Okie, no worries. I can understand that feeling. I can let it go too.

All you have to do is look at what things are generally identified as masculine. I think you're in the minority in not being able to do that. — frank

A misunderstanding on the usage of "generally" then --

Generally, as in what I'd predict people to say, I have a sense for this.

Generally, as in what I'd generalize to in giving a universal (or general) theory of gender, is difficult to identify.

Heh, well -- not for me. Not even psychological traits and characteristics differentiate gender, from what I see -- but rather how those are expressed in their respective roles. A gender is a mode of expression within a culture tied to roles, which in turn are given such-and-such rules regarding property and what to do with it, especially within the home.

At least this is where the emphasis lies. I don't want to go "all the way" in saying there's nothing psychological -- but I do prefer to look at the cultural environment that any given person might live within, which is why it's not easy to determine. There's a lot of cues in culture that can go overlooked "from the outside" of that culture, and what even counts as cultural difference is defined culturally.

Glad to have you still along :)

My post wasn't aimed at you specifically, my apologies if you took it that way. — Isaac

Cool, no worries. I thought it was so I thought I ought respond -- it is my thread after all.

Talk of masculinity in any sense, but particularly with regard to patriarchal oppression, is a fraught topic. Simply acknowledging the existence of these tropes carries with it commitments that entail offense to some you may not have any intention of offending. — Isaac

True. And I'll admit that my perspective isn't exactly the most congenial one with regards to masculinity. But it is the honest one I hold...

So, yes, all true. That's why I'm trying to be careful, but you're right to point out that even my approach may be too much to not offend.

We did upend how families own and pass on property around the time women got the vote. Prior to the early 20th Century, an American woman couldn't own a business unless she was married. Women would get married for no other reason than to allow them to participate in business ventures. That's all changed. In fact, all the things that Mary Stanton lamented have now changed, and the new way is taken for granted. There is no conflict between recognizing masculinity as a component of the psyche and recognizing how those images play out in dollars and cents. — frank

But the emphasis on the psyche over the role -- that's the patriarchal move identified by Kate Millet. At least this is what came to mind in reading you here:

It's fairly easy to discover what aspects of the human potential are usually identified as masculine and which ones aren't. So maybe we're talking at cross purposes, or maybe just about entirely different subjects. This is not fundamentally about politics. — frank

I'd say masculinity is fundamentally about politics: the politics of the home. And it's not fairly easy to discover what aspects of the human potential are usually identified as masculine and which ones aren't, because it's a part of one's culture. So you have to be able to understand a culture to understand a masculinity.

But the important thing to remember is that it's the patriarchy.

Beware of the trap a lesser mind might fall into of just thinking that humans ought not oppress other humans and the best way of identifying victims is by their actually being, you know, victims, rather than by using chromosomes or skin colour which are obviously much better metrics. — Isaac

I've been careful not to denigrate people who disagree with me or to intimate that they are of a lesser mind just because I happen to have some words in my head that others don't. At least, I've attempted to be careful to not insult anyone. It would definitely go against my purposes in exploring masculinity.

Hey, thanks for keeping it going! :D

Keep it up, I say.

The charge of misandry is a serious one that should be addressed, so I thought I should say something. I certainly don't want to court misandry, but I think there's room for grievance airing.

There's the aspect of reducing masculinity to psychology, which I'd say is similar to the response to feminist criticism which puts their critique of gender in the personal, rather than the political or public, realm. Rather than concrete material conditions you're saying the psyche is an ancient power which re-manifests itself throughout all culture, something which is much greater than any material analysis or political project could hope to put a dent into.

Which may be true, but then the feminist critique is always bringing the psyche back to the material -- if it's truly a psychological power, rather than a material one, then we could very easily upend how families own and pass on property. It would be of no consequence.

And then there's the aspect where you express that such determinations are easy, which I just don't hold. If it were easy to determine the masculine and the feminine then what's all the fuss about? Is gender-identity a numerology or astrology in your view?

*shrugs* No worries. I could have also read a bit slower, and all that rot. Now we know who said what.

The reality of patrarchy, to me, has always served as a kind of excuse for anger. Though, of course, it can be taken too far -- and one has to be ready to hear someone else's anger for it to really have an e/affect.

