'm a consequentialist, so if the fate of the world was at stake and we all die if I unhook myself, then I'm not going to unhook myself, I think it would be immoral to unhook myself, and I would force someone to stay hooked up and compensate them later, if possible. I would also pull the switch in trolley car. Sometimes the innocent person gets fucked over for the needs of the many.
Within the confines of the thought experiment, where there's nothing at stake except a violinist, the kidnapped person is allowed to remove the tubes that were inserted into them without their consent. It would be nice and charitable if they agreed to stay hooked up, but you can't force them. If you force them to stay hooked up, you're setting a hell of a precedent: that it's OK to kidnap people and hook them up to others. You're excusing a gross violation of autonomy. Is that a society you would want to live in? Autonomy rights are incredibly important.
Quoting Bob Ross
But we're getting closer to abortion. Closing the wound that's keeping the violinist alive is an action, correct? It's an action that results in his death, right? But it's morally permissible. So, if closing a wound that's keeping the violinist alive is morally permissible, how could it be impermissible to remove the tubes from my body that are keeping him alive?
Regarding abortion, suppose the mother's life is at risk, and the doctor can either save the mother or the fetus, and the mother makes it clear she's the one who should be saved. The only way to save the mother is to kill the fetus in an abortion. Ah, but this violates (3). But your position cannot be that abortion is impermissible if the life of the mother is at stake. So it seems your position falls prey to a reductio absurdum.
Quoting Bob Ross
Unworthy of being killed? What the hell does that mean? An innocent person in a psychotic rage from an unforeseen drug interaction is certainly "unworthy to be killed", but it's not murder if they get killed in self defense. The fetus that is putting a mother's life at risk if she give birth to it is also unworthy to be killed, but the mother has the right to have it killed to save herself.
Quoting Bob Ross
No. Suppose you've been kidnapped and while you're locked in the dungeon, you've rigged up a booby trap to kill the kidnapper. A heavy weight will fall on him. So you have one chance to activate your booby trap and the kidnapper comes into the dungeon carrying his sleeping infant son who you know will almost certainly die if you trigger your trap. But this is your one chance to escape. The kidnapper has told you he's going to kill you soon. You trigger the trap and kill the kidnapper and his infant son and you escape. Did you murder anyone?
Also, what about the 12 year old girl raped by her father and pregnant. Do you force her to give birth?
Yes, if you did commit to that, you would have to come up with some story about how humans are the exception because they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and thereby fell onto sin from their natural, animal, state of innocence - or some other equivalent.
There's a difference between how you're treating homosexuals and how we treat schizophrenics. For one I don't think a schizophrenic is "degenerate" for having schizophrenia.
There is no nature to which a person must conform to be a perfect version of themselves. All an essence is in this case is what the speaker wants something to be like rather than what it is essentially -- it's a normative frame that is different from the medical frame. Rather it seems more like a moral frame where the soul of the person is at stake.
I'm afraid I don't think the soul is at stake in sex. And, really, if you're not going to be the one doing the act why do you care?
The evidence on mental health towards homosexuals indicates that any sort of conversion program only results in harm. But letting people have sex how they want to doesn't result in harm.
From a hedonist's perspective its your category that designates natural sex that's the sin because it results in harm, whereas the reverse does not.
Quoting Bob Ross
This is a false dichotomy. Distinguishing between sex and gender is due to there being a difference in sex and gender -- historically speaking, even. We can read queer history rather than resort to a archetype.
And so this wouldn't follow since we can follow queer history rather than define people in terms of ideal categories or types that they play out.
You lose me at essence realism, which makes the account something of a non-starter to me. Why on earth would I want to preserve essence realism if it leads people to be confused about what is a perfectly natural desire?
Seems that your conclusions are a reason to reject essentialism: it confuses people more than enlightens them.
Quoting Bob Ross
How do you know? Did you check their soul for the soul-penis?
@Banno is actually contradicting himself with a double standard when he tells you that you can't promote 'oughts' because "ought cannot be derived from is." This is because every one of Banno's posts within this thread are premised on various 'oughts'. For example:
If Banno really thought that 'oughts' were underivable or unassertable, then he himself would not be constantly engaged in ought-claims.
The unargued ought-claims are all coming from your opponents in this thread, and this is because they are expressing moral outrage (which in this case is based on their false perceptions about your position). Moral outrage presupposes ought-claims, and unargued moral outrage presupposes unargued ought-claims.
What happened is that you contradicted yourself by claiming that an act which is reproductively viable is not better in any way than an act that is not reproductively viable (except you put "better" in scare-quotes, which doesn't help in any obvious way - I explicitly asked what you mean by "better").
You contradicted yourself, I pointed it out, and then you failed to respond. That's what often happens on TPF. Coincidentally, every time someone is faced with their own contradiction they suddenly lack time to respond.
What this means is that we are faced with the question: should I pursue this debate with @RogueAI? If I show him that his position is self-contradictory, he will just ignore my response and walk away from the discussion. Is there any point in pursuing debates with individuals who do that?
Quoting RogueAI
This begs the question. That's precisely what you were trying (and failing) to prove.
Pointing to books or threads is gish gallop and avoidance of engagement. I could equally point you to books or threads demonstrating my own position, but I don't do that because it is a failure to philosophically engage the points being discussed. You continually fail to engage the arguments presented.
But your side of the issue does the exact same thing. There are many different issues being discussed in the thread, but I believe this line of yours pertains to homosexuality. Your side of the issue believes something like, "It would be unnatural for someone who is intrinsically homosexual to act as if they are not homosexual, therefore a homosexual ought not act in such a way."
Double standards are being relied upon when folk tell @Bob Ross that his normative claims are inappropriate. Both sides of every moral and political issue are involved in normative claims. For example, each side in the homosexuality debate is saying, "Homosexuals ought (or ought not) X."
Quoting Philosophim
Is this form of religion really groupthink? I am a staunch atheist, so I have no skin in this game, but it feels an act of faith differs from groupthink.
Of course, elements of religion are clearly groupthink. But like you said yourself, most people aren't members of religions for 'clear and rational language'.
And most people would see arguing against someone's act of faith as bad form. In situations where it can harm others, sure. On national policy levels, I believe in the separation of church and state. But in private practice?
Quoting Philosophim
I read "Infidel" by Ayan Hirsi Ali in the summer, and she articulates this process powerfully. Although, interestingly, I read she recently converted to Christianity, after a decade and a half of atheism.
Quoting Philosophim
Quoting Philosophim
Right. I think you have a nuanced take on this issue. As far as adults go, I too think 'absolutely', assuming they have been informed of the risks and not pressured or rushed through the process.
With the trans issue, I think we might have a better example of cognitive dissonance in action than we do in the context of religion, or at least the religious beliefs that we generally encounter in WEIRD countries; although the Islam Ali renounced is present in some communities within the WEIRD world, and that produces genuine dissonance as they stakes are so high. And there are similarly fundamentalist communities in other religions.
There is an argument made that 'wokeness' is similar, functionally, to religion. But whatever one makes of this argument, 'woke' certainly doesn't have the centuries of tradition and ritual and shared cultural experiences which may be so much more valuable to the believer than any 'rationality' of belief.
In terms of hormone blockers and gender reassignment surgery, the stakes are pretty high, which seems likely to drive dissonance. Dissonance theory potentially explains the rejection of major challenges to trans orthodoxy - I think of Chase Strangio's war against Abigail Shrier, for example, or dr. Olson-Kennedy suppressing the release of research conducted by her own organization.
Quoting Philosophim
Oh I agree completely. I am just more familiar with progressive examples given that I live in a largely progressive world here in Toronto. I imagine plenty of Republicans, for example, felt cognitive dissonance on January 6th, or when Trump pardoned even the violent protestors from that day. I just didn't really see it.
But in my progressive world, talking to a friend who ran the gay-straight alliance at my last school about the first Muslim-majority city in the US banning pride, I get to see dissonance first hand. As a former progressive myself, I certainly experienced profound dissonance when I started to see some of the sloppy conceptual choices and language you described in your post in the schools I taught at.
I describe myself as a 'conscientious objector' to the culture war, echoing Richard Reeves, and increasingly think a path through the culture war is issue by issue, focusing on the most principled, informed beliefs of both sides of the debate.
Certainly, there are trans people who lost, greatly, personally, from the backlash against certain more extreme ideological stances. I see common ground between the left and right here, (despite being much happier having personally renounced both). Conceptual precision can only help this project.
This is childish sophistry. The mentally ill are, factually, mentally ill. Mere recognition of this carries no pejorative slant. Whereas you, on the basis of a very dubious metaphysics, are diagnosing a group which is not definitionally ill, as mentally ill. As mental illness is universally undesirable, you are saying that membership in this group entails being innately less than the general population. That is just bigotry. Moreover, your "philosophical" conclusions just so happen to coincide with the politically weaponized bigotry against trans people by conservatives in America and elsewhere.
My side? Same thing? Can you elaborate a little?
My suggestion is that the allegedly "absurd view that everything a natural organism does is natural." is pretty much the Christian tradition taken from the Story of the Fall in the Bible. It may not be universal, there have been 'legal' trials of animals in medieval times, but it is prevalent, and long-standing. It is not though, a view that I would particularly defend except in a psychological sense, which is not relevant to this discussion. But the idea that the beasts act according to their nature but remain innocent, whereas man has a higher spiritual aspect, and can and should resist his baser animal instincts at times, is really not that absurd in a religious or spiritual account of morality, indeed it is more the standard model, of European traditions.
The term "natural" needs to be defined here. If "natural" has something like its more modern meaning where it is defined over and against the "artificial" or "man-made" than neither homosexuality nor oral, anal, etc. sex, masturbation, etc. is "unnatural" in that they can be observed, albeit rarely, in wild animals. Likewise, if "natural" means "ubiquitous (or even relatively common) to primitive human societies" then murder, rape, slavery, human sacrifice, cannibalism, pedophilia, etc., and of course lust, gluttony, sloth, despair, wrath, greed, envy, and pride would be equally "natural."
Whereas "natural" in the tradition Saint Thomas comes from (if not as much the modern tradition built on his name) sees man, and indeed all rational beings (and so the angels) as essentially and naturally oriented to God in a unique way, through the nous (will and intellect, with Goodness and Truth as their formal object). There is no possibility of an orientation of natura pura vis-á-vis man qua rational here, since to be rational is to be oriented towards the Good, Beautiful, and True by nature.
I think the nature/supernature distinction is one of the grave missteps of modern thought that has unfortunately attached itself to a sort of "Neo-Thomism" (although this strain has largely gone into remission in the 20th century following de Lubac and others). If we think of an end for man that is "purely natural," where "nature" is defined in opposition to the "supernatural," thus sealing off the "natural" from God, and implying a sort of self-sufficiency of ends, then it is hard to see how fornication (heterosexual or homosexual) is a "natural" evil. Afterall, having already sealed off the ultimate target of the rational appetites, the role of the intellect and will now seems to be wholly instrumental and deliberative, and the ultimate ends for which we strive are the "purely natural" ends of man as a non-rational (in the old sense) animal. Hence, sexual pleasure is simply one of the plurality of goods to be sought, and sexual sins become perhaps a sort of "exclusively supernatural" sin.
Anyhow, fornication is, in the earlier context, "unnatural" and a violation of the "natural law," in precisely the way lust, greed, pride, etc. is more generally. It is a misordering of loves and a misordering of what truly fulfills human nature.
However, from the perspective of what Charles Taylor calls "exclusive humanism" which denies all "transcendent ends" (or in the classical tradition, "rational ends"), the "pleasures of the flesh" are just one good among social and intellectual pleasures to pursue.
At any rate, I think the question of "naturalness" in the first sense is a total non sequitur that several posters in this thread seem to be getting led off track by. Murder and rape are natural in this sense but surely they are not just and good. Nor does the fact that some people are "born with a strong inclination" towards something necessarily mean that such an orientation is good and just. Just consider that people are born with strong inclinations towards alcoholism, wrath, pedophilia, etc. Are these thus healthy? Surely they are "natural" in terms of being ubiquitous and present in brutes as well, and in all human societies, but that seems irrelevant to their goodness.
Whereas, under the "natural law," what accords with nature (the "law") is precisely that path that being reveals to us as good and just, leading man upwards towards what can fulfill his infinite desires, and here "what the brutes do" or "what most men do" is wholly irrelevant.
On the cultural issues you raised, I do fear there is a bit of mixed messaging here considering the degree to which heterosexual fornication, pornography, etc. has been not only normalized but even glorified in the broader culture, such that it is plastered in advertisements all over the surfaces of our cities and the media is saturated it (acquisitiveness, pleonexia, even more so, such that it is now a virtue of sorts). This is where the cultural presentation of the "natural law" starts to look outwardly incoherent and arbitrary, because the metaphysical grounding becomes submerged and we instead seem to have a sort of arbitrary, voluntarist pronouncement instead. The equivocation on "natural" doesn't help I suppose, nor do the voluntarist undertones of "law" in our current context. I would rebrand it "moral ecology," or "Logos ethics," or something personally.
Quoting hypericin
Isn't that definitionally true of [I]any[/I] designation for any mental illness? Alcoholics are a class of people. Pyromaniacs as well. Pedophiles are a class of people who are classed according to sexual desire, as are zoophiles, etc.
I think the better question is what properly constitutes a mental or spiritual illness. If classifying a group of people according to some desires, behaviors, etc. is bigotry than the concept of a mental illness itself cannot but be bigoted. Yet surely there are such things as mental and spiritual illnesses; from the more diffuse, e.g., acquisitiveness, to the more specific, e.g. schizophrenia.
A follower of a religion is not the same as a follower of faith. Very few read about religions on their own and decide to follow it independently. Most followers of a religion are brought into it by other people, and its a social place where one can belong. Many people who leave religions usually feel they don't belong. A person with intellectual doubts about a religion will likely still stay if the group benefits and sense of belonging are strong enough.
Compare this to the trans gender community. If you check out Reddit and youtube where people go to ask questions, they always try to present it in an extremely positive way that's fun and where you can belong. They even have fun mascots like a stuffed shark, colorful flags, and everyone is going to tell you how proud they are of you, how your mental health issue is perfectly normal, and that you should erase all doubts as bigotry and control. They welcome you with open arms and will be your new family.
I grew up in Christian churches, and I observed much of this first hand. I eventually left the church because I found it to be irrational, but I also had absolutely zero community ties to the church. My parents are extremely invovled in the church like choir, volunteering, and many of their friends are from there as well. For them, leaving would be extremely painful, and they have no interest in even seeing if Christianity doesn't work.
Quoting Jeremy Murray
Ah, always fun to hear someone else has a similar take. :)
Quoting Jeremy Murray
I can give you a religious example if you would like. "Seek and ye shall fine" is a statement in Christianity which pushes you to question the world. But on the other hand you have pressures from the church that some answers simply require faith. This allows a priest to say, "See, the church supports open thought", but then also when it is convenient to them they say, "You just have to have faith on this one."
Quoting Jeremy Murray
I could see exploring that argument further.
Quoting Jeremy Murray
Sounds like a good approach.
Quoting Jeremy Murray
I appreciate your thoughts! You make great points.
We definitely agree on this. :up:
Quoting unenlightened
I was trying to get at the underlying way that "moral non-naturalism" is being leveraged within this thread. One can object to a naturalistic meta-ethics, but at the end of the day both sides of these sorts of issues have substantive, 'ought'-involved moral positions that they are upholding. Or put differently, both sides are moral realists, just with a different understanding of morality. For that reason "deep" objections to Ross' moral realism or his 'ought'-commitments involve a double standard. What is needed is rather something like, "I agree with you that there are binding moral 'oughts', but I think you have misidentified them because..."
But perhaps I have misunderstood, and you are not objecting to Ross' moral realism or the simple fact that he has 'ought'-commitments.
There are people of good faith who hold traditional positions when it comes to sexual morality. Refusing to accept this is a form of bigotry. There are enormously robust moral, religious, and philosophical traditions going back millennia which ground traditional sexual morality. Trying to write all of this off in favor of some new theory that popped up a few decades ago will not do. The attitude which treats the vast majority of humans who have ever lived as irretrievably confused and irrational is tiresome. That attitude is leveraged to avoid argument, and it has to stop. If one wants to oppose well-established moral and philosophical positions, then they must use reason and argument to do so.
Regarding the "factuality" of mental illness, such a notion changes quite a bit from age to age, and it changes fastest in our own time. For example, gender dysphoria was "factually" a mental illness until 2018, when all of the sudden it wasn't. Similarly, following the sexual revolution, pedophilia was no longer considered a mental illness in parts of Europe, including places in Germany. The "fact" of mental illness is a faux fact which requires argument, not appeal to authority.
This is another vexatious post from Leon. Yes, my posts contain "oughts". But no, I do not derive those "oughts" from an "is". And witness:
Quoting Leontiskos
Another example of Leon bearing false witness. Of course we can assert oughts.
And this:
Quoting Leontiskos
Pointing to the literature is failing it engage? Laughing my ares off.
It's tedious. If I said Paris was in France, Leon would insist it is in Germany.
Philosophy as a team sport...?
You misrepresent because if you failed to do that, it would be more plainly seen how little you have to offer. This is what I said:
Quoting Leontiskos
-
Quoting Banno
From where do they derive? Surely if you think Ross must demonstrate his meta-ethics within the thread, then you too must be held to the same standard?
We've all had enough moral conversations with you to know that you don't have an answer to the meta-ethical questions you put to others. You always end with something that pretends to be an answer but isn't, like, "It's just what we do."
Here's the guts of it: You and Bob are using an anachronistic ontology in an attempt to defend an immoral position that you actually adopt as a result of your religious convictions, not your philosophical considerations. You are faux philosophers.
My friend, you have to appreciate that Humes Law is not a law of logic. If not, then please give me the logical theory in which it is derivable from or an axiom of; or, better yet, how it is derivable from classical logic.
Moreover, you seem to be insinuating that Humeanism is commonly accepted in metaethics; and I think we both charitably know this is patently false.
I reject the possible worlds interpretation of modal logic: Ive never been inclined to reject all of the operators, axioms, and formulas of it.
That is true if you are a moral anti-realist, which you arent either. Moral realism, both non-naturalism and naturalism, hold, necessarily, that moral judgments are proposition, express something objective, and at least one is true. They do not express something objective if you think that they are preferences.
I am sort of remembering out past conversations about it now: am I correct in remembering that you are just a moral cognitivist and not a moral realist (as described above with the standard three-pronged thesis of moral cognitivism, moral objectivism, and moral non-nihilism)?
The fact that moral judgments express something objective does not entail that they are grounded in something material (i.e., tangible) nor physical (i.e., mind-independent). Moral properties being natural, likewise, only entails that they are innate to the nature of the thing in question: that doesnt mean they are physical or material per se. In the case of Aristotelian thought, being hylomorphic, a material beings form is not material nor truly immaterial (as a separate substance) but, rather, both comprise the substance itself. So if the form of a material being grounds its moral properties then it follows that moral properties are grounded neither in the physical or material as properly understood in modern times.
Can you elaborate? I havent brushed up on my modal logic in a while. Most of the operators and formulas I dont remember disagreeing with: its the theory they use to describe it as possible worlds that I quibble with.
Yes, this is a problem; and I think any possible worlds theory of interpretation of modal logic will have to accept S5: I dont think the previous versions are ones we can revert back to.
But isnt the actual world a possible world in possible worlds theory? I though necessary X entails that X is in every possible world and the actual world is a world that could possibly exist because it does exist: its existence proves its possibility under the theory. No?
CC: @RogueAI, @hypericin, @unenlightened, @Tom Storm, @Leontiskos, @Moliere
Lets go with your semantics to demonstrate my point, because semantics here doesnt matter (philosophically). The social expression, the gender, of sex is not itself ontologically tied to sex: it is an epistemic symbolism of societys understanding of the ontological reality of sex and its tendencies. Gender, in this sense, is just societys beliefs about sex and its tendencies.
A natural tendency of the particular sex that has a procreative nature (like male and female as opposed to an asexual being) would not be identical to the social expressions: it would be the ontologically upshot of the sex. Society could get its symbols completely wrong about those tendencies and natural behaviors of the given sex and this would have no affect on the reality of those tendencies and would just mean that this particular society got it all wrong. These tendencies, grounded in sex, are what would be called masculinity for males and femininity for females for humans. Someone can mimick each to their liking, but they have a real basis in sex and its natural tendencies.
The sex, as you call it, and the tendencies due to that sex are virtually but not really distinct. If you have a being, no matter how imperfectly instantiated, that is of sex M then they will have tendencies T
Can we agree on this (notwithstanding the semantic disputes)???
At no point have you been in danger of presenting too much. Pointing to external sources is not engaging in argument. You simply haven't engaged in argument, such as responding to posts like <this one>.
Quoting Banno
More ad hominem fallacies. More nothing-burgers.
Quoting Bob Ross
Take a look at my present thread on Russell's paper. It is on exactly that topic.
Oh, you can't do that, that's "gish gallop".
I take it that you now accept that your account derives an ought from an is, which is progress, of a sort.
Quoting Bob Ross
So you reject the whole, but accept each of the parts... or just those that suit your religious zealotry?
Quoting Bob Ross
Apparently I'm not allowed to, that again being "gish gallop". But what more is there to elaborate on, since I already pointed out that
Quoting Banno
What part of that needs further explanations? Maybe Google it yourself, and save the "gish gallop".
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, the actual world is a possible world. No, existence in the actual world does not entail existence in every possible world. It exists, therefore its possible, therefore its necessary leads to modal collapse.
Quoting Bob Ross
No. You just moved your goal post. You still want gender to be "an epistemic symbolism of societys understanding of the ontological reality of sex and its tendencies", and so grounded in your "ontological reality" and not in social reality. You still want trousers to be like the three sides of a triangle, the "symbol of an ontological reality".
...argues against pointing to external sources by pointing to an external source...
I don't think so.
Quoting Bob Ross
There is no real basis in sex is my point of view. There is also no such thing as degenerate sex, nor do people with different kinks have different mental diseases. But then...
Quoting Bob Ross
Is a false dichotomy. On the basis of queer history -- the lived experience of peopled is recorded in their histories. It's not a personality archetype, and it's not ahistorical. It's rather a third thing.
j
And this pretty much follows by your first argument.
Many of your arguments have been similar -- so I'll bite the bullet and let it be clearly stated that sex is not unnatural -- where you are incredulous to the conclusion I am welcoming to the conclusion that love is not a perversion.
In addition, sex is also very complicated and interesting. Much more so than some kind of binary between the essence of man and woman, from my perspective. Your viewpoint for natural dispositions and what-not simply isn't how I see the world at all.
I'm not an essentialist, and I tend to see notions of 'male' and 'female' as evolving and changing over time. As Ive said, I'm not a gender theorist. What matters most is recognising that trans people are here to stay. We need to learn how to live with this reality, not suppress it or label it deviant, just as much of the world has come to accept homosexuality as part of the spectrum of normal human experience.
Sex is a creative act, its not limited to procreation. It can be a flight of fancy, a search for pleasure, a quest for meaning, a release of tension, intimacy, a form of recreation, a duty, even a way of avoiding responsibility. I'm not going to put a fence around it.
No I'm not objecting to that at all. I am a moral realist. My objection is to his waffling on about essence and nature and spirit as if he speaks with authority, when he clearly doesn't have even the authority of a coherent tradition. If you wanna give us that old-time religion, at least get it halfway right!
Okay, I appreciate the correction. :up:
I think provided a much-needed disambiguation of "natural," so I'll leave that issue alone.
Bob also equates essence with a set of tendencies or traits. But neither Aristotle nor neo-Aristotelians consider essence as a cluster of properties; rather it's what makes something what it is, as distinct from any properties it might have. That's what is behind their ejection of Kripke's account of essence, not a half-baked rejection of possible world semantics.
Now to be sure, I can't see a way to make this neo-Aristotelian view coherent; but the account Bob provides is an odd hybrid between neo-Aristotelianism and Kripke. It treats empirical tendencies as essences, essences as moral laws, and social conventions as expressions of biology.
Nope. I recognize nothing essential about masculinity in the way you conceive of it. At best, I will say that by virtue of being a man I inherit certain tendencies which are statistically more likely in males than in females. The urge to procreate with women is biological, and the fact that it is found in men more than women is not merely a result of gender norms.
But humans are nothing like geometric primitives. Group tendencies in no way determine individual proclivities. Humans are complex and exhibit a vast spectrum of individual variation. As shocking as it apparently seems to you, there are men and women who have no urge whatsoever to fuck the opposite sex. Factually, this is human variation, nothing more. It requires your sort of moralizing to transmute minority behaviors into normative violations.
Most humans are aversive to extremely spicy food. I absolutely crave it. The majority behavior is not mere preference, it is rooted in the hard facts of biology. Capsicum mimics substance p, for pain, which is involved in the neural system responsible for pain transmission. It evolved to deter the wrong kind of animal from eating this fruit (everyone except birds). And so avoiding this food is an expression of a basic, innate human tendency to avoid pain. Does this mean that the preference for bland food flows in an Aristotelian sense from human nature, and therefore my eating habits are wrong, deviant, a kind of mental illness? No, that is obviously absurd, what I eat is just a personal difference, which happens to be at variance with mean preference.
The core difference here between dietary and sexual preference does not lie in the preference itself, but in the interest of moralizers to regulate and discipline one above the other.
Well, at least the divine origin of the normative is explicit here.
Not sure what the Count holds in mind, so I'm not commenting on his behalf nor am I commenting to him. But if "The Good" were to be interpreted as equating to "a singular deity which wills all stuff into being" (to god in this sense of the term), then all westerner neo-pagans (most of which are either nature-worshiping polytheists or pantheists) would be contra the will of god and hence utterly unnatural, as too would be all Buddhists, all Hindus, all Inuits, and so forth. Even when they are utterly ethical (maybe especially by comparison to all self-proclaimed Christians who don't give a rat's ass for what JC said and wanted but only crave that their cultural traditions rule the entirety of the planet.) Witch-burning times, basically.
All this not being an understanding of the natural which I uphold, lest it wasn't clear. And I do uphold what gets to be termed "the Good".
One might go a step further and puzzle over how anything could be unnatural, given that presumably nothing can occur that is against the will of an omnipotent, omniscient being. That is, equating the will of god with what is natural carries the problem of evil into the problem of the natural.
(There's a literature here, too, stemming in a large part from a paper by that pesky David Lewis. We are apparently not to mention such things.)
If the idea you have is a sort of voluntarism or "divine command theory," then no, quite the opposite. I'd argue that divine command theory is itself a sort of moral anti-realism.
The natural law is ontological. It has a "divine origin" insomuch as everything (being itself) has a divine origin. There is not, however, a distinctly normative command that sits outside or is projected onto the being of things (a sort of sui generis "moral goodness.")
I'm not sure if I understand this. How could one be "utterly ethical" and at odds with Goodness itself?
The basic idea here is not unique to Christian thought. One can find it all over the Pagan philosophers, in Jewish, Islamic, etc. thought (this is indeed the broader tradition I was referring to). The Good itself (i.e., being qua desirable) is the formal object of the will, just as truth (being qua intelligible) is the formal object of the intellect. That's in more Western scholastic terms, because I thought they were appropriate given the topic of this thread, and because I think the language is clearer, but you can find the same essential idea back in Plato for instance. To be "rational," to participate in the Logos, is to be ordered to the True and Good (and so Being itself, in its fullness). So, whatever is rational by nature (crucially man in this case) is ordered to the Good and True.
"Natural" here is conceived of in its original context, as relating to the phusis by which mobile/changing being changes (i.e., acts one way and not any other, the principle of cause and intelligibility in change). Man changes, but is rational.
IDK, Boethius does a pretty good job explaining this without any appeal to special revelation. It is not that revelation is unimportant, but it is also not an insight that, in its basic assumptions, is unique to any particular tradition of revelation (or even the West).
The problem of what is natural and unnatural seems more difficult than the problem of good and evil, since the handy answer of free will is unavailable. Again, if everything has a divine origin, then how could anything be unnatural? Either not everything is of divine origin, or the term "natural" has no opposite.
The Fall appears to be both within the scope of God's will - at least, foreseen and permitted - and yet somehow outside of his will, in order that it introduce the unnatural.
But it's not up to you and I to make sense of this mythology.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
It appears that there is here also a variant on the Euthyphro...
I dropped some of this into GPT and uninvited, it proffered the following amusement:
[hide="Reveal"][/hide]
A good example here is reason. Reason is ordered to truth. But reason can be instrumentalized and ordered to lower desires. And this would be "contrary to nature." Likewise, cancer is contrary to nature in that it is a misordering of body.
But "nature" here is used in its original sense, as principle. I fear there is a sort of lexical drift here that makes a sort of "translation" necessary.
More broadly, evil, as a privation, in unnatural. That, I think, is more straightforward. What a thing is cannot be a privation (what it is not).
As noted above, the problem here is that the term "nature" was radically redefined during the Reformation and we are the inheritors of the latter tradition. I almost wonder if a different word should be used, such as logoi/logos or phusis, but I am also sometimes annoyed by other traditions refusal to translate key terms so I am ambivalent about that.
Quoting Banno
Well, in the latter traditions you will sometimes see the rough language of natural law ("unnatural") used, but against a backdrop where "morality" relates to a sui generis "moral good" that is wholly "supernatural" (a new category) in origin.
This is, BTW, exactly Alasdair MacIntyre's key thesis. The old moral language, e.g., "unnatural," "virtue," etc. is utterly incoherent in the modern context and carries on in a sort of bizarre zombie form through sheer inertia, getting rolled out in the way Warhammer 40k "techno priests" use technology they have almost no understanding of by holding to strict religious rituals that happen to coincide with their use.
True. Add to this notions of the Devil, in parallel notions of the flying (not yet slithering on Earth) serpent whose will to awaken all to right and wrong was contrary to the will of the so-termed "lord" of genesis 2 onward, and one sinks neck-deep into inconsistencies if not worse. This as part and parcel of equating the Elohim of genesis 1 to the lord of genesis 2 onward. Heretical to say they couldn't have rationally been the same, so I won't here say it.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Right. I generally agree with this, as previously alluded to. But one would need to grant that such is the traditional interpretation of many a major Abrahamic tradition, more specifically of many a major realm of Christendom, as well enough documented for at least the past 500 years in Western Europe. It's naturally feasible to go through spiritually ecstatic experiences (as long as they are not devil-governed) but it is utterly unnatural to cast spells and be in communion with the spiritual worlds via such means (especially if you happen to be a woman, even one that thereby serves as healer, i.e. medicine man, within the community). Take Joan of Arc as one well enough known example of this. And when did she become unethical? Never; quite the contrary. But she was accused of and killed for her devil-worship as soon as the authorities no longer benefited and thereby liked her life-long doings. And this specific mindset of natural vs. devil-business is, to my knowledge, in fact unique to Christian thought.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I can have a general feel for this and sympathize with it, but it yet doesn't resonate with me in a lasting way. For the spiritual folks amongst us, the supra-natural (same meaning as supernatural) is merely the many realms of spiritual being which subsist in manners tethered to the natural, physical world without being as constrained by the physical limitations which humans (and all other physical life) find ourselves bound to.
Then, just as there are some humans that are generally ethical and some that are generally not ethical, so too in "the above". In Christian realms, hence the angels and devils. Or, as an example from different spiritual realms, hence the enlightened incorporeal Buddha-spirits (each a deity) on the one hand and those incorporeal beings which are ignorant and thereby bring about wrongs and unrighteous calamities.
My main intent to all this being that there is yet a partition between the corporeally physical world and the incorporeally spiritual realms of the cosmos - both subject to the cosmic logos but in different ways. Saying that everything ethical is natural whereas everything unethical is unnatural would then greatly alter this partitioning beyond any recognition.
I much prefer associating "nature" with "inborn-ness". But that can get very complex to properly express. Still, at the end of the day, in appraising that all sentience has the Good inborn into its very core, one can yet then arrive at the perspective that the Good is our true, ultimate nature. (Of which we dualistic egos often enough stand in the way of.)
Except gays aren't mentally ill. That went out of style 50 years ago. So lumping them in with pedophiles and alcoholics and pyromaniacs does indeed seem like rank bigotry.
But that's not true at all, is it? A post within this thread that you've failed to respond to is not an external source. Your claim that I have pointed to an external source is something we all know to be false.
So is a thing unnatural because it is not "oriented to God", as you seemed to first say, or because it is contrary to a things internal order... Or are these, for you, the same? Presumably, it is only we limited creatures who see things as evil or unnatural, since everything must ultimately fit god's plan...?
So at least for god, if not for us, nothing is unnatural, or misordered?
I suppose it comes down to faith.
But if the urge for men to procreate with women is found more in men, and is not merely a result of gender norms, then how can you claim that "group tendencies in no way determine individual proclivities"? If that were true then such urges would simply not be found more in men.
To repeat an argument that everyone has avoided:
Quoting Leontiskos
The fact that males can fertilize ova actually does bear on what individual males do. It means that more males fertilize ova than females (because females can't do it). Contrariwise with pregnancy, more females than males get pregnant (because males cannot get pregnant whereas females can). To deny this, one would need to deny that even though X can do Y and Z cannot do Y, nevertheless an individual X is no more likely to do Y than an individual Z.
Then in an evolutionary or teleological sense, hormonal and strength-based differences between males and females flow, in part, from their procreative natures. A pregnant female is more vulnerable than a non-pregnant human being, and therefore the society which values reproduction must devote more resources to protecting her than it devotes to protecting non-pregnant human beings. It makes sense that males are stronger and tend towards protection given that they are never vulnerable in this way for extended periods of time (because they cannot become pregnant). Once one understands how human beings reproduce, one also understands why males are naturally stronger and more "protection-oriented" than females. Other similar facts follow, such as the fact that the mother who has personally committed a great deal of energy to the pregnancy will be more "attached" to the newborn than the father, and this goes hand in hand with the breast feeding that will sustain the infant's life.
These are a few of the reasons why it is altogether implausible to hold that differences between males and females do not flow out into the social lives of human beings. The sex difference plays a significant role in human life, including human social life. It is also why the position which says that fertilizing ova and becoming pregnant should not "count as" social roles has nothing to be said for it, and has not received any actual defense within this thread.
I would have preferred to leave such tangential topics to the side, but given that @Banno has jumped on the tangent, I will say something. What I find is that this focus on "the nature/supernature distinction" is a kind of canard in Eastern Orthodox circles: a form of polemic against Western theology. Whatever merit such a critique has is usually greatly exaggerated.
Beyond that, the reason such a move is usually a quibble is because it doesn't often amount to anything in the hands of traditional Christians, at least when it comes to questions of morality and politics. Avoiding the "Euthyphro" objection requires adopting the same sort of moral epistemology that a nature/supernature theory adopts, namely a moral epistemology in which non-Christians are able to recognize and follow moral truths. It only becomes more than a quibble in the hands of non-traditional Christians, who are desirous to leave that moral epistemology behind. In effect, the danger with bringing up such a rarefied theological debate is hair-splitting in relation to the context where anti-religious hobbyists are keen to try to turn everything into a so-called "Euthyphro" debate.
Aquinas' own position where the natural law is not the whole of the divine law is a very sound position, and it's not clear that @Bob Ross has deviated from this.
No need for others to provide the walls. But it remains a puzzle as to why such stuff is permitted in a philosophy forum.
So a mental illness is whatever "the professionals" or "society" says it is? IIRC, there was a somewhat successful push to normalize and legalize pedophilia in Western Europe within that time frame as well, but, had it been more successful, I am not sure if that success ought to the determining factor as to whether being a "minor attracted person" is a sort of "disorder" or not. Likewise, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had their own particular way of defining "mental illness" that I don't think most people would like to affirm. But if the definitions of secular Western liberal democracies are better than those of other parts of the world, or of Western liberal democracies not so many years ago, then presumably it is in virtue of something other than that such definitions are "current."
At any rate, I didn't lump anyone in with anyone else. Plus, taking umbrage at being "lumped in" with pyromaniacs and pedophiles (who surely didn't choose to be such) might itself be called a sort of bigotry, no? They would certainly say so.
Yet, my point was that the entire idea of a "mental illness" presupposes some sort of standard of health, and the notion of "pathologies." However, I don't see how this makes the notion of mental health intrinsically "bigoted." Appeals to contemporary or prior norms are sort of beside the point; rather that standard ("health") should be the criteria for "illness." Otherwise we would be forced to say that homosexuality [I]was[/I] an illness, ceased to be so (in some select places), but might very well [I]become[/I] one in the future, which seems a little odd, no?
More broadly, I would say every society, to varying degrees, has issues with making vices into "virtues." Today, you see this more with acquisitiveness, and perhaps also with male aggression and license. And while it's a tricky subject, since a "proper order" might vary by cultural, historical, and social context, it seems somewhat obvious to me that the "ideal human ordering" is not simply "what most people say it is," nor a function of "what the many think and feel," and so there is a standard/goal to which one may come closer or fall further away from. And the various ways of "falling short" would be how I would classify "mental" or "spiritual" illnesses.
One would not be so desperate to get a thread shut down if they thought they possessed rationally persuasive arguments against the positions with which they disagree.
Sure, although I am more familiar with Catholics criticizing that distinction to be honest. I only brought it up because "natural" in the common, secular philosophical usage tends to exclude any sort of "transcendent" end (I do not like the term here, but it is how it is usually labeled). And this tends to simply exclude the rational appetites such that there are only "intellectual pleasures" to the extent that one finds "activities of the mind" (be they literature, philosophy, or video games) "pleasing."
But if we take "natural" in this sense and speak to the natural law we end up with a weird sort of mismatch because there aren't really higher and lower appetites anymore (or I would argue, rational freedom) but just a sort of plurality of "natural goods" that are natural just in that they are "things men enjoy."
Or to put it another way, I'd say natural law presupposes a certain anthropology that tends to be not so much denied today as utterly unknown. I only meant to get at a mismatch in terminology because if you begin speaking about goodness and truth as formal objects, people nowadays immediately jump to "transcendence" often understood as "supernatural," which then seems to make the law primarily revelatory rather than immanent in being, if that makes sense.
A little heads up: Many (quite many, actually) of us men and women do not engage in sexual behaviors with others with the intend of procreation in the form of begetting offspring. Especially since many of us consider overpopulation to be very problematic for all of humanity, and hence for ourselves as well. And, unlike most if not all lesser animals, we nevertheless joyfully engage in sexual activities knowing full well consciously that they could serve a the one and only means of so begging children.
There is 0-point to both oral and anal sex (yes, this, here, among heterosexuals) were procreation to be the sole purpose to sexthis as one might quite telling find in the society expressed by Orwell in his book 1984 (to not bring into this past religious motifs). Yet we quite willingly with a lot of ardor and amore long for at the very least oral sex to be given and taken. And, no, it need not be a prelude to anything else. It doesnt even need to lead toward an immediate orgasm. Being given oral sex with gusto by ones adored partner however does provide one with a great deal of worth (fully psychological in its nature) in addition to the physiological pleasures involved. Why else do we nowadays term it getting/giving head.
As to men being the (natural) procreators/begetters. Physically, materialistically, yes. But then we are and have always been a bit extra. Psychologically, spiritually, women historically have and are well able to yet procreate and beget ideas, cultures, paradigm shifts, etc. into the minds of biological men just fine. And the power of cultures always tends to outweigh the power of individuals within them.
Masculine being to penetrate, i.e. as per the yang of things; feminine being the penetrated, i.e. as per the yin of things. And conceptions can either be physical or purely psychological. Is a men's gaining of a novel concept from a woman, his conceiving the concept till fruition and then his giving birth to it into the world, to be deemed unnatural? I deem it rather sickly, and hence very unhealthy, to so consider.
To affirm that there is no teleological scope to the evolution of minds per se, this via their penetrating and being penetrated by other minds, toward the Good is a bit too bogus for me to take seriously. And to consider only men able of penetrating due to our physiological biology is just too damn materialistic.
:up:
I've a bit to do with disability advocacy, using the social model of disability. A classic example is that steps prevent a wheelchair user from accessing services. Steps - something hat is not essential, but convenient - prevent the chair user from flourishing. So there is a good argument for putting in ramps.
Similarly, a mental illness prevents the individual from flourishing - perhaps the voices and paranoia make social interaction problematic. Unlike the stairs, the problem is a direct result of the disease, not a an imposed social consequence.
In the case of of homosexuality, is what prevents the individual from flourishing more like the stairs or the voices? Is it a direct result of their homosexuality, or is it imposed by the attitudes of others? Is it intrinsic or socially imposed?
Homosexuality was removed from the DSM because, unlike mental illnesses, it does not intrinsically impede an individuals ability to flourish; any barriers arise from social prejudice, not from the orientation itself.
@RogueAI, :victory:
That's fair. Although I see a lot of Orthodox picking up de Lubac's thesis nowadays, it is still primarily Catholics.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
True. I am familiar with Ungureanu's work, and he does make interesting genealogical arguments to this effect.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
It does make sense, even though Banno took it in the exact opposite direction. But presumably with a more generous interlocutor it may have been different.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I'd say yes and no. Such was Ratzinger's thesis, and I think it works up to a point. Yet early in the thread my claim that women do not beget/impregnate in the way that men beget/impregnate was seen as contentious, and cases like those seem to be transparent to natural law. We see the same thing with social issues such as males competing in women's sports, where natural law really does seem sufficient to answer the question.
A little head's up: I never claimed anything to the contrary.
To a large extent, yes. These are weighty science-based questions, and we often have to depend on medical experts. They don't always get everything right of course. But in the case of homosexuality, the medical communities and societies around the world stopped regarding it as a mental illness long ago. In the decades since, that seems to have been the right call. Do you disagree? Do you think homosexuality belongs back in the DSM?
As to the whole burgeoning homosexuality vs. naturalness issue:
Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals#
The natural world as unnatural? Or maybe just sick and in need of the latest pharmaceuticals to clean it all up.
For example, look at the way I began the post:
Quoting Leontiskos
That's a telltale sign that I am going to argue against the thesis within quotation marks.
As to: Quoting Leontiskos
No quibbles there. Hence the ancient Greco-Roman world, for just one example, being replete with homosexuality. ... Without it being either unnatural or indicative of insanity.
Right, and as I already pointed out, I have no idea how your response is supposed to be a response to the quote you quoted. It's as if you were responding to a post that I never wrote, but that you instead created in your head and then imputed to me.
Not having read the entirety of this thread, its quite possible that i could have misinterpreted your stance. In which case, my bad.
To clarify: Do you uphold that genders are necessarily tethered to biological genitalia of the body or do you not uphold this? Thanks for the reply.
@Count Timothy von Icarus, you have more familiarity with Aristotle than I - what do you make of ? Is Bob in line with neo- Aristotelian thinking?
No worries.
The thread considers gender in terms of social roles, and one of the theses I explicitly opposed in the post you responded to is the thesis "that differences between males and females do not flow out into the social lives of human beings."
So we can infer that one of the theses I was arguing for was:
Ah. Again, my bad for my specific reply to you.
Maybe I overly conflated your views with those of @Count Timothy von Icarus, who from what I've so far read at least alluded to homosexuality being either unnatural or an illness.
It's a complex issue. In my cognitive sciences and anthropological studies of human sexuality while at college, for instance, I was taught that humanity can be divided into fifths on a sexual preference spectrum. The two extreme fifths are 100% either purely heterosexual or homosexual. The middle firth is perfectly bisexual. With in-betweens on either side. Can't find a quick reference to this, but I continue to maintain this perspective in light of both history and current human culture(s). And, as per my previous post addressing the animal kingdom for example, I find homosexuality and bisexuality to be both natural and just as potentially healthy as any heterosexuality. (utterly heterosexual though I myself am).
I do find this pertinent to the discussion. But, if it doesn't contradict your own views, once again: my apologies for my previous posts to you.
Because, individuals can act in ways contrary to how groups as a whole behave. My species and gender determine the range and distribution of behaviors available to me as a human male. I can impregnate, but I cannot give birth. But this range is incredibly wide. It is therefore not accurate to say that my gender "determines" how I behave. If you knew only my gender, you might have ideas about how I can behave, and how I am likely to behave. But my actual behavior would be unknown to you, as gender does not determine it.
It very quickly produced a heated philosophical debate, and I've been enjoying posts by you and others which oppose the OP's bigotry and religious dogmatism. So I'm going to let it stand.
