Philosophy Now Forum

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 8:13 pm Flash understands. Flash just finds it serviceable to pretend not to, because logically, following the argument creates a defeater for trans-wanters either way.

I'm not buying the posture of misunderstanding; don't worry.

I understand your argument in the main, although frankly some of the weird bits are incomprehensible.

But the issue lies in trying to make you understand some stuff. You are consistently assuming essentialism and just faking it when you say otherwise. You did quite blatantly use profound to signify the thing that you want people choose and superficial to put people off the other thing.
What I described regarding categorisation is definitely an alternative that does not fit within your dichotomy, and does not deserve to be mislabelled as superficial.

Your argument doesn't, and never did, create a defeater of any sort. It is logically bad. You consistently refuse to explain the vague portions, and currently are pretending they are out of scope, while still relying on them.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 8:13 pm

henry quirk wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 8:06 pm ...the question in this thread (and a couple or three others) is...

Can a man turn into a woman?

The dominant, opposin' positions are...

Yes, a man can turn into a woman cuz gender is fluid, mutable, interchangeable, just a social construct. (the slippery fish position)

No, a man cannot turn into a woman cuz gender is fixed, immutable, not subject to change, sumthin' concretely intrinsic to the person. (the block of granite position)

you're welcome

Flash understands. Flash just finds it serviceable to pretend not to, because logically, following the argument creates a defeater for trans-wanters either way.

I'm not buying the posture of misunderstanding; don't worry.

as I say for new readers

all of us who've wrestled over this for a while: meh

new folks needed a primer and I gave 'em one.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 8:22 pm new folks needed a primer and I gave 'em one.

I doubt there are any new readers. That one guy has probably seen the state of this shit and fucked off.

Incidentally btw, you've used the cover of Henry to change the subject and avoid stuff you don't like before. So again....

Erm, ok. Well they've already the perspectives and the life experience of the intersex or whatever, an experience which you obviously cannot share so are logically unable to interrogate. So I guess they must have something "profound" going on right from the get go.

The choice of the term superficial was obviously intended to inspire an assumption of frivolity but carrying that over to making those things something you cannot need by definition seems presumptive. Skin is superficial, try getting by without any.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 8:32 pm

henry quirk wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 8:22 pm new folks needed a primer and I gave 'em one.

I doubt there are any new readers. That one guy has probably seen the state of this shit and fucked off.

You never know, Flash, what might creep in tomorrow, or next week.

Gotta get 'em up to speed quick.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 8:16 pm You are consistently assuming essentialism...

Fake "misunderstanding".

I've repeatedly said I need no such assumption at all. It will make no difference. But you know that.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 8:39 pm

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 8:16 pm You are consistently assuming essentialism...

Fake "misunderstanding".

I've repeatedly said I need no such assumption at all. It will make no difference. But you know that.

That's not true though. Your without option (now relabelled 'superficial') assumes essentialism is necessary for categories to have any meaning at all. That is directly assuming essentialism.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 8:41 pm That's not true though. Your without option (now relabelled 'superficial') assumes essentialism is necessary for categories to have any meaning at all. That is directly assuming essentialism.

Fake "misunderstanding." I've covered that, too. No essentialism needed. Choose your own categories, and the same things follow.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 8:41 pm That's not true though. Your without option (now relabelled 'superficial') assumes essentialism is necessary for categories to have any meaning at all. That is directly assuming essentialism.

In a relativistic universe (which seems to be the one we live in) categories are just mathematical distances.

Given any two things you can always define the one by assuming "sameness" then enumerating differences.
Or you can go the other way. Assuming difference then enumerating "sameness".

Either way, the meaning of the category emerges in the sameness between two different things, or the difference between two same things. The key observation here is the number of categories - the structure that emerges. Not the contents (meaning).

If you have 100 objects and only 2 categories. There will be concessions.