I expected and expect a number of defensive reactions to the topic. It really is one that cuts close to home for lots of people. So we're bound to make all kinds of mistakes along the way, I think.

A manner of expression? I mean, masculinity as a kind of archetype has been around for thousands of years in multiple cultures. It's fairly easy to discover what aspects of the human potential are usually identified as masculine and which ones aren't. So maybe we're talking at cross purposes, or maybe just about entirely different subjects. This is not fundamentally about politics. It's about the heavy hitters in the human psyche as that psyche has developed over the millennia. Current politics is a sniff in a hurricane compared to that. — frank

This mental move is exactly what Kate Millet describes as the patriarchal move -- the mental is the explanatory intermediary between biological sign and social role in her description of the patriarchal relationship.

Also, I'm not so sure about a psyche developing over millennia. Masculine-Feminine distinctions are common across cultures, for certain, but their mode of expression isn't rigid. Even what counts as something worth evaluating under Masculine-Feminine changes.

This is the quote from the article. Note well the comment is made by Laurie Penny, NOT Mirren. — Amity

Heh, well look at that. I may be a careful reader, but I got my wires crossed all the same :D

The fact that she takes fatherhood and equates it to "sop offered as compensation for not having real power". — Tzeentch

Well, she wouldn't exactly know it from the standpoint of a father, would she? It's an outsider perspective -- one which is valuable if we want to see who we are, or so I'd say.

I don't think any fatherhood worthy of pursuit would equate to "sop offered as compensation for not having real power" -- this is going to follow a similar patterns to the one I set out above. This isn't a statement about All Fatherhood, etc.

It's a statement from the perspective of a person whose had to live with patriarchy as a social reality which shaped her life. The acting world is particularly bad at this because it has to sell what people like to see -- that's basically the product. I'm not surprised to find an old actress who was tough enough to make it through that world express vitriol towards the institution -- though I wouldn't go so far as to say that her perspective on the institution is the whole story either.

We aren't in a post-patriarchal world, so probably not. I think it's important to distinguish between masculinity as the portion of the human potential we traditionally associate with males, and toxic masculinity which is the result of a pathological mindset, that is, the need to look down on someone else, or fear of women. The first is a fount of creativity. The second is something all need to be aware of.
When one decides that there is no difference between the two, that's misanthropy. — frank

I agree that it's important to make a distinction between masculinity and a toxic masculinity. I don't think all masculinities, even traditional ones, are toxic.

This is a reason I think it's an important topic for men to talk about.

Are there characteristics we associate with masculinity (I'm talking gender identity here) that women never have? — frank

Nope. That's why I've been careful to say men and women can have the same characteristics, and a difference cannot be found in differentiating characteristics.

So far I've been of the mind that it's a manner of expression, rather than a set of characteristics, that makes a gender-identity. But, then, some gender-identities get tied to characteristics in their particular way, so while in general it's better to say gender-identity is a manner of expression, a particular gender-identity may very well fixate on particular characteristics and act to put those on display more often, or improve them, or some such.

There's scarcely a sentence in the quoted sections that isn't overtly sexist.

Note how Mirren literally says that men are 'offered their families as sop'.

Disgusting.

And what's worse is that, apparently, there are people with a functioning(?) brain who see nothing wrong with a statement such as that one. — Tzeentch

Oh I wouldn't go so far as to call my brain functioning -- why would I continue to revisit the same questions with new answers in spite of knowing that my previous answers were unsatisfactory by this same method if I had a functioning brain?

I understand your sentiment, but can you make the argument that connects Mirren's statements with a hatred of men? It's possible, of course. Hatred for hatred is a pretty common exchange in the political world. It's just not what I read when I read the article.

Masculinity isn't something males have a monopoly on. Women have the same characteristics, though they may be sanctioned for broadcasting it. That's why criticizing the way some males behave doesn't contribute much to understanding the animus. — frank

I agree with your first statement, but I disagree with your second. I've come around in saying difference is a part of some gender identities. And while I don't think it's the traits or characteristics that make up a gender-identity, so that men and women can share characteristics, I'm not sure I'd go all the way and say women are the same -- some are the same, sure, and they are definitely sanctioned for not conforming to expectation in those cases, whatever that expectation happens to be in the particular cultural milieu.