And as @Count Timothy von Icarus points out, the discussion is the perfect specimen of the degenerate state of moral discourse described in the first chapters of After Virtue, in which (in my loose interpretation) Christian conservatives rely anachronistically on concepts that no longer have any shared social basis, and the liberals, leftists, and moderate conservatives (if they still exist) are largely emotive in their opposition.
Well, that's MacIntryre's view. Me, I'm definitely not on the fence. I'll make a post about it, maybe.
Please do.
Weirdly, I've decided to start out by criticizing Banno:
Quoting Banno
I disagree with this. I think what the Christian conservative use of neo-Aristotelian ideas of essence shows is that teleological frameworks are powerful and thus open to abuse. It's what makes them philosophically substantive, in contrast to the emotivism criticized by MacIntyre.
[quote=MacIntyre, After Virtue]Emotivism is the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling, insofar as they are moral or evaluative in character.[/quote]
MacIntyre argues that all modern moral philosophies that drop teleology have ended up here, without always knowing it. And the problem is that emotivism cannot provide any rational justification for moral claims, expressing only preferences. It is not open to abuse because it makes no substantive claims that can be abused.
The notion of essence in neo-Aristotelianism, on the other hand, makes meaty claims about human nature and flourishing, so it gives us a framework for rational moral debate, one that unfortunately can be weaponized by bad actors. You might say that it is neo-Aristotelianism's richness that is the problem.
The solution, arguably, is not to discard neo-Aristotelian ideas of essence, but to show how it can be used well, setting out a more humane, and more inclusive teleologylike one that shows how the telos of a human being is fulfilled in relationships of love and mutual flourishing, which can take many forms. I want to say that abandoning the concept of human nature and purpose because it's open to misuse is to surrender the very ground on which we can build a progressive vision of the good life.
No doubt there are other options, which you find preferable.
I guess I should get around to criticizing Bob, who after all is the proper target for those who wish to defend marginalized people from reactionaries, but it's a thankless and tedious task.
What exactly left that impression? The only two things I have tried to clarify here are that:
A. The "natural" of the natural law is very different from the "natural" of contemporary "naturalism" and so one must take time unpacking its distinct metaphysics and anthropology; and,
B. What defines a "mental illness" versus "bigotry," etc. cannot be reducible to mere current opinion, which is constantly changing, and does not always seem to track particularly well with "the good life" and "being a good person" (for we often fetishize certain vices).
The fact that people seem to be reading this as "you mentioned both homosexuality (an abnormal, as in, relatively rare, tendency in sexual desire) and pedophilia (another abnormal tendency in sexual desire)," therefore you are slandering homosexuals (presumably because pedophiles [I]really do[/I] deserve to be shamed and attacked for their particular desires or called "ill") is ironic, since it's exactly what they themselves point out as a sort of bigotry (it being important to note here that most people who sexually abuse children are not pedophiles per se, and that many pedophiles do not sexually abuse any children in their lifetimes, although the word is unhelpfully extended to both groups, but I speak here of the "illness" by which adults have a strong and/or exclusive sexual attraction to children regardless of their acts).
But, presumably many people do think in the case of those with something like an exclusive and "inborn, innate" attraction to children or adolescents that they should in fact go their whole lives without ever giving into such desires, regardless of if they were "born that way" or that such desires and interactions are "natural" in the sense that they are ubiquitous in human societies and can be found in brutes. And presumably, people who think that those with these desires ought never fulfill them would also agree that if they could be "cured" of them, they should be (hence our society's acceptance of "chemical castration" in these cases, etc.). And while people might try to justify this wholly in terms of the ethics of liberalism, focusing solely on "consent" (an issue muddied by the idea that children and adolescents can consent to attempts to change their sex or prevent puberty), I think that, on some consideration, it will be clear that it is not good for the adults involved either. An attraction to a "particular age" is necessarily an attraction to a person qua body, not a person qua soul. You can even consider this with someone like Jeffery Epstein, who was not a "pedophile" in the medical sense (his victims would have been eligible for marriage in almost all societies in human history), and yet surely it would have been better for him to be ordered towards a fulfilling marriage or the celibate life rather than towards coercing adolescents into sex.
But my only point here is that many of the arguments in this thread are defective. Something being "natural" in the modern sense of the term doesn't mean it is good or just, nor does a desire being "inborn" mean it is good and just (for as pointed out, envy, greed, lust, wrath, etc. are all "natural" and "inborn" in this sense). Nor is appealing to the rapidly shifting consensus of society or experts a particularly strong argument. These all seem to be appeals that are beside the point. Likewise, even if homosexuality were "unnatural" in the modern sense (and it isn't), that would be a terrible argument in favor of it being a vice. Nor do I think attempts to ground such an assertion in some sort of Darwinian account of the advantages of heterosexual vagina intercourse makes much sense. Presumably, any sort of natural law account of why homosexuality is not ideal has to ground such an account in a robust anthropology.
Quoting RogueAI
Absolutely. For one, this would imply that homosexuality [I]really was a form of mental illness[/I] right up until it wasn't, and that it could easily become so again. And presumably, on any realist account of science, what is "science-based" is not, "whatever experts currently believe," but rather something like "what is really the case," or "what ideal inquiry would reveal."
As to the DSM, no, I wouldn't think so.
But, to speak more broadly, I also don't think the DSM is at all helpful for describing "mental" or "spiritual" health in a general sense. Consider that fornication is considered "normal" unless one is a "sex addict," or that greed would essentially be left out as an "illness." So the entire paradigm of medicalized "medical illness" also seems like a bit of a red herring to me. That's yet another reason why I would not say that spiritual and mental health are reducible to "what experts currently say."
Quoting Banno
They are the same, although this is true for man as a rational being in a fuller sense.
Good points, and it's worth pointing out that the status of homosexuality in "thick" teleological accounts varies a bit across traditions. This is why I have tended to point towards lust and fornication in general, since these are more widely accepted as vices and the reasons why seem fairly straightforward (of course, some traditions are skeptical of sex in general), and so they are better entry points for understanding if and why such a tradition might consider homosexuality a sort of "vice."
The particular justification of homosexuality as a vice in the Christian and Islamic traditions is sort of obscured by the fact that, since there was no such thing as a "gay marriage" an easy justification was that any such relationships necessarily fell outside the covenetal relationship in which sex was appropriate. And likewise, since most people married regardless of "desire" such relations also generally involved adultery.
Sexual sins are in some respects unique in these traditions because of their particular anthropology which sees man as the image bearer of God, which then gives human procreation and generation a unique role in the cosmos and history (Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body in Simple Language is quite good here). So, even when homosexuality was not remotely on people's radar, there was still the idea that heterosexual intercourse ought to be solely oriented towards procreation (whether this is an error is another question), hence "missionary position," etc. Indeed, Saint Paul's comments on heterosexual marriage can (although they need not be) read somewhat ambivalently (personally, given his context, where there was such a huge focus on childbearing, I think he is more offering a justification of the desirability if the celibate life for those who are oriented towards it).
Hence, a coherent Christian, Jewish, or Muslim justification of why homosexuality is a vice per se (as opposed to the general way in which all lust, fornication, adultery, etc. is a vice) needs to be built on a more complete understanding of the role of sexuality and marriage. It will suffice to say that this is already and extremely fraught topic though, even as respects heterosexual relations and marriage. It is, I would say, probably one of the worst topics to look at if one is trying to understand the basics of natural law for this reason.
Quoting hypericin
But that looks to be an invalid argument:
1. "Individuals can act in ways contrary to how groups as a whole behave."
2. Therefore, "Group tendencies in no way determine individual proclivities"
One can think of a "group tendency" in terms of a raw statistic (mere correlation) or else in terms of a causally grounded statistic (a causal correlation).
Your claim is at least arguable on the former case, in the event that you define "determine" in a particular way. But my point is that we are in the latter case and not the former case with certain behaviors, such as fertilizing ova and becoming pregnant:
Quoting hypericin
So we have a group tendency: males tend to fertilize ova. With regard to your thesis the question arises: does this group tendency determine individual proclivities, or not? Does the fact that males have a power mean that individual males will tend to exercise that power? The answer is actually "yes," and the instinctual drive to procreate is built in to such an answer. For Aristotle the fact that a species has a power to do X and a strong drive to do X means that the individual members of the species will in fact do X, and yet this does not mean that the act is infrustrable (i.e. it does not mean that every individual necessarily does X).
Ill acknowledge that it might be due to an improper reading in-between the lines of the posts Ive so far read from you, this given my own biases picked up from lifelong experiences. I take it you lean heavily toward the Christian conceptualizations of God. Historically, a great portion of Christendom has repeatedly labeled homosexuality to be both unnatural (un-God-given) and a mental insanity. Maybe more importantly as applies to my biases, having grown up in a generally Orthodox Christian community, I have been repeatedly bombarded by these very same dogmas: homosexuality is both unnatural due to being contrary to Gods will and a mental insanity that needs to be purged from humanity. Nor did you take time in what Ive so far read to explicitly claim that homosexuality is, to you, both natural and sane; this so as to distance yourself from what I continue to take to be the significant if not majority opinionsometimes far more explicit and sometimes more hiddenof todays Christian populaces, at least those dwelling in the West.
Having acknowledged my biases, and in light of you not taking this stance, Ill apologize to you as well.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
As regards biology, as far as I know, there is no evidence to indicate that pedophilia is inborn at birth. Furthermore, the molestation (which often enough equates to rape) of children is immensely harmful, if not physically then psychologically. While, on the other hand, there is evidence to indicate that homosexuality is inborn at birth. This such that those homosexuals which are in no way bisexually disposed cannot be altered into holding heterosexual drives no matter the culture or any imaginable attempt (such as that of conversion therapy, aka "sexual orientation change efforts" which, btw, is commonly acknowledged today to be very harmful). And, there is no harm that results from consensually homosexual activities.
Having said that, as Ive previously mentioned, to consider that which is natural to be that which is inbornthis as per the Latin natura which itself derives from Latin nascor and which back then fluidly applied to what the Greeks specified as the Logos at large, both in terms of the physical and of the spiritualgets very complex. So reducing the notion of "nature" thus interpreted to the one simple term of inborn does not do the notion justice.
I actually think Simone de Beauvoir is perceptive in her general technological diagnosis, and that the whole phenomenon of contemporary sexual ethics has to do with technology rather than (traditional) religion. In a historical sense, cultural attitudes towards things like fornication, homosexuality, sodomy, masturbation, etc., are quite stable. Some cultures were more lenient towards such acts than others, but they were never viewed as positive goods, on a par with coitus within a stable relationship or relationships (note that the polygamy question is less clear). For example, in Roman society fornication of various forms was quite common and acceptable, but it was also understood as a sort of concession to the overwhelming sexual drive. There was a clear line of demarcation between the husband's procreative role vis-a-vis his wife and society, and his sexual acts outside of that context (which were often intentionally sterile). Women's sexual acts were generally more restricted given the uniquely female consequence of pregnancy.
The technology which most changed human social life in these areas was the birth control pill, which allowed women to engage in intercourse with a much smaller chance of becoming pregnant. When combined with the feminist movement, this led to a societal reconceiving of the sexual act. Sterile (or quasi-sterile) sexual acts were now available to both sexes, and insofar as the number of sterile sexual acts asymptotically approaches 100%, the sexual act itself becomes viewed as unconnected to procreation, sex (i.e. male/female distinctions), and in various senses, even biology. One can see the way in which many things logically follow at this point, such as abortion on demand, a separation of sex and gender, an indifference to one's sexed nature, an equality between heterosexual and homosexual sexual acts, a collapse of the traditional concepts of marriage and family, a slow collapse of monogamy itself, and ultimately dangerously low birth rates. It is the technology that makes all the difference, and it would be irrational for culturespast or presentwhich lack Western sexual technologies to try to adopt contemporary Western sexual ethics.
I think this is insightful. :up:
There are Aristotelian progressives, such as Michael Sandel of Harvard, who go the exact route that you prescribe here.
You stated:
I responded by pointing out that this line of thinking would entail that every classification of a mental illness is bigoted:
Which you now responded with:
What is sophistical about the argument I made? Hypericin, this is not a gotcha moment: I think we both understand that what you said is not coherent and was a consequence of the way you feel about a persons rejection of gender theory. Clearly, it is not bigoted to believe that some condition is a mental illness.
This is question begging; and I would like to note, despite we wanting to converse with you, that you have never once attempted to address the metaphysical claims in the OP.
Are you implying that you think that transgenderism definitionally entails that it is not a mental illness? If so, then what about the definition of transgenderism necessitates that it is not a mental illness?
I never once said that a transgender person is less than human or the general population: you are arguing against a straw man here. Likewise, even if I grant your claim, thats not what bigotry is. Bigotry is an obstinate and stubborn attachment to an unreasonable position.
With all that aside, I would love to discuss with you the OP if you would like to have a productive conversation about gender theory and the alternative Aristotelian one I gave.
No I wouldn't. No one uses the term 'natural' to refer to every act of any organism. That would collapse the distinction, in that context of its usage, into triviality; and there's no need to cite the Bible for this. An atheist can accept that the natural vs. non-natural distinction is here referring to what is in the real nature of a thing; and so behavior contrary to it is unnatural.
My friend, it isnt a stone throw away; and this is why this is really just a straw man to justify ones own ideas without contending with their opposition. This same argument applies to all defects which we normally would recognize and try to cure without accepting Nazism; for example, if what counts an idea as a stone throw away from Nazism is that the idea implies that a group of people are naturally defective in some way, then every person that holds that people with physical deformities is a stone throw away from Nazism. What is happening here, with all due respect, is your are inadvertently attacking an obvious straw man.
Ok, that makes more sense: you do not believe that the ends do not justify the means.
What equation are you using as a consequentialist to evaluate the (im)permissibility of killing the violinist?
Because you are coming at this from the perspective of consequentialism; which makes no regard for evaluating the permissibility of an act but, instead, looks at the consequences and circumstances to determine what to do. In consequentialism, all acts are inherently neutral.
In my view, I am evaluating the intrinsic rightness or wrongness of the act itself first; and then looking to the circumstances if permissible. The difference here is that I am noting an important distinction, completely missing in consequentialistic thought, between something being directly and indirectly intentional.
This just begged the question. You just said:
1. Abortion is permissible if the mothers life is at risk.
2. This mothers life is at risk.
C: It is permissible for the mother to abort.
As I said before, murder is intrinsically wrongwhich isnt true in your consequentialistic view and necessarily so due to the nature of that family of normative ethical theoriesand the ends do not justify the means; consequently, a mother cannot murder someone to save her own life.
In fact, this is standard in society other than with abortion. If my life is on the line, no matter how grave, and I murder someone to save myself I will, in fact, get charged with murder and condemned for it. Consequentialism is not compatible with the modern justice system.
Theres two ways to think about self-defense as permissible:
A) What is directly intended is not killing the person but, rather, neutralizing them as a threat (which is distinct from murder); or
B) It is not the killing of an innocent person.
Now, you bring up a good point in this example that this perpetrator is not culpable themselves for the attack (e.g., perhaps they are hallucinating and relative to their perspective they are stopping something grave from happening [although it isnt really happening that way]); and so they are innocent intuitively. I was challenging the idea that they are to be see as innocent; but we can also go the A route and note that this innocent person is a threat to this victim (of no fault of their own) objectively; and so the victim is justified in directly intending to neutralize the threateven if that has a side effect of killing them.
I do think that is a really good example you gave their that challenges my idea of innocence.
RogueAI, you are missing the point my friend! Killing the baby in this case is indirectly intentional which, therefore, cannot be murder. Whether or not this is permissible is evaluating fundamentally differently than abortion, with the principle of double effect. In this example you gave, we are evaluating if it is permissible to bring about a bad side effect of killing the baby; whereas in abortion we are evaluating if it is permissible to bring use the death of the baby as a means towards our end.
Well, I don't want to go off topic, but it seems somewhat relevant insomuch as an attraction to children (or animals, and other such orientations) are considered to be "bad for people" such that they ought never act on their desires and should move to purge themselves of them.
Now, consider this in comparison to those ascetics who feel this way about all sexual desire. If we are of the opinion that the ascetics are wrong, but also that some sexual desires ought never be pursued, then we are somewhere in the middle and we have some range in mind for what constitutes "proper" or "good" sexual desire and conduct.
Quoting javra
Well, that is very much how people describe it, they "just knew," from an early age. And they have the same sorts of aggregate differences in brain behavior that one finds with homosexuality, etc., although this is hardly surprising. No strong genetic correlates have been identified that I am aware of, but it's also an area that has garnered less attention in research.
Perhaps this is just an "angle" for advocacy, but AFAIK, research suggests that some people do experience such a strong orientation.
Quoting javra
Right, but it's very much the same sort of evidence. This is exactly what "MAP" advocacy groups point to.
Quoting javra
Right, but this is equally true for pedophilia. There is not a reliable "cure" for it. Although, people do relate being "cured" of it, this is true for homosexuals as well (and I see no reason to believe that all people who express having undergone such a reorientation are necessarily somehow lying or self-deceiving).
Quoting javra
I would disagree with this. Grave harm often follows, and from "consensual" heterosexual relationships as well. These are often some of the experiences people regret most in life. Wouldn't the point instead be that homosexual relationships are not "necessarily harmful?"
And this I think is a large difficulty for any sort of natural law explanation that tries to argue that homosexuality is a vice per se. However, it seems easy to point out at least one way in which such relationships may be less than ideal, in that they cannot produce children. Yet this doesn't seem to me to offer the sort of clear moral linkage we might expect.
To see why, consider the case of someone who is paralyzed from the waist down. No doubt, it is "ideal" that they be cured and be able to walk. However, it hardly follows from this that using a wheelchair is "wrong" because being able to walk might in some way be a fuller realization of human life and capabilities. Thus, a natural law theory really needs to show that it is, all else equal, better for homosexuals to be celibate (this is of course, excluding any criticisms of fornication, lust, etc. in general). This is where I find traditional explanations to often be lacking because they don't really countenance the idea of a monogamous homosexual relationship.
For instance, from a Patristic or Thomistic perspective, being "intrinsically disordered" doesn't mean "horrific" or "evil in every respect." The idea is more that the powers of the soul are directed contrary to their purpose/fullest fulfillment. In this context, the real issue is the special sacramental meaning of procreation (it's interesting to note here that this philosophy was largely developed by people who had chosen to eschew their desires and live as celibates, even though many had previously engaged in sexual relations).
I would imagine then that they would say that the wheelchair analogy breaks down because the wheelchair is a sort of remedy that compensates for absence, whereas the procreative focus of marriage is a sort of signification of divine mysteries (sacramental) but not an essential part of "the good life" (for many saints were celibates, and the Blessed Virgin was of course, "ever-virgin"). Hence, as respects many types of relationships, the point would be that, even if an act brings pleasure, affection, and mutual support, it can still involve a love that is ultimately misdirected. This is essentially the same rationale used against masturbation, fornication, and adultery (of course, there is a sort of stigma issue in these texts too. Saint John of the Ladder finds masturbation too depraved to even mention, an idea that had long currency until fairly recently, resulting in some rather funny letters written by Wagner to Nietzsche's doctor over the fear that he was engaged in "self-abuse.")
But of course, such an explanation is deeply tied to the idea that the sexes are revelatory of God, e.g., Genesis 27:
[i]So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.[/i]
I do not know if the conclusion can be justified outside this understanding. And what is interesting here is that in similar Western Pagan and Eastern traditions, the move is generally not towards saying "all sorts of sexual relations are beneficial," but more often towards seeing them as unnecessary, or even as pernicious distractions. Hence, the justification of marriage here is more about its positive sacramental significance.
However, and here is the tricky part from a Christian perspective that wants to argue that homosexuality is a vice per se, Saint Paul seems to allow for concessions to human frailty as at least part of the justification for sex (e.g., I Corinthians 7):
[i]Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman. But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.[/i]
And the traditional response here goes back to the particular function of marriage and procreation as a sacrament and a sort of transfiguring divine pedagogy (which is also the argument against contraception). However, there is a question about pastoral responses here (and birth control is a great example here too) where it seems that the standard is unlikely to be met by many (and yet the ideal is that all can attain to "sainthood").
But at this point, aren't we relying on more theological points? It's hard for me to see how this can be a purely philosophical argument. The procreative function of romantic relationships is too weak to justify a claim that homosexuality is a vice per se. To be sure, it might be better if, if one wanted, one could have children with one's spouse, but it hardly follows from this that it is somehow wrong to marry some who is sterile when one could marry someone who is fertile, etc.
I didnt say that they should be equivocated: it was an analogy meant to elucidate the fact that believing there is something bad (or even wrong) with the condition of transgenderism, homosexuality, etc. does not entail that one wants to persecute them for it or doing Nazi atrocities to them. People keep associated me unjustly and disingenuiously with Nazism for merely thinking that it would ideally be good to find a cure for these kinds of conditions analogous to finding a cure for schizophrenia.
Again, my friend, why do you all quote me out of context? It is like you all want to invent ways to cancel me since you cannot find a way to do it with my what I actually said in the OP or with my responses. I am here for a good-faith conversation to discover the truth about gender theory.
To be clear, I made one comment to a fellow that a part of the liberal agenda is to support (1) sexual degeneracy, (2) homosexuality, and (3) transgenderism. In that comment, I was not referring to 2 or 3 as sexually degenerate, but other acts, broadly speaking, like BDSM. I then clarified to someone that, in truth, I do think that the acts involved in 2 and 3 are sexually degenerate (although I understand that is a provocative term to use that I wouldnt use when talking to a member of the LGBTQ+).
The condition is separate from the acts. Homosexuality as a sexual orientation is not a behavior; gender dysphoria is not a behavior. A person that engages in homosexual or transgender acts (like anal sex or sissification for example) are engaging in degenerate acts in the sense of having lost the physical, mental, or moral qualities considered normal and desirable; showing evidence of decline. Obviously, this is not an argument against gender theory; and has nothing directly to do with the OP.
This is the root of our disagreement. You are a nominalist, which has deeper issues. We can discuss those if you would like; but without the basis of essence realism the whole gender theory I gave is useless.
The OP is about gender theory and if it is true. You are making an ethical claim that if it only harms the individuals consenting to it, then one should mind their own business; but this isnt a thread about the ethics of LGBTQ+ behavior: it is a discussion about an aristotelian alternative to modern gender theory.
To answer your question, your ethical claim here presupposes a flawed understanding of harm, rightness, wrongness, badness, and goodness. In fact, I do not know how you can be a moral realist, truly, if you dont accept moral naturalism. @Banno thinks one can be a non-naturalist, but it doesnt work at all. Ironically, it collapses into moral cognitivism without an objective basis.
First of all, it obviously harms them to engage in these activities. E.g., anal sex, contrary to popular liberal studies and stats, does harm the anus over timeperiod. Likewise, ethically, it disorders the soul and body and inhibits the person from living their best life. In your view, which is very liberal, harm is something like immediate physical damage.
Heterosexual acts is natural; but even that has to be ordered properly for the good of the people having it. The idea that pleasure (or avoiding pain) is the highest form of good for humans is simply not true; and homosexual acts are not natural just because people do it.
I agree.
My friend, I never denied this. In fact, I explicitly stated I am a moral naturalist.
I will take a look when I have time; but, again, just citing a source isnt an argument. You have to present something to the discussion yourself. Why do you think Humes Guillotine is a law of logic? Thats a super niche and widely unrecognized view (which doesnt mean it is wrong, although I find it improbable).
I didnt argue this. I argue that a necessary being, by definition, exists in all possible worlds; so it must exist in the real world. You denied this. Do you agree with me that if X is a necessary being then it exists in the real world because it must exist in all possible worlds and the real world is a possible world? If so, then it does follow that if X is a necessary being in a possible world then X exists in all possible worlds and therefore exists in the real world. Thats my point.
What contention are you giving to what I said? I converted the terms to your terms so we can avoid semantics for now: please give an account of what is wrong with the conceptual analysis I gave so we can further this discussion.
If you believe this, then, yes, there would be no such thing as sexual degeneracy or degeneracy of any kind. There would be no such thing as a man, woman, human, dog, cat, etc. there would be just labels we give things. We wouldnt be able to have doctors because there is no human nature to study to determine what is healthy; there would be no female vs. male sports because there is not real difference between them; there would be no real shared nature between two chairs or two humans; etc.
Its a history of individual expressions; which are personality types. You describing, by your own admission, a person that lacks a real nature which is expressing their own subjectivity through their queerness. Thats a history of a personality expressing its subjectivity.
What is love under your view?
In liberal thought, love is totally different conceptually than in conservative thought. Love, traditionally, is to will the good of another for its own sake; and the good is relative to its nature. You dont believe in real natures: so what is love?
To find common ground, we would need to discuss nominalism vs. essence realism. This is the basis for the gender theory I gave.
You can be loving and kind to people while also recognizing that they have an illness that, if you truly love them, you would make reasonable efforts to cure.
Fair enough. I've had a similar conversation with some Thomists sover the years.
I dont believe one can be appropriately loving to someone whose identity one denies and considers perversion. I dont think theres anyway we can resolve this one. The gap comes before your use of Aristotle - its between your version of theism and my version of atheism. All we can do ultimately to attempt to settle this is vote in a way that best supports our views.
Banno, why do you straw man me? You are obviously a very intelligent person; and I think you are being uncharitable in our discussions. I want us to have a productive and interesting conversation to uncover the truth about gender theory (whether you are right, I am right, neither of us, etc.).
I never said that a human in being necessarily exhibits every human trait. In fact, thats contrary to Aristotelian thought!
The idea that what makes a thing what it is (viz., an essence) dictates how that kind of being should behave is a standard Aristotelian view and is essential to moral naturalism.
An essence is not a set of tendencies nor traits. An essence is the whatness, the quiddity, which determines what it is to be this particular kind of thing; a form is an actualizing principle that provides a thing with its essence. The essential properties of a thing are grounded in the essence it has (which is instantiated in its form). The properties in essence are really distinct from them in esse.
It is not shocking at all: that is a privation of their nature (usually of no fault of their own). Its called asexuality.
Assuming it were a part of the essence of a human to eat bland food, which it isnt, then this would entail that you are, all else being equal, acting immorally by eating non-bland foods no different than how it is immoral to purposefully eat foods that you know your body cant digest. It wouldnt, however, mean that you have a mental illness; and I never suggested that analogously to transgenderism. Transgenderism is a mental illness because it is gender dysphoria: it is the condition where the mind cannot cope with the nature that the body has. It is a dissociation disorder that causes serious harm to the patient.
Something I listened to recently, and which is also related to ' post on rationalistic morality in a different thread:
Quoting Fr. Michael Sherwin, OP, Christian Virtue in America's Nietzschean Wasteland: Thomistic Reflections, 29:05
I just meant natural in the sense that it is something in accord with the substantial form of the being in question. I am thinking of natural law theory here, but in a simpler sense for the sake of the discussion. Technically one needs to evaluate the natures as ordered by God to do ethics properly.
Agreed. I clarified my terminology but they dont seem to want to engage in good faith.
Yes, but it is not in human nature, per human substantial form, to have those vices and issues: those are caused from the disordering of the soul and bodyin other words, through privation of the realization of their nature.
I couldnt agree more. The worse part to me is that even people on a philosophy forum are unwilling to engage in a discussion about gender theory: they are behaving uncharitably, disingenuously, combatively, and hatefully. They ignore my post and resort to baselessly associating me with Nazism, bigotry, homophobia, transphobia, etc.
Thats exactly what I told @hypericin and they said I am being a sophist.
To be honest, this thread is revealing itself as liberals being incapable of discussing an alternative gender theory. Virtually no one has even quoted or tried to contend with the OP so far: instead, they are trying to cancel me.
Even you are trying to entice the moderators to censor this thread and have explicated you would censor it if you had the power.
This is the part I'm disagreeing with. Not Nazi-ism, but rather that homosexuality is on par with schizophrenia. They are not the same or even analogous.
I do this on the basis of hedonism. The happiness of the person is what's important. Medically speaking there's nothing wrong with homosexuality, and even something right because it can bring someone happiness. But schizophrenia can result in stress and unhapiness.
Quoting Bob Ross
I don't think I'm quoting you out of context because I'm disagreeing with your assertion at the end as clearly as possible: None of the acts listed are degenerate acts. They have not "lost the physical, mental, or moral qualities considered normal and desirable; showing evidence of decline"
The reason for the skipped quotes is because those were the bits after reading the thread that I thought most relevant to my reply. For the OP, though, my simple counter-argument is you set up a false dichotomy because we can think of gender and sex in neither the Aristotelian nor as a psychological construct.
The Kinsey report shows that there's a lot more to human sexuality than your normative conception based on heterosexuality suggests. I don't think people having sex differently violates any sort of grand norm that a person should be striving towards because of the gender of their soul. Rather the reports of self-satisfaction are far more persuasive to me than comparisons to a big picture ethic on the nature of man and what men ought to be to be truly eudemon.
Quoting Bob Ross
I'd say this is similar to your opening -- you prop your position on the incredulity of the conseuqences of an imagined other. But if there is some other position between Essence realism and nominalism, perhaps one that doesn't even try to find the essence of things...
I'd say that the theory is worse than useless because it's also leading you to believe false things about sexuality on the basis of the philosophical theory rather than on the facts.
Quoting Bob Ross
I think you're going to have to pick a side and stick to it here. Aristotelianism, and Epicureanism for that matter which is what I rely upon more in thinking about ethics naturally, is well known for blending factual and normative accounts as if they are not at odds with one another. That is if the OP is about gender theory and whether it's true and you're discussing an Aristotelian alternative then you are also talking about norms, in which case the ethical claims aren't at odds with the factual.
The other way to do this would be to take up Hume's fork and discuss things in terms of strictly description -- but then the Kinsey report demonstrates that your theory is false. People get up to all kinds of sexual acts without calling them degenerate, and that "degenerate" is a normative concept so you'd have to reject Hume's fork and go back to thinking about norms with facts and the curious practical reasonings associated with it.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, it's a history. Not of a personality expressing its subjectivity, but of an event that effects the person telling the story and the person listening to the story in order to elucidate who we are in the world given what's happened.
Now you've put forward one way to talk about "who you are" through Aristotle -- but surely you can see that there's more to our possible ways of thinking about sex than as a psychological theory of personality archetypes or immortal souls?
History is more attentive to the particulars than psychology, for one. The concern isn't to find some overarching psyche that explains human behavior but to understand where we came from and where we're going and rethink where we came from and where we're going and re-understand where we are. The subject of a history needn't be one person or even a group of people. A history on queerness need not only include people who self-identify as queers, for instance. It'd depend upon the theoretical device the given historian or storyteller wanted to use.
That is it doesn't reach for this overarching theory whereby we have strict categories where we can say yes/no in all circumstances. Perspective is important.
That's not to say that there's no reality, though. The reality I deny is of essences, but not because that dissolves the world around us into inchoate unrelated bits without meaning or even knowledge as much as the philosopher's knowledge on such things.
Quoting Bob Ross
It's my intent to point out hedonism is as a kind of difference whereby we'd reach the same conclusion: i.e. if your metaphysic leads to thinking about men and women like a medieval priest then I'm afraid I think that you're wrong factually and ethically, as you do of I.
Where to go from there?
Quoting Bob Ross
Polyphonic. It's erotic, friendly, filial, and small. We can do anything we want with love. The particularities of a love will depend upon the lovers.
It's a relationship and an attachment and an instinct and a point of fulfillment.
To your point here:
I'd say that love requires a relationship such that we can support our will for one another, but that relying upon goodwill alone to define the strange mixture that is love is pale to love. The goodwill isn't from afar, is what I mean: it's not a general respect and desire for the wellbeing of others just because they happen to be human. That I'd call respect, whereas love is a relationship between individuals with names.
I guess @Banno would probably point to something like Nussbaums capability framework as a more useful approach.
I was an emotivist for some time. And I tended to view the art of rational justification as a kind of game; something we do within certain conversational contexts. The source of most of our beliefs is emotional or affective, with reasoning supplied post hoc to make them appear coherent or justified or part of theism's plan. I think emotivism may be returning. Perhaps it would be beneficial if people stopped debating right and wrong and instead understood themselves as having an aesthetic, affective relationship to the world. :wink:
Quoting Jamal
So, does this make you a foundationalist? Do you think, for instance, Rortys neopragmatic view of morality is limited because it doesnt rely on objective moral truths or universal principles? If all things are socially constructed, contingent conversations, then why do anything in particular?
"According to the results of my philosophy all Chinese are mentally disabled. But this can't be bigotry... If it were, so would calling the mentally disabled, mentally disabled! Nyuk nyuk nyuk!"
Can you see why this doesn't fly? You are comparing your spurious diagnosis to a tautology. Whatever bigotry might be contained in your diagnosis, it will not be found in a tautology. Citing a tautology does nothing.
Is the opposed view "purely philosophical"? This is one of the double standards at play in such issues, and like the slavery question in my thread, "Beyond the Pale," the double standard is most obvious when it comes to deciding the burden of proof. The anti-metaphysicalists tend to say, "Well if you can't demonstrate your position via purely philosophical arguments, then I guess my position wins by default" (i.e. such a person accepts no onus to provide arguments for their own position, and one manifestation of this within this thread is the emotivism).
The modern egalitarianism that secularity has become so reliant upon is deeply religious, as the historian Tom Holland and others have shown in detail. The struggle between modern egalitarianism and traditional Judeo-Christian morality is basically an internecine conflict about how to weigh different "theological" premises (such as the equal treatment owed in virtue of the imago dei).
The irony in this case is that the modern view is much more religious than the traditional view, and this can be glimpsed by noting that non-Christian cultures are not internally tempted by the positions that the West is now staking out. Egalitarianism is not a conclusion of natural reason. A culture guided by natural reason does not come to the conclusion, for example, that men and women are of equal athletic ability and should compete in the same sports leagues.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Isn't this a bit like what you argue against in posts like <this one>? You seem to be saying something like, "Well it would be better, but it's not morally obligatory."
How do I tell the difference between natural and non-natural? Or how do you tell it? Is the sex act a joyful act or a painful duty? Is the sex I have with my 25 year post-menopausal wife degenerate, sinful, inferior, because she is not going to get pregnant? And if not, then why is the sex of a homosexual so different? What distinguishes real nature from fake/ersatz/inferior/degenerate/perverse/ nature?
Why doesn't it fly?
1. Supposition: It is bigotry to call an entire class of people mentally ill
2. Mental illnesses are categories based on classes of people
3. Therefore, anyone who believes in mental illness is a bigot (reductio ad absurdum)
The argument is surely valid. For example, if we say that the entire class of people with schizophrenia are mentally ill, then according to (1) we must be a bigot. (The vacuous case where one calls the class of mentally ill people mentally ill is not necessary in order to secure (3).)
The problem is with your claim in (1). Bigotry involves a mode of behavior or belief, and therefore cannot be identified by merely pointing to a behavior or belief. For example, if bigotry is defined as "obstinate attachment to a belief," then the holding of a material position can never be sufficient for bigotry. This is because obstinacy is a mode of belief, and no belief is inherently obstinate. If "calling an entire class of people mentally ill" were intrinsically bigoted, then the DSM-5 would be a book chock full of bigotry.
The word "bigotry" is being used in this thread merely as a slur, in order to undermine a person's reputation so that their claims might be found less persuasive. The reason it backfires with @Bob Ross is because we all know him. He is not obstinate. He changes his mind often, adding edits to his OPs or writing new threads where he disagrees with former positions. It is a credit that such a slur has trouble "sticking" to him.
Perhaps the prima facie objection to labeling homosexuality a mental illness has to do with the fact that mental illness tends to justify coercive action, and coercive action is seen as inappropriate with respect to sexual orientation. But not all mental illnesses justify coercive action. Depression, for example, generally does not.
This seems to me to touch on my questioning of the veracity of Bob's Neo-Aristotelianism [reply=""here;1021231"]. My vague recollections of Aristotle do not much cohere with the reactionary and authoritarian direction that our Aristotelian friends hereabouts seem to share.
So it may well be that I am mistakenly blaming Aristotle for the errors of @Bob Ross, @Leontiskos and perhaps @Count Timothy von Icarus.
What is admirable in MacIntyre is the critique of emotivism, a suspicion of abstract moral theorising and especially the embedding of ethics in a social context. But I'm sceptical as to teleological accounts that link what it supposedly is to be human to what we ought do - although I might be convinced - grounding "ought" in teleology appears to be a category mistake. And the turn to "traditional" values is just too convenient.
The core of my disparagement of Aristotelian essentialism is the hollowness of "that which makes a thing what it is, and not another thing". It doesn't appear to do any work, and to presuppose a referential approach to language that I hold to be demonstrably false.
There is indeed an unresolved tension in my thinking, in an admiration for both Anscombe and Foot (to whom Macintyre owes a great debt) together with a more progressive attitude than either. I do not accept the authoritarianism of Anscombe, nor the emphasis on tradition in Foot. I'll add Rawls and Nussbaum to the mix, and I think we might translate Aristotelian ethics into a modern, inclusive agenda. I'd hope that we might proceed without a "thick" ethics of tradition or evolutionary constraint, and proceed instead with a "thin" ethics of autonomy, dignity, and realised capabilities. Small steps over grand themes.
Excellent post, Jamal. I hope you succeed in shaking up the conversation here.
As long as were indulging in theological issues regarding the issue of marriage between men and women, maybe it ought not be forgotten that the English term woman etymologically can well be interpreted as stemming from the wif (wife) + (of) mann (a person/human being). So interpreted this semantics rings true to Genesis addressing Eve to be born from the rib of Adam, with only the latter being endowed with the Lords breath (anima, i.e. soul)such that the women, Eve, is not soul-endowed (a theme recent enough to have been addressed even by Virginia Wolff); and such that women are thereby not fully developed persons/human beings. This interpretation also coheres fluidly with the historic Abrahamic notion of wives, and women in general, being the living property of men, second maybe to cattle and other domesticated beasts. Whether in monogamy or in polygamy (harems and such) makes no difference on this count.
This to bring to light that historically in many an Abrahamic tradition, wives were seen not as equals in personhood but as means, a vessel or vehicle, for men to reproduce their bloodline. And, in this specific light, for two men to copulate was an abomination on multiple levels, not just that of inability to reproduce one or the others bloodline.
But moreover, I also want to draw strong attention to the fact that marriage has not historically been about what we currently most commonly deem it to be: two people in romantic love, which entails agape for each other, who desire to so remain bound for the remainder of their lives and, in so remaining, who then hold the possibility of being functionalelse proper, fitting, or goodcaretakers for the children that might thereby result. Instead, historically, marriage was first and foremost about the property, territory, networking, and the general wealth of two cohorts, of two families, becoming entwined and thereby converged. Yes, offspring were important, but far more due to their instrumental value in further propagating this very same convergence of wealth. This by contrast to their being of mostly intrinsic value for the parents which thereby value their children as smaller, yet to be fully developed, fellow equals of human worth. (Quite obviously, Im here addressing historical generalities and not absolutes.)
Hence, the notion that the primary purpose of marriage is, or has historically been, to reproduce is a bit of joke in light of the surplus of evidence that presents itself.
Ill just end with this:
Homosexuals, just like Shakers, can well adopt those children that were unwanted by their own parentsthis if they so desire to have children of their own. God knows there are far too many unwanted children in this world. And as has been evidenced time and time again, being raised by two gay men or two gay women does not in any way convert the naturally inborn sexual inclinations of the child come their adulthood. But maybe more importantly, if gay folk want to be monogamous for the remainder of their lives, then let them so be via marriage. They ought not be condemned to forced promiscuity or else celibacy or else in any other way punished for their monogamy-aiming aspirations (such as via lack of corresponding legal rights)however implicit this proclamation might be.
As to pedophiles, its a far more heated subject, at least for me, than your posts make it appear. This because the issue too easily converges with that of child molestation and child sex trafficking (currently on the rise in the West). I do get many of the nuances (not all pedophiles are child molesters nor vice versa, etc.) but, to my ears, to casually place homosexuals and pedophiles into the same sentence or paragraph via comparisons is grossly unesthetic, to here keep thing superficial.
I do have more to say, but, as you've mentioned, all this tends to depart from what it seems we both take to be sincere philosophical questions and topics. And Im not overly interested in debating non-philosophical issues at the current time.
Indeed, I did. Somewhere away from mere tradition and the Grand Ethic we might find the piecemeal improvement of individual human lives.
[quote=MacIntyre]The most striking feature of contemporary moral utterance is that so much of it is used to express disagreements; and the most striking feature of the debates in which these disagreements are expressed is their interminable character. I do not mean by this just that such debates go on and on and onalthough they dobut also that they apparently can find no terminus. There seems to be no rational way of securing moral agreement in our culture.[/quote]
[quote=MacIntyre]Every one of the arguments is logically valid or can be easily expanded so as to be made so; the conclusions do indeed follow from the premises. But the rival premises are such that we possess no rational way of weighing the claims of one as against another. For each premise employs some quite different normative or evaluative concept from the others, so that the claims made upon us are of quite different kinds.[/quote]
If this is the case for all moral debate, are we all condemned to engagement in eristic, i.e., rhetoric with the sole aim of winning, a practice which is unphilosophical or even irrational? In other words, is this discussion necessarily just a fight rather than a shared quest for truth?
The answer, I think, is not exactly. MacIntyre in that second paragraph is referring back to his examples, which show a tendency in our culture, perhaps not a necessity. I think we can argue rationally for the superiority of our premises, but with the aim of persuasion, i.e., of winning the battle.
Traditionally, going back to Socrates, you're either seeking truth or trying to win. But why not both? In the case of this discussion I think I can produce an argument with a dual function: (a) to be read by those who share my premises (e.g., that homosexuality is not immoral, degenerate, or mentally or otherwise defective), it strengthens our shared understanding or explores how we can understand these moral positions better; and (b) to be read by wavering opponents and fence-sitters, it is simultaneously a public demonstration of our moral framework's superiority to that of the Christian conservatives.
Regarding (b), this superiority isn't a matter of preference, but rather of rational justification: a moral framework is better if it is more comprehensive, coherent, and leads to a more humane society. I hope to show that Bob's framework fails on all three counts.
So...
Quoting Bob Ross
Quoting Bob Ross
(My bold)
So one side says anal sex violates the natural ends of both organs and is therefore a privation of goodness, and the other says no, it doesn't and it isn't (maybe they point out that singing is not a violation of the natural end of the mouth). Who is right? What would it mean to "hash it out"?
Quoting Bob Ross
Pointing out the weakness or fallaciousness of these comments would be uncharitable (everyone ought to get some leeway when it comes to rhetoric)---were they not so revealing. Assuming that MacIntyre's diagnosis is about right and that engaging Bob on his own terms would be yet another of those interminable debates, we're each free to engage in metacritique, examining the opponent's ideas in terms of their genesis, while ignoring their validity (the latter is uninteresting: if non-procreative sex is immoral/bad/unnatural, we'll grant you all the rest).
I mean, we could critique the position immanently by pushing its concepts to breaking point. For example, if all non-procreative sex acts are degenerate and morally corrupt, then heterosexual anal sex, oral sex, and even kissing and touching, are degenerate and morally corrupt. That diverges sufficiently from human experience that it strikes one as preposterous. But if only some of those acts are bad, why? Why isn't kissing a violation of the natural end of the mouth and a privation of goodness? And if some non-procreative sex acts are morally ok if they provide a context for procreation or if they are the same kind of act as procreation, then what justifies the privileging of this kind of act over another? It must be something separate from biological function. (It is, of course, the prior commitment to conservative Christian morality.)
But ultimately there's little benefit in hashing out the telos of the rectum. The proponents of Thomist natural law no doubt have many elegant and logically consistent responses to all of the objections above, and we get another instance of interminable moral debate that doesn't touch what I think is interesting and important, namely the genesis and the social meaning of the ideas.
Quoting Bob Ross
So I'll now do a metacritique which attempts to expose the genesis of Bob's ideas. Note that I'm not addressing the OP so much as other comments made in this thread, so if I focus on homosexuality instead of transgenderism, that's why. If that counts as off-topic, I'm dreadfully sorry.
I'm going to make use of a concept from Adorno's philosophy: the non-identical.
Identity thinking is the reduction of things to instances or specimens of an abstract category, thus failing to capture or coercively suppressing the thing's singularness and its actuality. What the categorial concept either fails to capture or suppresses is called the non-identical.