If something isn't relative to something else, then there is nothing to be said about it. That's why relativists talk about justification only, not Truth.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 8:44 pm

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 8:41 pm That's not true though. Your without option (now relabelled 'superficial') assumes essentialism is necessary for categories to have any meaning at all. That is directly assuming essentialism.

Fake "misunderstanding." I've covered that, too. No essentialism needed. Choose your own categories, and the same things follow.

There is nothing stopping a transexual from being reliably described as 'needing' an attainable level of womanhood via the categorical structure I described in my post. It's not skin deep superficiality, it's not immutable, and it's not nothing, or meaningless, to transition.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 8:55 pm There is nothing stopping a transexual from being reliably described as 'needing' an attainable level of womanhood via the categorical structure I described in my post. It's not skin deep superficiality, it's not immutable, and it's not nothing, or meaningless, to transition.

The categorical structure you described is still a categorical structure! And the fundamental issue at play (in as much as you are both pursuing some foundationalist approach/solution to this) always ends up at the door of structuralism: "How many categories do we need?".

Ontologically 8 billion humans can produce 8 billion categories. Or one.

There is nothing stopping Henry Quirk from being reliably described as "needing" an attailable level of individuality. It's not skin deep superficially, and it's not immutable, and it's not nothing, or meaningless to transition from being a human, a cog in the machine, to being an individual known by the name of Henry.

In saying "it's not nothing or meaningless" all you are saying is "Hey! I recognize your need as valid - we have N categories now. I will allow one more!"

And the accusation that flies right after is "Slippery slope - why not 8 billion?"

Skepdick wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 9:21 pm

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 8:55 pm There is nothing stopping a transexual from being reliably described as 'needing' an attainable level of womanhood via the categorical structure I described in my post. It's not skin deep superficiality, it's not immutable, and it's not nothing, or meaningless, to transition.

The categorical structure you described is still a categorical structure! And the fundamental issue at play (in as much as you are both pursuing some foundationalist approach/solution to this) is "How many categories do we need?".

Ontologically 8 billion humans can produce 8 billion categories. Or one.

There is nothing stopping Henry Quirk from being reliably described as "needing" an attailable level of individuality. It's not skin deep superficially, and it's not immutable, and it's not nothing, or meaningless to transition from being a human, a cog in the machine, to being an individual known by the name of Henry.

In saying "it's not nothing or meaningless" all you are saying is "Hey! We have N categories now. Lets allow one more!"

And the accusation that flies right after is "Slippery slope - why not 8 billion?"

Sure. I don't mind that though. We invent new categories all the time, and we simply forget obsolete ones. The number we need is the number we find useful for describing things that are similar to each other some respects. What else is categorisation even for?

You can create an arbitrary category any time you like. Start a game where you think of a number between 9934534853 and 6762356738763296237632632. Now make someone guess that number. steves_guesses will quickly beome an array with a bunch of comaparatively large numbers numbers in, that's an arbitrary unique category that will live until Skepdick and Steve get bored of the game, and then not even bother to blink out of existence.

The Babylonian empire had no way to distinguish between four and two wheel drive cars, the categories involved only came to exist when they came to serve a purpose of some sort. Put some extra transmission sort of stuff into a two wheel drive car, and you got yourself a four wheel drive. That's mutability, perfectly sensible stuff. Put diesel in a petrol car (or vice versa) and the damn thing is broken, so it is still complex to change from one category to another, there are ways to set limits on mobility in this regard, some sort of rules are applied. I can't just identify my car as a diesel and blame the universe if the engine doesn't agree with me.

This shit's not that hard. Why throw all of our common sense concepts out the window just to be mean to trannies?

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 9:47 pm Sure. I don't mind that though. We invent new categories all the time, and we simply forget obsolete ones.

Yeah... that's how we are trying to solve it (there is no other way). Draw a distinction between sex/gender.

Sex has two sub-categories. Gender has... more. And then we are trying to re-point humans to start using the new category and forget the old one.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 9:47 pm The number we need is the number we find useful for describing things that are similar to each other some respects. What else is categorisation even for?