But there's room for trans-identity in all this, and gender-identity is connected to a world, so I don't believe that males have some kind of special position, or standpoint, from which to speak on masculinity. In general I tend to believe that it's the dis-enfranchised who have a better eye towards the truth, because their life often times depends upon it, while the enfranchised are more prone towards fantasy, because being powerful means you can indulge in the pursuit of fantasy. If you follow me this far then it's the women who have the better standpoint, but given that gender-identity isn't as clean-cut as 2nd wave feminism puts it -- well, it's not even that easy to lay out who has the better standpoint. Are we in a position at all to speak of a post-patriarchal masculinity, while the old family laws are still in place?

I don't see it as misandrist. While a stereotype, surely it's known that men can be possessive of their women? This isn't an "all men" statement, but a statement about cultural meanings and general attitudes, and she acknowledged her young-self's naivete. I'd say that's what she's attacking -- not men, but naivete, and in particular female naivete that she had once felt.

I'm not seeing the obvious misandry, at least. Feminism attacks the male power structure, not the male-identity. (Unless, of course, one comes to identify as the powerful gender)

I'd say philosophy does, too.

And the arts in general, for that matter.

What's mysterious is that philosophy progresses, but it doesn't progress in the same ways we usually measure progress -- power, fairness, abundance, stability, pleasure, tribe.

Math I can't say. But science I feel progresses in a different mode, more or less. Progress is relative to some value, at least, so I'd suggest that the difference is in values between practitioners of science and practitioners of philosophy, rather than a difference in unarguable progress.

The problem is set up by an excessive emphasis on "internal" and "external", and appears to be inherent in the phenomenological approach itself, from it's emphasis on direct experience. — Banno

I disagree -- surprise! :D

I think the phenomenologists overcome internal/external, but it's very easy to read our Cartesian assumptions into their work. I don't think a proper phenomenology can have an "out there", though.

But I do read them from a materialist perspective, or a realist perspective. It's a reading, too.

Nice reflection on anti/realism, though. Reducing anti/realism to a choice in logic in a particular context is very interesting. Not sure I can respond or even critique just yet, but it's interesting!

I've often wished math and science were taught with more of an eye to history. — Srap Tasmaner

Seconded. I feel like the scientific pedagogy tries to highlight history but it's not focused on it, so it's kind of bad history so it's definitely something you have to take up on your own if you're interested. The pedagogy is designed to teach people to be employable rather than give a deeper insight.

Maybe I spoke too soon. I like reading history. I'll just stop there. — BC

:rofl:

In authors you mentioned like Derrida, Foucault and Heidegger, a distinction is made between history and historicism. Philosophy is always historical in the sense that the past is changed by how it functions in the present. This as true of historical analysis as it is of fresh thinking. Historicism, by contrast , treats history as a static objective grid that one can traverse without altering its sense. Historicism fails to recognize that history is nothing past and gone but is immediately present and operative in the now that it co-determines. Both American Pragmatism and scientific naturalism can be treated that way, as a past that is still operative now. — Joshs

In this sense I am not a historicist, then. I mostly think about Popper when I think about the accusation of historicist, and that's the name I don't mind taking on. I just don't think there's as much poverty in history as he intimates.

But, this notion you say about history being treated as a static object -- that I do not do. It would go against everything I understand about the writing of history. History is a living subject, not a static Way Things Were, and it's nearly always addressing something present while talking about the past. My more mundane explanation for this is that history is narrative, which itself isn't a list of facts but a story which follows a trajectory of significance. (hence why I highlighted that in my post)

And, even there -- this is again in the territory that @fdrake already called attention to, where the masculine and the feminine are being defined by the patriarchal relationship rather than the space that a critique of the patriarchal relationship opens up.

But I really wanted to highlight how the material conditions of our lives are, in fact, wrapped up in gender, because so far I haven't made that very explicit, especially when the original conversation concerned an incredibly practical question -- what to do about gendered bathrooms?

Now I'm trying to think on your question, @fdrake -- the possibility of masculinities after critique.

For one, given the above, I think a post-critique masculinity will be concerned with sharing property. It can even be derived from the same traditional norm -- the desire to protect is better accomplished through distributing by need.

But, well -- this pinko commie would say that, wouldn't he? Still something to chew on for me...