In the Negative Dialectics reading group I included the following as an item in a list that answered the question, what's so bad about identity thinking?:
Quoting Jamal
Bob's arguments constitute a textbook case of this identity thinking: he must reduce the whole person to the act he finds disgusting to justify a coercive impulse to force everyone into his chosen norm of being. No attempt is made to understand the lived experience of gay or transgender people, to listen to their voices, to appreciate their diverse experiences of love and intimacy. That's all pre-emptively obliterated under the force of the categories of degenerate, defective, violation of nature, and so on, and the total person is reduced to the function of sex organs, the context of the act ignored in the act of imposing the category of non-procreative act.
This is not accidental. It is the symptom of real conflict, suffering and domination. The genesis of this particular discourse is not in Aristotle or even Saint Thomas, but in the specific social trauma of the contemporary culture war. It is the response of a fundamentalist ideology, whose proponents have long since been unable to assume cultural dominance, to the threat of pluralism. It may even represent the assertiveness of a revitalized Christian right that now hopes to get over this marginalization. Coercive identity thinking is a form of psychosocial compensation: it seeks to resolve through forcible categorization the social anxiety produced by a world it cannot control.
As it happens, even the categories of trans person, gay man, etc., are examples of identity thinking and therefore have this coercive potential, if we forget that individuals are more than that. So Adorno wouldn't deny that categorization is necessary even just to think; what he alerted us to is the constant risk of coercion built into reason.
But that's the point. Bob represents an identity thinking of the coercive kind. The censorious impulse on display in Bob's more careless comments reveals that he is not presenting the result of a disinterested contemplation of organs and sexual practices. Rather, his arguments work to impose, to force, and to control, according to those impulses. But I don't want to reduce this to psychology: in its reliance on pathologization and its anachronistic demand for public priority---it demands priority over all other frameworks despite the fact that it's pre-modern and decontextualized---the argument functions politically, regardless of any personal motives: to impose a social hierarchy by cancelling rival ways of life.
It is clearest in his least philosophical comments. Note the language: "disorder," "defect," "degeneracy," and "privation". It's a tactical move that translates a social and political question about which forms of life our society should recognize into a clinical one about how we diagnose and cure this illness. This allows the argument to present itself as compassionate (always the protestation "I don't hate them, I just want to help them") while its function is to negate the legitimacy of certain ways of being.
The mention of "an organ designed to defecate" pretends to be a scientific or common-sense observation but is really a public performance of disgust, an attempt to bypass rationality by invoking a visceral reaction to justify exclusion.
And it's in comments like those that Bob is most forceful and genuine, which again indicates that the genesis of Bob's arguments is not in reason, but in prejudicial feeling, an aspect of a certain kind of ideology. Despite the Aristotelian clothing, Bob doesn't properly engage or inhabit any tradition at all, if we understand a tradition along with MacIntyre as a "historically extended, socially embodied argument".
This takes me back to my first comment in the discussion.
Quoting Jamal
I admit that this was immoderate, in the personal nature of the attack. But I want it to be understood as a description of the ideological function of Bob's comments, rather than a personal accusation. In more detail, this function is the anachronistic use of Thomist Aristotelianism as the respectable-looking outward appearance for an attack on pluralism, an attempt to use the language of timeless nature to delegitimize a rival social vision and re-establish a lost cultural dominance---and along the way, to exclude, stigmatize, and pathologize people on the basis of aspects of their identity and of the private, consensual relationships in which they find human connection, and which produce no demonstrable public harm.
To all the wavering opponents and fence-sitters: I hope I've gone some way towards demonstrating the superiority of my premises. The way it breaks down is that respect for the rights of gay and trans people and the refusal to accept that they are, merely according to those identities, degenerate, immoral, or defective---this moral framework is superior to Bob's premises because it is...
1. More comprehensive: it accounts for the full range of human experiences of love, pleasure, and intimacy.
2. More coherent: it avoids arbitrarily picking one biological function as the sacred one, while damning all the others to hell.
3. It leads to a more humane society: no loving couples are told by authorities that what they're doing is a privation of goodness or that they are sick in the head.
Lastly...
Quoting Bob Ross
Odd that Bob managed to misgender Philippa Foot. :razz:
That's a fair point. I don't think there is an obvious "default." As I pointed out, a number of traditions move towards seeing all sexual relations as, at best, unnecessary, and so one could argue that all that is required is that marriage is itself justified.
Quoting Leontiskos
Sure, but I here just thinking through the traditional response "out loud." Traditionally, it has not been considered a "misordered love" to marry someone of the opposite sex who is sterile, or for elderly people to marry, no?
This is why I think any sort of justification has to rest on a thicker philosophy of sex and anthropology (which personalists do get into in more modern terms).
Quoting Jamal
This is interesting because this is exactly the sort of critique Rosaria Butterfield, who had been a lesbian professor of queer studies and is now married to a male pastor, levels against modern LGBT categories. That is, they are a sort of coercive identity thinking, particularly when taught at state schools and framed as (relatively) immutable and immune to agency. It makes sense given her background in post-modern and critical theory and new orientation I suppose. You know, something like: "I found my true identity in Christ, despite what the controlling cultural dialectic tried to tell me." To me, this sort of thing always suggest the interminability of post-modern arguments and arguments from psycho-analysis more generally.
Quoting Jamal
It's worth noting here that Thomas himself did not think that it was prudent to criminalize all manner of behaviors he considered harmful. For instance, prostitution and gambling. Unless you mean "authorities" in the broadest sense, in which case any society that allows religious freedom will fail at 3, no? So, we will be forced to either tell imams, priests, and rabbis that they cannot speak with their authority on certain issues, or else default on 3.
I am reminded of David Bentley Hart's quip on his blog:
Of course, conservative Christians are often critical of Hart because they disagree with his understanding of the Gospels as a call to inclusion and diversity, not that they would frame it this way... .
What we might need in these discussions are philosophically adroit theists who are not aligned with reactionary, anti-enlightenment projects. Ultimately these debates usually end up as tedious theism-versus-atheism worldview arguments.
By a happy coincidence I am currently reading In Search of Radical Theology: Expositions, Explorations, Exhortations by John D. Caputo.
It is a re-telling of Western theology from the perspective of Heidegger and Derrida - quite a blast of fresh air. Stay tuned ...
What is your position on homosexuality and how do you see it in a Christian context?
Hi Tom. I've just started reading this guy Caputo he has written a lot and I think I am going to love him. As far as I can tell so far his is definitely within the liberal tradition and for example has an explicit concern with respect to climate change.
I have some fairly strong conservative leanings. For me the story of the Bible and the kerygma of the "Christ event" is one of the most extraordinary, unexpected, exciting things to ever exist in history.
I also think that liberalism has produced various disasters in ethics - I have strong feelings about abortion, for example.
"Individual autonomy is the highest good" is what I identify as the root of all my disagreements, and the conception of freedom as "freedom from" rather than "freedom for" leads to a culture of relativism, where no objective moral order guides political life.
But on many other issues of the "culture wars" I am much more of a libertarian.
My position on a lot of those issues is: If it does not harm the person or property of a nonconsenting other adult, it should not be prohibited.
My position on homosexuality is basically that.
Now, this libertarian principle is complicated for a Christian - it would, for example, legalize prostitution, I suppose.
So that libertarian principle is not a "Christian context" per se, but perhaps I am being unfair to liberalism, because that kind of libertarian principle could only have ever arisen in a liberal society.
The trans thing I am much less clear about - I am not particularly a fan of trans women playing rugby with the girls, for example, I don't think that's fair.
Quoting Colo Millz
I dont support all trans activist demands. But I think the issues of sports, prisons, and toilets are relatively minor and are matters we can negotiate and develop procedural responses to.
Quoting Colo Millz
Why do you choose to believe this story over Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism's extraordinary stories?
I'm not really sure what you mean here. That is precisely how marriage tended to be viewed by philosophers and theologians. Of course, these pre-modern thinkers would probably be the first to agree that "most people" behave contrary to this ideal, but that doesn't amount to evidence that it wasn't the ideal. Also, most people were peasant serfs (and earlier, many were slaves) and so not particularly focused on alliances and amassing generational wealth and prestige.
Quoting javra
I'd imagine that many people who view homosexuality as a sort of imperfection could agree with this though, no? My extremely Catholic grandmothers were fine with civil unions, back when that was a thing. It's not like those who see gluttony as defect want to ban fancy food (and here "gluttony" traditionally referred not only to over consumption, but any undue focus on food).
The issue of "condemnation" is interesting though. Leaving aside homosexuality for a moment, there is the whole idea that any notion of gluttony is "fat shaming" or perhaps "consumption shaming." To speak of licentiousness is "slut shaming," etc. There are all "personal choices," and all personal choices are relative to the individual, so long as they do not transgress the limits of liberal autonomy and infringe on others, or so the reasoning seems to go.
I do wonder if the shift in moral language is part of the difficulty here. To say something is "bad" becomes to describe it as possessing a sort of specific "moral evil." But this is hardly what was traditionally meant by gluttony being "evil." It was a misordering of desire, although towards something that is truly desirable, and didn't denote anything "horrific."
So, to 's point, this is perhaps more an issue with liberalism. Liberalism has a strong sense of the "morally bad" as distinct, because everything else is personal choice, and so to say anything is bad, that it "ought not be done" or that it is "not ideal" become a sort of "condemnation."
Of course, this says nothing about whether homosexuality is ideal or not, I only mean to underscore where certain tensions come from.
Quoting Colo Millz
Well, it depends if you accept the liberal anthropology of man as a more or less atomized actor. That is, are such "personal choices" really only effecting the people who make them? Or more to the point, should the law be instructive, so as to lead people (both individually, but also collectively) towards virtue in a positive sense, as an aid to virtue. That's how Saint Thomas thinks of human laws, as aids. However, he also didn't think it made sense to make many vices illegal.
To be honest, it has always seemed bizarre to me that prostitution is illegal, but then all manner of pornography is incredibly easy to access for children. The latter seems to have a far more corrosive and dehumanizing effect, and I think feminist critiques of the porn industry have a lot of bite. Of course, prostitution involves objectification, but pornography seems to take this to another level.
I think the point goes rather deep. Substantive moral argumentation has dried up in the West. This is why, for example, some dismissed @Bob Ross by telling him that he is fallaciously drawing an 'ought' from an 'is'. The problem is that folks in the West are actually no longer capable of offering rational arguments for moral and political positions, and the anti-metaphysical and anti-religious slogans are part and parcel of that incapacity.
What occurs as a result is that one excludes moral and political positions that they don't like with reasons that they fail to apply to themselves. We see positions like the one taken in Beyond the Pale, "His slavery-claims are disallowed because they are not rationally valid," and the unspoken part reads, "...and because my position is the default position I do not need to offer any rationally valid arguments for why slavery should be disallowed." Or as we have seen, the only offering for why one's position should be maintained is because a democratic majority upholds it (and nevermind the question about why slavery was wrong when the majority favored it).
This is obviously the quandary that Anscombe, MacIntyre, et al. were wrestling with, but it really hasn't left us.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
We could talk about such things, but given the example you provided, I would simply concede that one should prefer a fertile marriage to a sterile marriage (ceteris paribus). Or using your own language, if it is better to marry a fertile wife than a sterile wife, then it is more choiceworthy to marry a fertile wife.
As to the more general question, we would need to specify the proposition in question. For example, we might want to talk about the proposition, "A sterile marriage or a sterile sexual act is necessarily illicit." I would say this relies on modal reasoning in the same way that "moral obligation" challenges rely on modal reasoning, and I think there are good Aristotelian answers to be had, but I will postpone the question for now given the complexity of this thread. That's the sort of question that could perhaps benefit from a different thread altogether.
"trying to cancel you" would amount to some sort of moderator action, or people trying to bully you off the website...so far, i haven't seen anyone whatsoever doing that to you. It seems to me that you're having trouble dealing with large volumes of disagreement. The point of philosophy is not for everyone to come to the same conclusion, but to discuss and argue, among making statements about your truth.
Well I don't want to proselytize but the classical way of answering that is that I did not choose that particular story, the story chose me.
And as far as Hinduism or Buddhism is concerned I went through periods where those traditions were (they still are) incredibly precious to me. Part of the attraction of Hinduism was that I found the "system" of Advaita to be more or less philosophical and similarly with Mahayana Buddhism, the Madhyamika thinkers like Nagarjuna and Chandrakirti were "philosophical" in that sense also. I found them to be attractive because I could get my mind around them, it wasn't just a matter of blind faith.
To attempt a more sophisticated answer to your original question about "Christian context", I think where I live (in the US) right now what we seem to be witnessing is the elimination of classical liberalism as a viable politics any more, and so what we are left with is the battleground between the two other ideologies, conservatism and leftism. Biden, for example, governed from the left.
In another thread Banno said that what was happening in the US was the "murder" of liberalism. I think honestly we are past that point at this stage, I think what we are looking at is its death-twitches. The wave of woke-ism seems to have crested and is largely over.
Really? This seems to me one of hte most potent and obvious oddities of humanity. There are plenty of people whos lifestyles I think are damaging (to themselves/those around them or society at large) and I think it s perverse that they defend their life style (funnily enough, plenty of gender theory types run along these lines - I don't suggest that being interested in gender causes one to be immoral, but I do think immoral people tend to be drawn to the more liberal communities abouts). That says absolutely nothing, whatsoever, about how i feel about them as a human.
If someone comes to me, and is visibly on drugs, obviously unable to calm themselves and has a bad time - and this happens three days in a row, I lose no love but i lose patience.
For these reasons, among others, I very much (morally) hope that some weird frankenstein of those thinker's ethical positions never makes it way into the mainstream.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Hmm, i definitely agree with this and it seems to illustrate an unwillingness to be morally mature in a person who makes those claims (again, funnily, plenty of gender theory types take that exact bent to anything and everything they can possibly shoehorn a complaint into). However, it seems to me we are free to criticise other's personal choices. I am not homophobic, but if i had some deep-seated issue wit homosexuality (assuming it's not a closeted issue) I don't see why I am somehow morally suppressed from explanation or sharing of my ideas there.
Quoting Colo Millz
I'm not sure left and right have much meaning these days in politics. Isnt what were living in really corporatism, with huge companies and their owners siphoning up the wealth of the land? I thought Biden was a centrist. Trump isnt a conservative; he may be an authoritarian, right-wing statist, but he doesnt seem interested in conserving many traditions. Australia, where I am, is still a liberal and generally progressive country, although we currently have a Labor government thats somewhat to the right. I dont think most voters have much understanding or interest in liberalism or of leftright politics; its seems to be driven by emotion and how they belvie a party or candidate will affect them financially.
I can kind of see your point. But I guess I would hold that if someone is gay, this is a more significant part of their identity, and of a quite differnt nature, than the drug consumption of someone who uses. And I would consider neither of them a perversion. I don't think I would compare the two things. Denying someones drug use doesnt seem to me to be the same thing as denying their homosexuality. Is homosexuality damaging to themselves or society at large? I wouldn't have thought so. Drug use? Not always, but often.
I think that is the danger that MacIntyre was forced to take more seriously in his later work. Also, the fact that MacIntyre was not always sufficiently attentive to that danger is one reason I'm not his biggest fan.
Quoting Jamal
Quoting Jamal
I think Socrates' approach was straightforward: try to convince your interlocutor. The rest will follow. If one begins with the presupposition that they cannot properly engage their interlocutor's arguments, but must instead play to their own side or to some "neutral" party, then I think Socratic dialogue has been abandoned. In other words, it's hard to see how one can accept MacIntyre's diagnosis while avoiding eristic. For example, if @Bob Ross does not himself accept the criteria and validity of "genesis argumentation," then what is occurring is simply eristic. If a metacritique is to be legitimate, it must work within the bounds of mutual dialogue. If a "metacritique" involves turning away from Bob in order to start talking to other people about Bob (which is something we have seen often within this thread), then eristic has emerged.
Socrates would do something like this: "I think that if one can show that the genesis of an idea is faulty, then the idea itself must be rejected. Would you agree with me on this?" Namely, he would bring his interlocutor along with him so that the dialogue is not abandoned.
But remember that @Bob Ross is attempting to offer arguments that are sound and not merely valid. If one honestly does not see the force of one of Bob's premises, they must simply say so. Validity is not of much interest in any philosophical debate. Invalid argumentation should be rare among principled philosophers. Philosophical objections should almost always pertain to soundness rather than mere validity.
Quoting Jamal
This is a perfectly legitimate form of argument that remains within dialogue and does not move into eristic. Is it also the sort of argument that is most likely to convince an interlocutor, given that it retains the lion's share of their premises.
Quoting Jamal
But you are being glib, and also inaccurate. The argument you just offered was not about "the telos of the rectum," but rather about whether sex acts require a procreative condition. It would cash out in the idea that the non-procreative nature of the rectum is irrelevant to an analysis of sex acts.
Quoting Jamal
The irony is that this is exactly what conservatives tend to accuse progressives of. Progressives are said to reduce someone's entire personhood to their sexual orientation, such that their core identity must be equated to their sexual desires. Similarly, "No attempt is made to understand the lived experience of gay or transgender people," given that there are not a few such people who agree with Ross and disagree with Jamal. It is simply assumed, a priori, that one is speaking for all such people.
Still, this sort of argument remains at a properly dialogical level insofar as it relies upon reasoning that is shared by one's interlocutor, at least in part. Presumably it does achieve that, and I think this is a sign that the notion of incommensurable worldviews that MacIntyre flirts with is actually mistaken. Instead of seeing an opaque speech, the conservative can say, "I actually agree with a good portion of that, and I think it gets at a problem with the way the LGBT movement reduces persons to their sexual orientation. I would want to see personhood and human life in a much broader and more spacious context." At the same time, if one wants the conservative to be open to Adorno, then they must be open to conservative parallels.
(The Christian community has received this objection with a fair amount of sympathy, as can be seen in the work of someone like Karol Wojtyla.)
Quoting Jamal
That's right, but I worry that the word "coercion" is being stretched too far in sentences like these. It would require a fair bit of argumentation to conclude that an act of categorization is a coercive act, or is pregnant with coercive potential. The problem folds on itself, given that if an accusation of coercion is found to be credible, then what is justified in response is precisely coercion. This is why, I think, that remaining on the dialogical level remains so imperative.
Quoting Jamal
I haven't seen a "censorious impulse" from Bob. I actually think a lot of people within this thread are desirous to see Bob himself censored.
Quoting Jamal
I think this is one of the many double standards at play. Does the LGBT lobby not use coercive means? Does it not rely on pathologization, for example by literally dubbing their opponents "homophobes"? Does it not demand public priority?
Quoting Jamal
Those are actually philosophical terms with the exception of "degenerate."
Quoting Jamal
Every moral and political position will end up negating the legitimacy of certain ways of being.
Quoting Jamal
By this point your charitable reading looks to have dried up. You are simply imputing malicious motives to Bob by focusing on certain parts of his posts and ignoring others.
The kicker for me is that I know lots of gay people who agree with Bob, and we have had great conversations about these topics. I realize it is very hard for the activist to reckon with such a fact, and of course when the fact is spied out coercion from the LGBT activist follows almost immediately. It would be hard to overemphasize the extent of bullying and coercion such people feel at the hands of LGBT activists, even to the point of falsely speaking for them and refusing to grant them any voice at all. They are subject to some of the most vicious attacks if they fail to fall into line with the cultural orthodoxy. Two of the people I have in mind are afraid to "come out" publicly because they fear the LGBT community. Their support meetings have been pushed underground after the meetings were infiltrated by reporters who doxed certain members, destroying their careers and lives.
Quoting Jamal
:lol:
Coming back to this:
Quoting Jamal
This seems to amount to, "The whole tradition in question will rationalize endlessly, and what is therefore needed is a form of ad hominem (where one tries to show that the 'genesis' of the ideas in question is 'prejudicial feeling' and evil motives)." I didn't understand what you meant by "the genesis of the ideas," until finishing your post, but it looks to be a form of eristic. I don't think there are such short cuts to be had, especially if Socrates is our model.
I would suggest that if one wants to offer a tradition such as Adorno, then they must be open to the traditions that others bring to the table, especially when they are strongly represented. I think the avoiding of eristic is the correct criterion, but I think the "genesis approach" fails to avoid eristic (and it is worth noting that one can question another's motives dialogically, without moving into eristic - Bob himself surely wishes to avoid engaging in bad faith argumentation). Finally, Bob is someone who is still finding his philosophical bearings. I think it is unfair to criticize him for an eclectic approach. That's how everyone begins.
I am allergic to proselytism (I didn't much appreciate it when it was attempted upon me) but I will try to briefly respond in this way:
Either the guy was the messianic King or he wasn't.
As C.S. Lewis famously put it:
[i]A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.
He would either be a lunatic on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg or else he would be the Devil of Hell.
You must make your choice.
Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.[/i]
Mere Christianity, Book II, ch. 3
For example no-one even reasonably sane could say "before Abraham was, I AM" - if they were merely some great ethical teacher.
Now if that is true, I'm not sure that whether the claim that he was the messianic King can be "convincing" in exactly the way you're putting it in your question. I am not "convinced" that I have clearly "seen", for example that Jesus is the Son of God.
Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Hebrews 11:1
So I am not "convinced" in the same way that I am "convinced" that 2+2=4.
But I do have faith, hope and charity - at least in a very limited way.
Some say that faith can only ever be anti-rational. I don't think that. I prefer to just ask:
"But what if it is true?"
If it is true then certain things follow - but I'll leave it there.
My response to Lewis was always that he missed the 4th option: myth.
But I appreciate your response. Maybe we can talk about other things some time.
I gave my justifications for it in the respective post. One can theorize something to be X and so maintain, but if it in practice is Y, then it is Y and not X. As much as the dictum goes that the #1 telos of marriage is that of having children, it isn't currently and has never been. To add to what i previously stated: People can and often enough do conceive and birth children just fine without marriage. The notion of "illegitimate child" is by no means modern. The issue is not that of having children but, instead, that of raising children to their desired purposes as adults. And for this, and only this, monogamous nuclear families are paramount.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
For the greatest portion of Western history post common era, marriages have been non-consensual, such as is the case in prearranged marriages. Serfs too had their economic necessities for survival. One quick reference to this generality:
Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_marriage_pattern#The_beginnings_of_consensual_marriage
Hence, till about 1140 consensual marriages did not occur. Nor did they predominate afterward. If you've ever read Queen Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron published in the mid-1600s, you'll find romance almost always being an extra-marital luxury (in the best of cases, as per a knight that devotes his life and eternal love for a perfectly married loved one while never having intercourse with her, though there's plenty of infidelity stories as well).
[edit: to try make this clearer: And all prearranged marriages are done for socio-economic reasons. Be it among nobility or among serfs. As long as one in not infertile, one can reproduce with anyone out there (and the act, regrettably, need not be consensual). But the formalization of marriage unites and unifies two households together. Reproduction here takes second place to which other household one as parent(s) ends up unifying with.]
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm in general agreement with this. But here's the important caveat for me: No one, none of us, period, is or will ever be anywhere near to perfect in any sense of the word while we live, at the very least, this lifetime. Hence, heterosexuality too is a form if imperfection, this by entailment of the just stated. And, while we can of course agree that imperfections are bad, it yet remains the case that likewise is none of us perfectly good; ergo, we are all in our own difference ways and degrees bad. Some will then take this as entailing a condemnation. Some have taken this state of mind to the point of mortification of the flesh via self-flagellation and the like. I don't view it this way. I take it that the one way to incrementally purge our impure being is to do what we all know to be right, this most of the time, while on occasion splurging a bit in the kinks we all have (be it a love of sweets, a sexual fetish consensually engaged in, etc.) while nevertheless never overly deviating from what is optimally righteous / virtuous - all this so as to better iron out our kinks, and all this without condemning ourselves but by both acknowledging our relative imperfections and being forgiving of them both in ourselves as well as in others (of course, sans any significant deviations).
In parallel, all this bit like intelligence or wisdom: we all fail to reach our perfect potential in this department and so we're all stupid by this standard of perfection. But, while the self-righteous will deny being in any way stupid, their very self-righteousness will in due measure prevent them from becoming more intelligent and wise then they currently are. Can't learn anything when one already knows everything. And so one cease to develop and improve. Much like is said of common beasts.
Don't mean to be preaching here, but to me it directly addresses the issue of condemnation for the badness of being imperfect. In closer relation to this thread, this be one heterosexual, homosexual, or else bisexual. Or course, implicit in all this is the question of what the heck then is the ultimate telos of life, aka the meaning or purpose of life. A different topic of potential argument. But I don't find this telos - which does go hand in hand with teleology and which can be the only "is" that justifies our "oughts" - has anything to do with heterosexuality, to not bring reproduction into the very same issue.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I very much disagree. None of us, progressives, conservatives, independents, or whatnot, are perfect angels. And each forest has its own crocked trees. It's a bit of scapegoat to claim otherwise. Besides, folks such as Girolamo Savonarola, who's renowned for his mortification of the flesh among other things, thereby condemning his own imperfections, were/are anything but liberal/progressive.
True. Aristotle's exclusion of barbarians and slaves, and partial exclusion of women, from the moral and political community was a presupposition rather than an active reactionary position.
Quoting Banno
Fair. I am undecided on it myself.
Quoting Banno
:up:
You don't think parents who see gender dysphoria as an illness are capable of truly or fully loving their children? Would this apply to something like autism or Down's syndrome too (which are surely even more relevant to personal identity)?
Anyhow, if seeing gender dysphoria as a pathology amounts to "denying someone's identity," wouldn't this mean that sex actually is deeply [I]essential[/I] to identity in precisely the way essentialist claim? I suppose this would go along with the sentiment that even if a treatment for gender dysphoria existed it would not be desirable, or that it should be removed from the DSM.
Yes, many of them do. Maybe I could tweak my wording.
But the proposition was that a stranger like Bob Ross would deny the identity of people hes never met on the basis that they have a 'perversion' he doesn't understand. That's not parenting and I dont think that counts as loving.
Note also that abuse is frequently perpetrated by people who say things like, Im doing this because I love you. Having worked in the area of domestic violence I've heard this many times.
I'm not a gender theorist. Heres my formulation (and Ill let you have the last word, since this isnt a productive conversation, much as Ive enjoyed it). Trans people exist and seem to have existed across cultures and throughout history. Empirical evidence consistently shows that their mental health deteriorates when they are forced to live contrary to their gender identity. And they are more likely to thrive if they are able to transition. The most ethical and pragmatic response, then, is to accept people as they identify. In most cases doing so doesn't undermine society and it greatly improves individual wellbeing and social inclusion.
Quoting Tom Storm
Good questions, although I balk at the suggestion that I'm a foundationalist. Otherwise ... it's complicated.
The qualification "arguably" is there because I am undecided, so one answer I can give to you is that I just don't know. But even if I fully endorsed the neo-Aristotelianism, I don't think that would entail foundationalism, if that is meant in a strong metaphysical sense, i.e., the belief in a fixed nature and purpose that provides normative justification for moral judgements.
My position right now is maybe something like a negatively teleological virtue ethics. I'm here to criticize ideas that seek to frustrate the telos of human flourishing, as I believe Bob's do, even if I don't have my own settled conception of what that human flourishing is. And settling on a conception of human flourishing is something I suspect is impossible in what I regard as a fragmented and chaotic human world. In other words, MacIntyre is right that modernity has produced people who, when they talk about ethics, don't know what they're talking about---and since I don't exclude myself from that, I have to be careful---and Adorno is right that while we might be able to see the sources of our norms and values, we cannot in our present circumstances find rational justification for them, such is the lack of access to a coherent socially embedded tradition.
So if there's any foundation to my moral thought, right now it's along the lines of Adorno:
As for Rorty, I'm not very familiar with him, but on the face of it yes, his view is limited without objective moral truths or universal principles, just as every other moral philosophy is. This standard is impossible to meet in the post-Enlightenment world, and the question is if Rorty's response navigates a good path between the Scylla of dogmatism and the Charybdis of relativism-nihilism. As far as I can see he sails too close to the latter.
This would seem to be a tricky place to occupy, and I sympathise.
Quoting Jamal
:fire:
And one might argue that they matter all the more in broken and chaotic circumstances. How else do we wrest some control or peace?
Quoting Jamal
Interesting. Does anyone know how to talk about ethics? Might not a redeemable form of post-modernism be the answer? I often think we are in a transition period. In our thinking, we seem done with modernity. There are powerful nostalgia projects everywhere, seeking to get us back to a golden era before things went astray. Its why we now have folk as diverse as Jordan Peterson and John Vervaeke flogging retro solutions to our problems, generally talking about the need to re-enchant the world. And every second new philosopher seems to be a Thomist.
Quoting Jamal
I watched an Australian interview with Nick Cave yesterday; he said that to be human is to suffer. Not an original take, sure, but one can't disagree (or help qualifying with "some suffer much more than others". Antinatalism lacks ambition. The most obvious antidote to this would be to blow up the world, destroy all life, and prevent all future suffering. Why is this not postulated as a heroic solution to all our problems?
In lieu of this, might it not be that we need a pragmatic approach to morality, given we are unable to get to truth or even agree upon axioms? Why let the perfect be the enemy of the good? I would take it as a given that anything human is going to be limited, imperfect, tentative, regardless of the era. Could we not build an ethical system acknowledging this, and put aside notions of perfection and flawless reasoning, focusing instead on what works to reduce harm? Just don't ask me how. :wink:
If only Peterson really strove to re-enchant the world. Most of the times I've heard him he was striving to re-lobster the (young male) human condition.
You might find interest in his quarrel with Putnam who was competing with him about the proper way to re-appropriate the American pragmatist tradition of Peirce, Dewey and James. While Rorty's idea of replacing ideals of truth and objectivity with ideals of solidarity didn't lack merit as a way to oppose what Putnam also rejected under the label of "metaphysical realism," Putman's own idea of a "Realism With a Human Face" sails at a safer distance from the Charybdis of relativism. (Rorty had a good rejoinder against charges of relativism, though.)
Good stuff. I mostly agree. Where I think this runs into difficulty is in how to uncover and decide on the causes of harm/suffering. The tools I favour are the critique of ideology, which I've tried to do here, and the analysis of social relations to reveal systemic domination. These can show the way harm gets baked into life and appear as normal. Liberal pragmatism doesn't really have this toolkit, since it doesn't have a robust scepticism towards social structures, so it can inadvertently end up preserving them and the harms they cause.
For example, both I and a liberal pragmatist might want to do something about the problem of widespread depression, agreeing that this is a significant harm or suffering. But while the liberal might want to solve the problem with better access to drugs and therapy, I and my quasi-Marxian critical theory buddies will question the diagnosis, saying that depression is a rational response to conditions of alienation and atomization, made to seem normal by ideologies like the work ethic, the performance society, and so on---and then link all that back to social and economic relations.
Id probably agree with this too. Of course, given that we cant change society short of a revolution (and then theres the question of what to do the morning after, as iek might ask), you're right that we probably cant do much more than offer people pills and talk therapy: the pragmatic responses (but not solutions) to being stuck in a traumatic world we cant alter. I guess it's a harm reduction approach. Perhaps theism is just the other side of the pills and talk therapy coin.
Quoting Pierre-Normand
Who knows what he's been trying to do? I think he might be a misunderstood atheist with a poor capcity to explain himself.
Quoting Pierre-Normand
I quite like it.
Quoting Pierre-Normand
Indeed and it's easy to get him wrong, I suspect. As I understand him, Rorty argued that he was never sayign that anything goes. He accepts that we lack absolute, universal foundations, but he insisted we can still distinguish better from worse beliefs within our communities and conversations.
Exactly. I seem to remember he also argued that if one were truly a relativist, then each community would have their own norms/truths and there would be no warrant for widening the circle of solidarity (for including transgender persons, for instance!)
Just a quick note to say that the word means severely critical of the behaviour of others, like someone who polices public morality (like the Roman censor). It's not about wanting to silence people.
Otherwise, I may respond to some of your interesting criticisms in the coming days.
That's fair. I actually think we could get a lot of mileage out of ' point about Aquinas' view on prostitution. I think a lot of fast assumptions are being made about Bob's views. Part of that is simply because @Bob Ross misunderstood the Overton window of TPF and did not anticipate the manner in which his posts would be received. If he were to go back in time he would probably understand his audience differently and write somewhat different posts. For example, going back in time, he might have anticipated the objection from some that what he really wants is coercive conversion therapy for all homosexuals.
Quoting Jamal
Sounds good. I am going to pile yet another (short) post on your head, given that I will be out for a number of days after tomorrow. :wink:
-
Quoting Jamal
I see these meta-questions about eristic and the like as extremely important, and I'm happy you began your post with that sort of consideration.
I think this move of yours is a case of the following:
On the one hand, time management is important and because of this I favor strictures that help equalize differences of time-availability (e.g. #6 here). On the other hand, I think the pain of time-taking is part and parcel of philosophy. Lack of time is probably the cause of a great deal of the spats on internet forums (because on internet forums the fact that one is low on time is rarely disclosed).
It could of course be objected that I have misrepresented the argument. It could be said that the point is not that the debate will take a long time, but rather that it is literally interminable. First, I don't think the debate is interminable. When someone like MacIntyre says that a debate is interminable, what they usually mean is that it may take decades or centuries for the debate to be settled within a society, and I would suggest that the needle is always being moved towards a terminus even if one can't settle the entrenched debate in a week. Second, the notion of "interminable debates" is a prelude to misology. To say that a debate is interminable is either to justify some course of action outside debate, or else to justify doing nothing. Either way, it ends rational discussion.
Beyond that, I think there are three operative principles at play. Eristic is one of them. Another is ad hominem. A third is the notion of being "Beyond the Pale." A key point here is that there are certain cases where ad hominem is not fallacious, and I think those exceptional cases have everything to do with the notion of being "beyond the pale." The simplest explanation is to say that ad hominem is acceptable when someone is engaging in bad faith. Yet it needs to be emphasized that the ontology of "bad faith" and especially the epistemology of recognizing "bad faith" must be grasped. This is because it is extremely common to use ad hominem appeals to shut down legitimate debate (and this is itself a form of bad faith engagement). Similarly, all fallacious ad hominem is a form of eristic. It is only the exceptional form of ad hominem that is not fallacious and is not necessarily eristic. When that exceptional form remains in earnest dialogue with one's interlocutor, it is not eristic. When that exceptional form of ad hominem abandons earnest dialogue with one's interlocutor, then it is either eristic or it is a form of moderation/policing (i.e. an authoritative move by a kind of referee or someone acting in that capacity). That form of moderation/policing is coercive, but not objectionably so as long as the bad faith has been properly assessed and understood.
I realize that's a lot, but the crucial point is that claims of "bad faith" (or bad acting, or bigotry, etc.) must be taken seriously, particularly by those who utter them. Bad faith engagement is something that is contrary to the spirit of philosophy, but a proper understanding of what it is and what it isn't is crucial given the potential for manipulation.
The problem with these sorts of arguments is that they amount to the following:
This so-called "pragmatic approach to morality" is just a variant of that form of reasoning. In this case the point can be seen by recognizing that forms of negative utilitarianism (such as the reduction of harm) are no less committed to moral truths than any other theory. One who wishes to reduce harm is committed to the truth that harm is morally evil, and this is true regardless of what they end up meaning by 'harm'.
What is at stake in (classically) liberal thinking is not a special "pragmatism" or an abandonment of moral realism, but rather a democratic, lowest-common denominator approach to morality and politics. The principle is not that moral truth is abandoned, but rather that only the moral truths that the vast majority of the population agrees with are to be enshrined publicly.
(This thread has largely been people jumping wildly from topic to topic, hoping to get their interlocutor to say something objectionable.)
Yes, I think this reasoning has some merit, although I find terms like 'morally evil' too close to a classical religious language I dont use, Id probably prefer cruelty or unjustifiable harm. I guess my response your point would be that in my understanding when a pragmatist tries to reduce harm, they're not appealing to an objective fact that harm is 'evil', they're expressing a shared sense that cruelty and suffering are things society wants to avoid. So moral claims, for a pragmatist, come from our communal values and practices, not from some deeper metaphysical truth.
Which is where yoru criticism below might come in; does this lead to a banal morality? It's a fair criticism, but I'm not sure the inference is accurate.
Quoting Leontiskos
Interesting. What is the substantive difference between a lowest-common denominator approach to morality and a legitimate approach; can you provide an example to give me a better notion of what you have in mind? Would the 10 commandments be an example of lowest common denominator approach (an accessible framework for the masses)?
Okay, but on this approach you are committed to the conclusion that the society which favors harm is no better or worse than the society which reduces harm.
The problem I have here is that no one actually believes such a thing. No one says, "Oh they are butchering babies and raping women over in Xylonia, but that's not a problem at all because harm isn't really evil."
Quoting Tom Storm
A democratic, lowest-common denominator approach does not favor human rights, especially insofar as human rights would be extended to minorities. That is why we find such an approach inadequate. Humans tend to act in their own favor, and if the laws are a function of the will of the majority, then the laws will favor the majority. Human rights and minority rights require the intervention of some non-democratic motive.
Sure, but people do use emotive language to describe atrocities, thats true. And it is not intrinsic to pragmatism to describe actions like this as 'not a problem at all'. Rather, we can say about such acts that people are expressing a deep-seated human reaction to horror and a commitment to moral solidarity. Such acts are precisely what we do not want to see in the kind of society we hope to inhabit. The rubric 'evil' need not be employed.
Quoting Leontiskos
Interesting. Certainly seems an accurate refection of populism.
Moral solidarity is directly contradictory to the sort of cultural relativism you just espoused. If one opposes harm only "because doing so reflects the values and sympathies of their community," then there is no moral solidarity with those outside the community. If someone opposes harm outside of their community, then obviously they were confused when they said that their opposition to harm had only to do with the values and sympathies of their community.
Liberalism solves this by associating itself with other ideas. In the US it became associated with
laissez-faire economics of the worst sort, leading to gross inequity. European liberals resisted this to a greater extent, adopting social programs in an attempt to mitigate it's worst aspects.
The virtues of liberalism are tolerance, pluralism, avoidance of violence. the vices of liberalism are normative emptiness and the inability to guide life. It was never meant to stand alone.
Liberalism provides a way to interact, without telling us what to do. Critical theory provides a way to understand what is going wrong, without telling us how to fix it. @Tom Storm's pragmatism reminds us that nevertheless we must act.
Seems to me that the three of these together mitigate against the grand social programs that would explain the whole, and leads us back to the critical, piecemeal improvement of individual human lives.
Small steps, not grand schemes
Jamal, I truly appreciate you engaging with the topic; albeit incredibly mediated from the OP. I genuinely hope that we can have a productive and respectful conversation. Lets dive in.
I am going to address the main points, as I see it, that you made; and feel free to let me know if I missed anything crucial.
Eristic vs. Rational Discourse
You provided an interesting, brief treatise on dialectics that aim at sophistry (eristic) vs. truth (rational knowledge) and analogized it to our dispute in ethics and metaphysics. You seem to think, and correct me if I am wrong, that two completely antithetical or exclusive theories cannot be rationally resolved; and, consequently, we must rely on metacritiqueviz., critique of the genesis beyond the validityto decipher which one a person should hold as true. To me, this is false for the following reasons:
1. The genesis of an idea is historical and, consequently, (inter-)subjective and, consequently, cannot provide any influence on the truth or falsity of a proposition (or theory). A genesis, including yours of mine (which I will get to later), at best, exposes the (social or individual) psychology at play in developing the ideait uncovers the motives...not the truth...of the idea.
2. The kinds of theories you are describing are just ones that are logically consistent and internally coherent; but epistemically we evaluate theories on much more than that. The main two you seemed to have missed is external coherence and parsimony.
I submit to you, that we use internal coherence and logical consistency to determine if the given theory meets the prerequisites to be sound; and then we move forward comparing how well it (1) fits the relevant data needing to be explained, (2) how parsimonious it is at explaining it, and (3) how well it coheres with the prioritized (external) knowledge we have of the rest of the world.
With all due respect, what your genesis exposition did was collapse ethics into psychologya fatal Nietzschien mistake IMHO.
Question-Begging
Your criteria for evaluating ethical frameworks used to demonstrate that your ethical framework is better was circular:
(emphasis added)
The word humane is a morally-loaded term; and as we see at the end, you end up presupposing the truth of your ethical theory to prove it:
What makes a humane society? You are presupposing here, in effect, that, in conclusion, your theory is better, liberalism, because it makes a better society. You then, and throughout the entirety of your thinking, assumed the concepts at play in liberal thought to convey your point. E.g., you used love in a hyper-individualistic, non-traditional way; and you assumed that it is better for society to have the authorities butt-out of peoples lives as much as possibleboth of which are tenants of classical liberalism.
More importantly, though, I want to be clear that I have not advocated for an authoritarian regime, like big brother, that forces people not to do sexual evils. Not once have I said that. In fact, I think Christianity entails that people need the ability, the leeway, so long as it is not gravely bad for them, to do evil to themselves. E.g., gluttony is evil but I actually think it is evil to force someone not to be a glutton. I just think there is a point where it may be too detrimental to their own good (e.g., Cindy should not have the option to do heroine even if we knew she won't harm anyone else by doing it, being 'objectively suicidal' should not be honored with suicide assistance, people castrating themselves to try to be the other gender should not be affirmed, etc.). The grave issue with liberalism is that it presupposes freedom of indifference and not freedom for excellence; and this is why we see it pushing for what is good as merely what coincides with what a person wants. True liberalism should support furries, medical affirmation care for transgenders, suicide assistance, euthanasia, providing people with hard drugs if they want it, helping people maim themselves if they want to, letting people sell their bodies for money, let people enter sex indentured servitude if its their kink, etc. Liberalism is hyper-libertarianism.
So, to be clear, you are partially arguing against a straw man of my position here. Nothing about the Aristotelian thought I gave necessitates that Chinese-style authoritarianism is the best political structure; or that we should force homosexuals not to have sex. In fact, I think that would be immoral to do.
Natural Law Theory: Based or Absurd?
Kissing, holding-hands, and the like are not sexual actsthey are intimate acts (with sometimes sexual undertones); and are a part of the natural ends of the human body. We use lips for many thingsnot just one. What your argument here suggests is that any intimacy outside of sex must be contrary to the natural ends of non-sex organs; and I dont see how that is true. Which leads me to:
In order for an act with a natural faculty to be immoral, it has to be contrary to the ends of that faculty such that it inhibits the said faculty from fulfilling them. Consequently, singing, kissing, cutting ones hair, cutting ones fingernails, getting an ear piercing, etc. are not immoral because they are not contrary to the ends of the respective faculties in this way.
Anal sex, for example, on the other hand, inhibits the anus from fulfilling its ends of (1) holding in poop and (2) excreting it. Anal sex does, in fact, although the organ can repair itself to some extent, loosen up the anus organ. Even liberal studies usually admit this to the extent that they suggest to people to do exercises to strengthen the pelvis area to help keep the anus healthy (to counter-act the anal sex they are having). Which leads me to:
This seems like an attempt to ignore the obvious fact that the anus is designed to defecate by ad hominem attacking me: you are essentially saying hey, guys, lets ignore the fact hes right about this one part because he really is just prejudiced and trying to give a bad-faithed public performance. This is the kind of rhetoric on this forum that saddens me; because I am out here trying to have good faith conversations with people.
Likewise, you are absolutely right that heterosexual anal, oral, and touching (such as masturbatory) sex is immoralI only see this as a bullet to bite from the perspective of liberal thought.
identity thinking
Am I correct in thinking that your identity thinking critique is that all concepts and ontological identities are forms of coercion? Do you accept that there are real identities (like a triangle really as opposed to only conceptually being a three sided shape)? Are they all coercive and immoral in your view?
To demonstrate good faith in my desire to have a productive conversation with you, I am going to overlook the fact that you reduced my entire metaphysics to a baseless ad hominem attack on my character and psychology; but I do need to clear my name. I am not ad hoc rationalizing a feeling of disgust for homosexuals; I am not prejudiced towards homosexuals; and I am not trying to use the terms like defective, violation of nature, etc. to pre-emptively obliterate anything (although I grant that the term 'degeneracy', although it truly does apply to what I was saying, is a provocative term that I would not use when talking to a member of the LGBTQ+ community). You know nothing about my personal life ..nothing, Jamal.
One last thing I wanted to cover:
MacIntyre accepts the vast majority of my view. Hes an Aristotelian too and a Christian; so I dont understand why you would think that he would think I am not following a tradition when I am using Aristo-Thomism. Aristo-thomism is a long-standing tradition in the Latin, Dominican Scholastics.
Yes, I think thats the way ahead in so many avenues. We still have to live and get on, even in imperfect circumstances.
Im acutely weary of theory and theorists - seems to me its a great place to hide. But at some point useful ideas do become elongated strategic programs and its easy to get caught up.