Agreed. Which necessarily begs the question: what are we using the category sex/gender for? This is a sociological question.

To legitimise biology, or physics, or neyrology, or any other social sub-culture as having authority to define the utility of that category inevitably leaves some use-case out.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 9:47 pm You can create an arbitrary category any time you like. Start a game where you think of a number between 9934534853 and 6762356738763296237632632. Now make someone guess that number. steves_guesses will quickly beome an array with a bunch of comaparatively large numbers numbers in, that's an arbitrary unique category that will live until Skepdick and Steve get bored of the game, and then not even bother to blink out of existence.

Agreed. Cognitively we can synthesise as many as we need and use them for whatever we want.

That's never been the issue. The issue is about those categories which have manifested and solidified in social structure.

Like toilet-builders ask the question "How many toilets do we need to build?

And the answer is "However many sexes there are".
Whereas the answer might become "However many genders there are"

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 9:47 pm The Babylonian empire had no way to distinguish between four and two wheel drive cars, the categories involved only came to exist when they came to serve a purpose of some sort. Put some extra transmission sort of stuff into a two wheel drive car, and you got yourself a four wheel drive. That's mutability, perfectly sensible stuff.

And that's the crux of it.

The practical alterations required following a cognitive one.

This is the same old tension that exists in Computer Science between data (ontology) and logic (reason).

When one or the other changes - things explode. Logically.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 9:47 pm This shit's not that hard. Why throw all of our common sense concepts out the window just to be mean to trannies?

Because reactionaries.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 8:55 pm There is nothing stopping a transexual from being reliably described as 'needing' an attainable level of womanhood...

That begs the whole question.

After all, what's an "attainable level of womanhood?" How much real "womanhood" is attainable by a man? We haven't answered that.

Our ability to answer It depends, again, on whether or not we think "womanhood" is a superficial or profound thing.

If it's profound, a man cannot "need" what a man cannot possibly have, anymore than he can change his DNA. But if it's superficial anyway, then he can't "need" it, any more than he can "need" high heels.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 11:18 pm

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 8:55 pm There is nothing stopping a transexual from being reliably described as 'needing' an attainable level of womanhood...

That begs the whole question.

After all, what's an "attainable level of womanhood?" How much real "womanhood" is attainable by a man? We haven't answered that.

I think I've given you a couple of answers to that. To recap.
1. It's entirely usual for classifications to be controversial and for some people not to accept the current standard, so the question is contingent.
2. I have no interest in sweating contingent details. Your opinion of these details matters zero much and so does mine, I feel there should people with actual involvement who can answer this stuff. The principle I've described, and that so enrages Henry, is not as insane as you pair of risible zealots insist though. If somebody belongs to one gender, but then sheds aspects of that gender and acquires aspects of an alternative gender, at some point they would be more the latter than the former. How many boxes they have to tick out of N options before this is official in whatever sense is just shit I don't care about.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 11:18 pm Our ability to answer It depends, again, on whether or not we think "womanhood" is a superficial or profound thing.

That's just a baseless assertion you keep repeating. Why are superficial and profound the only two things this can be?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 11:18 pm If it's profound, a man cannot "need" what a man cannot possibly have, anymore than he can change his DNA. But if it's superficial anyway, then he can't "need" it, any more than he can "need" high heels.

Lots of people need things they cannot possibly have. Everyone who has an incurable disease needs a cure for an incurable disease. If a robber holds a gun to your head and won't leave until you give him some adorable Jimmy Choo Pumps, then you "need" high heels. One of your list of superficial things was hormones, everyone needs hormones, you die without them.

Switching out the vocabulary of essentialism for profound and profane must have seemed like a very clever swerve when you cooked it up, but you're not actually going to be able to pull it off. You may as well just go back to what you really mean. You're going to have to say "that's not the sort of profound I meant" and when I force you to define it properly we are just going to end up with essence again.