Heh. I love historicism. It's kind of my schtick to understanding philosophy. Part of that is it gives me a more concrete way of understanding the relationships between ideas. The historical relationships are a good foothold for understanding the conceptual relationships, and generally I understand the idea by understanding the ideas' story. I understand that we cannot conclude that an idea is good, bad, true, or false based upon the history of that idea, though -- I think the genealogical fallacy is a fallacy. I pretty much take on the historicist label as an acknowledgement that there is a difference between philosophy and the history of philosophy -- but tend towards the historicist side to contextualize significance, rather than true/false:good/bad. Maybe that's where the history of ideas' philosophical strength lies? In characterizing significance?

But that's just the impetus for these thoughts, and the relevance of a contemplation on gender with respect to the material choices we make on gendered spaces. I think the materiality of gender is most directly experienced in the workplace and the home, in part because the public is a restrained space, and in part because the public is shrinking in the face of the ever-expanding private sphere so most of our personal experiences are at the workplace, or a home, or some other privately owned establishment rather than interacting in a public. The relationship between men and work is a good point to bring up here -- women have been working, often times harder, from the beginning of culture. But it's the man whose work counts as worthy of the name. The picture of a homemaker living a life of comfort and ease is exactly that: nothing but a picture. Traditionally taking care of the home and children is where women work, and it's not a job you get to come home from. Depending on what era we're talking here -- our gender disruptions are incredibly recent! -- the woman couldn't leave her job at home due to the stigma of divorce and a lack of skills that could be sold in the workplace. So men could have their dalliances and get forgiven not because women were forgiving, but because their access to goods is bound up in their relationship.

It's this material relationship between one's personal identity and the goods of life which makes a critique of gender relevant -- gender and property have always gone hand in hand.

The impetus for the thread began with the practical question of gendered bathrooms. Or, at least, that's how I'd put it -- the other side puts it sexual bathrooms, and holds that gender and sexuality are, if not identical, at least a tight fit, such that we can utilize sex in place of gender with respect to norms of bathroom usage. My counter-point has been that we have never used sex in place of gender, but rather the emphasis on chromosomal patterns is a novel interpretation of the traditional gender distinction - we already knew who the men were when we pointed out they had XY chromosomes. We didn't identify men from their chromosomal characteristics, but rather discovered a possible biological distinction from science which could possibly support the traditional gender bi-section, at least as a rule of thumb. (as it turns out, though, as is almost always the case in science, the picture is much more complicated than all that)

We can describe gender outside of the parameters of sexual characteristics, and we in fact do so whenever we describe a behavior or a tendency of a particular gender expression(Boys will be boys!). Further, individuals show that the sexual characteristics are in no way determinative of a person's gender, given the diversity of genders. In fact there are people who "pass", to use the straightforward but still sad term -- there are already people with different chromosomes than the traditional view of gender would predict but who are able to utilize the facilities they would prefer to use. As such I submit that we do not actually use sexual characteristics to police gendered spaces, but gender, and that gender is much older -- and more practical -- than chromosomal identifiers, given that we do not actually investigate the genome of most people we know.

So, at a minimum, we should address what we mean by gender given that this is the actual rule we use in policing.

The above should be enough to say why I think you cannot support the sex-gender link empirically. People will point out that chromosomal differences are small -- the oft-cited 99.5%/0.5%. But there are so many more genders than even these three possible chromosomal arrangements. There's the four-gender theory I pointed out which gets at a richer expression of what gender is, but it's a bit too abstract for my taste: good for research, but bad for really understanding a particular gender identity in its depth. Which is what I think a lot of this hasty generalization does is attempt to come to some conclusion based upon a small amount of evidence on a topic that, in fact, is incredibly complicated and even difficult to determine in a manner that's not merely a personal reflection on one's own life and gender. So we shouldn't be all that surprised that the traditional view of gender, a quick-and-dirty distinction that's easily filled in with the details of one's personal life so that the partner is the other gender and you complement one another, is empirically inadequate to the task.

That leaves a values approach -- which I'd say patriarchy hasn't really done all that well for itself. The pleasures of patriarchy are the pleasures of power rather than the pleasures of self-sacrifice, as the story is told. Puissance, not protection is the only rational ground to support it. That should be fairly obvious that power for its own sake doesn't exactly pass the ethical bar, or at least, not very many of them. So that leaves an aesthetic grounding -- a non-ethical value. I think most gender-identities fall into this category: they are personally rewarding in that it feels good when we do what feels right to us to do.