For those who are interested, in the philosophical literature this form of argument is called a "perverted faculty argument." A contemporary philosopher who has written about this topic both informally and academically is Edward Feser (<link to his related blog posts>).
I don't see how these comments help forward the conversation.
Well, again, that's because you are not discussing an alternative to gender studies, but foreclosing on it. Your claim that gender is just biological sex has been thoroughly debunked.
Quoting Bob Ross If you think that my interpretations of your claims is a straw man, one possibility worth considering is that your account is not as coherent as you suppose.
Here's my critique in outline.
1. Aristotelian essences are hollow.
2. There is a usable and interesting distinction to be made between biological sex and socially inaugurated gender.
3. You account of Aristotelian ethics is shallow. Other Aristotelian theorists, such as Nussbaum, do not reach the conservative conclusions of your account.
4. In claiming that certain gender traits are biologically determined, you move form an is to an ought, a logical error.
5. I hold that the stance you take concerning issues such as sexuality and abortion to be immoral.
@hypericin, I find that you are digging in ten toes deep on a hill that no one wants you to die on. Your justification for my views on transgenderism for being bigoted are internally incoherent in your own beliefs. Perhaps, would you care to re-word your claim in a way that is internally coherent?
Likewise, you still, hypericin, have not attempted to critique the OP. What are your thoughts on the contents of the OP itself?
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Bob Ross
So it was a substantive post that did not help forward the conversation.
Perhaps the problem is not with my post?
By determining if it is in accord or disaccord with the nature of the being in question. It is contrary to the nature of a lion for it eat plants; it is in its nature to eat meat.
When properly done, sex is a beautiful act of love and pleasure; so this is a false dilemma.
No, it is not.
Homosexuality as a sexual orientation is not itself degenerate: I am not sure why you are assuming I believe that. Homosexuality as an act or behavior is because it wills in accord with what is bad for a human. You having sex with your wife is an attempt at realizing your and her natureirregardless if your natures are defective or inhibited in some sort of way. Think of it this way: is a kid who is born without the ability to feel pain thereby immoral? Of course not! Is it a defect? Absolutely. If we could cure it, would we? Absolutely. Is the kid doing anything wrong by willing in ways that are not contrary to their natural ends in an effort to realize their nature even though they are incapable of realizing the aspect of their nature that is sensible [in relation to their lack of feeling of pain]? Of course not. Would the kid be doing something wrong if they tried to maim themselves? Of course: thats contrary to their natural ends.
A real nature is innate in the being of the being in question: it is intrinsic. A fake nature could refer to many different things; like someone understanding the nature of a being incorrectly or a nature that is merely conceptual (in the case of nominalism).
I didn't make any argument like that. I am not sure where you got this from: many people, including myself, have outlined clearly what you said and why it leads to absurd conclusions that you wouldn't accept.
Again, this is not a gotcha moment. I think this is a rather meaningless topic to debate right now.
The vast majority of the people responding to me have been trying to get the thread censored. Some reported it to the moderators to get removed; some notified the moderators without formally reporting to incentivize them to remove it; and some outright, like @Banno, said that they wish this was getting censored.
The fact of the matter is that no one from the opposition, expect perhaps @Jamal, has even tried to contend with the OP; instead, they tried to get it banned and then, when that failed, tried to trip me up with labels to try and get me to cancel myself. No, e.g., I am not a supporter of Nazism.
Do you think an eristic is a legitimate way to discover truth? I don't see how that isn't just an attempted psychoanalysis of the one forwarding the argument as opposed to contending with the argument itself.
That's an extraordinary claim.
Taking on the role of the victim in the face of overwhelming critique is a cheap, purely rhetorical move.
Definitely agree. I was genuinely interested to converse about modern gender theory contrasted to mine; and no one even attempted to do that.
I'd put our conversation differently than you have here.
I didn't try to get your OP banned or trip you up with labels.
If it needs to be said I believe you're a good faith interlocutor -- I didn't think it needed to be said.
Now, I have voiced opposition to your position, and in stricter terms than I normally do. But my opposition is directed at your position, and not your character. Were you of ill character I'd be tempted to ban the OP.
Eristic is something like fighting because one likes to fight, or arguing because one likes to argue. It usually connotes a desire to win for the sake of winning, without any regard for whether what one says is true or false, sound or unsound.
So no, I don't think it is a proper philosophical approach. My first thread was related to the topic. Actually, I think everyone generally agrees that eristic is problematic. @Jamal's post seemed to begin with that premise.
Sorry, I am queued up with all the responses. I thought I already answered this; but to answer: it is immoral. Again, directly intentionally killing an innocent person is always murder and murder is always wrong. However, in your consequentialistic view none of this would be true. This is why I asked you (I think?) what equation, as a consequentialist, you are deploying to evaluate what the best outcome is.
I understand the emotional-intuition we tend to have that she should be allowed to have an abortion; and I dont think it is entirely misplaced: it arises out of good empathy for the tragic situation the poor girl is in. However, the ends do not justify the means; and, of course, I am saying that knowing you reject that as a consequentialist.
Even if hedonism is trueviz., a persons hedonic happiness is all that mattersit does not follow that homosexuality as a sexual orientation is not a defect of the human species. I understand it could increase hedonic happiness for a person by engaging in their sexual desires; but this says nothing about whether it is a defect.
For example, not having my legs since birth might, in hindsight, bring me a lot of hedonic happiness through the tribulations I overcame with the condition: does that mean that me being born without my legs is not a defect?
I think you are conflating how a defect can influence our (hedonic) happiness or, more generally, psychology with the defect itself.
I am not saying you are quoting me out of context for disagreeing with that; Im saying that the original comment being leveraged here by everyone didnt even claim that homosexuality from degenerate and my comment later that did did not claim that homosexuality simpliciter is degenerate. Degeneracy is about moral decline; and badness is not identical to immorality.
I agree with you that under your view you shouldnt see anything wrong with homosexuality and, consequently, it cant be degenerate even though it is still a defect at best or a mental illness at worst. Defectiveness is not the same as degeneracy.
Fair enough: what do you believe sex and gender are? Lets start there and see if we can make some headway.
Yes, but thats just logically impossible for it to succeed as a third position. Thats like saying there is some other position to take about this block being yellow or not yellow, perhaps one that doesnt even try to figure out if it is yellow to begin with . Thats not a valid third option to topic.
This doesnt demonstrate that it is morally permissible; all that demonstrates is that people have sex in many different ways and enjoy it (superficially).
If it is their expressions throughout time that they are describing, then it is a history of their personality unfolding.
I understand that; but what I was saying is that IF gender is just a social construct then it is just about personality types. History about peoples sexuality would just be, as a social expression, an expression of their personality.
I think nominalism is an untenable theory IMHO.
Lets start with what you mean by sex and gender; and then we can get into hedonism vs. aristotelianism afterwards.
Whats its definition though: you just used the word to describe it. I need to know what you mean by it; because you mean it totally differently than the traditional usage. Is it to will the good of something for its own sake where the good of that something is just what it desires (or gives it pleasure)?
Fair enough, and I appreciate that Moliere :heart:
I hope we can have a fruitful dialogue. I think we need to start with what each other means by 'sex' and 'gender'. You said it isn't just a social construct, so I am curious to see how you use them then.
Oh, then maybe I misunderstood @Jamal; or perhaps I misunderstood the term. I thought they were giving an psychological account of why I am coming up with the Aristotelian account of gender because they wanted to provide a metacritique of the genesis of my views.
To be fair, I do think you tried in good faith to contend with my view a little bit there; but then it stopped for some reason.
I don't think it is unreasonable to note that virtually no one contended with the OP; and still haven't. You still haven't contended with the revised version I asked you to.
1. We never had a discussion substantively about nominalism vs. essence realism.
2. You never gave an account of what that is; and did not contend with my outlining of it in your terms that I gave to try to forward the conversation.
3. I've never heard of Nussbaum, and you've never provided any reasons that we could discuss of why it is shallow.
4. We did discuss this a bit: that's fair. However, you seem to think that you are contending immanently with the OP when you noting Hume's Guillotine; but I don't see how it does. Like I said, we can discuss this in detail and I already asked you (to of no answer) what grounds the objectivity of ethics for you as a non-naturalist. Non-naturalism can't account for moral objectivism: it only accounts for moral cognitivism.
5. Well this isn't directly relevant to the OP and begs the question. We can discuss this though.
I am more than happy to continue our discussion if you want to discuss any of these.
You quoted us as if we are the same person. I didn't say it was a substantive post, and I am pretty sure Leontiskos was being sarcastic (although I could be wrong).
Yes, I did: Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, I did:
Quoting Banno
And so on. I'm sorry you haven't been able to follow these connections. This is how threads of this sort become echo chambers, one party repeatedly demanding accounts the other has already given because they do not match the expected response.
I responded to this:
With:
You responded with:
I responded with:
To which you killed the conversation with:
I tried to reformulate it to your schema to further the convo and you never contended with it in any substantial sense. The above is the track record: these are the facts of our discourse on the actual OP. The rest is loosely related.
If this is opaque to you I wouldn't worry too much about it. There's a suspicion that you are not engaging in good faith, but I think such a suspicion is mistaken. You strike me as one of very best posters on TPF as far as "good faith" is concerned. I could cite numerous instances where you change your mind after rethinking an issue, and that's part of why I treat you as a serious interlocutor even on issues where we have significant disagreements (example 1, example 2, example 3). Heck, your first threads on TPF favored a form of moral subjectivism and argued against moral realism. That's where I met you.
I don't follow that at all. They might not be what you were expecting, but they form a neat dialogue on your claim.
Again, your "epistemic symbolism of societys understanding of the ontological reality of sex" just seeks to collapse gender into biology, which is again no more than your failure to recognise the distinction between sex and gender.
It's bang on.
Since we are being pedantic, let's amend the supposition:
Supposition: It is bigotry to substantively call an entire class of people mentally ill.
"Schizophrenics are mentally ill" is not a substantive claim, it proceeds from the definition of "schizophrenic". To know the word is to know that "mental illness" and "schizophrenia" stand in a genus - species relationship. It offers nothing new to the competent language user.
This is not at all the case with "Ali Chinese are mentally disabled" or "all trans people are mentally ill".
Quoting Leontiskos
I do not accept this definition. I can make any number of claims that are clearly identifiable as bigoted, without requiring a personalized, subjective assessment of just how obstinate I am in my beliefs.
This is really just basic decency. If I were trans, or had loved ones who were, I wouldn't want to come here and have to deal with threads claiming that I or my loved ones were immoral and mentally ill based merely on group identification. And context matters deeply: Bob's claims are made within a historical context where the government of the predominant English speaking country came to power on a platform of naked bigotry, primarily against trans and immigrants. As others here have pointed out, this post takes part in the ignoble philosophical tradition of providing intellectual scaffolding for state-sponsored bigotry.
Actually I take all that back. I have an idea for a new op: "Conservative Christians are immoral and mentally ill". I'm positive I can make a better case than @Bob Ross, without appealing to a questionable reading of Aristotle.
That's false though: i read it and tried sympathizing with your logic, and i still don't agree with it.
If you don't like being treated like this, then don't try and ban drag shows like you said you wanted to...and don't complain about people trying to cancel you when your thread and arguments stay intact.
It's hard for me to obey the moderation rules on websites in general when there's so much dumb and spammy crap; so you are not alone if you feel misunderstood. People trying to cancel your thread is not the same as people trying to kill you, which is another form of "canceling".
By all means feel free to amend the argument if you think it can be improved. I was simply using your own language as a starting point.
Quoting hypericin
Let's look at how you hope your new supposition changes the conclusion:
1a. Supposition: It is bigotry to substantively call an entire class of people mentally ill
2a. Mental illnesses non-substantively call an entire class of people mentally ill
3a. Therefore, it does not follow that anyone who believes in mental illness is a bigot
I see what you are trying to do, but I don't think your distinction between substantive and non-substantive holds up. Here's why:
Quoting hypericin
"Schizophrenia is a mental illness," is not a tautology. Things such as schizophrenia are added and removed from the list of mental illnesses, and therefore such predication cannot be tautologous. For example, one of the newest mental illnesses in the DSM-5-TR is prolonged grief disorder. It was added in 2022. In 2021 it was not considered a mental illness. This is one sure reason why we know that, "X is a mental illness," is not a tautological ("non-substantive") claim.
Quoting hypericin
Then feel free to provide your own definition. I was just taking a common one. My points will hold with any genuine definition of "bigotry."
Quoting hypericin
But this begs the question at hand, namely the question of whether it is bigotry. That's the very thing you've been failing to demonstrate, and three people have now pointed out the fallacious quality of your arguments for that conclusion.
The crux here is that you want to maintain that it is correct for you to call "bigotry" anything you think is really bad. The problem is that that's not what "bigotry" means. Not everything that you think is really bad is bigotry. "This is really bad, therefore it is bigotry," is an invalid inference.
We've always managed to do so so far. I hope and suspect that we will.
Would you mind if I suggested another starting point?
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, I think we all agree that eristic is not good in a philosophical context. My claim was that engaging directly would result in eristic, and that I had another option, which was metacritique.
It isn't a psychological account. At least, it's not meant to be. If my account veered into psychology---meaning that I imputed dishonesty and hateful feelings to you and explained your attraction to Thomist Aristotelianism in those (or other psychological) terms---that's a risk which is always tempting when I'm discussing things I care about with someone whose views I find morally objectionable. But one can examine someone's personal motivations from a sociological, rather than psychological, viewpoint---as representative of an ideology's operation in society. The problem is that since the focus is in some sense on the person, it can look a lot like ad hominem. But there is a difference, which is that the ideology critique aims to explore the social function of certain beliefs expressed or implied by your interlocutor, rather than simply discrediting that interlocutor.
This is actually a pretty common confusion in philosophy. Rather than directly confront the validity (or soundness) of a Christian's moral precepts, Nietzsche tried to expose their genesis, namely in the hatred and resentment of the slave. Rather than arguing that the plans of 19th and 20th century penal reformers were inhumane or resulted in recidivism, Foucault traced the genesis of these reforms to developing technologies of power, a result of more thorough social control even while being less brutal.
I think both these philosophers have been accused of committing ad hominem or the more general genetic fallacy. Imagine Foucault saying to a penal reformer, "your view represents the internalization of a new, more insidious form of power". To which the penal reformer might say "Ad hominem!" But of course, that's not what Foucault is doing. Genetic reasoning is not always fallacious.
I'm not saying all this to get myself off the hook. I'm saying that there is a central argument which remains to be dealt with after you remove all personal attacks and instances of ad hominem.
However, I am thinking of revising my original argument to show that engaging directly (what I called "immanently") can, e.g., by exposing contradicitons, serve as a basis for metacritique (which I think it effectively did in my big post).
Under this scheme, eristic is what happens when I fail to escape from the direct engagement, i.e., in Adorno's terms, fail to move from the particular (Bob's argument) to the metacritical universal (Christian ideology). But the point of my revision is that I do actually have to engage.
But why is schizophrenia a mental illness? Why would anyone link trans to mental illness if there were not some type of similarity between being trans and being schizophrenic (as in they are both a type of delusion)? Maybe we should stop with the labels and just get at the symptoms of what we are talking about.
What makes sex so special that one can identify as the opposite sex but if someone identifies as another species or as the President - then that is just crazy. There is no consistency in the interpretation of the symptoms.
Quoting hypericin
But if you had a family member that was anorexic and they were told that their condition means that they have a distorted view of their own body, why would they be more accepting of this fact than trans people are of their condition as a delusion?
Quoting Cleveland Clinic
Quoting hypericin
Exactly. I have always said that the trans movement is like a religion. They are both mass delusions. This is just being consistent. Aristotle (or the input of any long-dead philosopher) isn't needed. We don't need to refer to long-dead philosophers to determine if an argument is logically sound or not.
The OP isn't about drag shows and that only came up because people were derailing the conversation to try yo get me to say something that is homophobic, bigoted, etc.
Like I said:
1. We have solid evidence that multiple people notified Jamal about the thread in hopes of getting it banned and some were actively suggesting, like Banno, to censor it.
2. No one contended directly with the OP: it is about gender theorynot ethics about sexuality.
3. RogueAI was trying to bait me into agreeing with Nazism to illegitimatize my position.
4. Multiple people decided I was a bigot for thinking that transgenderism is a mental illness and continued to push that claim even after being corrected on the definition of bigotry.
5. They continued to mischaracterize my views even after I clarified them. For example, most initial responders made claims that I support forced experimentation (or 'curing') of homosexuals and transgender.
This is only important insofar as it demonstrates that at least some of the leftists on here are not being intellectual virtuous; which I think everyone should be exhibitingespecially on a philosophy forum.
With that being said, the discussion has started to tame itself and is now getting more charitable and closer to actually discussing the OP; so I have high hopes that I will be able to have productive conversations with people who are sticking with the thread.
Now you are claiming that a unsubstantive claim is one that is contained, deductively, in the definition of something; and this kind of claim is not bigoted.
1. That is not what bigotry refers to. It is an obstinate attachment to an unreasonable belief.
2. Definitions are subjective. By your logic, when transgenderism was considered, by definition, to be a mental illness called general dysphoria it would not have been bigoted for me to believe it. However, since they changed to definition to fit liberal agendas I am not somehow a bigot for using a different definition. Bigotry requires that I am holding on to my belief that transgenderism is a mental illness stubbornly, which means I am being closed-minded and acting in bad faith. You haven't demonstrated any of that.
3. If society decided to redefine schizophrenia so that it is not by definition a mental illness for suit a political agenda; then you, by your logic, would bigoted if you still believed it was.
Let's just move forward. You say I am failing to recognize the difference between sex and gender: what is sex and what is gender under your view?
It seems relevant to many of the points made here though. It isn't considered immoral for sterile couples to marry. And if such marriages were considered wholly defective per se that would represent an extremely narrow view of marriage.
Anyhow, while I object to the idea of a sui generis moral good that is discontinuous from other goods, I do not think this means that all value judgements must become "moral judgements." Surely it is better to be born with a functional hand, but it is hardly a moral failing to be born with a mangled one. Likewise, is it immoral or even a sort of deficit for someone born sterile to marry?
This is what I mean by arguments from procreation being too weak. They have not traditionally been thought to preclude sterile heterosexual couples from marrying.
Quoting Jamal
That set's a rather large task for oneself though, no? "Christian ideology," is incredibly broad. Even to only focus on the natural law tradition is quite a project. And it would require focusing on the natural law tradition, and not just "the [I]real[/I] reasons" some conservatives are drawn to it (which strikes me as necessarily an argument from psychoanalysis of sorts). But there are lots of wrinkles there, not least that the status of homosexuality is not uniform across modern versions of the tradition, nor Christianity, nor conservatism. Yet surely those differences are important in considering the genealogy of why some strains differ.
Can there be a genealogical account of "Christian ideology," that makes absolutely no reference to Christian theology? Or one of the natural law that doesn't account for its philosophical basis? It strikes me as something like trying to explain the appeal of Marxism in the West entirely in terms of the "real motivations" of Western Marxists, as wanting to appear counter-cultural, hip, or transgressive, which, even if it is partially true, will also remain shallow. It doesn't explain the particulars. Costin Alamariu is a reactionary conservative and yet that whole set of masculinist identitarians tends to be quite accepting of homosexuality and its "classical roots." There is not a necessary linkage between the terms "reactionary," "Christian," "conservative," and any particular stance towards homosexuality.
Genealogical accounts are normally big door stoppers for a reason. One thought is that homosexuality was widely considered to be a mental illness, or defect of sorts by progressive liberals until relatively recently. So, if you want a complete genealogy, you have to look at why that changed, as a sort of broad, widely held default, and why particular groups did not find the drive towards this change compelling. But I think here, at the sociological level, you would have to look at particular theological traditions and bedrock assumptions there. This is probably besides the point for Bob though, who says he isn't a Christian, and so is probably not a good target for a critique of Christian ideology.
Quoting Jamal
Well, in Nietzsche's case it's also just bad history, with no rigorous methodology, bordering on mere creative fiction. Also, his work is littered with emotional invective, so this criticism is always going to bite in at least some areas. :smile:
(Sorry, I can't help myself here. Nietzsche's many merits notwithstanding, I do not take him to be a very good historian to say the least.)
My problem with this is that I don't think, e.g., Nietzsche is validly critiquing Christianity by giving a psychoanalytic of the development of humanity over time. He never gives any coherent reasons that God doesn't exist, that morality doesn't exist without God existing, that morality is just socio-psychological, etc. Instead, you actively presupposes it throughout his works. His geneology of morals is a good read, but it doesn't even attempt to do ethics.
You can reduce ethics to pyscho-sociological inquiry unless you are a moral anti-realist. Are you a moral anti-realist?
This is a significant issue because you are not providing an alternative ethical theory to contend with nor are you contending with Aristo-Thomism by giving a genesis to Thomistic or modern conservative thought. It could be simultaneously true that natural law theory is true and humans discovered it with evil motives.
Likewise, you are trying to give a genesis of conservatives as a group and then trying to lump me in that general depiction. You simply don't have any reasons to believe I am bigoted, prejudiced, etc. even IF you had good reasons to believe there are a lot of bigoted, prejudiced conservatives out there. You are conversing with me and my ideas here: not on a debate stage where you address the crowd and make general remarks.
Are you saying that heterosexuals ought to, or at least may, realise their real nature, whereas homosexuals ought not realise their really defective nature? Are you saying that the menopause is a defect, or old age is a defect?
My problem is you make these declarations of what is a defect and what is a real nature but you never tell me how you tell what's what, so that I can do the same. So I keep coming back, to try and find out what real natures are and what defects are again and again, because I cannot find the consistent basis. Should I not force my rhubarb because it is against its real nature to grow in the dark? I'm sure you will tell me the answer, but what I want is that basis that will allow me to tell for myself. Is it against our real nature to travel by motor car? Is it perhaps the real nature of horses to be ridden and pull carts for us? But, above all, how do you know?
I didn't mean I have to account for the entirety of Christianity. The task is just to trace the argument back to its source, not in Aristotle or even Thomas, but in Christianity as it finds itself now (in America, probably).
Right, I am just wondering about the general linkage there. I can think of American subcultures (hardcore punk, rap) that are extremely homophobic (lyrics peppered with slurs, etc.) and yet have shed almost all outward embrace of Christian culture. Whereas historically in the West negative attitudes towards homosexuality predominated prior to Christianity.
So for example, the linkage can go in the other way. People who have strong feelings about homosexuality and gender, etc. gravitate towards existing Christian frameworks, which you see in the embrace of "cultural Christianity," or the language can simply be rolled forward without its religious foundations. And this is why I actually think a psychological argument makes more sense, even if those arguments have their obvious flaws.
The culture war makes for very weird combinations here, such that "cultural Christians" sit alongside conservative Christians in condemning liberal Christians' embrace of various philosophies of sex, and yet until relatively recently any sort of "Christianity" that denied the divinity of Christ, the virgin birth, etc. would have been considered obviously the gravest sort of hersey, far above any opinion about sex.
but once again: this just isn't true. I know it's not true because I did directly respond to the OP: in my response, I sympathized with you implying that gender and biological sex are dependent on each other, and I asked you not to use the term "liberal agenda" because it's terminology used for bigotry and fear. If you don't believe, the main people who propagated that term were political pundits appealing to those who don't like liberalism. It doesn't clearly describe anything that's going on in politics: it's vague, it points into a void. The reason why those pundits use the term is to induce fear; they want their listeners to think liberals have this unified ideological agenda, and our discussion showed that you agreed with that POV (point of view).
Me asking you not to use a particular term is not me "canceling you", it's just me wanting you to use clearer and less emotive terminology so I can understand your gender theory. You say that others have been trying to shut down the thread, but I personally have sent Jamal or other moderators no messages like that. I personally don't like to do stuff like that, at least in the context of "someone has an offensive or wrong point of view". If I think someone believes in nonsense, then I try to show them it's nonsense if I talk to them at all. I personally thrive on "offensive", it makes me feel alive, even though I will continue to respect Jamal's specific guidelines because I do think flaming and nazi perspectives tend to make internet discussion more bland and less interesting.
Okay, but I would encourage people to actually look at an argument from a philosopher who has written on this topic either formally or informally. I just don't know any arguments that fall into the problem you've identified. Else, maybe try to formulate the argument that you are arguing against?
The general question here is to ask whether there is a real distinction to be made between, say, anal sex and coitus, even when one of the partners engaged in the coitus is naturally sterile. I think there is a very obvious distinction to be made. The position which wants to say, "If marriage cannot be between people of the same sex, then marriage cannot be between any sterile couple," is basing itself on the reasoning which says that there is no real distinction to be made between those two acts. I don't think any of that makes sense. There is a difference between an organ that is inherently sterile and an organ that is accidentally sterile (or sterile through some impediment).
The other issue here is that the arguments around marriage are generally political arguments and not moral arguments (in the sense of being restricted to individual morality). The reason societies throughout history have recognized marriage between couples of the opposite sex but not the same sex really is based on the procreative nature of opposite-sex unions. That sterile couples were not barred from marriage does not mean that marriage is unrelated to procreation. A sterile person is precisely an exception to the rule that people are not sterile, and a sterile opposite-sex union is an exception to the rule that opposite-sex unions are not sterile. A sterile same-sex union is not at all an exception; it is a metaphysical necessity. The modal reasoning is unable to take exceptional cases into account; the essentialist reasoning is not. ...The other issue here is that sterility is not only difficult to identify with certainty, involves an invasion of privacy, and is costly to verify, but that there are tons of cases where supposedly "sterile" couples eventually do conceive.
With that said, it is surely true that the intentional sterility of our culture mitigates the force of arguments connecting marriage to procreation, as I alluded to <here>.
(I'm a bit short on time, which is one reason why I don't want to open up this can of worms at the moment.)
In fact, I haven't received a single private message complaining about this discussion.
There is not any difference in the world -- only in the philosopher's mind.
You are claiming that there is no difference between a womb that cannot conceive and an anus that cannot conceive. That there "is not any difference in the world" between the not-being-able-to-conceive of the two particular organs in question.
I need not argue against such a position. I need only describe it to show its rational poverty.
I am claiming that -- especially in respect to the original topic.
I'd rather say that your expression is something I need not argue against -- it describes your error clearly.
Where to go with that?
If I am wrong then it is only to my detriment to ignore such a powerfully rational claim, but I'll take my chances.
(And note that it is possible to simply ignore positions or claims with which one disagrees.)
Leon, you go on about true philosophical engagement but this exchange between yourself and Moliere demonstrates perfectly that it must be bullshit. You know very well that Moliere meant there is no relevant difference, and yet you chose to pretend you didn't know it. It's eristic, clear as day.
I don't think we've nailed these down at all, but that feels like the proper place to start if we're attempting to do philosophy.
There are some distinctions you've stated that I could start questioning, but then I feel like we'd go back to where we started.
In some ways then it feels like the most appropriate place to start is to ask -- where should we start in relation to thinking about sex, gender, and the various identifications and actions that result?
I've stated before that I'm basically an Epicurean on such things.
I believe you're a Christian on such things.
I have ideas about what "Christian" entails because of my own upbringing, especially with respect to the "conservative" brand of Christianity.
This all by way of leading to the place I think we could begin: What is the difference between liberal and conservative Christianity in the USA?
That feels far astray but it also feels at home to me: as a possible place to bounce off from that's not going to result in the same tired dialogue which, at least so I've expressed, looks inspired by bigotry (even though I don't believe you are a bigot the words are used by others and that retains a meaning)
EDIT: Also, it might be something so far astray that it's not for this thread. As in my first response I'm reaching for a root and that will produce different conversations. Ultimately, though, I'd like it if we could all stop talking about the specifics of sex and whether this or that act is eudomon or not -- we're not in a sermon here, we're thinking together about things that are hard to think about.
Thanks for revealing rhetorical methods for what they are.
I am not reducing ethics to psycho-sociological enquiry.
Quoting Bob Ross
That's right. But you've misunderstood. I'm not saying that your motives, or those of earlier philosophers, are evil (although I'm not ruling it out). I'm saying that the concepts and arguments you use are not neutral philosophical tools, but are tools of power, formed by historical social conflict.
And if the discourse of natural law developed to legitimize certain ways of life and certain hierarchies, the very idea that it might be true is deeply suspicious. To me it's like saying "but what if racism is actually true?" Well, no: here is why we have racism [insert genealogical account here], and here is why the racists are making these arguments now. (I'm not saying you're a racist or resemble a racist).
Quoting Bob Ross
I characterized your ideas as conservative, but not so that I can accuse you of things you haven't expressed: we only have to look at your words to see evidence of bigotry, as several others have pointed out independently. And I hate to break it to you but we are effectively on a debate stage, and we are addressing the crowd, whether we know it or not.
No, this isn't true at all, and I think it shows up your own biases. You are again much too quick to jump to incriminations due to the emotional volatility of this issue.
Here is the proposition that Moliere (and you?) claim is true:
The most obvious reason this proposition is false is because an organ that is inherently sterile is relevantly different from an organ that is sterile through some impediment. If you are a doctor and a woman comes to you saying, "I am having vaginal sex and I haven't been able to get pregnant, can you help me?," and a man comes saying, "I am having anal sex and I haven't been able to get pregnant, can you help me?," then you would try to help the woman but not the man. This is because conceiving new life in one's womb is metaphysically possible and even normal, whereas conceiving new life in one's anus is not metaphysically possible. This dovetails with the epistemic point I made, "The other issue here is that sterility is not only difficult to identify with certainty [...] but that there are tons of cases where supposedly 'sterile' couples eventually do conceive."
The other case is where the natural sterility is not due to a treatable impediment and we know this with perfect certainty. I think this case is still wrong, and easily known to be wrong. But offers no argument for his position. He only offers an abrupt, Monty Python-style contradiction, and that in response to a substantial post that I wrote out. In this case you would have to specify what counts or does not count as "relevant," for that is in no way obvious, and a simple contradiction doesn't constructively further the conversation in any way.
I'd say the reason I'm short with your responses is this line of reasoning.
It looks entirely irrelevant to the point at hand. It's like saying "but the light was on!" when talking about a bank robbery.
Which is why I say it's in the mind of the philosopher. I assure you that the people who are having sex with their organs in various ways are not thinking about this distinction in any which way whatsoever.
I think the various rules around sex are a religious fetish that basically hurts people. Hence my mentioning things like conversion therapy. It's something that, if anyone wants religion to be seen as good, religion should recognize as a prejudice carried on into the world now. Sure it could be revived, but why would I want to hate more people than I already do? What benefit or goodness do I get out of that? Seems much happier to allow people to bone as they will
Well you've moved from "no difference in the world" to 's "no relevant difference," and I'm guessing that, at least on your pen, this idea of "no relevant difference" is an unfalsifiable claim. If it's not then you would need to spell out what it means.
It's a bit crazy that @Jamal accuses me of being engaged in "bullshit eristic" because he thought that I failed to interpret "no difference in the world" as "no relevant difference." This is wrong on so many levels. If someone wants to say "no relevant difference," then they obviously do not want to say, "no difference in the world." Further, hyperbolic speech on emotionally fraught issues is itself irresponsible. But beyond all that, my response in no way requires ignoring the hyperbolic nature of @Moliere's speech. @Moliere's claim looks to be clearly wrong even when interpreted hyperbolically.
The way that members are being treated in this thread is exhausting, and would not fly in any other thread. ...And it is moderators who are behind much of it. :yikes:
A Benny Hill joke I remember from my childhood: God, in his all-knowing wisdom, gave us ears for the purpose of having something upon which to attach our eyeglasses on. (It's humor of teleology gone wrong, if it needs being explained, and its funny as hell to me.)
But yea, there can be a cline of sorts: from functional two-headed animals being unnatural (though an occasional, rare, aspect of nature), to diseases being unnatural (though a staple aspect of nature), to anything that does not bring me optimal health or eudemonia or immortality of existence being unnatural (though all these are natural aspects of life), to anything that gives me the heebie-jeebies being unnatural (though its natural to sometime get them on account of natural aspects of reality), to anything I say "boo" to being unnatural (though its perfectly natural to dislike things and for these things to be).
Mostly just wanted to mention that joke, though. :razz:
It's not crazy to me what @Jamal said -- it was something I felt.
Quoting Leontiskos
No one -- absolutely no one -- thinks about Aristotle while fucking.
Yes or no?
Quoting Leontiskos
I think this thread is exhausting -- that I have to explain to someone that talking about others sex acts as a bad thing in the mind like they are schizophrenics that need help is the saddest thing I've had to deal with in recent memory here.
As in, yet again, here we are, in the same dumb bullshit I've always dealt with because Christians really care a lot about how others fuck -- not because they're fucking, but because others fuck wrong.
Quoting Moliere
This is the sort of hyperbolic, elevated, aggressive, intentionally insulting language that intentionally makes these issues impossible to discuss rationally.
Look, I didn't want to say it out loud, but I have you on ignore. I have for a long time. I had to take you off ignore to read your post, and it was the same sort of emotional post I've come to expect from you. Only a tiny minority of conversations I've ever had with you have gone anywhere. It honestly seems to me that the reasoning you consistently employ, in thread after thread, is purely emotional. That's why I don't usually engage you anymore. <This post> was the breaking point for me, four months ago. @Jamal read my dismissal as uniquely related to this thread and this topic, but it's not. I find Moliere's posts to lack cogency in general. I should have anticipated the way this would be construed as having to do with the topic at hand rather than Moliere in particular.
But it's worth noting that I highlighted what @Moliere said, claimed it is irrational, claimed that it will fall under its own weight, and decided not to engage further. This is much more charitable than trying to undermine @Moliere's claim through a sort of genetic ad hominem (which is precisely why I wanted to avoid delving into the fact that I have @Moliere on ignore, the leveraging of which is in itself is a mild form of (arguably non-fallacious) ad hominem).
Where am I wrong?
Do you or do you not believe others -- every single other human being -- should be married before having sex and should only be married to an opposite such that children will be produced or reared?
I'd say that people can have sex however they want.
Some Christians agree.
What about you?
Seems like no.
This makes sense to me, and I appreciate this idea that one must engage.
Part of the reason I want to introduce and delineate the notion of ad hominem rather than merely focusing on eristic is because ad hominem is more objectionable and identifiable than eristic. The forum is full of eristic. Avoiding eristic will avoid the fallacious kind of ad hominem, but avoiding eristic is a high bar. Kudos to those who can clear that bar, but I think the more realistic conversation centers on ad hominem rather than eristic.
Quoting Jamal
I think this sort of issue is worth discussing, and I tried to raise it in my follow-up to you. Nevertheless, the problem is that it probably cannot be allowed without double standards. If Christians on TPF start pointing to genetic premises in order to try to implicate their interlocutors in immorality, it's hard to believe that they will not be censored. That is, if I do to Marxism or secularism or the trans movement or the homosexual movement or the abortion movement what Nietzsche does to Christians, I will almost certainly be banned for some sort of so-called "phobia." Double standards emerge when you have a "rule" or allowance that is so subtle and so ill-defined as to depend almost entirely on the subjectivity of the interpreter.
For example:
Quoting Jamal
If it makes sense at all, it requires a great deal of subtlety to "examine someone's personal motivations from a sociological, rather than psychological, viewpoint," given that personal motivations are intrinsically psychological.
I think my post <here> closely relates to what you are trying to do. If one were actually to prescind from psychology, then they would be saying, "This person may be engaging in good faith, but the belief they hold will end up causing negative social consequences, and therefore it must be censored/opposed/mocked/deemed beyond the pale." The problem is that you are dubbing them an evil thing even though they are not being imputed with evil intentions, and when this is combined with the move wherein one shifts from speaking to the person to speaking to the crowd, you are licensing the crowd to dismiss or censor or harm the person for extrinsic reasons. In the end you are trying to justify treating a non-evil person as if they were evil, and that is at the heart of the problem.
I didn't mean to imply that you wanted an authoritarian state. But now I'm wondering: would you like to see changes in the sexual behaviour of people? If so, how should that be achieved? When you state that certain sexual behaviours are immoral, do you propose to do anything about it or would you like anyone else to do something about it? I assume that all else being equal you would prefer to live in a society in which the sexual activities you think are immoral are at the very least stigmatized, no? This is enough to count as the "authorities" I mentioned, suitably reworded if you like. I could have written:
3. It leads to a more humane society: no loving couples are stigmatized (privation of goodness, mental illness, etc) because of their private consensual acts.
Quoting Bob Ross
To me, you don't seem very close to MacIntyre. As far as I know he didn't address homosexuality or transgenderism, so all we have to go on are his philosophy and his Catholicism. We have to extrapolate, but where is the warrant for extrapolating to "MacIntyre accepts the vast majority of my view"? I guess because you characterize the vast majority of your view as the Thomist Aristotelianism that you share with MacIntyre. But I'm interested in the particular views you're expressing here, like your views on homosexuality and the extremely controversial---among Thomist Aristotelians and Catholics as much as among others---view that oral sex between a married man and woman is immoral. Neither of us can be sure what MacIntyre thought about those issues.
Quoting Bob Ross
I wonder if you can meet me half way and admit that the following comments might suggest otherwise?
Quoting Bob Ross
Quoting Bob Ross
Because from my point of view, pathologizing a way of life or sexual identity that causes no demonstrable harm is a form of prejudice. Asserting a concept of naturalness so as to exclude a segment of the population for behaviour that causes no demonstrable harm is a form of prejudice, while there are other reasonable and intuitive concepts of naturalness (and telos and so on) which could accommodate those people. And disclaiming prejudice in this case is equivalent to someone in the early 20th century saying "I am not prejudiced against Africans; I just think that since they do not have the benefit of civilization they need to submit to British rule, for their own good." (I'm not saying you're racist or believe British colonialism was great)
I'm all about the subtlety. Subtlety is my middle name. But I don't think it's all that hard. It just means I take my interlocutor to stand as representative of an ideology's appeal. In doing so I run the risk of obliterating their unique qualities in my rush to put them into my box of bigots. But I don't think this is devastating to the project. And if my interlocutor's argument is clearly off-the-shelf rather than bespoke, the ideology critique gets to take a short cut.
Once again I say I might go back at some point and reply to some of your interesting criticisms.
Quoting Leontiskos
Your favourite word of the week.
What is "the project"? Because my point would be that "the project" has shifted from philosophy to a form of activism which opposes an ideology. It would seem that the project of TPF is to engage in good faith discussion and argument with individuals in order to try to grow in knowledge, skill, comradery, etc. If someone wants to oppose an ideology, then they can of course do so via that project of engaging individuals in dialogue. But if someone wants to oppose ideology in a way that avoids engaging individuals in dialogue, then I would argue that they have moved on to a rather different project. This would seem to be eristic in a broad sense insofar it is an attempt to "win" a social or cultural issue without having to go through the hard work of engaging real individuals in argument.
Quoting Jamal
I use it often. :grin:
---
Quoting Jamal
To call something unhealthy when it is not unhealthy requires an error, and in any given case that error could be due to prejudice. But Bob's whole position revolves around his argument that the things in question are unhealthy. It would be prejudice to simply assume that Bob is lying when he claims that such-and-such is unhealthy.
It would really make as much sense for Bob to say to you, "Whitewashing a way of life or sexual identity that causes demonstrable harm is a form of prejudice." If he did this to show that you are prejudiced, he would obviously be begging the question. So why do it to him?
If one wants to say that Bob is prejudiced, then they should have to provide some real evidence for that position. They should have to present a coherent argument showing why he is prejudiced, and the argument cannot simply be argumentum ad populum. If one wants to truly avoid begging the question, then they need to provide arguments for their claims. If they think some comment is "suggestive" of prejudice, then they must actually say why they think that. The danger is the scenario where any argument against some position is considered "suggestive" of prejudice, such that one has not only chilled speech about that issue but frozen it entirely.
Quoting Jamal
This too begs the question. If one is going to effectively say, "You're just using this concept of naturalness because you are prejudiced against the groups in question," then they surely must have some grounds for why such a claim is supposed to be true. Bob is not "guilty until proven innocent."
If one actually <looks into> the argumentation in question they will find that it has a long history, and is applied in other areas than sexual morality.
You will ruin the pretence of victimhood saying things like that.
Thanks for the clarification. Anyone who read this post of yours may have genuinely thought otherwise:
Quoting Jamal
In 2022 there was an outbreak of the Monkeypox virus. It disproportionately affected gay men. Now when a potentially serious virus disproportionately affects some group, it is ethically requisite that that group be notified of their increased risk. This didn't happen with Monkeypox. In fact the general strategy was to claim that Monkeypox did not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, and that those who pointed to the fact that Monkeypox disproportionately affects gay men must be intent on "stigmatizing homosexuality."
Such false propaganda from the LGBT lobby can lead to real, demonstrable harm for individuals. Sacrificing truth-discussions in order to try to avoid giving offense does have consequences. The propaganda may have succeeded in making gay men may feel safer, and it may have succeeded in avoiding even the slightest impression of stigma, but it at the same time increased their risk of contracting a potentially severe virus.
The more general point is that homosexual sex involves various risks that coitus does not, and the LGBT activist will very often try to minimize these risks in the name of "compassion" and "equality."* This is but one example of the way that quickly imputing bad intentions to one's enemies and good intentions to one's friends can go awry. Things are not so black-and-white.
* Note that the move
That does not match my understanding.
Latin culture worship the phallus, denigrating the passive participant in intercourse. It wasn't being homosexual that was mocked, but being penetrated. The dogma that same sex acts were sinful in themselves enters from Leviticus. It was Christianity that invented the notion of such acts being "against nature"
They alerted me not intentionally but just by quoting things I hadn't seen in their posts.
A defect is a privation of the full nature that a being has. A homosexual and heterosexual, e.g., male both have the same, full nature of maleness (which is in their substantial form); but, in matter, the homosexual has some sort of privation that is inhibited the full realization of that form materially. In contrast, your question presupposes that there is such a thing as a real defective nature in the sense of a defective form; and that is not possible (under my view at least).
By analogy, a person born without their limbs still have the full nature of a human (in virtue of their form) but it was not realized properly in matterthe matter that received it did not receive it properly. This can be caused by all sorts of external factors; like if, e.g., the mother was a drug addict and that messed up the development process.
No. Menopause is natural for women, but, although I am no doctor, I am fairly confident that women usually get it in their 40s. I was assuming, and this just an assumption, that something happened to your wife for her to be completely through menopause at 25...that seems young to me. However, this is an aspect of her and your personal life: I dont want to be disrespectful and you dont need to share with me about it.
The methodological approach is to empirically investigate what is essential to a given thing, such that it would no longer be that thing without it, and that would be a part of its nature. E.g., you are no longer talking about a human, in nature, if you are talking about a being that doesnt include rationality. This doesnt mean every human has to be capable of exercising proper intellect; but what this is essential to the human nature.
The essence of a chair is something which can be sat on. Hence you can have two chairs that are arranged in completely exclusive ways and still be both chairs; and they could be made out of completely different materials and still be chairs. Their form of a chair is still thereembodied in its power to be sat on. It is about looking at the teleology in a thing.
With all due respect, you didnt address the OP in any substantial sense. Heres the comment you are referring to: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1020464
You derailed the conversation into a discussion about liberal agendas instead of my views on gender and sex. Sure, I used the phrase liberal agenda in the OP, to be fair, but that wasnt a key aspect of the discussion. Your direct contention was just a vague agreement with me:
That was it.
EDIT: I am not arguing that you, specifically, tried to get me censored or acted in bad faith.
This is just false: @Jamal told me that they were alerted to this from at least two people and the implication obviously was that it was not like they were alerting them because it was such a great, positive post:
Quoting Jamal
EDIT:
That in conjunction with, for example, the fact that Banno explicitly told me they would censor this if they could:
Quoting Banno
And clearly tried at times to imply to the moderators to ban it:
Meaning is found in use, so there is always some ambiguity. But here we can be pretty explicit.
An example of a biological appraisal: This body has two X chromosomes. A biological fact, normatively neutral.
An example of a gendered appraisal: Having two X chromosomes counts as being a woman. A social fact, and normatively loaded.
The failure of your essentialism is that it mistakes having two X chromosomes for taking on the feminine role. It tries to introduce the normative stuff at the level of biology.
(I added the italicised "your" because there are variants of essentialism that do not promulgate the incoherence seen in your account)
You misunderstood. Reading their posts, in which they quoted comments of yours I hadn't seen before, alerted me to your comments.
Are you kidding me? What i said wasnt true and i will not acknowledge / you didnt address it enough is awful forum etiquette. You said nobody was addressing the OP, which is a complete lie. It's pretty clear from interactions with you that talking to you isn't worth it. Have fun with "the liberals trying to cancel you", as you seem to be framing it.
But this is not my forum. And I have no desire for it to be my forum. This thread is interesting because some folk here have such ratshit ideas; explaining why they are ratshit provides some amusement. Were this my forum, it would be much less entertaining.
To misquote Groucho, I'd not join any forum that would have me as a moderator.
The pretence of victimhood is a cheap rhetorical move.
I agree with you that it is important to begin with an exposition of the fundamental concepts at play; but I would say that this is best exemplified by giving definitions and descriptions of the key concepts involved (like sex, gender, etc.).
I am specifically Aristo-Thomistic. Not all Christians are Thomists, as it is not necessary to be Christian nor is it necessary to be Orthodox (Catholic) nor (Roman) Catholic.
Metaethically, Aristo-Thomism is a form of moral naturalism; normative ethically, it is a form of natural law theory; and applied ethically it is conservative.
I think this is more of a historical question that I am no expert, I confess, to answer; but heres my thoughts. I conservatism is the default for Christianity, as this is embodied, quite obviously, in roman and orthodox catholicism which have apostolic succession and adhere, to sufficient degrees, to the church traditions. This view is inevitably conservative. E.g., women cannot lead in the church, wives submit and respect your husbands, husbands love your wives like Christ loves the church, homosexuality is immoral, etc.
Liberalism comes in with more progressive or/and non-traditional forms of Christianityi.e., from the protestant reformation. Many protestants are not liberals, of course, but liberalism can only coexist with Christianity in an interpretation of Christianity that believes in sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, solus Christus, and Soli Deo Gloria (viz., the five solas). In protestantism, each individual is their own church and church authority is not regarded very highly or, sometimes, not regarded at all.
A liberal Christian, I submit to you, reads the Bible for themselves, allows themselves as the final arbiter of interpretation, and interprets the Bible under the purview of loving one another to the point of love being willing the happiness of all. This is not the traditional view of love for Christianity, but irregardless of whether it is accurate or not that is my experience of liberal Christians I speak to. They truly, in their hearts, love Jesus and want to love everyone; but they understand of what love is is very different than traditional thought.
I think both liberals and conservatives really want, in America, to make all peoples lives better; but they just have wildly different understanding of (1) what makes a persons life better and (2) how to go about doing that.
With that being said, I do think there are plenty of liberals that are truly Christian: they accept, in their hearts and minds, the Nicene Creed and do really love Jesus, have and continue to repent for their sins, and are doing the best relative to what they know how to do. I dont want to bash liberals here.
I apologize if I misunderstood, but you have to be able to appreciate from my perspective why that still reads as you being messaged about it. People don't usually at people to thank them for 'bringing this to their attention' if those people didn't notify them of it.
With that being said, I am interested in furthering our discussion (and I will respond to your other posts here in a bit); and so I am more than happy to concede that, in granting your word to me, I misread the quote and people did not message you about this. Perhaps it was just a big misunderstanding.
I apologize if I've offended you; but what I was meaning by 'no one contended with the OP' was that no one attempted to dive into my gender theory. All you said was that you agree to some extent with me and suggested I avoid the rhetoric 'liberal agenda'. I don't see that as contending with my gender theory; and my main focus with saying 'no one was contending' was to emphasize people other than you that were interacting with me. I was not directing that claim at you.
Just to demonstrate to you that I am operating in good faith and am solely interested in forwarding the discussion about gender theory, I am more than happy to concede that you directly contended with the OP insofar as you agreed partially with it and suggested I avoid rhetoric like 'liberal agenda'.
No. I have no clue what you specifically believe sex and gender are.
Banno, my dear friend, you didnt answer my question. I want to know what you mean by sex and gender: I want definitions (and they dont have to be brutally precise: I just want to get an idea what you mean). What you gave here are descriptions of aspects of sex and gendernot what they are themselves.
I can see how it was misunderstood, but I've said I wasn't messaged, so that's that. If you're going to apologize do it without backtracking.
It's perfectly natural to post a message in a discussion to say, e.g., "thanks for alerting me to the existence of that book," in response to a post that mentioned a book but which wasn't directed at anyone in particular. I meant it in that sense.
That's what free speech is really about. "The freedom to espouse ideas that I personally think are horrid, stupid, crazy, etc." Why? Because not speaking about it doesn't make it go away. People won't stop trying to push for something, they'll just push for it quietly, underhandedly, or with deception.
Further, you don't have a chance of persuading others that you think that idea is crazy if its simply asserted as crazy through forced silence. A person may believe in a 'crazy' idea because they haven't been exposed to any of the information you know.
Finally, and I am sure there are more reasons, but forced silence breeds resentment. A person forced to silence often doesn't feel like their idea is wrong, but that people are evil and controlling because your idea is right, but they're afraid of you winning. This breeds evil. The world does so much better when people are not afraid to speak their mind and talk with one another. Understanding another's idea doesn't mean agreement.
Based on what jamal said, they were probably alerting him based on perceived rule violations, even though Jamal clearly decided you didn't. I wish you well in trying to sharpen your discussion/rhetorical skills in getting your points across, even though i might not read your OP again.
I don't have enough time to read this entire discussion to figure out the source of our conflicts. I haven't even read everything in the discussion I created.
Yes, I have.
You expect me to provide you with essences of sex and gender, failing to see that this very question is dependent on your essentialist framing of the issue.
The meaning of a term is seen in its use, not some abstract expression of essence. I've done what I can for you; its up to you to do the rest.
If this is true, then you are denying that we can have definitions of things; which is completely different than being an essence anti-realist.
No one should be under the illusion that Bob or Leon will change their minds as a result of the discussion here. Our posts are a performance, to an audience. Eventually, as the ineptitude of the response becomes unavoidable, a thread like this becomes too much like kicking a pup. Then it's time to go back to expounding Gillian Russell's text.
Not a worry: I wish you the best!
To be clear, you are implying that traditional Christianity (viz., roman and orthodox catholicism) are ratshit.
But what I would do is set out for you examples of how the use of "sex" and "gender" differ. That's were your error sits.
No. I've said that the arguments for your variant are ratshit.
CC: @Philosophim
Banno, your comments are just getting mean and are not helping further the discussion. I am continually making an effort to further our discussion by trying to get you to tell me what you think sex and gender are; and so far all you have done is give two examples without definitions and stated that giving a definition presupposes essence realism.
To be clear, I am not putting on a performative act: I will concede points if I am convinced.
Aristo-Thomism is the predominant view for roman catholicism; so at a minimum you are saying the latin, Dominican scholastics is ratshit. Nothing you have critiqued of mine really varies from standard Aristo-Thomism. Likewise, most of the broader points I am making are accepted by traditional Christianity (viz., orthodox and roman Catholicism).
Christianity, even for protestantism, is a version of essence realism, of the immorality of homosexuality, moral naturalism, etc.
What definitions are you using, Banno? Do you a definition of sex and gender that you have in mind when using those terms?
Definitions
To me this is just a red herring. I understand this is exactly what Foucault wants us to think; but it evades a discussion about the truth of the matter.
To take your example, imagine someone is a race realist. Would I be contending with their view by avoiding a discussion about what race realism means to them and why they believe it in exchange for a historical exposition of the genesis of why they (or the group of people who believe it) developed the theory?
I see it as having its place, but the more important aspect is to converse about the ideasnot why a person developed them.
With that said, I think we would have a more fruitful discussion if you responded to my points on natural law theory and provided what ethical realist theory you are operating under so we can compare.
What you believe bigotry is? I would say it is an obstinate attachment to an unreasonable belief; so the material aspect of the act cannot itself prove bigotry: you would have to demonstrate that I am holding onto a belief (1) stubbornly (2) despite having reasonable counter-evidence. E.g., a person who is a racist is not necessarily a bigot: little old grandma with her KKK robe and stubborn insistence on racism, as exemplified by her unwillingness to listen to anyone who tries to have a rational conversation with her, is a bigot. Bigots are people that hold onto a belief so steadfastly that they are close-minded to an extreme point of rejecting reasonable counter-evidence (or even being willing to engage with people in good faith on the topic).
Catholicism teaches that oral sex, as opposed to oral foreplay, is immoral: thats something that MacIntyre would have probably accepted as a Catholic. However, it was not infallible teaching (viz., extraordinary magisterial teaching or ordinary and universal magisterial teaching) as far as I know; so maybe he didnt agree with it.
Catholicisms basis for it being immoral is natural law theory and is heavily influenced by the Dominican, Latin tradition in the west; so I do think my view is basically the predominant metaphysics of Catholicism (although it is not taught as the official metaphysicbecause, for good reason, they keep the metaphysical commitments of the faithful to purposefully vague ones). The reason it is immoral is because the sex is not ordered towards unified and procreative sex.
If you are asking about oral foreplay, that is technically not forbidden in Catholicism (I agree); so my natural law theory is a bit stronger.
I understand where you are coming from, but this is because you are viewing harm in a liberal way. I think two gay men that have consensual sex are harming themselves and each other.
Harm for liberalism is more like goes against happiness; for conservatism it is more like goes against nature. In more cryptic terminology, liberalism is about hedonic happiness; conservatism is about eudaimonic happiness.
This is why I was saying your original critique begged the question. You used all the concepts in liberal ways that I am going to reject. For example, for you it is not incoherent with the concept of love to support someone in their transitioning to the opposite sex; in conservative, traditional thought this is incoherent. To love something is to will the good of it for its own sake and the good is metaethically referring to the realization of the nature of that thing. So, I ask you: what do you mean by love? What do you mean by harm?
Your comments are not always helpful is what I am saying. Calling the most prominent opposition to your liberal views 'people with ratshit ideas' is not helpful (even if it is true).
Why are you refusing to define what you mean by 'sex' and 'gender'? Do you believe you already have and I missed it? I am trying to forward this conversation.
First off, teleology and essences are no more empirically observable than is efficient causality, which is zilch. So one does not empirically investigate them: they instead get investigated metaphysically.
Secondly, and more to the point: This quote from you would entail that a human infant is not humannot until it gains rationality to some meaningful extent. It would also entail the same for those with very severe mental retardation, or mental handicaps, or however youd like it best expressed. Also those in a coma. And the list continues. All of which is patently wrong.
Quoting Bob Ross
A bench is not a chair. (both can be sat on) To not mention beds and tree trumps, etc. So this too is wrong.
Quoting Bob Ross
On this we can agree, but see my comments to @unenlightened in this post as they regard both faulty teleological reasoning and faulty applications of the word "natural".
Personally, Id very, very greatly dislike having sex with another man. It would be as unnatural for me as it would be utterly unnatural for a non-bisexual homosexual male to in any way like having sex with a woman. But!: These two facts in no way make either homosexuality or heterosexuality unnatural relative to Nature itself. To jump from the first notion of "natural" for one's own constituency as persona to the notion of "natural" in the sense of Nature at large is to do far more erroneous reasoning then merely equivocate semantics and contexts. Nor does the aforementioned in any way make either homosexuality or heterosexuality intrinsically unethicalthis irrespective of the mores of a society--this such as via relation to the Good per se, which ought to be pursued by all (or at least so some of us uphold). In contrast, it can be readily construed unethical, i.e. unaligned with the Good, to condemn a loving couple who has sex that leads to no harm but instead much psychological good for boththis either by accusing them or their sexual activity of being in any way degenerate or else by acting upon this condemnation. Jesus Christ sure as hell didn't--and he lived in a time of what by comparison were massive amounts of homosexual behavior in the societies that surrounded him.
Nice work, ain't it?
A chair on which one cannot sit. A certain approach to definitions and essences, displaced by a piece of nonsense. For those who can see it.
Yup. Definitely so! Having worked a bit in Photoshop, you sometimes get those types of results, as you say. Cool art, though. In a way, it reminds me of Dadaism the the Surrealism which grew out of it. (I greatly like the best of both.)
Yes, words change over time. As our understanding of mental health changes, so do the meanings of the relevant words. This does not mean that merely defining a word as it is used today is a substantive claim. It is definitional. Whereas, the claim "schizophrenia is not a mental illness" would be substantive. Accepting it would require a significant revision of our understanding of schizophrenia, and so to the meaning of the term.
Quoting Leontiskos
Amusing that you think you can know that. I will try to define only rhetorical bigotry, the relevant form here:
The ascription of negative qualities onto a population based on their group identity, which are not intrinsic to that group's membership criteria.
Quoting Leontiskos
It is just historical reality that exactly these claims were leveled against homosexuals, that they were immoral and mentally ill. And which were used to justify repression, including forced institutionalization. Do you think those claims were merely the result of the inquiry of curious minds? Or were they both reflections of social prejudices and tools used to legitimatize repression?
The investigation of the essences of things is empirical: we do not know of the nature of chairness a priori. Now, you are right that teleology itself is a matter of metaphysics; but the empirical world and metaphysics goes hand-in-hand.
It doesnt entail any of that. I was careful to note that all humans in virtue of having a complete substantial human form are fully human in essence. Essence determines what a thing isnot how that essence is realized in existence.
So, for example, a cognitively disabled person still has rationality as an aspect of their nature because it is an aspect of their substantial form even though it was not realized in matter appropriately. This is the age old real metaphysical distinction between essence and esse.
This is a fair objection to raise: I was too loose with my characterization. Technically a chair is something which for one person to sit on and a bench is for multiple people to sit on. This is a real distinction, not merely nominal, between the natures of both.
A bed is for lying down. A person that buys a bed to use as a chair is misusing a bed.
Correct, but I never argued this. It is unnatural because it misuses our natural organs and disorders the mind and body.
True, but natural law theory would entail that it is immoral.
Loving someone is not willing the good of someone for its own sake whereby what is good for them is to be happy: thats a liberal and very modern view that ignores the reality of essences. Loving someone is willing the good of someone for its own sake whereby what is good for them is to realize their nature.
Nothing about two consenting, superficially (hedonistically) happy homosexuals having sex is loving, harmless, nor good for them; because it goes contrary to their nature. Again, notice the tension between libertarian, hedonic liberalism and communal, aristotelian conservatismthats what is really at play here.
Jesus didnt come to condemn: He came to save. This is no way suggests that Jesus condoned homosexuality and, in fact, the apostles were very clear about it being immoral. https://www.gotquestions.org/New-Testament-homosexuality.html
This is not a chair. Just because someone advertises it as a chair or calls it a chair does not make it a chair. It does not have the form of a chair. That's like me outlining the form of a human and then you send a picture of a cow because someone advertised the cow as a human.
Funny that you keep repeating this "obstinate belief", when even the toy definition you took it from says more than that:
I would say that your insistence that trans is a mental illness, based only on your personal philosophizing, against the entirely of mainstream medical opinion, who I must presume is collectively vastly more qualified than you to make this judgement, is plenty obstinate.
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, generally we judge against the standards of the time. Holding racist views in the 19th century is not the same as holding them today. Living in a racist society, and inheriting these beliefs, is not the same as actively advocating for them.
And yes yes, it must have been the strong arm of The Liberal Agenda which bent the medical establishment to its will.
You have to say that. You have to re-assert your arbitrarily chosen essence, your self- reinforcing monologue.
You do the same thing here:
Quoting Bob Ross
points to the same problem.
Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
Here's what can be done by way of answering your demand for a definition:
Quoting Banno
Here's why it's relevant to the thread:
Quoting Banno
You rely on these notions of "nature" extensively. They are however meaningless devoid of an explanation of what "our true human nature" which awaits to be fulfilled in fact is. So please explain what in your opinion this ultimate nature of humanity whose fulfillment we ought to strive for is. This being quite pivotal to the subject matter at hand
As to politics, for my part I am neither liberal nor conservative, but a bit of both. I just don't like scapegoating by those who behave as though they themselves and their preferred faction(s) are angels incarnate who do no wrong.
Quoting Bob Ross
No apostle was Jesus. Period. Moreover, Christ man, Jesus condemned galore. It's he who stated that the camel (a beast of burden) will have an easier time than the fat rich guy when it comes to entering the kingdom of god (the needle's eye). It's he who gave the allegory of souls that deviate from god being placed into trash bins that get set on fire so as to become annihilated into oblivion. It's he who rode the white donkey into the marketplace to condemn those within. But no, he, Jesus, never once condemned homosexuality. And yes, this lack of condemnation by he upon which all of Christianity is pivoted on is not only indicative but immensely informative.
Then let's build on it. Let's say the person-in-the-psychotic-rage-from-the-unforeseen-drug-interaction isn't trying to kill you, they don't have any weapons, but are merely trying to drag you into their idling van. You resist, of course, and stab them with a pocket-knife you have and it kills them. Is that murder?
Now let's say the person-in-the-psychotic-rage-from-the-unforeseen-drug-interaction isn't attacking you at all, but they are screaming death threats at you, and in your personal space, and a good Samaritan comes up behind the psychotic and puts them in a chokehold, but he does it wrong and the psychotic dies. We will never know what the psychotic truly intended to do. Is that murder?
This is in response to your new/edited OP: your gender theory is very much in line with how aristotle may have responded in his time period to more modern and flexible ideas of gender...however, his logic has been criticized on the basis of some of his "is" statements for their lack of acknowledgement that being is not a fixed state. For example, "he is a boy": if that boy gets their penis removed, wears a wig, and talks with a lisp, then many will no longer see them as such...what are they then?
Aristotle would probably agree with you that gender as a personality trait would violate his rigid ideas of...things...but what practical relevance does this have? What justifies totally invalidating transgenderism and homosexuality? It seems that it's not working....
Quoting Bob Ross
But how can you justify this perception of health? Is health then supposed to be equivalent with "well, they tell me that im a male, so it's unhealthy to wear pink or read cosmo"? The gender stereotypes have changed overtime. That line of reasoning doesn't seem to make any sense, seems to be a symptom of an extremely kantian type of logic.
I'm not so sure. For instance, Martha Nussbaum's response to rigid Aristotelian essentialism would be critical, despite her drawing heavily on Aristotle herself. That cosmic teleology would be dropped. For Aristotle, teleology is immanent in nature itself. It's more Aquinas who would have it enforced by god. But we can do without either.
We're being sold a pup, an Aristotle crafted to suit religious ideology.
This is a basic misunderstanding, there is zero commonality between being trans and schizophrenic. Schizophrenia involves auditory hallucinations, disordered thinking, and delusions of persecution, and is devastating to the sufferer. Whereas, to be trans is to identify with a social role which is at variance with the one culturally linked with their biological sex. To argue that this is a delusion, you would have to argue that there is something so essential to the linkage between biological sex and gendered social role that to be at odds with it is a kind of insanity.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Anorexia is devastating and very often fatal (~20% mortality rate), and family members are usually desperate for help. Framing the condition as an illness is to say that help is warranted, whereas denying this say the opposite, that the sufferer just needs to get over it or whatever. Unlike schizophrenics or anorexics, trans people don't generally conceive of themselves as mentally ill. This designation is imposed, which is pathologization.
You misunderstand. Perhaps I was unclear. She was through menopause a long time ago because she is 73.
Quoting Bob Ross
You make no sense, and you haven't answered the question. The criterion you claim is essential, the next sentence clearly says is not essential, and then again you claim it is essential. That's not rational. Are you human?
How do you investigate what is essential, what is accidental and what is a defect? What are the criteria? Why rationality and not an opposable thumb or the ability to love, or bipedalism?
And how do you decide what categories to investigate?
It is surely the essential nature of a homosexual that they are attracted to the same sex. This follows from the mere definition and requires no empirical investigation; likewise it is essential to a heterosexual that they are attracted to the opposite sex.
One might think that reproduction is essential to life, but as soon as one knows that most species have become extinct, that becomes untenable. One has to rethink.
In the case of a chair, it's essence is its human use, and its essence is not really empirically investigated, but again definitional. We call it a chair if we can sit on it - except that when one does the investigation, it becomes rather more confusing, because a bosun's chair doesn't look like a chair, a human cannot sit on a doll's-house chair, and sometimes we sit on stools, branches, benches, saddles, the ground, and so on. And this is empirical evidence that essences are highly opaque, to the point of being arbitrary, even in what seems to be the simplest of cases.
There is. Gender isn't a role like an actor or actress in Hollywood where the role is fictional, segregated from reality. Gender is more of a social expectation of the sexes. Society is not saying, "you are a woman because you wear a dress". Society is saying that "you are already defined as a woman because of your biology, and because society also has a rule that exposing yourself is illegal, then we expect you to wear certain clothing to symbolize your sex under the clothing so that people of specific SEXUAL orientations can find mates that align with their SEXUAL preferences".
Quoting hypericin
Read the symptoms I provided from Cleveland Clinic again. One of the symptoms is not realizing you are mentally ill, which is why they have feelings of being exploited, a tendency to read threatening meanings into benign remarks or events, persistently holding grudges, and a readiness to respond and react to perceived slights. This is all because they are being told that what they believe is not true and the truth is not something they can cope with.
And that is specifically where we disagree in terms of meta-criteria. My thought in thinking about liberal/conservative was to note how there's not really a definition as much as these are attitudes we ascribe to others that are also somewhat dependent upon eachother: i.e. to be conservative is to be not-liberal, and vice versa. I wanted to start here because it seems like the fulcrum around which your initial argument rests (the two options for thinking about gender), and I don't think it's a conceptual division but a cultural one -- one of perspective and attitude rather than definitions and inferences.
If that's so I wouldn't put it that there is some kind of "liberal" theory of gender, for instance. There are possibilities for theorizing gender which rather than being defined by concept, definition, and description of the concepts can be understood more provisionally, but with greater accuracy, by listening to what people say about their gender.
This notion of gender is something that can create particular social expectations which are played out. That is, there is no liberal or conservative gender so much as gender is a performance within a culture which utilizes this spectrum for self-identification. But not all genders are liberal/conservative or even thinking in such terms at all. They are diverse and difficult to categorize in such manners.
And lastly I'd note where we began: There is something completely alien to your way of looking at sex and gender to me. It looks like an old idea preserved in moth balls for no purpose other than to claim that one has a conservative notion of what gender is as opposed to a liberal notion of gender. But I don't think what I've presented falls into this category you've denoted in your first paragraph where one must either think in terms of essences where there are two genders which must adhere to such-and-such rules regarding sex and relationships OR we are left with psychologizing.
Rather I think we can be empirical about gender and look towards the facts about how people behave. Hence my highlighting the Kinsey report, and noting how your criteria are not medical as much as religious.
As you say here:
Quoting Bob Ross
But, medically speaking, all of that is wrong. There is nothing wrong with having sex of the various kinds. There is no nature to which our soul must aspire towards which a Dominican scholastic was able to perceive. The opinions of priests are often mistaken when it comes to sexual health.
So, I mean, we can say it's a perspective, yes. But it's a perspective that relies upon false notions about what human beings are empirically speaking, and when it comes to the normative component that's something you'll just be appealing towards your sense of what seems right on the basis of some sort of shared cultural artifact like religious texts and interpretation.
Which is why I mentioned hedonism -- sure I can check the math, but if there is at least one other reasonable ethical stance towards this problem of ethics (the ethics of sex, gender, and boning) then we're lead right back to "Which ethic should we choose?"; the is/ought problem, Hume's fork, is more ignored in these old philosophies that believed the facts spoke for themselves about what is good, when in reality it was the philosophers interpreting the facts towards such-and-such norms (which means we are free to do the same).
I bet there's a lot of people have that symptom.
Again, logic and reason clears the fogginess and fuzziness of the terms we are using.
Transgender identity mistakes intra-sex diversity (different ways of being male or female) for inter-sex distinction (being male vs. female) - confusing kinds of men/women (i.e., variations within sexes) with kinds of genders..
When someone transitions and says Im a woman, they're not rejecting the sex/gender binary, but reaffirming it they are still operating within the same two categories (man/woman), just switching sides. If gender is supposed to be distinct from sex, why use the terms? Wouldnt that show that gender is still dependent on the sex binary? Being male or being female is a natural kind something biologically grounded and all the ways of living out those kinds are variations within that category, not grounds for a new category.
From this view, gender is not a separate ontological layer (social role distinct from sex) its a descriptive shorthand for the spectrum of behaviors humans exhibit. So when we call a behavior feminine or masculine, were just naming a pattern that some men and women exhibit more often not defining a separate gendered essence or identity.
I'm not denying we all have personal and subjective feelings and inclinations. What I am saying is that what we often interpret as gender incongruence is not a conflict between ones biological sex and some separate gender identity. It is simply a reflection of the natural diversity in how humans live, feel, and express themselves. The supposed incongruence is a conceptual overlay imposed by the gender framework. Once you remove that framework (gender neutral), theres no conflict just human behavioral and psychological diversity. A man who feels like he should be a woman isnt actually experiencing an identity mismatch. Instead, hes just expressing a variant of male human experience one that happens to share traits culturally associated with women.
:lol:
Yes indeed. I pity you, I really do.
Two psychiatrists meet on the Street. "Hello" say the first, "you're fine, how am I?"
To put it bluntly, if you can see my delusion, then either you are in my mind, or the delusion is out there and to that extent not a delusion. At the moment, I suspect the former is more likely.
I apologize: I cant remember if I responded to your first point in this reply.
Well, of course. I think we are all sinners, theres plenty of different sins, each person has a different hand of cards from the deck, and we all must strive to live as good (ethical) lives as possible. There is such a thing, in traditional thought, albeit non-existent in progressive thought (usually), as immoral sexual acts that are consensual between parties and acts against oneself.
By analogy, there was real world event where two men consented for one of them to eat the other. If consentingin a proper way free of duress and inhibitory conditionseliminates the possibility of an act being harmful or, perhaps, simply is morally permissible in virtue of it being consensual; then theres nothing wrong with what happened.
However, when we view ethics in a naturalistic way (metaethically), it becomes clear this is immoral because it deprives the one killed of their nature completely (by there non-existence) and so all the good for them is lost and the action is contrary to every natural end of themexistence being the most fundamental good and prerequisite for all other goods. I would be interested to know what ethical theory you are operating undermetaethically, normative ethically, and applied ethicallyto evaluate this example to compare.
I think socially we should have norms that incentivize the good and dis-incentivize the bad and of which cultivate a nation-soul centered around the virtues and human flourishing.
A key tenant of Christian thought is love of perfect goodness (God) and of the ordering of things relative to Himto the point of loving your enemies and wanting their good even as they nail you to a cross. I think society legally and socially should reflect this. This is where the idea of responding to evil with only proportionate and without retaliation comes from: if you love your enemy, you seek not to destroy or annihilate them but to stop them from doing evil and to change their ways.
The response to evil needs to be proportionate (out of love not for the evil but the person who mistakenly embodies it) and centered towards what is good for all (including the person committing the evil). Hence, justice proper is restorative and not retributive; and not all immoral acts deserve physical force to stop.
In cases of injustice (viz., immoral acts against a person), physical force as a means to enforcing morality is reserved for immoralities that are, in their gravity (either to the other person afflicted or an act against oneself), detrimental enough to the good of the victim that it is proportionate to do so. Proportionality is key here. E.g., a person that is inflicting themselves with self-hate (which causes them to be down in the weather a bit) is not something which would warrant physical force (because it would be disproportionate as a remedy to the situation); but if they are trying to commit suicide (even consensually and in a state where they are not out of their mind) then it is justified to use force to save them. E.g., stopping a murder by physical force is proportionate but stopping someone from being mean to someone else on purpose does not warrant such force.
Also, the penal system, applied ethically, is supposed to mimick providing a remedy to restore the dignity of the one offended and the will of the (repentant) criminal (although I grant this is not at all what happens in American prison systems at all). Consequently, self-inflicted sins require a different approach because the one offended and the offender are the same. In short, it wouldnt make sense to imprison or criminally charge someone for doing evil against themselves; instead, it would require rehabilitation.
Theres also a practical aspect, applied ethically, to this too that cannot be ignored. I am weary of the government; and so I am not interested in trying to setup cameras everywhere like in China to stop people from doing every immoral deed. There has to be checks and balances here.
The question becomes: where does homosexuality and transgenderism fall in terms of the gravity of the act?.
In short, transgenderism would be viewed, in my view, as Ive unapologetically said many times in this thread, as a mental illness and be treated like one. The context matters: sometimes a schizophrenic is posing too much of a risk to themselves and the public so they get sent to a rehab center; sometimes they are stable enough to live productive lives in society. I think if a transgender is posing a significant risk to themselves then, similarly, we have a duty to help them by protecting themselves from themselves and rehabilitate them. If they are not posing a significant risk and can live a productive life in society (which many can and do), then that shouldnt happen. Where the analogy breaks, is that schizophrenia causes a risk by way of hallucinations which is different than a person having gender dysphoria; so the schizophrenic would need to be on medication (most likely) to not pose a significant risk to others (depending on how bad it is); whereas thats not the immediate case with gender dysphoria. The biggest risk it to themselves, like a chronically depressed or suicidal person. Because of this, the approach is a bit different: I think we would have no right to force them to take any medication unless it something proven to be analogous to the schizophrenic example of taking meds to not hallucinate; and we would take the approach of having governmental and societal institutions and programs that help consenting transgenders get better (like alcoholics anonymous).
For homosexuality, it is not a mental illness by any stretch of the imagination: its a pyscho-sociological (at worst) or pyscho-physiological (at best) phenomenon. The harm they, as consenting adults, are doing to each other I would view analogous, although not quite the same, as heterosexual couples that perform effectively the same sexual acts: physical force or punishment isnt a proportionate response and it wouldnt make sense to do so. Instead, there should be programs for helping homosexuals with their sexual orientation issue and for helping all couples with their sexual vices that are voluntary. Socially, we should love those who are sinfulwhich is all of usand try to live by example so that people can see that what they are doing is evil and everyone should be readily willing to help them be better (and quick to judge nor to condemn).
I think a lot of liberals think that being against homosexuality and the like has to lead to homophobia; but thats just not the case.
It depends on what you mean by stigmatized. I would say that the family and friends should love them (in the eudaimonic sense) and be kind to them and live by example to try and help them onto a better path. We are all sinners; and we should live by example proportionately to what we know about the good.
Like I said, if the person is posing a significant risk to themselves or others then physical force may be a reasonable response (for their own good and the good of others).
But, again, humane here is begging the question. Also, loving is being used incoherently here: you cant harm someone with love (which goes back to our differences in our understandings of love and harm).
Ultimately, I think liberalism and conservatism in America boil down to four concepts at play that are really influencing the differences between the two. That is, love, harm, freedom, and goodness. We are not using these concepts the same at all.
The definition you cited requires it to be obstinate or unreasonable which is a loose way of saying what I was saying. Being prejudiced does not necessitate that one is being bigoted, even if I were to grant you that I am prejudiced (which I am not).
Secondly, the DSM-V used to consider transgenderism gender dysphoria: they only removed that in recent years to fit liberal agenda. This was a consensus amongst experts.
It isn't a chair because you can't sit on it. What is your definition of a chair? If you can't give one because you think it requires essentialism, then I think we need to hash that out first and come back to this.
We dont need to have perfect and complete knowledge of the nature of a being to have good reasons to believe they have a nature.
Essence realism accounts for the self-unity of substances, the similarity of different instantiations of substance (viz., different supposita), avoids meteorological nihilism, and avoids positing that a members of a causal series can exhibit a property that no member itself can provide innately.
Jesus instituted the church, His bride, with the apostles which is guided by the Holy Spirit. He gave them the power to bind, loose, speak, and forgive on His behalf. If an apostle condemns something, as a direct disciple of Jesus which was ordained as the first bishops by Jesus Himself with said powers, then it is dogma. If you reject this, then the vast majority of Christianity is lost.
Moreover, Jesus didnt address every ethical point of contention nor did the apostles write everything that He said down; so we dont know nor is it important if Jesus Himself explicitly condemned it.
Even more importantly, the Old Law was not abolished with the New Law: Jesus was the New Law embodied which fulfilled the Old Law. In the Old Law, there are aspects that were temporary (like allowing divorce) and ones that were not (which are still in effect today like the banning of bestiality, homosexuality, etc.).
The Bible and the church could not be more clear that homosexuality is immoral.
Heres a reference just in case you want to check it out: https://www.catholic.com/audio/cot/jesus-said-nothing-about-homosexuality-rebutted & https://www.catholic.com/tract/early-teachings-on-homosexuality.
No He didnt and even if He did I dont see the relevance at all: we are discussing the morality behind homosexuality.
Galore is not the same as being greedy and selfish. Jesus doesnt mind if everyone had an overabundance of wealth; what He does mind is someone that is super wealthy and does not to help those in need.
The church has always condemned homosexuality all the way back to the apostles and the Old Law. There was never a pivot.
I guess the thing that concerns me the most about these arguments is that you are implying that blind conformity to social expectations is inherently good, and disobedience is inherently bad. I'd rather surround myself with people who were more open minded so i could be more honest and less irritated with them.
For example, in the more renaissance time periods in europe, it was considered shameful for a woman to show her ankles in public in christian societies. Now, the expectations are much looser in western countries. In some Muslim countries, it's considered shameful to take off your head scarf unless you are around your immediate family (and once again, the stricter onus is on the women, as muslim men do not always need to cover their faces). If any of these things you or Bob Ross are saying is true about gender ideas being objective, or about trans identity being a mental illness, then how could any of these cultural conflicts exist? Would you ever question an authority figure's ideas about anything?
And yet the speak of it with such immense authority and complete conviction in passages such as this:
Quoting Bob Ross
Boldface mine. All this at face value being utter doublethink.
As to the rest, I'll skip the religious fluff and stick to facts regarding what Jesus Christ himself did and said ... and facts regarding what he didn't. I admire him far too much to not do so.
I dont see the relevance of the examples you gave here, but I will respond.
Normative ethically, the response to an evil must be proportionate; but applied ethically there is some charitable weight granted in favor of the victim. If objectively I could have shot someone once to neutralize them as a threat but instead shot them four times, then would give the subjective element of the case a charitable interpretation and lend some weight in our calculation in favor of the victim; and in this case they would not be charged with murder.
Normatively ethically, idealistically, shooting someone three extra times than was necessary is murder or manslaughter; but applied ethically we would not necessarily deem it as either. To contrast, imagine I shoot that person once, the threat is obviously neutralized, and I take my sweet time and end up shooting them three more times out of retribution, pride, or retaliation. Depending on how disconnected the three extra shots are, we may not be able to use the charitable interpretation of the subjective element of the event to acquit them of murder. Whereas imagine I shoot the person four times very quickly out of panic to neutralize the legitimate threat but, realistically with 20/20 hindsight vision, I could have only shot them once. Thats clearly going to be a case where I am acquitted because of a charitable weight given to me as the victim.
In your example, stabbing them, normatively ethically speaking, must be a proportionate and least harmful means of neutralizing the threat to not be murder relative to the objective and subjective elements of the case (e.g., I might only be aware of stabbing them as a viable means although objectively I could have just punched them in the face); otherwise, I am intending to kill themnot to neutralize the threat.
This would be an example, all else being equal, where technically objectively the good Samaritan committed manslaughter (because they unintentionally killed them out of negligence); but, again, we must weigh in the subjective elements of the situation. It may not outweigh the manslaughter charge in this case, since it seems like they really did something incredibly disproportionate, but it will still be relevant for sentencing.
We have to realize that perfect justice operates no where like mans justice. We dont know for sure what someone intends, knows, etc. or what exactly happened. We use evidence based reasoning under the court of law to try to resemble justice.
For those who dont know of it, theres a parable/fable that speaks to this exact issue. In short, theres a kingdom with a water well that, when drunk from, turns the individual crazythis due to having had a spell cast on it by somebody or other. Everyone but the king and the nobility drinks from it (the king and nobility have their own water source). The king still wants to rule his kingdom but the general populous, now of the same mindset and in agreement with each other, comes to perceive the king and his associates as insanely crazy people, proceeding to rebel against them in all sorts of ways (with a give me liberty or give me death mindset). Eventually, out of fear for their own safety and in desperation, the king and nobility then come to decide that the only way out of the situation is for them to drink from the spell-cast well as well. At which point, the populace rejoices in the kings newly found sanity. And the king rules the kingdom happily ever after to everyones pleasure and benefit.
Multiple versions of this fable, some more philosophically poignant than others. Myself, I think I first heard of it as a child. And it does tend to illustrate well enough how certain notions of insanity and sanity are purely social constructs that have nothing to do with any solid groundingother than that of an interpersonally created reality (with interpersonally created realities including those of languages, cash values, and most of what is cultural, culture-specific mores included).
Example: was Moses a man with mystical abilities and visions or was he a full-blown schizophrenic who would have benefited from modern day anti-psychotics so as to not be bothered by things such as burning bushes that spoke to him? But as the stories go, at the end of the day, dude was functional. Hence sane (i.e., of a healthy enoughbut never completely perfectmind). From a different vantage, for those who believe in the possibility of such things, same can be said of all modern-day psychics world over (who happen to not be deceiving charlatans): they're sane rather than in need of psychiatric institutions.
This isnt a problem for Aristotles thought because the essence of something is in its form. The form is the actualizing principle that makes the instantiated being (suppositum) what is it. The form is not identical to the essence: an essence is abstract whatness, whereas form is real whatness.
A boy is a boy not because we have some sort of definition that provides in the abstract the essential properties of a boy; but rather because that essence is instantiated in that boy in his form. For a human, the substantial form of their body is their soul; and the boy has a male, human soul; so this boy is fully a boy in essence (because it is in his form) in substanceeven if his existence doesnt fully reflect that. Materials beings for Aristotle are comprised of form and matter. The form is complete; the matter may not receive the form completely. A boy missing a leg is missing an essential aspect of being a human in existence (esse) in matter; but in existence his form includes it.
It clarifies the difference between an expression of gender and gender itself. Maleness (sex) and masculinity (gender) are not reducible to social expressions of them and they are intrinsic to the essence (and by proxy the form) of a man. Thusly, men cannot become women without killing them: transitioning is impossible; mimicking a gender doesnt make you that gender; etc.
The color pink, for example, is an expression of genderit is not a part of gender itself. This, again, is a key mistake modern gender theory does. Now, either this expression is symbolic (e.g., the Mars symbol represents maleness), mistaken (e.g., using an umbrella in the rain is not itself representing any gender), or gravitational (e.g., being protective is masculine).
Whether or not pink is feminine is symbolic, mistaken, or gravitational is going to depend on if:
1. The gravitation to the color has any biological (natural) basis (then it would have a gravitational element to it);
2. The color properly represents something feminine (like the female person on bathroom doors)(then it would have an element of symbolism); or/and
3. The color pink has no connection to gender whatsoever (then it is a mistake).
I am not sure which category(ies) pinkness falls under: Ill have to think about that more. What are your thoughts? That seems hard to tell. Like I stated many times before to people, there may be aspects of social gender expectations that are really illegitimate. Importantly, modern gender theory doesnt allow for this because it denies the reality of gender and instead views it as purely a social construct.
It's not that we can't "give a definition" so much as that definitions do not do what you think they do.
Others have carried the point. I'm sorry you can't see it. Read Austin or Wittgenstein some time.
Using your framework, it's symbolically feminine as pink can be associated with girliness, gentleness, affection, lightheartedness...but that's only because our culture repeats this imagery (for example, manufacturing pink colored toys for little girls). I've read that in early 1900's america, pink was what boys wore, blue was what girls wore.
Oh, nevermind then.
This facial incoherence is due to a misunderstanding of hylomorphism. Essences, forms, being, and matter are distinct from each other.
A man that is missing limbs is simultaneously fully man in essence in virtue of their substantial form (viz., their male soul) and not fully realized as a man in existence (because the mattertheir bodyhas not properly been realized by their soul).
By investigating what constitutes the essential powers that the being has: what it is to be that thing as opposed to something else. This is a scientific, metaphysical, and empirical inquiry into ordinary objects. Think of it like this: if a, e.g., kitten develops in a perfectly healthy manner (uninhibited by its environment and what not) then what would we expect it to become independently of coincidental factors (like fur color)?
Is something that would never have four legs, in principle, be a cat? No. It is a part of what a cat is to have four legs. Could it still be a cat and be black instead of orange? Yes.
Could a specific cat be missing legs? Yes; but its essence as instantiated in its formin its soulwould include the teleology of having four legs and the matter simply would not have been realized properly by the soul or it was destroyed by something else (like mutilation).
No. It is essential to what it means to be homosexual to be attracted to the same sex; but that is a reflection of what is essential to a sexual orientation which is not a substance nor a being. When I say that it is essential to hate to will the bad of something for its own sake, I am not committing myself to the idea that hate has a real essence because hate is not itself a real entity. The human that is homosexual is a substance; and that being has a human nature which precludes that sexual orientation.
Just because something can be sat on does not mean it has a form that includes something that is sat on by a person. A log is not a chair because its form is that of woodof a treeand is being technically misused (not in an immoral sense, but still a misuse) of it: it does not have an essence such that it is supposed to be sat on. It has a soula substantial form in virtue of which the tree is aliveand when chopped down is a dying deposit of a substance called wood which was ordered towards the good of the tree originally.
If you believe that we can define sex and gender, then please define them.
Quoting Dale Martin
@Hanover You probably know this stuff already, but Dale Martin is a cool lecturer. This isn't about homosexuality, it's just about Judaism as the backdrop for Christianity:
It was about how they saw the natures of men and women. We would say their assessment of nature was wrong.
I want to leverage this analogy as well. I want to say that @Jamal and others within this thread are a bit like the European who lands on the shores of Africa, finds a strange people speaking a strange language, and immediately begins making all sorts of uncharitable assumptions about their motivational and moral state. Only after such a person begins to contextualize both their own tradition and the tradition they are encountering will they be in a position to attempt the sorts of judgments that are here being made prematurely.
One broad-brush overview of the different historical moral positions is found in Nathan Jacobs series on the topic, beginning with <this video>. In the second video of the series, beginning at 1:41:19, Jacobs draws it all back to our current culture. He argues that the distinctive moral character of the current culture is a merger between nominalism and utilitarianism which derives from materialism and empiricism. He begins with the trans issue, moves to feminism, then to the notion of oppression, then to questions of anthropology, then to hedonism and identifying with ones passions, and eventually to the (only historically novel) idea that being affirmed by others in ones moral decisions is the key to happiness.
The sort of overview that Jacobs provides would offer the Europeans within this thread the resources needed to contextualize their own position. The uncivilized people that the Europeans within the thread are encountering are simply human beings, acting in good faith, who are neither nominalists nor utilitarians. They believe that the good life is found by living in harmony in reality, and such people include Platonists, Aristotelians, Stoics, pagans, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and many others. A person who favors living in harmony with reality is going to look odd to a person who is a nominalistic utilitarian of one variety or another. And maybe at the end of the day the Europeans will successfully convert the natives, but the first thing they need to do is to contextualize both their own tradition and the tradition they are encountering. The first thing they need to do is engage and understand the traditions in question, rather than immediately dismissing them in one way or another by assuming superiority.
First, I realize that your view is significantly American, but don't assimilate me to your parochial politics. I'm not American and I am highly sceptical of liberalism in all its senses and manifestations.
That aside, I think you're right. You're making MacIntyre's strong point that our frameworks are incommensurable.
Ad hominems and cherry picking posts is all you got.. You lose. I win.
Quoting unenlightened
...mental illness, social illness. It's still an illness.
Maybe you didn't notice through that haze of hate, but I was agreeing with Hypercin that Christianity is a type of mass delusion.
Quoting hypericin
So maybe you should ask hypercin how they would go about determining if Christians are delusional. I thought that was obvious. But in your attempts to throw mud you got all muddy.
This right here. To quote an old meme, "You win all the internets." In general the way we talk to each other over issues has become atrocious (not you Jamal). We use terrible vocabulary, emotional appeals, and worst of all, discount each other because a position on a topic is considered 'the enemy'. The idea that, "Even talking about this will hurt someone" is one of the greatest evils to be put in the minds of people.
We have to talk to people we are disgusted by. We have to stop elevating a discussion to a moral or status stance. We need to be listening to each other as much as we talk with each other instead of at each other. We need philosophy.
Clear language, contextual analysis, and the wisdom to explore anything and everything. I remember a person one time came to this forum and advocated that murder wasn't actually immoral. Most responses were dismissive and an attempt to shut down the idea. But a person like that needs their idea explored. To say, "Lets take your premises and accept them as true, what contradictions arise?"
Philosophy challenges God, social issues, government, society, norms, and assumptions. It does not give hemlock to those who say our planet revolves around the sun, or that the sun revolves around us. It is the willingness to talk with and explore all avenues for rational truth, which often conflicts with the emotions of others and even ourselves want.
Though we will always encounter people with frameworks different from our own, I hope we keep talking with each other. Bit by bit we may learn to understand each other, and even if some things are irreconcilable, there is always some common ground to be reached. Thank you Jamal for conversing with Bob on a matter that is in my opinion, one of the most important philosophical issues of our time.
I agree and am not meaning to convey that there are liberal or conservative theories of genders; but, rather, that there are gender theories compatible with liberalism and conservatism and some are prominent among each.
This is why I think diving into politics in this thread is and was a red herring: people are skipping past the philosophical and psycho-sociological discussion about gender theory to ethicswhich puts the cart before the horse. Ontology is prior to ethics.
(emphasis added)
But this is the modern theory of gender. You just described gender as a social construct and social expression. This is exactly what we are disputing here.
If gender is a performance within culture that is for self-identification, then gender is divorced from sex; for anyone can perform in a manner that is properly identified with such-and-such social cues and expectations and they thereby would be, in gender is just that, that given gender.
What the OP is getting at is something more subtle in metaphysics: is the performance, social expectations, and social cues identical to gender OR is gender an aspect of the real nature a being has.
We like to think now like Hume: doctors deny doing ethics when they inform you of the descriptive facts about health because prescriptive and descriptive statements are seen as divorced from each other. However, they are giving normative claims simultaneously. When you and your doctor agree that your hand isnt working properly, you both are implicitly conceding that there is a way it should be working: thats a normative claim that is tied directly to a descriptive claim.
Likewise, health wise, it is obvious that many forms of sex that people engage in are unhealthy for the body. Like I stated to other people on here, anal sex does damage the anus (even granting it heals itself to some extent over time and one can do exercises to help strengthen it); and deepthroating does damage the throats ability to gag (which is for avoiding choking). Now, you are right that the doctor wont purport these kinds of facts as related to anything normative; but they are closely connected to normative ones. The way the nature of a human is does dictate how that human, biologically, is supposed to function and operate: thats a direct tying of descriptions and prescriptions.
Like I was trying to note to @Jamal, this is the real debate for sexuality ethics is indeed...ethics; and this isnt incommensurable to resolve: we would need to start with metaethics, then normative ethics, then applied ethics. In order to dive into our metaethical disagreements, we will have to dive into metaphysics and ontology.
More importantly, the OP is really about whether or not gender is a social construct or something else; and whether or not the Aristotelian take accounts for it. It is not a discussion itself about ethics: it is a discussion about human ontology.
I can hold a belief on a proposition, X, with high credence and still concede that I might be wrong: thats all I did there. Doublethink is when one holds two contradictory or highly incoherent beliefs: thats not the case here.
Likewise, I can be confident that X is not Y without knowing to a high degree what Y is. If you ask me: what would a pizza-worshipper do with a cheese pizza?; I can hold the belief that I dont know exactly what a pizza-worshipper would do with pizza AND that they wouldnt go and throw it away in the trash and forget about it.
Moreover, most importantly, I said that we dont need perfect and complete knowledge to know that one has a nature...thats different than saying that I dont know sufficiently that we have one. You can investigate empirically a being to decipher what their nature is.
My friend, we dont have any writings from Jesus. The Gospels are written by the Apostles who are relaying what they saw and were taught by Jesus; and the church is the succession of the oral tradition going back to the Apostles and, in turn, what Jesus taught them.
If you dont think that an apostle can get it right about homosexuality after being directly taught by Jesus, of which we dont know exactly what Jesus taught them (as we dont know orally what was conveyed and we have no writings from Jesus), then you have no good reasons to accept the Gospels which they wrote nor the stories they told about Jesus or what they taught their disciples in turn from what they claimed Jesus taught them.
I could see this as a plausible account, but I am not sure if the 'gentleness' of certain colors has a gravitational effect, generally, on women over men; similar to how men tend to gravitate to jobs about 'things' (e.g., engineering, architecture, etc.) and women to jobs about 'people' (e.g., nursing, therapy, etc.). I don't know the effects of the colors on us biologically as it relates to nature.
To me, it is obvious that, e.g., the Mars symbol for maleness is purely symbolic because I am confident there is nothing about the symbol that men would gravitate towards but, rather, is a construct we came up with to refer to maleness in the abstract. Color it is not so obvious to me.
:heart:
If you ever want to have a conversation about gender theory, then just message me. When you refuse to define the key terms, it is just hard to progress the conversation.
What are you looking for in a criteria? I am not following. Are you wanting a precise equation where someone could plug in the values for the variables and it spit out "is this nature"?
I am not saying you are American; but my entire conversation about liberalism and conservatism in this thread is in the context of American politics. I am not well versed in other countries' politics, although I have a general understanding.
I am not arguing that these four concepts cause us to be incapable of forwarding a conversation: I am noting that our disagreements are very deep. The deepness of a dispute doesn't necessitate that there is not means of resolution. What we need to do, and what I've been asking you to do, is dive into metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics (in that order) and metaethics will probably require us to dive into ontology a bit.
I don't know; I wanted to know how you arrived at your certainties. You speak of 'empirical' as though you can look at nature and see essences ... I can make nothing of it, I think you are hallucinating.
That is not what I am saying at all. If you've read all my posts you would have seen that I have said that a man can wear a dress if they want, but that does not mean they are a woman. It is those that insist on controlling other's speech that are the ones that lack a sense of being open-minded. It doesn't mean you can't call yourself a woman - only that you cannot make me call you a woman. Do you understand the distinction? If not, then I would need you to define, "open-minded".
It's not blind conformity. We all accept these soft rules for a reason - because we all have sexual orientations and desires and need a way to determine another's sex that aligns with one's sexual preferences. How would you feel if you took someone home with you that did not align with your sexual preference but was dressed like someone that aligns with your sexual preference? Saying that you have to ask just goes to show how closely gender is tied to sex.
Quoting ProtagoranSocratist
Please read my all my posts thoroughly because you are just straw-manning me.
What you are saying aligns with what I have already said numerous times in that the easing of the societal expectations is exactly what eliminates the spectrum of gender identity as a social construct. Remove the expectations and you remove any spectrum to move along. A gender neutral society is a society in which transgenderism does not exist.
You might have missed this among all the nonsense going on in this thread:
Transgender identity mistakes intra-sex diversity (different ways of being male or female) for inter-sex distinction (being male vs. female) - confusing kinds of men/women (i.e., variations within sexes) with kinds of genders..
When someone transitions and says Im a woman, they're not rejecting the sex/gender binary, but reaffirming it they are still operating within the same two categories (man/woman), just switching sides. If gender is supposed to be distinct from sex, why use the terms? Wouldnt that show that gender is still dependent on the sex binary? Being male or being female is a natural kind something biologically grounded and all the ways of living out those kinds are variations within that category, not grounds for a new category.
From this view, gender is not a separate ontological layer (social role distinct from sex) its a descriptive shorthand for the spectrum of behaviors humans exhibit. So when we call a behavior feminine or masculine, were just naming a pattern that some men and women exhibit more often not defining a separate gendered essence or identity.
I'm not denying we all have personal and subjective feelings and inclinations. What I am saying is that what we often interpret as gender incongruence is not a conflict between ones biological sex and some separate gender identity. It is simply a reflection of the natural diversity in how humans live, feel, and express themselves. The supposed incongruence is a conceptual overlay imposed by the gender framework. Once you remove that framework (gender neutral), theres no conflict just human behavioral and psychological diversity. A man who feels like he should be a woman isnt actually experiencing an identity mismatch. Instead, hes just expressing a variant of male human experience one that happens to share traits culturally associated with women.
The incongruence comes from knowing you are a man but society telling you that if you like to wear a dress, you must be a woman. Remove that expectation and now you can wear a dress and still be a man.
I'm not straw manning you; the issue is that people who want you to call them a man, when you see them as a woman, are in disagreement. How you handle the disagreement is completely up to you. Don't try and force me to read all of your posts. In the end, gender is both about congruence and conformity...if you think trans is a sign of mental illness or poor health, this proves my point.
Sure.Quoting Bob Ross
Says who?
Levinas notes the opposite.
Quoting Bob Ross
I'd say my position is both/and -- yes there are ties to sex from gender, but they are not essentialist ties which a philosopher can dream up within a normative frame to apply to everyone else(With respect to Aristotle and Aquinas: especially not for all time). Rather the gender a person has is something they come to find. There's a sense in which I can go so far as to say that person comes to know themself -- i.e. what they thought they are is not who they are -- but not so far as to say that any philosopher knows that better than the person.
Quoting Bob Ross
I disagree with your first assertion: Many people do not like thinking like Hume.
Doctors do not deny doing ethics -- it's just a medical ethic that's informed in a certain way. I note the medical model because I don't think you're presenting a medical ethic at all, but rather a religious one. They also fit in an interesting place with respect to the Humean fork: i.e. it's a practice which blends factual and normative concerns in a productive manner.
When it comes to questions of sexual health I'm going to pick the people who really just want people to be happy and healthy regardless over the people who want people to be happy in a particular way, else they're sinners.
I think the Dominican priests, at one point, played the role of doctors of body, soul, culture, mind -- but no longer do.
I'm not religious, but if the religious want to continue to live on in the world we happen to be in -- rather than fight against it -- then they'll have to come up with some other function than advice on how to have sex.
Once upon a time it may have made sense -- but it doesn't any longer. Homosexuality is not a sin, and if a Christianity wishes to present it as such that's such much worse for that Christianity.
Quoting Bob Ross
Have you seen what birth does to a vagina?
It's not pleasant.
Quoting Bob Ross
Cool.
Then I'm squarely against the Aristotelian account of gender, obviously.
The question there is in what capacity?
Either Hume's fork applies, in which case we're speaking descriptively of gender rather than normatively, or it does not, in which case while you want to discuss human ontology ethics happens to apply since ontology and normativity aren't separated without an is/ought distinction of some kind.
Which way do you prefer?
Then don't expect your cherry-picked posts and strawmen to deserve a response.
The problem is that this just isn't based on any real culture: real cultures just have different ideas about biological sex and gender than others. Some cultures were possibly so simple that there was no need to discuss gender or an equivalent concept. Trying to logically invalidate transgenderism just won't work out.
Nature doesn't even conform to simple, binary ideas about sex. Hermaphrodites aren't just a mythological concept, but there have been real human heraphrodites. There have also been other kinds of transgender conceptualizations, like "two spirit" in native american culture. Trying to reduce trans to a logical error just isn't correct or based on modern medical and scientific understandings of transgender issues.
Wow.
Exactly. Which is just saying that there's the biology of sex and then there is a society's expectations of the sexes, and it can differ from culture to culture. This implies that for one to change their gender they would have to change cultures, not change clothes.
Quoting ProtagoranSocratist
:roll:
Quoting Cleveland Clinic
Sex concerns biology, gender concerns social roles. But because of your religious beliefs, you wish there not to be such a distinction, so that you can maintain that biology necessarily determines ones sexual roles. You wrap all that up in a pretence of misunderstood neo- Aristotelian metaphysics in order to to kid yourself that ist has some merit.
It's all pretty tendentious. And after 15 pages, tedious.
Some people try to make solipsistic arguments, then accuse others of not understanding them, insisting that you didn't read enough of their posts. I don't understand these arguments that transgenderism is just a logical flaw. There's clearly more going on with these people than mental illness.
With the trans folk or the ones doing the anti-trans posting?
As @Tom Storm pointed out, Bob Ross is clearly here to justify his authoritarian, conservative politics in the best way he can, which is, not very well.
His motivation is political, and religious, not philosophical. He has a parochial, patriarchal, patriotic view of humanity, such that everyone everywhere ought fit some fantasy about 1950's middle class 'Merca.
It's mainly interesting because it is so sad, so limited.
In the end there's not much we can do for poor old Bob.
I was referring to trans folks, but what i said interestingly applies to the people here who have been wanting to invalidate trans as a type of person as well...
Unnecessary psychologising on my part, of course. But it helps me make sense of such threads.
And yes, that is intended to be ironic.
:up:
I gave up. It's like talking to smoke.
:meh:
Quoting ProtagoranSocratist
Was wondering if this had already come up ...
Hermaphroditism wherein the lifeform reproduces with another such that both impregnate each other and become impregnated by the other does not occur in humansbut is quite natural in relation to Nature at large:
Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermaphrodite
So, about 1/3 of all non-insect animal species are hermaphroditic. Thats more normal for Nature than is being a red-haired human (less than 2% of humanity at large is. And please, please, lets not start on the human-relative abnormal condition of red-haired-ness).
In humans, the condition of having both ovarian and testicular tissue is nowadays called, ovotesticular disorder, with only about 500 reported cases. It is certainly not a normal phenotype for humans but, wait for it, normality has absolutely nothing to do with natural. Otherwise, stuff like red-haired people would then, rationalistically and all, be unnatural abominations of nature. Besides which, it does occur in nature.
Far more interesting and telling is the proportion of intersexed humans in humanity at large:
Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
Boldface mine. So up to nearly 2% of humanity might be intersexed. Quite importantly: and all this is just regarding the physiology of the human body. Goddess only knows of the vast diversity of genotypic and phenotypic expressions as strictly pertains to the physiology of the human brain as regards sexual identity and preference. The brain being that which (either in large part or in full) constitutes the mind, rather than the body per se.
Ill end this post with the number one news flash of all news flashes: Nature, ergo the natural, is all about diversity, intra-species very much included . (And not, by any means, conformity to any one mans or cohorts notion of an ideal essential nature of this and that lifeform. Such as how some humans have, at least historically, wanted all humans to reach their "ideal essential biological nature" of being blue-eyed blonds.)
As to homosexuality and such dying out in our species due to such people not being able to reproduce, over two millennia of documented history clearly demonstrates that, nope, this just ain't happening. ... This as though it is a naturally inherent aspect of our human species of lifeform. :gasp:
"hermaphrodites" in human terms just mean that the person has both forms of genitalia, and like i said: they're not both sexually functional, and very rare:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkjhpu6JnS0
no matter how many people want to believe that humans can only be grouped in the "male and female dichotomy"...does not mean it will happen...
Quoting ProtagoranSocratist
To better clarify:
Yes, human cases of what is more correctly termed "true hermaphrodites" cannot reproduce at all.
In my previous post, what I stated about ovotesticular disorder in humans having only about 500 known cases ... this condition currently termed ovotesticular disorder is one and the same with what was traditionally termed "true hermaphrodism" in humans. You can verify this in the link provided to ovotesticular disorder in that post.
Now, technically,, ovotesticulral disorder / true hermaphrodism in humans is far more atypical than merely having a mixture of both forms of genitalia. It is having gonads (a technical term)--ovaries in women and testies in men (rather than the vulva or penis which are external genitalia, gonads being just one aspect of human internal genitalia (e.g. the male prostate and the female uterus are other aspects of internal genitalia))--that, as gonads in the one human, have both ovarian and testicular tissues, both together in the same gonad, which is then technically termed an "ovotestis". This is far more interesting than the issue of reproduction you bring up (and, again, yes, human "true hermaphrodites" cannot in any way reproduce) because the gonads control many an important hormone, both in adulthood and in development. (and ovaries deliver different enough hormones in women in comparison to testis in men, and the sex-specific hormones play a big enough role in how the two sexes differ physically).
All that stated, when it comes to genitalia per se (the whole entire shebang), in humans, cases where the two are combined to whatever extent are termed "intersexed" ... this rather than "(true) hermaphroditic"--the latter, again, only applies to gonads that are part male and part female. And, again, whereas "true hermaphroditism" is very rare (only about 500 reported cases in all of humanity past and present), cases of being intersexed are relatively quite common: up to nearly 2% of the global human populous might well be intersexed ... with a more or less absolute minimum of 0.018%, which is still quite a lot considering.
yeah, 2% is roughly the same percentage of people who identify as transgender, even though the two conditions are very different. We're talking very small minorities, but overall very large numbers of people...
Yup. (It's also roughly the same percentage of people who are red-haired.)
But as you say: the two conditions of being intersexed and of being transgendered are very different. Being intersexed (and there's a whole story about how far too many are mutilated at birth so as to conform to societal expectations) is a strictly physiological, physical, condition of the human body (complexities of how this affects behavior aside). Whereas being transgendered is entirely mental, psychological: the body typically is perfectly male or female in appearance while the brain is configured to identify to the sex it is not bodily.
While we're discussing, all that said--and all of it blatantly enough evidencing the natural biological diversity within the human species as regards sex--I have yet to understand something about ancient cultures in which homosexuality was accepted and relatively wide spread (well known and documented examples include Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and the less known in the west Ancient Japan, at least prior to Christian cultural "influences")):
Though homosexuality was by comparison rampant and readily accepted--and they no doubt had the same percentage of intersexed individuals--there is no historical record I can find of transgendered individuals in these cultures. Maybe I haven't looked deeply enough into the matter. Or maybe it might be the case that being transgendered is in some as of yet mysterious, at least to me, way intimately related with the culture(s) we ourselves are living in??? Then again, some of them Ancients wore togas most all the time, which kind'a look like skirts, so who knows? :grin:
And there are ancient records of anal sex practices...
As far as transgendered people existing in those cultures, maybe it simply wasn't recorded or expressed as openly. You also bring up something I have thought about a lot, maybe there are certain mysterious purely psychological factors that drive people to have trans identities that are put into place by modern culture and social norms. If I had to guess, there would be some subtle biological and psychological aspects at work here.
Let's do it by example and start with an easy one. What makes water water to you?
Says me.
What are these ties then? How do they work? If theres no real essence to, e.g., a woman in virtue of which she is a woman; then how is she even said to be of the female sex? Likewise, even if she is granted as of the female sex without a real essence nor exhibiting the essential properties of a female, how is gender related to sex in your view?
They do deny doing ethics insofar as they dont believe they are making normative statements by evaluating and conveying the health concerns or issues with someone. Of course, they have a code of conduct ethically that they are taught for dealing with patients.
No doctor says: Moliere, unfortunately, you have cancer; and you are morally obligated to get treatment. No, they Moliere, unfortunately, you have cancer. I want to outline your options so you can make your own informed decision of what you should do.
This is a false dilemma that exists prominently in Western, liberalized society. No, there is not such thing as a medical vs. religious ethic: theres just ethics, which guides all of our actions. This is the same fallacy people commit when they try to separate epistemic from moral normativity. Its all just an attempt at saying these kinds of oughts arent relevant to morality: morality is this special category that we cant really justify or pinpoint but it isnt involved in hospitals, intellectual virtues, etc..
You are presupposing that happiness is about hedonism (which I understand you are a hedonist, so it makes sense) which is a prominent liberal view. Like I said, the fundamental disagreement between conservatives and liberals lies in the totality distinct usages of the concepts of happiness, harm, goodness, and freedom.
Happiness is not about this superficial hedonic pleasure; its eudaimonic.
More importantly, you are presupposing a sense of harm that acknowledges no such thing as self-harm if it makes someone happy when you say healthy in the above quote. Someone can feel hedonically happy and be harming themselves (and so it is really unhealthy)...such as a masochist.
Christianity isnt going anywhere in the West: it is essential and integral to the very Western values we espouse; and theres way too many members in powerful positions and institutions to get rid of them.
If I am being honest, society would collapse if we followed hedonism.
The symmetry breaker is that the vagina is designed for it and so it is not contrary to its natural ends; whereas, the anus is not designed for it and it actively inhibits it from realizing its ends. One is with and one is contrary to the natural ends of the body part.
This isnt relevant though to the OP even if I grant it. The OP isnt facially discussing ethics: it is discussing what you would call descriptive claims.
If Humes Guillotine applies, then all ethics goes out the window. At best, you end up with a view like @Bannos that is a hollow-out version of moral cognitivism or you end up with a version of moral intuitionism (like Michael Huemers); or, worse, you end up being a moral anti-realist. Just a companions in guilt response here.
Ethics ultimately applies, but it isnt immanently relevant to the discussion about ontology. In principle, someone could agree with my formulation of gender and sex and reject moral naturalism. This is a false dilemma.
Yet you posted links to articles online as if it would support your premise. You're simply picking and choosing the things you want to believe with no consistency. I could say "Don't believe everything you see on TV." and then where would we be? Your not moving the conversation forward.
You're asking us to believe what you say when you provide no evidence (what documentary?) and I have? If you choose believe some documentary and not a non-profit academic medical center renowned for its expertise in several areas, then there is no point in continuing this conversation.
To be clear, you still have not defined what you mean by sex and gender. I am still waiting. You are refusing to continue the conversation by actually providing an exposition of your view. All you have done is explicate vague descriptions of sex (e.g., has to do with biology) and gender (e.g., has to do with social cues, roles, expressions, expectations, etc.) while refusing to define them. At first, you made the absurd claim that we can't define anything if essentialism is false; and then agreed with me that we can have definitions but then resorted to evading defining them by way of claiming that everything has already been explained to me.
The way forward is extremely, painfully easy: just define the terms!
The Cleveland Clinic is a medical center for humans, not other species, so we are talking about humans.
Quoting javra
Your argument can be used to assert that sexual reproduction is more natural than asexual reproduction or hermaphroditism. It is no wonder that the trait of hermaphroditism did not evolve past fish or worms. This is because sexual reproduction Increases genetic variation, promotes adaptation, reduces disease risk and leads to speciation. Mammals are generally unable to reproduce asexually because they rely on a process called genomic imprinting, where certain genes are only activated depending on whether they come from the mother or father.
Quoting javra
Which just shows the small percentage of intersex people compared to women or men, and your own argument "Thats more normal for Nature than..." would mean that women and men are more normal for Nature than intersexed people. This is not being denied. I agree with that assertion.
Quoting javra
Exactly - and that is what sexual reproduction amplifies. Intersex people are lucky to be able to pass their genes to the next generation as most cases their sexual organs do not function properly because they are not fully fledged organs. What you're saying is that abnormalities like schizophrenia, being born with a tail, being born with half a brain, are simply diverse ways the human genome expresses itself. Is that your point?
You're making completely hypocritical arguments though: you condemn me for not reading every single thing you posted in the thread (lazily calling that "cherrypicking"). If you forgot what you posted...
Quoting Harry Hindu
Oh, poor you: some want to control your speech, but you can't even get me to read all your posts! I understand you must feel so inadequate, and it's my fault. Maybe you should talk to a therapist about it and take some pills. You seem confused.
Um ....
Quoting javra
Quoting Harry Hindu
I could only explain to those with better reading comprehension. Sorry, just not interested.
I don't understand the question. Water just is water. Nothing makes it water to me. Do you mean how do I tell something is water and not white spirit, pure alcohol, or hydrochloric acid? Or how do I tell it is water and not the spirit of forgiveness or a brick?
Apparently, the Inuit make bricks from water, and make houses from the bricks and live in them. I put tiny water bricks in my gin and tonic sometimes.
"Sex" is a differentiation within a species. "Gender" is a differentiation between cultures. The relationship between "gender" and "sex" is fully one of cultural habit.
The relations that arise are due to habituation in thinking and learning to live within a social world. They are subject to change with time, place, and even individual relationships. Even "sex" isn't exactly "biological" but more cultural in that we tend to think sexes are di-morphic when really it's just a spread between markers, an extension of the reproductive system outside of a single organism reproducing itself and a manner for a species to exchange and mix-up genotypes. How it happens varies wildly throughout nature -- consider the Sea Horse's birth patterns.
Quoting Bob Ross
Why isn't the latter "doing ethics"? How is that a denial? Must ethics be the sort of thing a person, upon knowing, now knows what's good for others?
I'd say that's upside down.Quoting Bob Ross
I choose happiness because Epicurus is a eudaimonic hedonist and so it dodges all the things that you discuss in dismissing the "liberal view" -- i.e. goes against your initial argument that there are only two possibilities when discussing gender.
Epicureanism basically side-steps all the accusations against liberalism you've conjured as your other that props up your position.
Quoting Bob Ross
You'll notice a theme in my responses here -- that would be so much the worse for the society resisting what's good, from my perspective. I'd celebrate letting go of Christian guilt in favor of hedonic calm because then people would be living in accord with their nature.
Quoting Bob Ross
This is what @unenlightened has been driving at -- how do we designate one form of damage "natural" and the other "unnatural" other than to say this is what the speaker prefers?
Does the nature of things spring forth so obviously that there simply is no reason why the vagina can be damaged but the ass cannot?
Quoting Bob Ross
I want to highlight here how you're doing it again: You're setting up the bad consequence in order to preserve your generally reasonable position. When some criticism is pointed out that seems to be your go-to: To either point out how the other possibility is worse, or to note that the criticism is "too analytic" and if they adopted the mixing of norms/facts like Aristotle then they'd come to see the light.
Here, on TPF, people have read these guys, though. The defense you're offering is one of plausibility in the face of a possible bad conclusion.
But if there is a third possibility then we can criticize away without fear of this unwanted conclusion.
If we're discussing descriptive claims alone then how does your account square away with the evidence in the Kinsey Report? Does it go through and label "Well, that act is unnatural"; in which case, what's the use of it? To make people part of said community to feel guilty enough to stay in line?
The engineer's attitude to sex is that holes are designed to be filled by shafts with matching threads. You are one of God's bolts and you have to find the right hole to screw yourself into. A rather robotic attitude to creation. Like those specialist insects with a proboscis designed to fit a particular species of flower. Though in this case, only the flower is having sex and being deflowered, the insect is just dining. "One insect's meat is another flower's orgasmic procreation." Who knew that honey was the ejaculate of interspecies sex?
Quoting unenlightened
The perverted plants knew, all along -- having sex thru other species all under our noses (and with others' noses and knowses).
I think it is confused. While I haven't read all the replies, I haven't seen anyone cleanly pinpoint where it goes wrong (imo).
Here you say that gender is the "symbolic upshot" of sex:
Quoting Bob Ross
Yet elsewhere you claim that sex and gender are the same. Here you relate sex and gender to properties of a triangle:
Quoting Bob Ross
It seems you don't have a good understanding of what a symbol is.
Triangles, trilaterality, and triangularity are related by strict entailment. One logically entails the other two.
This is not how symbols work. Symbol and symbolized are connected, but the connection is social. Outside of the social linkage, they are radically divorced. Beyond a connection which lives in minds, they are ontologically distinct.
"Dog" is connected to furry dogs, but only by linguistic coding. Outside this convention, you will never discover furry dogs in the glyphs, nor the glyphs in the goodboys. It is this ability of minds to symbolically connect any two arbitrary things that enables language.
Similarly, outside of social coding, you will never discover blue in a boy, nor femaleness in pink. These are all connected, but only symbolically. Outside this mental fiat, they are radically distinct. (In fact, this coding was reversed not even a century ago. Pink was seen as manly, virile and active, while blue was cool and passive, fundamentally female.)
Your argument relies on a confusion of the nature of symbolic relationships. Only by mistaking symbolic relationships as ontological, "essential" in your terms, can trans people be seen to be betraying their "essences". If this "betrayal" is fundamentally social, the argument falls flat.
You haven't, and perhaps can't, recognise the uses to which those terms are put, because it undermines your whole philosophy. Here it is again: "Sex" and "gender" can be used to differentiate between those characteristics that are biological and those that are social. You deny this, but unfortunately for you it is an obvious truth.
What you think of as a "gotcha" moment is actually your own undoing.
The way forward is extremely, painfully easy: recognise the distinction.
So is "sex" the biological nature of a being; and 'gender' is the social cues, expectations, roles, and expressions under your view?
If so, then is gender a purely social construct for you?
No, the OP defines gender as:
Quoting Bob Ross
Thats because I changed the semantics in the OP, which I openly stated, to help try and further the discussion with people who were getting confused with the terms. I even kept the old text in strikeout and the new text in bold.
Thats correct; but as an analogy. There is a difference, in Thomistic scholastics, between a virtual and real distinction/property.
Trilaterality and triangularity do not entail each other: an entailment is when a formula cannot fail to be true given the truth of another formula. Trilaterality and triangularity are properties: not formulas in a formal system of logic.
Maybe you are saying that Trilaterality
Gender isnt symbolic in either schema I gave. There are symbolic and gravitational expressions of gender; but gender is the natural tendencies which are necessitated from the given sex.
Blueness, whether it is a symbolic or gravitational expression of gender, is not a part of gender itselfthis is the crucial mistake of modern gender theory. Gender is the natural tendencies of sex and sex is the procreative nature of the substance; e.g., masculinity is the gender and maleness is the sex.
Gender is not a social construct: the symbolic expressions would be. Gravitational expressions would not be.
But what makes it water? Why is it water as opposed to acid?
Quoting Bob Ross
Ok, so, then, you are viewing gender as a social constructcorrect?
To compare, I would say sex is a procreative nature of a substance; and gender is the natural tendencies of that sex. Hence, e.g., masculinity is a gender and maleness is a sex. If this account is true, then gender nor sex is socially constructed. Our symbolism, societal knowledge, and expectations of gender would be social constructs.
Yes, I could see that would be the case since you are not an essentialist.
They arent telling you what you ought to do; so they are not imposing ethical commitments on you. Of course, as I noted before, they are operating under a code of ethic. I am talking about how they dont impose an ethic on the patient as it relates to their health.
They dont believe that the way a, e.g., hand is supposed to work medically has any relevance directly or immanently to ethics. They see it as them simply giving the amoral facts. This is in alignment with and directly caused by Humes Guillotine.
I didnt follow this question. If someone knows about what one ought to do, then it applies to everyone; if they know what so-and-so should do, then it applies to so-and-so.
How is it eudaimonic when eudaimonia is achieved by properly fulfilling ones naturenot chasing pleasure or avoiding pain?
Likewise, how can your view be eudaimonic when you deny the existence of natures and eudaimonia is relative to the nature of humans?
Can you elaborate on this? Id be interested to hear how.
Of course, if you believe that Christianity is holding incorrect ethical views (viz., what is contrary to what is good), then you should reject it. I just dont see hedonism as plausible: Aristo-thomism is Aristotelian but with the theological goods.
Are you equating Epicurianism with boiler plate Aristotelianism?
I am not following. You make claims that imply nature is real; and then turn around and deny it. I dont know what to make of this.
A body part doesnt have a nature: it is a material part of a substance with a nature. A human has one nature: either maleness or femaleness. This nature is instantiated in one underlying reality that exist by itself (viz., a substance) which is provided that nature (essence) by its form and it, as such, is one complete instantiation of that type of substance (viz., one suppositum). The form has the full essence; and the matter receives that essence. The human body is the matter as actualized by the human form; and the body parts are parts of that body.
A finger, hence, does not have a nature: a human has a nature which is in its form, and its body has parts which are developed by that form. The finger is something developed by that form.
The finger has a natural end insofar, although it doesnt have a nature proper, it is a part of the teleology as imposed by the human form (which is the human soul). The fingers are for grabbing, touching, poking, etc.
The anus is obviously for holding in poop and excreting poop: any doctor will tell you that. Thats obvious biology at this point. Now whether or not it is immoral to abuse the anus is a separate question.
The claim wasnt relevant though. I can play the Hume game and say that the OP is making purely descriptive claims about sex and gender; and then you will need to discuss why you agree or disagree with my account of sex and gender without invoking morality. This would only be an invalid move if the OP was making ethical claims; which it isnt immanently.
No, I was just noting the issues with Humes Guillotine since it seems critical to your metaethical commitments. Eventually, if you want to discuss ethics, we are going to have to discuss it.
I dont understand what objection you are making with the Kinsey report: can you elaborate? To me, its just a report that people feel happy, when they dont believe it is immoral to, having all sorts of sex.
To me, I am saying ethically it is wrong to, e.g., sodomize; and you are rejoining but people report having fun doing it. That doesnt have direct relevance without connecting it to some ethical claim. Are you saying because they find it pleasurable it must be morally permissible? If your view is eudaimonic, then that cant be the case.
The gravitational gender expression is tied to sex because it is the upshot of how that kind of being tends to behave (e.g., men being more interested in things; women more in people) and is not, therefore, a social construct.
The symbolic gender expression is a sign that signifies something about gender (e.g., the mars symbol representing maleness) and this is a social construct. This is still, however, the upshot of sex insofar as a valid symbol will represent something that is really about gender (viz., really about the natural tendencies and traits of a given sex).
Consequently:
Were'd that come from?
How do you distinguish a "gravitational expression of gender" from a "personality type expressing gender":
Quoting Bob Ross
Or, are "personality types expressing gender" a subset of "gravitational expressions of gender"?
You seem to be importing a notion of morality people do not use. Since Divine decree won't cut it here you are relying on purported self harm. But if that were enough to substantiate immorality then eating desserts and mountain biking would also need to be condemned. We don't generally consider minor harms associated with voluntary activities to indicate immorality, be they elevated cholesterol, sprains and breaks, or anal tears.
This "immorality as self harm" reminds me of drug prohibition. Here too draconian punishments for even simple possession are justified in terms of self harm. Even though, little effort is taken to substantiate these harms, or compare them to the harms of legal drugs. And even though in almost every case the harms of the prohibition itself vastly outweigh any harm of the drug. Here too, "self harm" feels like a pretext to legitimatize the desire to punish the behavior on political/personal/religious grounds.
I don't generally give chemistry lessons for free. In brief though, acids and alkalis are water based solutions containing ions H+ and OH- respectively, along with some varied partner ions of the opposite charge. It is the absence of a preponderance of either H+ or OH- ions that makes difference between neutral water and acidic or alkaline water. This is what humanity has learned by careful study and experiment, that you can learn about in a good history of science text. Now you tell me what you have empirically learned about the essence of water.
The hypocrisy is yours as I'm sure you would not like me putting words in your mouth that you did not say. Pathetic.
L-O-Fucking-L!
YOU are the one that used the phrase "normal for Nature". I was merely using your own terminology. If normality has absolutely nothing to do with natural then what did you mean by "normal for Nature"?
Quoting javra
Start by comprehending your own posts.
Sort of. I worry about that phrase if we're being specific. One thing to note is that I think we're a social species, for instance, so "social construct" does not thereby mean "not real" as is often mistakenly taken to be the case.
The social is as real as beans.
Quoting Bob Ross
I'd rather say that this qualifies it as something worthy of considering as an ethic. Ethics which set out to tell me or anyone what to do shut down the most important thing to consider in doing philosophy: thinking for oneself and reflecting in new circumstances.
Quoting Bob Ross
Because Epicurus describes human nature differently from Aristotle. Rather than a biological creature embedded within a social whole which produces the proper roles for those who can be truly eudomon -- the politician and the philosopher in the city of slaves -- humanity is embedded within a different ontology of atoms and void. Another point of comparison here would be the stoics who give yet another version of human nature which then justifies the norms put forward, just like Aristotle.
In the ontology of atoms and void the gods do not care about you and there is no afterlife so theological goods are distractions from pursuing our true nature. Furthermore people get confused about their pleasures and pains in thinking that they must avoid pain and pursue pleasure in the sort of modern cartoon version of hedonism. So there is a nature to which Epicurus appeals in making ethical decisions with respect to forming a proper character. The big contrast here between Aristotle and Epicurus is that Aristotle thinks proper birth and upbringing are the only means to living a truly eudemon life, but Epicurus believes anyone can be taught how to live a truly eudemon life -- hence setting up the garden which takes people away from the hustle and bustle of the city and into a reflective space where one's character can be worked upon.
But rather than finding means between passions as a way to pursue a virtuous life that takes part in all of what humanity's capacities have Epicurus teaches people to let go of their pleasures and accept their pains. The pleasures are easy, not difficult, to obtain. Pain is easy to endure, not something to be avoided at all costs. To those who believe the Gods care for us they do not -- they are perfectly content where they are and have no interest in our brief life. This means we can stop killing animals in the hopes of obtaining rain -- the world we live in is a natural one of atoms and void. Furthermore there is no afterlife, but only the dissolution of one's atoms into the void, so there is no special code of conduct one must adhere to obtain immortality. You will die regardless, so focus upon the type of creature you are instead and live a happy life.
I'm sure you can see how this isn't reducible to any sort of "liberal" attitude or possible conception that that pop-category might denote.
Quoting Bob Ross
I tried to address your concerns in the preceding paragraphs.
Quoting Bob Ross
That's perfect acceptable to me -- but then it seems you can't make normative claims like:
Quoting Bob Ross
I don't know that a doctor would tell me that, actually. That seems the sort of thing we'd think of immediately upon thinking about the ass as if it must have a purpose "Well, it does this a lot, so that must be its purpose"
I'd imagine that medically it'd be as you said -- the doctor gives advice on the basis of knowledge rather than telling the patient exactly what to do as a moral authority would.
But, I'll mark you down as "Yes" to the question, then: The nature of things is that obvious that we can just say, by looking at something, what it is for, what it's proper purpose is, what its essence is. But that doesn't seem like the sort of conclusion you'd want, either.
Quoting Bob Ross
I think it's a superior empirical basis for understanding sex without norms. So basically a continuation of one of the forks, as I'm putting it -- either we speak as if sex has no norms that are dependent upon the facts (We play Hume's Guillotine) or we speak as if they do (we don't play Hume's guillotine). If the latter then The Kinsey Report isn't "in the game", so to speak, because it's pretty much attempting a descriptive project without norms about what that project is studying. If [s]we play the former[/s] we play Hume's Guillotine then I'm pointing out modern medical ethics. [s]as well as[/s]If we don't play Hume's Guillotine Epicureanism is a possible other way of thinking on the question of sex, gender, and boning.
(EDITed last paragraph for clarity -- the expression was confused, but I substituted in some names for pronouns and shortened the sentences to make it clearer)
Sure, the views of a society can have causal power - whether they be representative of reality or not (religion is a prime example). The fact that they exist is not being questioned but if they actually refer to a real state of reality. When humans agreed socially that the Earth is flat did that make the Earth flat?
Quoting Moliere
We shouldn't forget that natural selection has repurposed body parts for different uses. The difference is do these new purposes provide any benefit to survival or finding mates and therefore passed down to future generations?
I would argue that people dressing as the opposite sex is a hindrance to finding mates that align with your sexual preference.
It is obsolete (sexist) language-use - use that does not reflect Western societies progress in breaking down these gendered barriers and treating each other not as women and men, but as human beings - that is being reinforced by the transgender movement. When a father says in a demeaning tone to his son who is trying on a dress, "What are you trying to be, a girl?", the father is reinforcing that sexist view of the sexes - not that his son is actually a girl. This type of language is what takes us backwards and the transgender movement is reinforcing an outdated use of language that ties human expression to sexed categories, whereas an evolved humanistic view understands such expression as variations of the same human kind.
There is a thing where people transition to try to escape dealing with past trauma, usually physical and sexual abuse, altho they don't realize it until later. They find out that time and experience is needed to deal with trauma, and for some, the final step in coming to terms with it is to de-transition and breathe life back into an identity that was previously destroyed by events.
So it's as you say, it's that transgender culture says that men and women are fundamentally different, that's why this pathological response is possible.
A lot of people who de-transition feel deep regret and betrayal.
"putting words in someone's mouth" is radically different interpreting someone's text. Have a nice life, this is getting really pedantic.
Heres some English definitions:
I made use of the two terms normal and natural in the same post so as to showcase their differences, knowing full well that too many hold irrational biases in which the two terms are opined to be synonymous.
And I made use of red-haired people - an abnormal case for humans which is nevertheless natural - to explicitly illustrate this. Many, many other examples can be provided.
To further spell things out: "normal (i.e., ordinary) for Nature" is in no way equivalent to "natural for Nature". Nature can have both ordinary and unordinary outcomes; that said, Nature cannot have unnatural outcomes, this by definition of "natural". But then, all this should go without saying.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I get youre trying to be insultive and all, but the hell have you been smoking?
My summary of your ideas
You seem to be arguing that transgenderism is a logical fallacy, and that it makes no sense to talk about gender as something separate from sex. You have also hinted that transgenderism is a mental illness, and not a valid condition on its own, on the basis of what the transgendered say about it.
Speak now or forever hold your peace.
I was asking you a question. Do you believe that gender is social and biological; or neither; or a combination of those and other things?
Repeatedly.
Good question. There is no such thing as a gender expression that is an expression of personality (in the stereotypical sense of personality which is [inter-]subjective) under this view: there are just gravitational and symbolic expressions of gender.
A personality trait is any trait that a person has as a matter of their psychological persona; whereas a gravitational expression of gender is the natural tendencies that a person has due to their sex. Since personality is influenced by natural tendencies, the personality of a person will reflect those tendencies to some imperfect extent (depending on various factors).
My friend, this is natural law theory and Aristo-Thomism: it is a very popular view in metaethics and normative ethics.
Natural law theory claims that we are decreed by God to follow our nature; so the idea that you can separate out harm (in general: not just self-harm) from Divine Law is a false dilemma if the thesis stands.
They would not be immoral under Natural Law. Neither of those in and of themselves inhibit the body from realizing its natural ends. Now, depending on the context (e.g., dessert gluttony, rash biking, etc.) it may be immoral because it does inhibit it.
You kind of smuggled in anal sex here; but it is nothing like the other examples you gave. Anal sex is like consistently drinking alcohol your entire life; or smoking. It has permanent damage that occurs over time. Even doing it once inhibits the anus for a while at doing its job.
Are you taking the position that self-harm is not immoral?
Please refer me to your answer, then.
Would it be fair, then, to say that you believe water is water, as opposed to something else, because of its structural (molecular) makeup (viz., H2O)?
Quoting Banno
Goodness - without consent? I hope not.
Well, it wouldnt be real; because reality is objective, and socially constructed ideas are inter-subjective (even if they are expressing something objective).
Our agreement that vanilla ice cream is the best ice cream ever and that anyone who disagrees is an ice cream heretic has inter-subjective existence.
Ok, would it be fair to say that Epicureanism is the same fundamental, naturalistic project that Aristotle is doing but it focuses on well-being of the organism independently of an ordering to any higher goods? For example, it seems like Epicureans would say that sacrificing yourself as a father for your son is not good; because it goes against the immanent well-being of the father and there is no recognition of the higher good that relates to the fathers role as the father.
You didnt address it though. To be clear, you are both denying and accepting the existence of natures. Which is it?
Do you, on the one hand, believe that things have natures that they can realize to live a happy life (as you describe with Epicurus) or do you deny the reality of natures altogether? This seems internally incoherent to me.
All of those are descriptive claims. The fact someone has a nature is not a prescriptive claim in the Humean way. I am simply stating that there really is a nature to a human, irregardless if one should follow it or not.
I am not arguing that we can know everything about the nature of something at first glance: weve impacts the natures of many things over many thousands of years. Its an empirical investigation: it is not a priori.
Nothing about what people report about themselves is itself a normative claim, so I am not following you here.
Ok. We arent discussing the ethics involved in the medical industry nor what should be the ethic there: we are discussing what gender and sex are. I think you are jumping to my ethical views on sexuality when I have not imported it into the OPs discussion.
Likewise, Epicureanism may be an alternative: we would have to explore that; but it definitely doesnt seem coherent with nominalism (which you accept since you reject essentialism).
I deny that men or women have natures, that sex has a nature, and that gender has a nature but I think the concept of a human nature workable. And I wouldn't put "nature" in terms of "essence" either.
I don't believe in universal criteria for inclusion in a set, such as necessary and sufficient conditions, which specifies what a thing is.
But there could still be a use for "nature" in our thinking even if we're not adopting Aristotle's ontology.
Quoting Bob Ross
You are arguing you can know the ends of things, though. Their teleology. Yes?
If that can come to be known over time then by what means do we infer the teleology of organs as you have?
This is the thing I'd deny empirical investigation can really do: We utilize teleological notions in biology but they're an organizing apparatus more than the ontology of speciation. Rather all we can do is describe -- at least if we play Hume's Guillotine.
If we do not then
Quoting Bob Ross
... it was explicitly your description of the anus' teleology that got me started on this line of thinking.
This is your Argument 1. There is either Realism or Nominalism. Nominalism is not tenable, ergo Realism.
Epicurus' epistemology is one of direct realism. It's a naive epistemology with respect to the critical turn in philosophy heralded by the Enlightenment thinkers. I don't agree with it in specifics, though I think it's harmless in general -- its' major fault is shared by all other philosophical theories in that it is wrong.
I'm not claiming nominalism. I'm speaking in my own words and not as part of a category of people with such-and-such beliefs well known, unless nominalism really is nothing but the belief that essences do not exist.
I would say that we possess knowledge, though -- it is provisional and not ontological, but still knowledge of what's real. In that vein I think the poetics of Epicurus' ontology get along with what we know about the universe at present. But that's not the sort of knowledge which the Epicureans would have claimed -- they claimed to have the truth that all of reality is atoms and void.
Which I take ontology to be: not real but rather a poetics that allows us to comprehend and bring sense to the real. It does not encompass all of reality and we cannot deduce things about reality from our categories. However we define our terms the reality of things will always slip beyond our categories such that we cannot have deductive knowledge of the real, but rather provisional knowledge.
But that means the sorts of claims we find in Aristotle, Epicurus, the Stoics, the neo-Platonists, and on forward which make claims about reality as it really is cannot be treated like we know them. They're just ways of organizing what we know into sense for ourselves so that the absurd is manageable.
So, anti-realist with respect to ontological commitments, but realist with respect to reality, anti realist with respect to essences, realist with respect to nature, and explicitly agnostic with respect to ontology: Not only is it not known, but due to our position it cannot be known.
So sex, gender, and boning under this umbrella: Speciation roughly follows Darwinian evolution because some molecules formed at one time that started to self-replicate. Natural selection took care of the rest. Sexual reproduction is a method for mixing up genes, however that's done. There's no "natural" sex as much as there are methods for swapping genetic information such that the next generation has a mixture of genes. Male/Female is a rough, metaphysical speculation which we utilize to understand this infinitely complicated process.
Gender is social and inter-social and inter-personal and personal. Sex is our metaphysical belief about others' biology, and gender is the identification one has in all the previously designated senses. It functions as a means for understanding one's role, understanding one's place within a community, understanding what desires are acceptable and what are not acceptable for the kind of gender you have, understanding the sorts of desires that are had by said gender, all in order to then enact it within the social dance. This social dance is real, note -- not essentially so, but as real as you and I talking right now. People perform gender.
The important thing to note here is that does not then mean:
Quoting Bob Ross
Since there's no underlying reality which defines the perfect specimen of a genus the performance is all there is to it: the surface is expansive and deep, but not undergirded by a purpose or soul. Rather it's something that arises naturally through coming to learn how to act with others: socialization.
****
So I'm definitely taking the critical turn more seriously than the neo-Thomists are. And without some way to specify how natures are determined rather than offering a common-sense teleology it would seem to me that the neo-Thomists aren't so much overcoming the critical turn as ignoring it and stubbornly continuing in their tried ways.
Following up on this, two resources are the Girgis/George/Anderson document, What is Marriage, as well as Peter Simpsons article, Legalizing Same Sex Marriage. The first document is helpful in many ways, but I think Simpson's piece is more incisive, not to mention shorter.
I would depart from Simpsons conclusions by claiming that political forms should favor the ideal in one way or another, and that because of this his conclusions are premature. For example, I do not think that a contraceptive mentality departs from the ideal of marriage to the same extent that a homosexual mentality does, and therefore I see Simpsons equating of these two possibilities as flawed. Indeed, Aquinas explicitly opposes Simpson's thesis in this matter.
But again, I see the objection from infertile couples as failing to recognize the difference between an exception and a rule. An infertile opposite-sex couple is an exception; whereas an infertile same-sex couple is a necessity. It is in no way out of the ordinary for law to track natural exceptions with legal exceptions.
Of course, that the LGBT advocate cannot see this is due to their post hoc rationalization, and Simpsons conclusions may well be vindicated within a culture that is steeped in these forms of post hoc rationalization. He is surely right that if we make the novel definition of marriage coherent we will learn how significantly we have departed from the historical tradition.
So you are now advancing the claim that, "Schizophrenia is a mental illness" is not a substantive claim, but, "Schizophrenia is not a mental illness" is a substantive claim. It seems that all you mean by "substantive" is, "contrary to the current widespread view."
@Bob Ross is presumably quite aware that the idea is contrary to the current widespread view, so there's no trouble there. And of course "bigotry" does not mean, "contrary to the current widespread view," so this notion of "substantive" doesn't seem to take us anywhere.
Indeed, the only philosophical significance of something being contrary to the current widespread view is that it has the burden of proof within that cultural context.
Quoting hypericin
Is this taken from some source or are you coming up with it yourself?
The problem with this definition is that it hearkens back to the same we've already been over. Your charge amounts to something like, "Ross has falsely ascribed negative qualities to a group." That's the question at stake. What is needed are arguments pro and contra. It does no good to simply claim that Ross has uttered a falsehood if you have no argument to back up your claim. Besides, this is not the definition of bigotry.
Quoting hypericin
If someone uses a shovel to smash in a man's face, should we outlaw shovels?
The underlying problem is that you are imputing bad motives without good evidence. You must argue your case, not merely assert it.
You're welcome. I think it provides the sort of argumentation and rationale that @Bob Ross was after in the OP.
Thank you, Frank, for being frank. :smile: It's nice to see that not everyone here is delusional.
Quoting Bob Ross
So its not just me who gets the dramatic Oh [name]? I feel cheap.
Like gender, mental illness is also a social construction; for example, as someone who previously went to therapists and thought of myself as mentally ill, I eventually arrived at the conclusion that all forms of "mental illness" and "disorders" aren't anything but a vague collection of symptoms that are often temporary. If you think i'm wrong, look into how often the usage of mental health diagnosis changes.
For example, even with something "serious like schizophrenia", the professionals themselves apply the label fairly liberally, even when the patient isn't describing any sort of major life-altering problem. People have hallucinations for many different reasons, sometimes it's just temporary, sometimes it's related to sleep deprivation or drugs. However, if you go to a professional and mention hallucinations, they will respond by telling you that you are schizophrenic and that you need to take drugs to fix it, most likely...
You're not telling me anything I didn't already know. I said this myself already.
Quoting ProtagoranSocratist
Yes, different people may have different reasons for identifying as trans - delusional disorder, seeking attention, a hate for real women/men or heterosexuality, or just being manipulated by others into believing they are the opposite sex, are some of the more prominent reasons.
But yes, ultimately it is a category mistake that I lay out here and here.
This is to just say that sometimes doctors can misdiagnose, or that the tend to diagnose you with something you do not have to make a profit. You probably never had a mental illness and what you experienced is simply a normal human condition.
You see, this is ultimately what bothers me about trans-genderism from a surgical and medical perspective. There have been a lot of medical advancements, and a lot more is understood about the human body, but I think the proposition of changing someone's sex should be looked at with extreme caution, since modern doctors are not these all-powerful geniuses like they often want you to think about them. Without clear biological tests to determine if someone needs hormone therapy etc., transgender treatments risk becoming an infinite money-grabbing loop.
However, the double bind is obvious, if you look at the whole thing from a transgendered perspective: there's generally a two way moralization going on, there's a pushback from people who don't want trans ideas to become normalized or accepted ("you're not trans, you're just confused, you need to see a therapist"), and pushback from people who think it's a moral issue if you question transgender identity at all ("you're a transaphobe, you're ignorant, you're intolerant").
Either way, it's a pretty dangerous scenario for the transgender person, it can't be fixed with simplistic logic...but perhaps a total upheaval of modern day ethics, morality, and scientific standards....
Quoting javra
It wasn't the just the same post. It was the same sentence "more normal for Nature".
If you don't like the words you used, then would you prefer, "common", instead of "normal"? To define any thing as belonging to a group you have to define the common characteristics of that group and that is what it means to be a "normal" example of that group. At what point does replacing the characteristics with other (opposing) characteristics make one not a normal example of that category and in a different category all together? For instance, does intersexed people qualify as sexed people? Is it an uncommon characteristic of sex, or a different category altogether? If the former - what exactly does the condition share with common expressions of sex (male and female)? Do intersexed people always make more intersexed people, or more males and females?
Quoting javra
Well, there you go again using "abnormal" to define red-haired people, in other words, "abnormal for Nature". You're really just reiterating what you already said. I should add that I think that conflating red hair with intersex is a mistake. If red-hair was passed down to all in the next generation it would have very little impact on the survival of the species than if intersex traits were handed down to all in the next generation. There is a reason why a vast majority of human beings are either man or woman and why there are sometimes inaccuracies in how genes are copied and how those inaccuracies are expressed - it has to do with natural selection.
i personally see absolutely no evidence of this "progress" though: through progressive ideology, people cite things like the end of slavery in the way it existed in colonial times, but there many current forms of slavery, some of them being almost identical to the outlawed chattel slavery that is no longer practiced. You also bring up the right to vote as it pertains to women...but the progress made is questionable as well: the political right tends to point out problems with "fraud and abuse" (which is hard to understand without looking at the issue firsthand, but real voting experts tend to discount as a wild exaggeration). The political left points out unfair access issues that keep poor and less educated people from voting. Either way, republicans are wanting to minimize easy of access at the voting booth, democrats want to expand ease of access at the voting booth, and all these arguments are made specifically to control who gets elected and who doesn't.
Again, i'm not "cherrypicking", I just value being able to point out specific false claims made by people on here, this claim about western society progress is dubious if not entirely false...i'm much less concerned about the ideology and motive of the people putting forth these claims, as i don't have easy access to that.
Yes it was. Theres a very important aspect to language called context. Especially in the context of all my posts on this thread in which Ive quoted you, Ive made a point of evidencing via examples that more normal for Nature never equates to more natural or, more precisely, to more natural for Nature. This being something that you seem to disagree with, as is evidenced in your statement here:
Quoting Harry Hindu
Especially in the contexts addressed, there is no such thing as X being more natural than Y. Naturalnessi.e. the property of pertaining to Nature, i.e. to the natural worlddoes not come in degrees. Something either is natural or else it is not.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I very much like the terms Ive used. But ok, common is just one more possible synonym for normal. This changes nothing of the aforementioned.
Quoting Harry Hindu
You're asking me to here resolve the Sorites Paradox, aka the paradox of the heap: at which point is a heap no longer a heap. This being a topic deserving its own thread in the metaphysics department of the forum. And certainly not easy to satisfactorily resolve, most especially on a forum's soundbite format.
BTW, in attempts to better clean up the issue of more normal for Nature not being equivalent to more natural for Nature:
Language can at times have a way of befuddling philosophic issues via metaphor and the like.
Normal stems from according to rules. Nature, the natural world, has its rules (natural laws as prime examples). The supernatural can be in certain perspectives deemed to not adhere to the rules of the natural world (or, at the very least, certainly not to the rules of the physical natural world); such that the paranatural (synonym for the supernatural) thereby gains the synonym of the paranormal. Example: Marian apparitions (here assuming that they might in fact occur for some, rather than all of them being outright lies) are outside the sphere of the natural world, the natural world then being the normal state of affairs as regards human experiences (this only where one allows for the possibility of veritable, extra-natural experiences)
In such means alone, an association is then made between what is natural and what is normal, namely: the natural state of the world/cosmos is the then the normal state of the world/cosmos, this in terms of human experiences.
Then, theres a a slippery slope that gets slipped on whereby the two terms the normal and the natural become interpreted by some to have one and the same semantics: because the natural world is the normal state of affairs, this as previously outlined, that which is normal (i.e., ordinary, common, etc.) gets interpreted to therefore be that which is natural.
And it is exactly in this that the irrational bias of equating normality to naturalness becomes established in far too many. Redheads do not have the normal hair color of our human species, nor do gray eye-colored humans have normal eye-colors (one of my grandfathers had gray eyes), nor do AB negative blood type humans (1% of the human populous) have normal human blood types (most normal being O positive and A positive) but all this has absolutely nothing to do with the naturalness of being a red-haired human, or gray eyed, or AB negative, and so forth.
I'm curious where this leaves cross-dressing in your view. Clothes/makeup/jewelry are surely nothing more than symbolic expressions of gender. And so choosing one set of symbols over another cannot be "gravitational", and so can only be a morally neutral expression of personality. Do you agree?
Yet, you also say:
Quoting Bob Ross
Quoting Bob Ross
And so, what to make of male nurses, female engineers, females who gravitate towards being providers and protectors? Insane? Immoral?
Quoting Bob Ross
Wow!!! You will have to cite me some sources on that one. By that last sentence, do you mean, you can't take a shit after???
Arteriosclerosis is an accumulation of physiological insults, and is negatively impacted by even a "normal" amount of excessively fatty and sugary food. To be a mountain biker is to sustain injuries, many of which can entail significant impairment later in life. It goes with the territory
Both of these surely impair the natural function of the body. I am missing even a corresponding long term harm of anal sex.
Also, obviously anal sex is popular with heterosexual couples too. I assume they fall into the same physical and moral hazard?
Quoting Bob Ross
Generally, yes, I understand immorality to be a lack of preventive and restitutional care around the harm you cause others, not to yourself. Especially since you widen self harm to include the notion of not living according to your nature. This is normal, we seldom live in a way that is optimal to our natures. Every day of our lives would be thereby be swimming in immorality, and the concept would dissolve into meaninglessness.
Re-reading and seeing I did not address this.
I'd rather say that a father understands their role and accepts pain when it comes.
The Epicurean cure is supposed to relieve worry about desires we can do nothing about: as human beings we want pleasure, we avoid pain, we want to live forever, and we'd like luck on our side and hope it grants us what we desire.
Since we're a social species who learns roles and desires to fulfill them hedonism can explain sacrifice.
There are a couple of things I would like to understand better here.
1. When you say divorcing sex and gender makes for "an ahistorical account", do you mean it is an account that does not agree with the historical usage of the term 'gender'?---as when Charles Dickens in the first page of David Copperfield referred to "unlucky infants of either gender", meaning either sex (a phrase which struck me sharply on the nose, for I had been protesting to myself that gender is an attribute of words, not of people).
Or do you mean, as some people here (don't remember who) seem to have thought, that it was disconnected from queer history and the like?
2. I am not sure what you mean by 'the symbolic upshot of sex'. The Mars symbol ( ? U+2642 MALE SIGN = Mars, alchemical sign for iron) is of course a symbol, but it seems quite arbitrary that it is attached to the male sex, or for that matter to Mars or iron.
When you refer to "the very social norms, roles, identities, and expressions ... that are studied in gender studies", it would seem more relevant to give as examples typical or stereotypical male or female behaviors, such as dominance or submissiveness, interest in things or interest in people.
I've read through the first 7 pages of this discussion and encountered a lot of noise, along with a few gems. Apologies if skipping the next 10 has made me miss anything relevant to my inquiries.
No. A widespread view about schizophrenia is that it is an organic brain disorder, not caused by bad parenting as was once widely believed. But, this still a substantive claim. A substantive claim is a claim that is not already intrinsic in what is being discussed. That schizophrenia is a mental illness is intrinsic to the concept of schizophrenia. In other words, it is definitional, not substantive.
Quoting Leontiskos
You are mixed up. It is contrary to widespread view, and clearly substantive. That is what makes it capable of being a bigoted claim, where "Schizophrenics are mentally ill" is not.
Quoting Leontiskos
We can argue back and forth the merits of Bob's philosophical claims. I believe they have none. But, by arguing that the claim is bigoted, I'm arguing that it is noxious. Especially so, made in the current fraught political environment for trans people. And, practically speaking, this class of claims are almost never true. I can't really think of any examples to the contrary.
Again, lets test your counterarguments in the context of another claim.
"Black people are less intelligent on average than white people. This cannot be said to be a bigoted without providing factual evidence to the contrary, to do so would just be begging the question. Moreover, it is not particularly obstinate, by my [made up] definition, and it cannot be bigoted by your definition, otherwise 'People with Downs Syndrome are less intelligent on average' would be bigoted".
Does this sound good to you? If not, how does it differ?
I think there are two problems with this. First, as MacIntyre's views matured he began to from his strong incommensurability thesis. Indeed, precisely as he started to understand the differing views in question did he begin to move away from that thesis.
Second, assertions of incommensurability are dangerous, and here's why:
This is not to say that there are no incommensurable views, but rather to point up how one will be rewarded for thinking their interlocutor's views are incommensurable with their own, regardless of whether they actually are. There is a great temptation to simply dub someone's views "incommensurable" as a way to get what one wants. Indeed, within this thread we have seen the , the name-calling, and the favoring of censorship, and I'm afraid that a claim of incommensurability functions as little more than an excuse for those sorts of moves.
This was almost explicit in one of your , where you basically said, "Because this is an interminable debate I am going to resort to something that I wouldn't usually engage in, namely something that borders on eristic." And note that in your very first substantive post to Bob you had already determined that the debate was interminable. If one wants to dub their interlocutor's views incommensurable, then I think they have to demonstrate a knowledge of the view in question and explain why it is incommensurable. If one does not do that it is too easy to dub something "incommensurable" even before it is understood or assessed. This is especially true on issues that are emotionally fraught.
Of course there are some difficulties in this thread, such as the difficulty that @Bob Ross' views tend to be a bit original and therefore idiosyncratic. It is understandable that one may prefer to save their labored dialogues for an interlocutor whose arguments are very common or well-represented. Bob is no plagiarist. Some of his premises are idiosyncratic and some are not, but he writes his arguments himself.
I've already answered this <here>, namely the definitional/tautological notion.
Quoting hypericin
So your claim is that, "Schizophrenia is an organic brain disorder," is a substantive claim (because "organic brain disorder" is not contained in the definition of Schizophrenia). And you simultaneously claim that, "Schizophrenia is a mental illness," is not a substantive claim (because "mental illness" is contained in the definition of Schizophrenia).
Here's the problem: How can a claim which depends on a substantive claim be non-substantive? For example:
1. Schizophrenia is an organic brain disorder
2. Schizophrenia is [insert other relevant predicates here]
3. (1 ^ 2) ? Schizophrenia is a mental illness
4. Therefore, Schizophrenia is a mental illness
Yet if (4) is a conclusion that depends in part on conjunct (1), and conjunct (1) is substantive, then (4) must also be substantive. If (1) is required to know (4), and (1) is not "definitional," then (4) cannot be "definitional." You are involved in logical errors.
Quoting hypericin
Is it not you who are mixed up? If I say that your notion of "substantive" is nothing other than, "contrary to the widespread view," and that this is why Ross's view is "substantive," then it makes no sense to object by saying that Ross' view is contrary to the widespread view and substantive. That claim does not function as an objection to what I've said. It agrees with what I've said.
I would suggest looking into what you mean by "definitional" (as I think it is nothing more than that which represents the widespread view). The claim that some predicates of Schizophrenia are rock-bottom "definitional" while others are not is tendentious given that the definition of Schizophrenia has changed over time.
Quoting hypericin
Okay, well that's a new claim on your part. Why is it noxious?
Quoting hypericin
To be clear, what claim of his are you talking about? There are a lot of different topics in this thread. I had been under the impression that you were speaking to the homosexual question.
Quoting hypericin
Which class of claims?
Quoting hypericin
I have addressed this issue in some detail towards the end of the thread, "Beyond the Pale."
First, let's get clear on what bigotry actually means:
Quoting Bigotry | Cambridge Dictionary
Quoting Bigotry | Merriam Webster Dictionary
Whether any claim, "X is Y," is obstinate, intolerant, based on "dislike of other people who have different beliefs or a different way of life," etc., depends on the context. Again, bigotry is a of behavior or belief. To give an example, Daryl Davis is a famous black man who convinced dozens to leave and denounce the KKK, simply by interacting with them and showing them that their views were mistaken. Davis convinced some and failed to convince others. The ones he convinced were, in some relevant sense, not bigots. They were not obstinate given that they changed their belief when presented with evidence to the contrary.
If you were right and everyone who says, "Black people are less intelligent on average than white people," is inherently a bigot, then it makes no sense that Davis convinced some and failed to convince others. The fact of the matter is that some of those whom Davis encountered held that belief in a mode that involves bigotry, and some did not. Or if someone wants to insist on a particular definition, they must at least admit that some whom Davis encountered were more bigoted than others, despite holding the same material proposition.
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Edit:
Quoting hypericin
Is the "that" its being contrary to the widespread view, or its being non-definitional, or both? On any case, this is mistaken. One can make bigoted claims that are both in line with the widespread view, and that are "definitional."
For example, consider the slur in the Jim Crow South, "Black people are niggers." This claim was in line with the widespread view and it was being used definitionally, yet it was at the same time bigoted. Given that cultural assumptions and the definitions of words that cultures coin can themselves be reflective of bigotry, your necessary conditions for bigotry are mistaken. The definitions that humans rely upon can be false, even at a cultural or widespread level.
No apologies needed: most of it was red herrings and ad hominems.
I dont mean to deny that gender is connected to queer history; but that its normal usage has never been like it is today. Now we are seeing people using the gendered terms in completely two different senses; and of which they believe are completely or vastly separated from each other.
When a symbol is in some way representing a gender, it is a valid symbol of gender; but gender itself is not about symbols. You are right that a symbol can be loosely or tightly related to what it signifies (e.g., the redness of the Templar cross resembling blood seems much more closely connected to martyrdom than red representing 'to stop'). We could debate what counts as a good symbol vs. a poor symbol, but I think we would both agree it has to do with how well what symbolizes the thing relates to that thing. The Mars symbol doesnt seem as closely related to maleness as the shape of a man on a public bathroom door, for example.
I was just giving the standard description of gender that liberal gender studies uses: its all social and not ontologically connected to sex; and it has to be for their ideology to work, since they want to claim that a person can become, e.g., non-binary by simply not expressing themselves as a part of the male or female genderthis only works if gender is purely socio-psychological.
On the contrary, my theory suggests that, under the revised version (lets say), gender and sex are not really distinct but are virtually distinct; and so we can conceptualize them as different, insofar as gender is the natural tendencies of sex and sex is the procreative nature of the substance, but in reality they are not separable. If this is true, then gender is not social at all: masculinity, e.g., is separable from the social understanding of it and so the social expressions and expectations are not a part of gender itself.
Ok, but what is a nature then?
Yes.
Its innate to the organ: it isnt supervenient. That is, the nature of an organ is intrinsic like its weight, size, shape, etc. and not like its extrinsic properties like its monetary value.
The reason I think you are having a hard time conceptualizing it, if I may be so bold (and no offense meant), is because you are failing to see that, even if essence realism is false, my kind of theory views the very same natural organs you do through the lens of them having a nature embedded in them (in virtue of their form).
Think of it this way: studying the functions, biologically, of an organ is the same process as studying its teleology. This is not to say that we have to understand teleology through the scientific method, but just to convey it to you I think thats the best example I can give that you may be able to relate to. E.g., based off of what this liver is doing, what is made up of, its size, how it relates to the other organs, etc. it seems to be for filtering out toxins (as well as other stuff). One natural end it has is to detoxify the blood which is done through its natural functions, such as its enzymes that break down toxins into less harmful substances.
Let me reword it in a way that you might be on board with: the anus natural functions are such that it secretes and holds in poop. Thats what it does for the body. You may divorce the functionality from teleology, but lets start there.
No, I have not given an account of why someone should accept realism: I was noting that you are a nominalist and you are an epicurean that accepts eudaimonia which requires realism. You are holding two incompatible views.
Nominalism is the view that essences are not real: you are denying realism about essences, so you are a nominalist. Semantics aside, you are still affirming realism about natures in a way that doesnt seem coherent; but Ill wait to elaborate on that until you give me your account of what a nature is.
How can it though if you are claiming that Epicureanism is Aristotelianism without the social obligations derivable from ones nature? Typically, the father has to lay down his life for his kid because he is their father who is has the natural role in the natural family as the provider and protector.
All @hypericin is doing is ad hoc defining and redefining bigotry because they want it to be bigoted because they view the position that transgenderism is a mental illness as too extreme. I have no problem with people continually refurbishing their definitions (as that's part of the refinement process); but this is just bad faith to me on their part.
I think that's right. The label "bigot" is being used as a means to the end of a particular form of censorship, without any regard for whether the labeling is true or false. Whether or not it is true that you are a bigot, it's expedient to say that you are.
That said, @hypericin is at least willing to consider his own view and attempt to provide reasons for that view. That's to his credit, and it is something that few others in this thread have managed.
I dont think attire and aesthetic accessories are purely social (viz., purely how we symbolize gender). For example, makeup is closely connected to women making themselves beautified as a part of their role as the object of sex (which is not to be confused with saying that women should be objectified in the colloquial sense of the term).
A lot of the ways we traditional or even liberally dress are related to masculine vs feminine traits. For example, a traditional dress covers the legs and butt to express female modesty.
To be fair to your point, I dont know exactly how much of our clothing choices is truly gendered vs. socially constructed; and there definitely are socially constructed aspects to clothing choices.
A person that exhibits sufficiently the oppose gender of no fault of their own is not doing anything immoral but it is bad. A tomboy girl is a masculine girl, which is bad even if they have done nothing immoral. Ideally, all men would be masculine to a perfect degree and same for women with femininity.
A person that purposefully mimicks the opposite gender is doing something immoral by trying to will what is bad for them; but this isnt too say that it is a sin like murder.
That can happen too, but thats a temporary inhibition. The long-term effect is that it loosens the anus which makes it have a hard time keeping poop in.
Not necessarily, unless you are doing stunts or something. One can safely bike through mountain bike trails without hurting themselves; and just because doing something opens up one to the risk of injury does not mean that it is immoral to do. If that were true, then everything we do would be immoral basically. There has to be a sufficient probability that an act is going to go contrary to the natural ends of the body for it to be unwise and immoral.
We are swimming in immorality. We have no disagreement there.
For Epicurus the human nature is more fixed (though fixed by atomic combinations so the possibilities for what a human can be is pretty large). I'd rather say that "Human nature is a tendency" while noting the useage I mean is with respect to the locution "human nature"; it's the sort of thing we mean by what something is, as you note. I just don't believe that there's exactly a set of necessary/sufficient conditions or secured by the essence of its type. Rather we have to come to some sort of understanding between ourselves in a particular conversation with respect to a question to contextualize our interests instead of thinking about human nature qua human nature.
What concepts are we considering with respect to human nature? What environment do we find these humans in already? If we're to speak biologically then we'd be talking in terms of natural selection, but in terms of our history we'd be reflecting on a different body of texts, and a different body of evidence that displays what human beings do.
For the purpose of Epicurus human nature is our tendency to get wrapped up in our desires to the extent that we are the cause of our own suffering.
"Tendency" since there are no necessary/sufficient conditions to include a member in the set "humans". That does not thereby mean that the human is not a natural human: they could participate in other tendencies. And, really, descriptively speaking, because we treat someone as a human basically everything they do is an example of human nature in some circumstance or other: the outliers are just as much evidence for our nature as the ones which follow norms as they are a possible tendency.
But that's because we treat them as such, not because they are such-and-such a thing.
Quoting Bob Ross
Why does it require realism?
I'd say it just requires wanting a tranquil life. For Epicurus he went out and actively recruited people due to his realist commitment, but I don't think we have to be realists to utilize an ethic. We could just want what the ethic wants.
Quoting Bob Ross
"Natural function" is the same as teleology. It'd be the sort of thing I'd deny as knowledge. Instead I think we can use our body however we see fit within its capacities: Rather than purposes there are things we have the power to do and the will to control these powers. The purpose a body has is the purpose towards which I put it, not the purpose which a theoretical device can define.
Basically the same response in noting how teleology is used in biology: Sure it is! And it's just a way of organizing our thoughts rather than the ontology of speciation. We're the ones who think in terms of form-function and that's how we make sense of the world. There's a sense in which a teleology arises but they also fall in the same sense so it's not like there's an actual proper function -- extinction is as much a part of evolution as birth, and that's when all the functions stop.
Quoting Bob Ross
I associate more with nominalism than the belief "Essences are not real", so that's why I protested. If they are one and the same then no problem. (for instance I can make sense of "wholes" without "essences", which would count me out as a nominalist in some uses of that word)
Quoting Bob Ross
I don't agree with your characterization there -- rather there are different social obligations in different social worlds -- but in terms of hedonism it's because people want to do these things. Sometimes Fathers actually like their kids and so want to sacrifice themselves for them out of a sense of love and care. The pain isn't so bad in light of this pleasure.
But this is how YOU used the phrase. I already understand the difference between "normal" and "natural", which is why I offered to use the term, "common" rather than "normal".
Everything is natural, including the mutations that occur when copying genes. In fact, it is those very mutations that are "filtered" by nature - leaving behind more stable or adaptive variations over time. But that does not mean that vestigial traits are not natural. It means they are not common (the norm) or adaptive.
The distinction of what I am getting at becomes clear when you ask yourself, "would you classify intersex an adaptation?" The same can be asked about being born with a tail, missing a finger or toe, or being born with cancer. Are those adaptations, or mutations that are typically filtered by natural selection if humans did not build such strong social bonds that allow those born with these conditions to continue to live and even have children if possible.
As a quick divergence from the thread's topic to address one of the points of your post, I would even go as far as claiming that even the supernatural is part of the natural. After all, what does the supernatural mean outside the light of the natural? If the supernatural exists and has a causal effect on the natural world (god created the world) and the events in the natural world have a causal effect on the supernatural (doing good on Earth gets me into Heaven), then we are talking about these two things being part of the same reality. Maybe we are simply talking about different dimensions (what if god was merely an extradimensional alien?)
To cut to the chase: Do we then agree that the issues at hand have nothing to do with either normality or with naturalness?
If so, as currently appears to be the case, Ill then assume that whats instead being implicitly addressed is the issue of dysfunctionality.
This issue of dysfunctionality, of itself, is an extremely complex issue. For one example: You at some point mentioned schizophrenia as a mental illness and compare it to sex and gender issues. Not only are the causes to schizophrenia still unknown, but, as I previously mentioned, there would be no reason to presume that the Biblical Moses and modern-day psychics, as just two readily known examples, are not all cases of schizophrenia (they all claim to see/hear/etc. things that normal people dont) were it not for the fact that they all are/were fully functional human beings. With some being far more mentally healthy than the average Joe. The point to this being that the seeing/hearing of things that are not physically there is an extremely complex issue, one that is in no way cut and dry, and it does not of itself signify mental insanity (as per the examples just provided).
That said, when it comes to being intersexed, intersexed people, as a general rule, are fully functional. As is the case for homosexuals. As is also the case for transgender people. This save for the pushback against their very being in society which many a normal person engages in. Again, these diverse expressions of the human, though functional, are nevertheless all different from the norm with many in society treating that which deviates from the norm as unnaturalwith this very proclamation being that which many of my posts in this thread have been ridiculing.
I get that they might not be perfectly functional, but then who the hell is?
And yes, things such as mental insanity is indeed dysfunctional. To not get into the more extreme cases of conjoined twins and such.
But I dont here want to start on the issue of what ought to be done about the dysfunctional folk in society were there to be significant debate on this matter, it would too easily bring to mind the extermination camps of the Nazis who, after all, were in pursuit of a future heaven on earth (this, obviously, via quite authoritarian meansand theres plenty right about the dictum, the means do not justify the ends) where all human souls get birthed into a human-envisioned ideal human nature reputedly, to include the ideal human nature of everyone being blue-eyed blonds world over.
Sure. They could have been high on hallucinogens. Religions might have been founded on the ideas of insane or high people.
Quoting javra
I didn't use the word, "functional". I used the word, "adaptive".
Define functional here. Sure intersexed people, homosexuals and trans are functional as human beings - they can live their own lives without the help of others, but what they cannot do is have children without the help of others. That is my point. You could make the point that trans that are gay would fit into this but a trans-woman and a trans-man can have children without help precisely because they are heterosexuals (and this is probably an extremely rare case as most trans are gay). You could also argue that intersexed and homosexuals still play a role in raising the next generation, as they can provide healthy and stable homes as any heterosexual couple can, and you could even say that they (as well as any straight couple that are incapable of having their own children) are doing society a great service, as functioning parents, by adopting.
Quoting javra
Again, it depends on how one is defining, "functional".
Quoting javra
Oh, come on. Don't start conflating my points as fascist. I am not saying that people with schizophrenia, or who are born with disabilities deserve less than anyone else. I am fine with supporting a safety net for the disabled, but at the same time would agree with society's goal in promoting research in trying to eliminate these disabilities from occurring in the future (no I'm not equating sexual preferences as a disability. I'm talking about physiological disabilities, like intersex). Would you tell a woman she does not have a choice to terminate their pregnancy if test indicate a high probability that the child will be disabled? When we tell an anorexic that their body image is not true, we are not attempting to single them out for a "shower". We are merely trying to get them the help they need.
Or, there might indeed be spiritual dimensions to reality. Take your pick. But don't presume to have definitively evidenced it. That is, not unless you can, philosophically speaking.
Quoting Harry Hindu
So ascetics world over, who cannot have children due to their own hardcore physiological imperatives, are to then to be deemed in terms of functionality/adaptiveness ... what exactly? Notice that such an ascetic has zero fitness biologically speaking. All due to "mental" reasons and choices.
As to definitions, this link gives what I intend by "functional". You'll note that is can well be a rough synonym for "adaptive"
Quoting Harry Hindu
I am not conflating your points as fascist. It's the notion of X, Y, and Z, not fitting a human-envisioned "ideal human nature" that we ought to actualize which gives me the heebie-jeebies. This for reasons aforementioned. As to the rest of this paragraph, I'm glad to hear - but, again, I don't find rational grounds for the intersexed, or homosexuality, or the transgendered to be "disabled" or else mentally insane. So why then "try to eliminate" these expressions of being human? And then, if an alternative rational reason is provided, "eliminate" them how?
Consider X and Y. If they are equal, then neither one is preferable. If X is better than Y, then X is preferable. If X is better according to some criterion, then X is preferable according to that criterion. If the proportion of X-outcomes and Y-outcomes is beyond our control, then it is pointless to prefer one to another even if it is better.
Is any of that objectionable?
So now let X = heterosexuality and Y = homosexuality. Does everything I just said about X and Y still hold good?
As soon as we accept the premise that X-outcomes and Y-outcomes are not beyond our control, and that X is better than Y, we have logically excluded the position which says that we cannot prefer X to Y (or that it is pointless to prefer X to Y).
So for example, if we accept that there are bisexual people who can choose between a heterosexual monogamous relationship and a homosexual monogamous relationship, then we must recognize that it is eminently rational for such people to discern whether X and Y are equal or unequal. Similarly, if we recognize that LGBT-identification has risen substantially in line with changing social norms, then it becomes very hard to claim that the proportion of X-outcomes and Y-outcomes is altogether beyond our control.
At this point, if we accept that there are bisexual people who can choose, and that social norms have a strong effect on how much sexual orientation identification occurs within the society, doesn't it follow that we would be interested in objectively assessing the relative value of homosexual and heterosexual arrangements? If we are interested in the health and happiness of the society itself, would we not be interested in such a thing?
Jamal is being charitable. I would have banned you by now.
And I responded. Words change all the time, that's what language does. This does not make a definition a substantive claim. Definitions are claims about words, not claims about the world.
Quoting Leontiskos
You are mistaking a definition for a logical argument. That isn't remotely how words work.
Quoting Leontiskos
Not a new claim, it is the thrust of my calling it bigoted. You said that my calling Bob's claim bigoted was begging the question of its truth or falsity. The idea is not exactly that it is false, but that it falls into to a conceptual pattern of harmful, prejudicial, demeaning claims, which are additionally seldom (if ever) true. That bigotry is noxious should be well evident from its history.
Quoting Leontiskos
It is a widespread view of how a word is used. One can believe that schizophrenia is psychological in origin while still using the word correctly. Just like one can believe that serotonergic, not dopaminergic neurotransmission is the neurotransmitter at fault. But to use the word without knowing that it is a mental illness is to use it incompetently. Just like using the word "house" without knowing that houses house people.
Do you think "Houses house people" is a substantive claim? If so, is everything that isn't a pure tautology substantive to you?
Because Bob has an opinion that's relevant to the context of the discussion? I want to be clear, I don't hold Bob's opinion. But I don't hold many people's opinions. If I disagree with their outlook in a discussion, I'll present to them reasons why I think they're wrong. You don't ban people because you dislike what they're saying. You ban people for unnecessary language, calls to violence, and behavior that isn't about the discussion. Bob has plenty to say and will gladly read and respond to your point politely if you are polite to him first. Bob is using a Neo-Aristotelian perspective. If you disagree that this leads to a 'masculine girl' not being good, then demonstrate why. Comments like yours which contribute nothing to the discussion but threats and intent of dislike, are what we all should be avoiding.
CC: @Philosophim, @Leontiskos, @Jamal, @Wayfarer
@ProtagoranSocratist, this is what I was referring to as the hatred, anti-free-speech, and lack of good faith by my opponents. I have been a member on here for over four years and never have ever had any issues with anyone: I try to be as charitable as I can be to other people's positions and learn something from them (although I fall short sometimes). Simply for providing a robust and sophisticated (albeit not necessarily true) position contrary to modern gender theory and sexuality ethics I have been dubbed a bigot, neo-Nazi, homophobe, prejudiced interlocutor, and widely considered banworthy.
Even @Jamal has expressed in many times, including in the bannings thread, that they consider me lucky that they did not ban me for having an opinion on gender theory and the ethics of sexuality.
The liberal establishment in this forum has exposed its anti free speech sentiments. I wish we all could have productive conversations, in good faith, about important topics like gender theory. All of these insults, ad hominems, threats of banishment, etc. on their part is unnecessarily and does not further the discussion.
The ethics of sexuality and gender theory appear to be irrationally off limits on this forum, even if it is a good faith intellectual and philosophical discussion grounded in widely prominent theories (such as Aristotelianism). Ironically, I've made a thread about defending, to some extent, Imperialism, which is still up, and I was not threatened with banishment nor hated on like I am now. These threats seem politically motivated to me.
To @Jamals credit, they haven't banned me nor censored the thread; and I do respect that.
No, so long as its taken to be an oversimplification of real-world applications, where the criteria that determines better or worse is context-dependent and often multidimensional: Take intelligence for example. Einsteins intelligence is not Darwins intelligence, such that each is far better than the others in the relevant context addressed. Neither are these two intelligences equal nor is one intelligence better than the other in any objective sense. Then theres the artistic intelligence of, say, Michelangelo. The architectural intelligence of Gaudi. That of Kafkas. And so forth.
Quoting Leontiskos
There are, lets say, pure heterosexuals and pure homosexuals that are in no way bisexual. As Ive previously expressed in a previous post, from what I learned in human sexuality courses while at the university: with each likely constituting roughly 1/5th of the population. This such that only 3/5ths of the population are in some means bisexual, and with only 1/5th of the population being true bisexuals, such that they in deed hold no preference whatsoever when it comes to sexual orientation.
But even when assuming that 100% of the human population is in fact bisexual and can thereby be swayed into either heterosexual or homosexual relations (which, I hope, is readily understood to be utterly false), given that homosexuality is neither a disability nor a mental insanity, your post neither addresses why homosexuality ought to be exterminated from the population nor the how this ought to then be done.
As to relative values, they again can well be context-dependent and multidimensional.
As to the health and happiness of society at large, by what criteria is the typical Ancient Greek citizen concluded to be less healthy and happy that the typical modern citizen? and this not due to improved medicine or technology but strictly on account of the Ancient Greek most likely having engaged in homosexual activities.
Alexander of Macedonia comes to mind as one well-known example, and he appears to have been a pure homosexual: quite healthy and happy for span of his life, despite his homosexual activities.
But Bob, the issue is that what you were expressing in this thread was in fact transphobic: you expressed interest in banning drag shows. So if what you are arguing is in fact bigoted, then why are you complaining about it when people point it out? This is something I see with a lot of modern day conservatism: you complain when people see your logic for what it is. So what exactly are you trying to accomplish with this performative whining? Are you trolling? Are you trying to guilt people into changing their minds and embracing your ideology? You've done this more than once.
I personally did not directly hurl insults at you (homophobe, transphobe, bigot, Nazi, etc.) because I do not like to argue like that, it doesn't bring light to a discussion. However, I don't sympathize with people who want to express bigotry but not be criticized for it. Believe it or not, I don't like it when leftists whine about "privileged white men", because it's hypocritical...wanting to express bigotry without being criticized for it is totally hypocritical. Remember how Jesus in the Gospels feels about hypocrites? He doesn't express positive sentiments about hypocrites...
We are all prejudiced, we can't help but be prejudiced because this is how the survival mechanisms in our brain have been wired overtime, for lack of a better explanation...but there are sayings that are both true:
If you don't like being called a bigot, then do not express dislike towards transgendered people. I also think it's totally ridiculous that you are still complaining even though you have not been banned. Clearly the moderators are letting you get away with a lot of stuff that's frowned upon within a modern progressive/liberal mindset. You've even clearly broken one of the rules, more than once, about evangelizing a particular point of view. From the rules:
There are a lot of places online where you can get away with expressing bigoted sentiments with impunity. For example, there's this one music service I was using that had a chat room. There was absolutely no moderation. As a result, there's some dude who has been living on there for years who almost constantly spews hatred towards jews.
I get that you are mad about the clear left/liberal bias of a lot of online places, but every single place you discuss everything online has a bias. The mods choose the left/liberal bias so that transgender people can post on here.
I agree that active hatred or statements that are not open to debate and discussion are preachy and don't belong. Your specific example within the context of this discussion did not seem to fit that. Bob is making claims according to a Neo-Aristotelian perspective. If he's wrong, it should be easy to point out. Bigotry rarely has anything behind it than its own bias, so it should be simple to demonstrate that either Bob is flawed in his assessment of his Neo-Aristotelian approach, or that it is simple bias.
Bob is a reasonable person. He's already gone back to his OP and made adjustments. That means this is a person thinking about what's being said and working through ideas. Talk with him, not at him. Stick to the OP and ask if this is a proper use of a Neo-Aristotelian viewpoint necessarily leads to these conclusions. If you're not interested in that, just avoid the discussion.
I'm beginning to feel like Sisyphus trying to argue with all these clearly delusional talking points people make on here...
This is a clear practice in reductionism: you're making all these judgments about complex phenomena, and trying to bend it to suit some sort of a simple narrative.
First of all, in absolute terms, there is no "right and wrong". It's imagination only. You can't convince me otherwise. It's an attempt to universalize subjective "good and bad". Good and bad are also imaginary, but I find them much more relatable. I also find "correct and incorrect" to be more relatable, but when the subject matter veers into sheer nonsense and insanity (as in my opinion, this thread does) those become fully irrelevant.
Second of all, if bigotry rarely has anything behind it besides a "simple bias", then people would have stopped talking about the Nazis a long time ago, because the race hate, antisemitism, and nationalism would have been simple biases corrected by rationalists, and nobody would have died as a result.
Third of all, the assessments of his Neo-Aristotle approach have already came and went, but for whatever reason Bob Ross keeps complaining about the reception that his posts are getting. So no...there's a whole lot more going on here than "a simple bias". Bob Ross has also expressed associations between his Neo-Aristotle perspective and his Christianity, and Aristotle was not a Christian...people tend to associate Christianity with Plato's idealism due to the structure of his ideas alone, but both of these greek philosophers predated Christianity by a considerable degree. Aristotle was more of a humanist, because he put the rationality and reasoning above everything else in his worldview.
Perhaps this quote most perfectly describes the situation:
Insanity a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.
Yes, and it also happens to be unjust.
Quoting Philosophim
:up:
clarified the TPF policy. One is not allowed to call gay people immoral or degenerate (and presumably this applies to all classes of people, not just gay people).
I think this exchange is instructive:
Quoting RogueAI
In Thomistic thought there is a distinction between something's being immoral and its being bad or evil. Everything that is immoral is bad/evil, but not everything that is bad/evil is immoral. So murder is immoral and bad/evil, but a deadly tsunami is bad/evil but not immoral. Similarly, schizophreniato take the common example being used within this threadis bad/evil but it is not immoral.
I haven't read all of Bob's posts, but it seems to me that he has consistently maintained that the homosexual person is not per se immoral, but that their condition is bad (and he likens that condition to a mental illness like schizophrenia).
On the one hand Bob has tended to use "bad" rather than "evil," which in English have somewhat different connotations. That is good, and it helps avoid misunderstandings.
But the deeper issue here is that @Jamal's policy remains ambiguous. For example, consider my . If I were to argue that X is better than Y, and that the person who has X and Y both within their grasp should therefore prefer X, my utterance could be technically construed as a bannable utterance. This is because "should" is conceivably construable as a moral claim, and the logic of my claim could therefore be construed as entailing the proposition, "Bisexuals who choose to be gay are immoral" (because according to some given reasoning they should prefer to be straight).
Part of the difficulty here is the ambiguity between "should not" and "immoral," which has been the topic of hundreds of conversations on TPF. But if someone like @Jamal wants to around a central value of respecting homosexuals, then he might reasonably interpret, "The perfect bisexual should prefer a heterosexual coupling," as, "Perfect bisexuals who choose homosexuality are immoral," and ban the person in question, even if the proposition is a conclusion and not a presupposition.
This is actually why I tend to never broach these topics on TPF. Or if I do, I speak extremely precisely and carefully. There is a longstanding bias that will tend to interpret my utterances in the worst possible light, and I don't generally like to "skate uphill" to that extent while doing philosophy. The longstanding policies chill speech in this area, presumably intentionally.
To be honest, there is no obvious solution to these sorts of problems. Free speech absolutism comes with its own batch of difficulties, and I don't see @Jamal as wrong for refusing that route. As I've argued elsewhere, I think TPF just has to be transparent about its own dogmas, for that seems to be what they are. TPF is a quasi-sectarian philosophy forum, much like a <sectarian university>. It has rules that are substantive and not merely procedural. Although this is hard for secular people to accept, I think it has to be acknowledged. On a Christian forum one might be disallowed from "promoting" abortion, which means that one cannot argue in favor of abortion, either in moral or non-moral terms. On TPF one seems to be disallowed (or at least very strongly discouraged) from "promoting" traditional sexual ethics, which means that one cannot argue in favor of traditional sexual ethics, either in moral or non-moral terms.
I grant that @Jamal is attempting to avoid a sectarian forum by claiming that one can argue against Western European sexual ethics but they cannot call gay people "immoral." "Traditionalists" would agree that gay people are not necessarily immoral, but they would not agree that no homosexual person is immoral in virtue of their homosexuality.* I'm guessing that this is not a distinction that @Jamal wants to make. If he doesn't want to make that distinction, then perhaps he can see how difficult it would be for a "traditionalist" to argue that homosexuality (for example) is bad but not necessarily immoral (even despite the fact that this position relies on an extremely common distinction in moral philosophy, namely the distinction between a free act and an unfree disposition).
I want to emphasize that these are not easy things for someone like @Jamal to navigate. I don't even know what I would do if I held to Western European sexual ethics and I were in his shoes. The answer is in no way obvious, and I don't want to pretend to oversimplify the issue. In any case, I think that folks like @Bob Ross should try to understand how difficult it is for Western Europeans to countenance traditional sexual ethics, and the Western Europeans (and those who agree with them) should try hard to entertain the possibility that some people who hold to traditional sexual ethics really are acting in good faith, and are not bigots. (But in my personal opinion, I think Western Europeans need to be more open to debating their sexual ethics given the fact that their sexual ethics are geographically and historically idiosyncratic.)
* In Christian and especially Catholic moral teaching, someone cannot be held responsible or immoral for what is beyond their control. Such moral teaching therefore makes a distinction between free acts and inherited dispositions, including with respect to homosexuality. This means that (traditional) Christians do tend to see homosexuality in much the same way that they see alcoholism, and this understanding is in no way limited to Christianity. Is the alcoholic "immoral"? The answer is never "necessarily yes" or "necessarily no." This is why traditional sexual morality is effectively disallowed on TPF, for TPF effectively disallows everyone from disagreeing with the substantive position which says, "necessarily no."
This has been my approach all along.
I am also strongly stating that these sorts of questions aren't really up for debate here -- but am hoping to do so in a philosophical manner. Insofar that a sexual ethic thinks that homosexuals or transexuals are immoral that is something not really worthy of debate as much as persuading someone who is reflective that they are in error.
Wonder away: But I'll insist that you're wrong factually and ethically.
But that's the question, isn't it? Can excluding certain debates ever be done in a philosophical manner? Especially when the position being excluded is extremely common both historically and geographically, and is being held by people of good faith? (See also regarding @Mikie's attempt to exclude climate change denialism)
That's why, " TPF just has to be transparent about its own dogmas." Some will bristle at the word "dogma," but when you have a single position that is privileged above all others, and debating that position is disallowed, how can it be denied that what is at stake is a dogma? Dogma basically means, "You aren't allowed to argue about this position."
If TPF wants to take a non-dogmatic approach to the topic then I think that would be wonderful. I think that is what is being attempted. But if at the end of the day the policy amounts to, "You aren't allowed to argue with this substantive position," then I think a self-consciously dogmatic policy is preferable (because self-conscious policy is better than subconscious policy).
Would you affirm the same of positions such as that of Holocaust denial, the somewhat different belief that the white race is superior to all others due to divine commandment from God and thereby has an inherent right to subjugate or else exterminate all other races on Earth, how about the belief that there is rational justifications for the goodness of an adult having consensual sex with preadolescents? And far more taboo positions could be additionally proposed.
If you do, then is there no limit to this bottomless pit of deprivation? Or does deprivation, which in this context can only be harmful to the eudemonia of both individuals and society at large, not exist?
If you dont, then on what grounds separate justifications for ever-expanding homophobia (which this threads theme maybe only too unintentionally seeks to provide and solidify) from, say, justifications for there not having ever been any intentional executions of homosexuals in the gas-chambers of WWII?
(I ask this as someone who respects the dignity of life, and sees no reason to deprive others who are for most part fully ethical humans of this very dignity.)
I'm not sure. That's what I'm attempting at the moment, though.
There's a sense in which, sure, if I follow along with the thoughts of my own heritage, I understand the lines of thought which note differences between various sexual acts, feelings, and so forth.
I think they're all mistaken, though. Were I still religious I'd consider them abominations which desecrate the texts -- human beings being what they are, fallen, of course they'd write scripture which supports bigotry against sexual minorities.
As it is I'm of the opinion that it's the religions which need to come to terms with the world we are in, if they be peaceful. If not then I suppose we get to be on different sides of a divide in spite of both wanting peace.
With all due respect, your response is full of ad hominems. I dont think you are doing it unintentionally, as I think you are a good faith interlocutor (and I commend you for that) that simply hasnt read the thread and is basing their interpretation heavily (inadvertently) on what other people have claimed about me (instead of what I claimed myself).
To be clear, you have now taken the position, by your own words, that I am expressing bigotry, transphobic, hypocritical, and an evangelist. Lets break all of these down in hopes that we can have a substantive discussion about it.
1. Bigotry. In order for a claim to be bigoted, it has to be something claimed in an obstinate way; and not merely claiming something that is niche, false, delusional, or considered gravely immoral (by the recipient). I would challenge you to demonstrate, through citation, where I have been being stubbornly attached to my positionwhere I adamantly refuse to consider reasonable critiquesto the point of dying on the hill. I submit to you that, on the contrary, in this thread I have been nothing but charitable to everyones critiques (including those that are irrelevant and ad hominems): I have openly stated that I will concede points where I find reasonable evidence to support it. If this is true, then, even if you believe what I hold to be true is widely immoral, my views on sexuality cannot be bigoted by definition.
2. Transphobia. I would define this term as to be hateful towards transgender people in virtue of their transgenderism but I concede this is not the standard definition; so let me also address the basic one on google that says it is the dislike or prejudice against transgender people. Firstly, as it relates to my definition, I am loving transgender people by acknowledging that they have a mental illness, wanting to cure them, and helping them in whatever way I can to get rid of their body dysphoria; and this is because, in Aristo-Thomistic thought, love is to will the good of a thing for its own sake and goodness is the equality of a things essence and existence. The problem here, is that you, being submerged so thoroughly in liberal thought, can rightly rebuttle that, under your view, to love a person is to will their (hedonic) happiness; and, consequently, it would be, since hate is the parasitic opposite to love, hateful to prevent, e.g., a transgender person from having a drag show or getting surgery if they thought, or perhaps knew, that it would give them relief from their gender dysphoria. Given the definition I gave of love and transphobia, it cannot be true that I am transphobic for wanting to help cure their illness nor because I want to prevent the incorrect exaltation of sex in drag shows. Secondly, the colloquial definition from google requires one of two things to be true: either (1) one dislikes or (2) has a prejudice against transgender people. I would challenge you to cite anywhere where I expressed dislike or prejudice for the transgender person themselves and I will concede. On the contrary, I have openly advocated to love transgender people (which doesnt mean you affirm their own mental illness as if it is normal), to treat them with respect, and to help them kindly as much as possible. There is a difference, crucially, between hating badness and immorality vs. hating people. I do not hate, dislike, nor have a prejudice against a schizophrenic because they have this bad illness; and likewise the same is true for transgender people. I love the person, hate the evil (viz., badness or immorality).
3. Hypocrisy. A hypocrite is a person who special pleadsthat is, they hold some proposition true but not for such-and-such without any reasonable reason for any sort of symmetry breaker. I am not sure why you think I am being hypocritical; but I understand you think that I am blind to the hatred that you seem to think I had it coming. I would like to stress that even if you are right that I provoked hatred, it would not follow that you should condone the hatred provoked nor blame me for it. The one hating is doing something immoral, not the person being hated.
4. Evangelism. I never once have done anything evangelist on here; and I would challenge you to come up with one example. Evangelism is different than forwarding a position: everyone forwards a position when they are conversing on a topic. Evangelists are actively trying to convert you to a religion. I have not been open about my Christian faith on here; nor have I tried to convert anyone.
So if I express interest in banning Christian parades, then I am a Christianophobe? What you are doing is defining anything against the predominant view of how we should treat transgenderism as transphobic: this is oddly convenient. What if a transgender advocate group decides to push that murdering cisgenders is perfectly permissibleam I transphobic for opposing that? Where do you draw the line? What definition are you using?
I @ you because we had a discussion about this where you denied any of this was happeningincluding that people were trying to get me banned. I am showing you that the people on here are demonstrating their hatred in an attempt to avoid hatred: its an interesting paradox.
I appreciate that, and I do commend your good faith discussion: I am not meaning to lump you into that crowd.
Do you believe, then, that everyone is a bigot too? Clearly, when these people are calling me a bigot or prejudiced they are not intending to convey that everyone is one.
I dont dislike transgender people. Again, you are confusing dislike for the modern-day ideology (that teaches its totally normal and tries to affirm their dysphoria) with dislike for the transgender person. Think of it this way, imagine you had a bad case of schizophrenialots of unwanted hallucinations causing you to develop depersonalization, derealization, and delusionand you went to a friend and told them about. Imagine that friend told you that theres nothing bad happening to you: you dont have a mental illness. Imagine they proceed to affirm every delusion you havewhich is caused by your inability to discern reality from your hallucinations of no fault of your ownto help you be happy. Are they doing you a service? Are they really loving you properly, ProtagoranSocratist? No. Are they necessarily doing it out of malice, spite, or some other immorality? Not necessarily: maybe they dont understand what schizophrenia really ismaybe they think you really dont have a problem.
Lookbelieve it or not my friend, @Banno, @Jamal, and @RogueAII have discussions with transgender people and I do not dislike them nor are we disrespectful to each other. One time I had an long conversation about sexuality ethics and gender theory, in much more political detail than in here, with a transgender person that transitioned to avoid suicide; and we had a respectful, nuanced, thought-provoking, and productive conversation that left me with nothing but sympathy for their condition. It is truly tragic and horrible the suffering many of these people have to go through and overcome. Is that bigoted of me to say too? What makes you think if a transgender read my OP or discussed sexuality ethics with me that they would be disrespected, demeaned, hated, or attacked by me? You are twisting my view that transgenderism is bad into some sort of hatred of transgender people that is completely unsubstantiated. I challenge any of you to cite where I have suggested or demonstrated that I would insult, abuse, demean, disrespect, or attack a transgender person if I were to talk to one on this forum.
Ive never once tried to convert anyone to Christianity: I am not sure why you believe that Ive committed evangelism.
My friend, with love and respect, the fact that you consider my comments in this thread on par with anti-semitism tells me you have not looked at really anything I claimed in here.
Check out the link I gave in that post, where I answer this sort of question.
Quoting Moliere
Philosophy operates through persuasion; dogma operates through force; therefore dogma is incompatible with philosophy. That's why I don't think you can shut down debate "philosophically."
But a philosophy forum could be sectarian, and this could occur for understandable reasons. It might have dogmas for non-philosophical or indirectly philosophical reasons.
Note that a dogma excludes a position that is live within the Overton window. There would be no need to erect a dogma for a position that is not of this kind. (cc: @javra)
I apologize, I am not really following your view on a nature. How can something be such-and-such a thing if there is nothing it is to be that thing? Your explanation of tendencies seems to deploy realist semantics to convey your point; and it is tripping me up.
If humans do not share a nature, then we cannot say that there is such-and-such a way a human will tend to behave because there is no such thing in reality as a humanno?
Because you were saying it is eudaimonic: thats an Aristotelian term that refers to happiness as a biproduct of realizing ones nature; and you description of Epicurean thought seemed to imply the same thing. I think I just need to understand how you are analyzing what a nature is and then I can circle back to this.
They are conceptually distinct. Biology admits of functions of the organs (e.g., the heart pumps blood) but not that there is a design to it (e.g., the heart should pump blood). Which leads me to:
Are you saying you deny that the heart functions in a way to pump blood? I dont understand how one could hold that: can you elaborate more?
I think we have plenty to discuss in the above, so I will refrain from further comment until I understand your position better.
Sure we can.
Quoting Bob Ross
I think that's not quite right :D
I'd rather say that your response here is exactly where we're missing one another.
Epicurus follows along with Aristotle's assumptions, which is why I choose him as a foil to Aristotelian philosophy.
I think Epicurus has a point about human nature that's much more limited than what he thought, though still applicable in all cases where someone wants to live a tranquil life.
I'd say that this is still eudaimonic because once one accepts they want tranquility all the other components of character-development towards one's nature come into play.
In a sense I'd say that there is more than one nature a human can pursue, even if they contradict one another in terms of what all humans can be. (I'm still persuaded by the existentialists)
Quoting Bob Ross
I deny that there's a teleology to an organ: once the heart stops pumping this is as natural as any other function our body undergoes. We have the capacity to pump blood with our heart, and due to natural selection we're endowed with that power, but there is no truth to our teleology -- one day all of humanity will be extinct in the same way that the heart stops pumping. There is no purpose which secures these capacities.
Okay, but I included the proposition, "If X is better according to some criterion, then X is preferable according to that criterion." Perhaps you would prefer that I explicitly include another proposition, one which I took to be implied, "If X is better according to some criterion, then X is not necessarily better in general." I of course agree with this proposition.
Quoting javra
But I have not assumed such a thing. I literally said, "if we accept that there are bisexual people who can choose..." I did not say, "If we accept that 100% of the human population is in fact bisexual." Indeed, my argument makes no use of such a premise, nor do I see it as plausible.
Quoting javra
Because I don't think such a thing should be done. Why would you assume that I think such a thing should be done? Nothing in my post says anything to that effect. Isn't it strange and uncharitable to simply assume that your interlocutor wants to exterminate an entire class of people?
You actually seem to have managed to ignore almost the entirety of my post, along with imputing to me strange and uncharitable positions. Specifically, I explicitly asked you four questions. You only answered one or two of them, namely the preliminary ones.
(This is why I don't tend to argue these topics on TPF. Over the years it has become a place where one cannot present an argument and have that argument addressed without being imputed with all sorts of strange, uncharitable, and extraneous positions.)
@Banno, @RogueAI, @Jamal, @ProtagoranSocratist
Also, come to think of it, that transgender person I mentioned to @ProtagoranSocratist agreed with me that transgenderism is caused by gender dysphoria, that it is bad, and they even went so far as to say it is immoral to transition; but they believed, as a Christian, that Jesus would forgive them since it saved their life (and so there was an element of consequentialism going there). By your own words and logic, that transgender person is a bigot, transphobic, and prejudiced.
There are a lot of LGBT individuals who disagree with the sexual ethics of Western Europe, though they are denied a voice:
Quoting Leontiskos
This is exactly the sort of thing I want to combat: it's not immoral to transition. This is a false belief passed down from an ancient world where bigoted beliefs could easily be passed on.
To consider it immoral is to hate onself if they want to transition. That's a bad ethic.
Would you consider that transgender person a bigot then even though they were pro transitioning as a necessary evil?
A bigot? No. They're clearly in a place of conflict. I'd only want them to feel it's OK to transition while they don't think it is.
But it doesn't solve anything. "Transitioning" only became a thing in the past few decades. Humanity has existed for tens of thousands of years. Can't you see the lunacy in assuming a life-changing and often permanent and irreversible procedure that hasn't had the time for any actual lifelong studies to be done is the "first, best, and only option"?
Forget morality, it's just not a sound belief to be so "gung ho" about. Not yet. Unsound beliefs like yours turn vulnerable people into guinea pigs. How can you not see the immorality in that?
Just because humanity can do something doesn't mean they should.
I read it. It does not address the question I posed. Which I would still like answered.
Quoting Leontiskos
And so your argument then had nothing to do with homosexuality, but, instead, with strict bisexuality. Two utterly distinct sexual preferences. First off, I was addressing homosexuality, not bisexuality. Secondly, arguments regarding how swayable bisexuals might be in terms of their sexual preferences are utterly disconnected from those regarding homosexuals (and heterosexuals).
Quoting Leontiskos
Hmm. Maybe it is because the very quote from me you chose to reply to stated the following:
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
You mean your arguments that strictly regarded bisexuality? You seem have completely missed the significance of my reply to it. In a nutshell, homosexuality is not bisexuality.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes, specifically the ones I found pertinent following my reply to your post. Which two questions do you still deem pertinent and unanswered?
Quoting Leontiskos
On one hand, welcome to life. On the other, I find nothing in my reply that was "strange, uncharitable, and/or extraneous". Your verbiage here presented you as victimized and me as victimizer. Let's see, this then being "ordinary, charitable, and pertinent"?
Supposing that's true: So what?
Quoting Outlander
Can't you see that the life-changing decision is truly life-changing one way or the other? That to not-transition is as life-changing as to-transition?
Yes, people have to make decisions for themselves and live with that.
No, others who have feelings elsewise about those decisions don't have much of a say in what they do, and ought not to.
Yes.
Being a ________ phobe means simply that you are afraid of the category. If you wanted to ban a Nazi costume party, then you would be a naziphobe if it's on the basis of it being Nazi.
I wasn't intending to insult anything other than the opinions of people on here as nonsensical and delusional, kinda like how you say transgenderism is a mental illness, i think denying that fear of transgender people is a form of transphobia shows some sub-par logical reasoning...yet it's common for people to be able to be unable to relate in such matters.
Quoting Bob Ross
I spent a few minutes looking this up. There is an issue, but mainly with rough, forced, unlubricated entry, i.e. rape. This completely fails to support the absurd claim that anal sex is like smoking and drinking every day.
Quoting Bob Ross
Mountain biking is notoriously dangerous, even taking precautions, and among my mountain biker friends there is no one who has not accumulated a resume of injuries and wear. Devastating injuries like paralysis, and death, are not uncommon. Yet, you dismiss these dangers, while being fixated on the somehow unique harm of the activities of one particular population. Why is that?
Quoting Bob Ross
What do you think of eugenics? Perhaps it gets a bad rap?
That's right, and that's why you are mistaking a predication for a definition. A claim like, "Schizophrenia is a mental illness," is a predication, not a definition. Someone could say, "I am defining Schizophrenia as a mental illness," but the basic claim we are talking about is a posteriori, not a priori. Bob is obviously not saying, "Homosexuality is[sub]df[/sub] a mental illness." He is using "is" in a predicative manner, not a definitional manner.
Quoting hypericin
You're just avoiding the argument. You claim that something which is known tautologically, by definition, depends on extrinsic a posteriori knowledge. That's a logical contradiction.
Quoting hypericin
It is a new claim given that you have never made that claim in the thread prior to this point.
Quoting hypericin
Bigotry is noxious, but we are asking whether Bob's claim is bigotry. You are still begging the question.
Quoting hypericin
I mean, "Schizophrenia" was coined in a psychological context to replace the older, "dementia praecox." So you could argue that it is "definitional" ("non-substantial") to claim that Schizophrenia is a mental illness. The problem with your argument is that none of this is true for homosexuality.
Indeed, the claim that a posteriori claims are somehow bigoted is actually rather crazy. We make non-"definitional," "substantive" claims all the time. It is not bigotry to do so.
Quoting hypericin
Suppose it is. Would it become bigotry?
We're going in circles. Again, the point is that bigotry is not a phenomenon of material propositions. It depends on how someone holds a proposition, not what they hold. Something you never answered:
Quoting Leontiskos
Incredibly well said. Everyone looks at that story and says, "I'm the black person." But often times we are just as likely to be the white people in the group. Its why dialogue is so important.
Anal sex has been demonstrated to be correlated to an increase risk of getting:
1. Fetal incontinence;
2. STDs;
3. Bacterial infections;
4. HPV;
5. HIV; and
6. Anal trauma.
How much of a correlation is there? Scientifically, there is no consensus; but they definitely increase the risk: the anus is clearly not designed to be penetrated, even if it is morally permissible to do so. Now, how much of an increase is worrying enough to not do it? I think this is a mistaken question, as Ive noted before, because having anal sex is contrary to the natural ends it hasirregardless of how contrary it may be.
However, I will indulge: if someone is thinking about it in terms of I wont do it if it is too harmful to the anus; then I would say fetal incontinence and anal trauma are the biggest risks. The other ones can be mitigated fairly well; but over time the anus loosens up with more anal sex and if done frequently keeps it loose.
The problem with studies now is that there isnt a lot of them about the link between the above issues and anal sex due to the sexually private nature of it and the political agendas of liberals. Just as they are trying to wipe out the notion that transgenderism is caused by gender dysphoria (by doing things like removing it from the DSM-V), they are also spitting out unsubstantiated articles trying to claim that anal sex is perfectly safe because we lack data on it. Its a, at best, argument from ignorancethat is, they are saying something is safe to do because we dont know if it is unsafe to do (due to lack of sufficient studies).
The studies in existence clearly support a correlation between them and if you ever talk to someone that does anal sex you will find that, anecdotally, they have problems with holding in poopespecially right after having anal sex for a while. Some even do exercises to counter-act the loosening of the pelvic area so they can do anal sex on a weekly basis.
Maybe we are thinking of two different activities, but mountain biking does not usually, when done right, have a significant risk of any of those. Again, I am not arguing that if there is a risk of danger that one should not do itthat would mean, e.g., I cant go drive my car because theres a chance I will get in a crash. I am saying that you cannot use, purposefully, your faculties contrary to their nature. If you think biking is contrary to the natural ends of the body, then please demonstrate howI am not seeing it.
You clearly are trying to bait me into saying something bad so I get banned; but, since I am a good-faith interlocutor, I will give you a brief summary of my views on eugenics and I would be interested to hear what your thoughts are on it.
By eugenics, I understand it to be the selective breeding of humans on the basis of genetics. There are two fundamental kinds of selective breeding: involuntary and voluntary.
Involuntary selective breeding is only permissible when such breeding would produce a grave risk to the state of being and genetics of the offspring and reasonable efforts have been made to respectfully convince the parties involved in that attempted breeding to voluntarily abstain. I am thinking here of examples like incest and inheritable diseases that are extremely bad. The inheritability of the bad condition must be proven to be sufficiently high-risk and the bad condition itself must be sufficiently high-risk.
Voluntary selective breeding is always permissible, as it reflects the right to bodily autonomy. A person has the right to decide who they sleep with and on any grounds whatsoever. People have all sorts of different dating, marriage, and sex preferences; and for many people they do have genetic preferencesespecially racial ones.
Having racial preferences in dating and sex may sound weird (maybe?) to Europeans (I am not sure); but in America people of all races here have preferences in terms of who they are more attracted to (which may not even be their own race) and a lot of people in minority groups explicitly prefer their own race preferable. I know a lot of, e.g., black people that will only date black people and want black children. I dont seek to regulate nor find it immoral for people to choose who they procreate with, have sex with, or date.
I personally do not really care what race a woman is; but I find mixed women usually more attractive then other women.
What are your thoughts?
But, then, why am I bigot? Or why am I, if you prefer, speaking bigotry?
The people in here are trying to claim that I am a bigot or at least speaking bigotry by saying that transgenderism is bad and transitioning is immoral; but yet when it is transgender person that says it now it all of the sudden isn't bigotted. It's almost like bigotry is never demonstrated through the material act because it involves an obstinate attachment to the belief....
I don't believe you're a bigot. I think you're a person of good character: else I wouldn't have engaged.
I'd rather say that sometimes the words we use are used by others in a manner which we wouldn't approve of -- but since we live in a social world we have to find another way to express ourselves.
Make sense? I have faith in you @Bob Ross, but the words you've used are used by others who want more than a philosophical reflection.
Quoting Bob Ross
I'm not following your ending here -- I'd note that there's nothing wrong with being trans or gay for the various reasons I've stated. And I don't think it's who says what with respect to this issue -- i.e. I don't think there is a morally or factually correct stance which states that trans or gay people should not be what they are.
I suspect the reason such sentiments creeped into spiritual texts is that we are the authors of our own spiritual texts and we're as imperfect as they come: Sometimes a bigot got to pen a spiritual passage.
There's nothing trolling about it. You accused me of the serious offenses of expressing bigotry, transphobia, hypocrisy, and an evangelism; and are refusing to provide any evidence to support it, which is, be definition, slander and defamation. Don't call people nasty names if you are not willing to have a conversation about it.
I understand, and that is respectable :up: .
I agree with you that overall Bob Ross tries to be respectful, yet writing off homosexuality and transgenderism as mental illness or problematic is definetly what i would call bigotry. While i don't personally have an issue with letting bigots post on here (if Jamal could ban all bigots, the nobody would be able to post here), it defies logic that one can keep insisting that nobody should be able to challenge the many flaws in their posts.
For example, i'm personally ignoring everything Bob Ross says to me, as he has pulled me into this thread that i've been sick of for a while now. He has gone back on his tactic before, where he slanderously claims im not actually contending with his posts. This is worse than flaming, this is completely manipulative and narcissistic behavior. He has kept this thread afloat by obnoxiously complaining about how people are canceling him and providing absolutely no evidence to back it up. He has shown a command of how the notification system works on here, and that is the only reason why this thread is over 19 fucking pages long.
Would it be helpful if I formulated objections for you? I think I understand what you would want to say.
Objection 1. It is unjust to oppose a person for their homosexuality in the same way that it is unjust to oppose a person for their race. It is unjust to oppose a person qua race because people have no control over their race. In the same way, it is unjust to oppose a person qua homosexuality because people have no control over their sexual orientation. Both cases are the same insofar as they impute fault where no fault could exist. (Furthermore, it would be wrong and unnatural for someone to abstain from exercising the sexual desires they experience.)
Objection 2. It is unjust to say that the thing in which someone finds their core identity is not good; traditionalists say that homosexuality is not good; some people find their core identity in homosexuality; therefore traditionalists are unjust.
Objection 3. The forms of injustice depicted in Objection 1 and Objection 2 are so obvious and self-evident that it is extremely likely that the person who transgresses justice in these ways is a bigot.
Is that approximately what you would want to say?
I read this at breakfast yesterday and felt it was très à propos:
---Discourses of Epictetus, Book III, Chapter XX, translated by P. E. Matheson.
That's right. Both parties came to the table to engage in earnest dialogue. Those who refuse to do even this do not allow themselves the opportunity to learn whether they are the one who is the bigot. They do not permit any scrutiny of their own beliefs, even by themselves.
A bigot is obstinate. They have not entered into the conversation in order to engage in earnest dialogue. They are not going to change their mind as a result of a rational discussion.
There is a point at which further engaging with bigotry is doing no more than providing them with a platform, or the walls to their echo chamber.
Daryl Daviss method wasnt the one seen here. He didn't meet racist propositions with counter-propositions, as though the problem were a matter of epistemic error.
Rather, he dissolved the framework within which those propositions took hold. The racist belief Black people are less intelligent, that Black people are somehow other, less human, or outside the circle of empathy was undermined by his calm, articulate, personable, unmistakable humanity. He invalidated the tacit presupposition on which the racist attitude rested.
So the simplistic distinction between bigoted and non-bigoted believers misses what Davis did. Such beliefs are not neutral cognitive contents that may or may not be held bigotedly. They are modes of dehumanisation. By being human, Davis undermined the core anger of bigotry.
That same hateful attitude can be seen in this thread, from the petty disparaging of the tom boy to the outright perdition of the homosexual. The anecdotal accounts of compromised transgender folk are pathetic, given the profuse accounts of transgender folk being ostracised by their community.
The content of this thread is bigoted. For me, the point has been reached at which further discussion is inappropriate.
I'm growing weary of nonsense such as this. The KKK grand wizard was not unbigoted because Davis managed to turn them. Davis is remarkable because he was able to turn a paradigmatic bigot.
Only a non native English speaker could make such a mistake about such a common term in good faith.
Quoting Leontiskos
I seriously hope this was a lame attempt at a joke. If not, you aren't following the discussion at all.
Quoting Banno
Very, very well said.
And I'm growing weary of your fallacious approach and your inability to engage arguments. Again:
Quoting Leontiskos
Your approach is apparently to claim that all of those who Davis encountered were equally bigoted, because they each held to the same material proposition. That makes no sense. If you cannot admit that someone who changes their mind is less bigoted than someone who won't, then your own inability to change your own mind is something that should give you serious pause.
Quoting hypericin
It is a strawman to think that this turns on propositionality. Everything I said holds just as well even if we eschew propositionality. There is no premise that Davis engaged in some sort of formal, propositional argument (although he did at times engage in formal argumentation with his interlocutors on the matter of racism).
Heck, the whole underlying reality here is that we all know @Bob Ross is not bigoted, not because of any propositional presentation, but because we have interacted with him. It's precisely the same.
Right. Prejudice is a 'pre judgement' about a situation. When exposed to things which demonstrate that the initial prejudice was wrong, but a person insists on the prejudice being correct, that's bigotry. I confess to not reading the entire thread, but I have hours of conversations with Bob about multiple topics. I have seen Bob ask deep questions, and deeply defend their side. But when a point has clearly been proven, Bob is one of the few people with the humbleness to say, "I've changed my mind." Bob has also pointed out many things to me that have made me think deeply about my own presuppositions, and made me readjust my thoughts and approaches and changed my mind. That's a rare and amazing human being.
So I find the accusations of bigotry incredulous. Have you clearly demonstrated why Bob's position is factually incorrect? Have you engaged honestly with him on his viewpoints, definitions, and as a thinker? Forgive me Banno, but your first impressions in this thread seemed more confrontational than intellectual. If you confront someone you put their guard up and good conversation rarely happens.
Quoting Banno
And I agree. A person who is obstinate in holding a position that rationally can be proven to be incorrect, and they provide no counter argument, is not worth listening to. Has this happened here?
Quoting Banno
Ok, have you demonstrated that to Bob? Not just merely insulted him, but actually examined his definitions, his arguments, and then attempted to explain another viewpoint that is more rational? The black man did not go into the group of white men with a "How dare you" attitude. But we can imagine that many of the white men had that attitude towards the black man. We should not easily compare ourselves to the black man in the story, but the group of white men. Group hostility with a culturally agreed upon 'moral' view against a lone individual trying to talk with us is the danger we should all be aware of.
What is at stake is not @Bob Ross's personal attributes. No one here knows him well enough to even be interested in arguing this. What is at stake is the nature of his claims. That is why in my attempted definition, I defined rhetorical bigotry. And why I argue that this is a kind of bigoted discourse. Whereas, a KKK grand wizard makes bigotry a life project, and is so paradigmatically a bigot.
You and Bob are the ones that persist in making it personal, focusing on personal attributes of obstinacy eople (as if bigotry were mere mulishness). And yet by your own narrow definition you are both plenty bigoted. Bob, in dismissing all the negative feedback he's gotten as "The Liberal Agenda", in dismissing the entirety of the responses he's received as "ad hominems and red herrings", and dismissing the opinion of the entire medical establishment as the whim of, again, "The Liberal Agenda". And you, in your exhausting tendency to right fight each and every point, no matter how contorted your position becomes, as well as interpolating positions of mine that I don't hold, while seeming to ignore my actual arguments. And then chide me for not addressing each of your mistakes. If I were to do so, the discussion would branch exponentially to infinity.
Er, but that has been a huge part of this thread, namely personal attacks and accusations on Bob. You yourself are arguing that someone who says what Bob is saying is bigoted, are you not?
Quoting hypericin
And I pointed to the problems with your definition and your approach before offering .
Quoting hypericin
Do you not admit that your argument has been very strange and "contorted"? You have been arguing about whether statements are "definitional" or "non-definitional" in order to try to support your claims of bigotry. When you take that pedantic route and erect curious and undefined terms like "definitional" and "substantive" you should expect similarly pedantic responses. Throughout I have been trying to get you to clarify your terms and your arguments, to little avail.
I don't mean to be too hard on you. As , you have engaged in substantive argument against the OP (or something vaguely related to the OP) more than anyone else in this thread. For example, you've disputed the factuality of the medical claims upon which some of @Bob Ross' arguments depend. It's to your credit that you are often one of the persons who is trying to offer a reasoned account in threads where others are not.
If you want to call it a day, that's fine by me. I'm a bit tired of the topic as well.
Bob is not only participating in, amplifying, and offering legitimatization of a larger homophobic and especially transphobic movement in this historical moment, especially in this country. But he has implicitly insulted forum members and their loved ones, implying they are bad, immoral, and crazy. So neither Bob or yourself are in any position to pearl clutch if he has received personal attacks in return.
Quoting Leontiskos
Give me a fucking break. To attack these as curious and undefined is itself pedantic, fittingly as you are one of the most pedantic posters on here. If one were to take your pedantry seriously, a bigoted claim would simply be impossible.
Let's play a game. Make a claim that you believe is actually bigoted, if you think any exist.
I'll take that as a "yes," which contradicts what you just said. You say no one is personally attacking Bob and then you continue to personally attack Bob. That's the sort of gaslighting that Bob has been dealing with throughout, and it's not odd that he would defend himself.
Quoting hypericin
Quoting Leontiskos
I've pointed out your error from the start, wherein you fail to understand that bigotry is a mode of behavior or belief, not an intrinsic quality of a proposition. Your response has been to reject the idea that bigotry requires obstinacy, and more generally to reject the idea that bigotry requires a mode of belief. Maybe have a look at the first sentence of 's post which you quoted approvingly.
So if one wants to point to bigotry, they cannot merely point to a claim. If you want me to point to bigotry, I can do so. In fact I already have, if indirectly. The corollary of what I say in the following quote is that those who Davis failed to convince were bigots:
Quoting Leontiskos
Nope, not a personal attack, except perhaps against his judgement. He might be doing this unwittingly, with the best intentions. But he is doing it regardless.
Quoting Leontiskos
And so your answer is "no". To you, no proposition or discourse can themselves be bigoted. And so if they are not, why should believing or promoting these propositions, no matter how obstinately, be bigoted either? Do you see how absurd this is?
Again, you have called KKK grand wizards "unbigoted", because the best ambassador to bigots we have ever seen were turned by him. And so whatever authority you may have had as to what bigotry is and isn't has already been ceded.
Okay, fine. But as has been pointed out, there are lots of LGBT individuals who agree with Bob, and who would find many who oppose him within this thread to be, "implying they are bad, immoral, and crazy." Do we care about them? Or do they not count? Is inadvertent offense objectionable when you are the one inadvertently offending people?
Quoting hypericin
I literally gave you an example of bigotry. If you don't know by now that I think bigotry involves a mode of belief and not a material proposition, then you haven't read anything I wrote.
Quoting hypericin
Feel free to check out I've pointed to a few times already, along with the accompanying conversation.
You are right in saying that if a material proposition is not inherently bigoted, then believing that material proposition is not inherently bigoted. What is needed is a particular mode of belief, such as obstinacy (for example).
A common form of taboo occurs when bigotry becomes correlated with certain beliefs in a given time and place. Given our current time and place, Holocaust denial is correlated with bigotry. When this fact is combined with the condition where Holocaust denial is beyond the Overton window (and therefore is correlated with bigotry according to the vast majority), a society will prohibit Holocaust denial.
Prohibitions based in aversion to bigotry are one form of taboo. All taboo is culturally situated. If it is taboo to say, "Women are defined by their sex," in country X, and it is taboo to say, "Women are not defined by their sex," in country Y, then each country will view those claims differently. People will be offended by two opposite claims in each of the two countries.
If those two countries come together, they cannot simply impose their taboos on one another (which is what you are doing). Instead they must recognize that what is at stake is a taboo, and engage in rational and good-faith discussion about their differing points of view. See especially the bolded:
Quoting Leontiskos
(I.e. The taboos that accompany the sexual ethics of Western Europe are also geographically and historically idiosyncratic.)
WTF. Bob has literally, explicitly, called multiple subsets of people bad, immoral, and/or crazy. This is quite different from simply opposing someone's wacky beliefs.
Quoting Leontiskos
Your misunderstanding of what bigotry is does not constitute an example. Again, you believe that any proposition, however odious and hateful it might seem on the surface, is not in itself bigoted. Such a proposition must be uttered by someone who we know is affectively obstinate, and we know in advance will never change their mind about it. Until we can somehow know that, we can never know if it is truly bigoted.
Quoting Leontiskos
So if I obstinately believe that the earth is round, that is bigotry by your reckoning?
Here's the TL;DR that you seem to require:
GTFO with your horseshit.
Not that I want to continue the discussion, but there was a good chunk of your reply I missed in my irritation, so apologies for that.
Thanks. :up:
Again, I appreciate your engagement. But yeah, let's be done. :lol:
I don't understand why you are DM me that you would like to be omitted from the discussion in this thread, of which I honored and respected, to just inject yourself yet again to spew false, defamatory, unsubstantiated, and spiteful comments about me.
Like I said in the DM and in this thread, I need to understand what you mean by gender being social and sex being physical/biologically to be able to discuss with you our differing opinions on this topic. I already clearly defined the terms; and, in good faith, I will do it again.
'Sex' is the procreative nature of a substance; and 'gender' is the natural tendencies of that sex. What do you mean by sex being biological and gender being social? Can you elaborate in depth about that or provide a basic definition of each?
If you truly don't want anything to do with this thread, then please stop interjecting with malicious ad hominems that are unsubstantiated. It's not helping us further the discussion. Like I said before, I would love to discuss this topic with you and hear your thoughts; and, believe it or not, I will concede any points that I am convinced by. I am not a bigot.
I've tried to discuss this topic with @Banno many times and they keep evading it. All I've asked is that they describe or define 'sex' and 'gender' so that I can understand where they are coming from and hopefully further the discussion. I don't see any other way to progress the discussion, since my definitions are clear and Banno clearly is well versed in Aristotelianism.
No one has tried to discuss any flaws in my position, other than @Banno and @Jamal (that I can remember) for a brief moment. You just keep ad hominem attacking me and refusing to substantiate your claims.
Ok, so do you believe that everyone is a bigot then?
If you are good-faith interlocutor, then I give you this challenge: try to play devils advocate. Give me a brief account of why I believe that homosexuality is bad as a sexual orientation and immoral as an act; and why transgenderism is a mental illness called gender dysphoria. I will bet you that you will grossly misrepresent my position because you still to this day havent engaged with me on the topic in any substantial sense. Prove me wrong.
Then please stop calling me seriously bad names without substantiated evidence to back them up. No one has the right to pop into a thread, ignore the actual topic, and gaslight everyone into believing the person is a horrible person.
Ill give you the transcript. You said in this post that I am a bigot, hypocrite, evangelist, and a transphobe. I responded addressing all of these claims and how they are patently false; and challenged you to demonstrate them with evidence here. You then ignored everything I said with this sidestepping response. I then kindly asked you to substantiate your horrendous claims against my character on this forum here. You responded with hateful comments that were complete red herrings that demonstrated your unwillingness to back up your defamatory claims here. I then rightly pointed out the dodging you are doing and the seriousness of your baseless accusations here. You then, now, ignore me and respond to someone else spewing the same unsubstantiated, hateful claims against my character and, worse yet, trying to gaslight everyone into thinking you are the victim. Theres the tape: you cant escape the transcript. You have called someone a bigot, transphobe, evangelist, and hypocrite while purposefully evading substantiating the claims. Thats the facts, and I am growing impatient some of these forum members and their unwarranted hostility and uncharitability. .
I never once said that people who engage in sexuality immorality are crazy; and you are confusing badness with immorality.
This is incoherent. You cant plead that you are not attacking me and then hurl personal attacks on me. Which is it?
I want it to be on the public record here that @Banno just told me that they reported me for defamatory comments for this response I just gave.
Here's the DM:
I am not going to report @Banno back out of spite, because this whole thing is really childish and unnecessary. What I said in that response was as respectful but honest and true as can be; and anyone who reads it can see that.
Edit: Didn't meant to post that. Happened while I was copying into a PM chat. But I'll leave it here, to show that Bob has misread who said what.
I'm out. Too heated.
Added, by way of explanation for anyone who cares:
Bob Ross accused me of "injecting" myself "yet again" and had me "spew false, defamatory, unsubstantiated, and spiteful comments about me".
This is there in black and white.
I replied here:
Bob Ross accused me. Be clear about that. I asked for adjudication; be clear about that. The following is a falsehood:
I did not report Bob Ross for making defamatory comments. I reported myself, because he accused me of making such comments.
A misreading is one thing. Bob failing to recognises his error and continuing the falsehood is quite another.
Just to be clear.
You are, as before, alluding to me here as the bigot and someone who will not change my mind (which youve stated multiple times now in the thread). Thats contextually what you are referring to with @Philosophim. Do I need to pull up the transcripts of what you have said earlier in this thread? You have never once substantiated any of these claims.
You are alluding to me having a hateful attitude, engaging in petty disparaging, doing pathetic anecdotes, and incentivizing the ostracizing of transgender people from the community. Youve expressed many times that my views are bigoted and that you would censor them.
Nothing I said was defamatory: its true.
If there's something I am misunderstanding, then please let me know and I will be more than happy to apologize if what I am saying is false.
It's a good question.
Quoting Banno
And so we learn that Banno is sending PMs to try to drum up sentiment for the notion that Bob is a bigot, behind his back. This does not seem out of the ordinary for Banno, namely working privately behind the scenes to try to influence public threads without the knowledge of those he opposes within the threads. Is this good faith engagement on TPF?
Realize though how this post from earlier was meant to assuage the large number of doubts regarding the question of whether in-private moderation jockeying by ordinary members was occurring:
Quoting Jamal
It appears as if this is no longer true.
Banno has finally clarified what they meant by this DM:
What they meant according to a DM today:
As anyone can see, the first quote, which is the entire DM message in question, clearly conveys to any person that the sender reported them, not that they reported themselves. I guess @Banno was attempting to make a joke.
In light of this and in hopes of moving forward, I recant my claim about Banno reporting me and chalk it up to a very odd joke by Banno that was not appropriately clarified after the fact.
Also please be kind to ProtagoranSocratist. He's new and feels a bit bothered by his own perceived personal attacks that have happened on these forums. He generally seems like a nice poster and we want him to feel welcome. I think we can all agree it got heated in here and let bygones be bygones for another thread.
Yeah, I think the substantive discussion is largely behind us. :up:
I think Bob has done a good job defending his name. At this point the thread doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
Dude (or dudette, idfk) i appreciate your kindness, but this isn't very true...Bob has revealed that i am not a kind poster. But let me re-iterate why i still think he has serious mental health problems: he complains incessantly about how people treat him on here. He has also been trying to get me to forget about how he has said these two things:
-transgenderism is mental illness
-he wants to ban drag shows
These both would understandably offend a person who considers themselves trans, considers themselves to have a legit mental illness, and people who sympathize with transgender people. However, for the sake of polite argument, i did not lash out directly because of these claims.
No: i have lashed out because Bob Ross wants to be beyond reproach even though he keeps making false accusations and disrespectfully pulling me back into this duscussion. He's clearly an evangelist, i'm clearly a flamer, we should both be banned from the message board based on the rules. Me, for being cruel to a hypocritical piece of shit, him for using whining about persecution to evangelize his stupid fucking christianity.
Be a little kind to yourself too. You're learning your way around these forums, and this post got a lot spicier than normal. Most of the posts here are low key discussions about different philosophical approaches. Its perfectly human to get emotional at times here. Trust me, we've had real trolls who would put your post to shame.
I think everyone has gotten to say what they feel in this thread, and I also ask a little forgiveness for Bob too. He felt pretty attacked on this thread, and he's human as well. I've spoken with Bob many times over the years and he's honestly one of the best people here, constantly coming up with new ideas and approaches to subjects and willing to talk to anyone politely. To be clear, I am not saying anyone is right or wrong in their feelings here. If you feel Bob was overly defensive or didn't get a good first impression, I simply ask you to give another of his threads a read and let this encounter be an exception to move on from.
I appreciate your thoughts and I agree: this thread has run it's course and we just need to put this all behind us. I look forward to our future discussions, my friend!