But in contrast to the ethical violations of patriarchy I don't think that the aesthetic grounding of traditional masculinity as provider-protector-owner of the family is strong enough. The ethical violations are seen in the statistics of violence against women. If patriarchy is not the reason -- it doesn't exist, or is a dreamed up excuse of a few political radicals with their noses in too many books -- why is it that women are disproportionally subject to violence in intimate relationships?

That is -- in setting out the traditional view of gender, given that we should set out the actual rule we use in policing gendered spaces, I think we lose any attraction said view may have. So even its aesthetic grounding is questionable.

As such I'd submit that such a traditional view of gender ought not be used in public, at least. And public restrooms are certainly public. But the public is for everyone, not just 99.5% of the population, and just because some families like to live a romanticized vision of the traditional model that's not a reason to block people from shitting in public where they'd like to.

I don't know what such discussions tend to do or how they end. I get the impression that Moliere has lost interest. Perhaps, for him, his questions have been answered adequately... — Amity

Heh, I'm enjoying reading along. I'm contemplating, now, how to make the material dimensional aspect of a critique of gender more explicit. And I feel like the conversation has elevated at this point so I'm taking longer to think it through.

I don't think so. Entropy is too rarified a concept to include in what I'd call what we face on the day-to-day. It's too complicated, and for specific purposes.

Even in terms of things falling apart -- entropy drives structures as much as their dissolution. But what we face daily? If it is a structure it's at least not obvious that it maps to entropy. In a sense I can interpret what I face entropically, but it's just one way of looking at what I face.

In terms of chemistry I know the difference, though if pressed I always have to look up what enthalpy means.

Enthalpy is one of those terms that highlights how much science is built for humans rather than is a universal concept. We wanted to know how much energy was not because of a change in temperature when measuring the temperature of chemical reactions so we invented a term called enthalpy to distinguish between heat and work in a chemical system which allowed us to put "heat" in a similar category to "friction" -- that other force/work that allows us to make the balance sheet work out.

Funnily enough humans invented the topic before modern theories of chemical bonding. It's very much an artifact of classical thermodynamics. And so your interpretation of it will depend upon how you interpret the various "levels" of science and how much historical terms are merely influential vs. are actually true. (EDIT: Also, funnily enough, by "modern theories of chemical bonding" I really only mean ones influenced by the quantum revolution. Soooo ya'know -- at least 100 years old)

But maybe this is all off-topic, because you're asking after ethical implications, of which I'd say there are none.

Oh I don't mind the category Feminist, insofar that I get to express what I mean. And in philosophical discussion the norms are such that you can clarify yourself, so in philosophical discussion Feminist fits the bill.

But in real life most people who aren't familiar with feminism think that a man calling themselves a feminist is trying to get sex -- most people interpret the expression as a kind of virtue signal for partners rather than a serious political or philosophical commitment with a whole body of thought behind it. And all I really mean are the books and ideas and politics, so it's just easier to not call myself a Feminist and stay at the level of books and ideas and politics.

Though there's something about Feminist thought that brings what was traditionally thought to be a personal affair into the open, into the public: Family relations, and in particular, patrilineal property inheritance and control over that property while living, and how that relates to one's identity. So I can't stay at the level of books and ideas -- I have to engage in politics, which necessarily means I am involved, rather than it just being some ideas.

So it'll come out eventually. I don't mind that, insofar that I get to say what I mean, though. I certainly am inspired by the Feminist writers! At the very least I think it makes sense to pay homage to them.

OK, I got the idea, but I want to know why and how they are philosophically important. If all he did was paraphrase Heidegger in even more obscure language, why would I bother to read him instead of Heidegger, since the latter would afford the same insights with less effort on my part? — Janus

Here's where my in-between-ness will be a handicap more than a help. I started on Derrida a long time ago before I was really able to comprehend him, and I still struggle. I wanted to understand what the fuss was all about given these two impressions of Derrida I had. At this point I think I've read enough to be able to say that I'm persuaded he's got a good philosophical point, but I don't feel enough confidence to say "And you should bother to read him too", because I'm still a bit shaky on some of the concepts. He's a pretty hard philosopher in the same way Nietzsche is hard because they don't come right out and say their point. Even Heidegger, in his circuitous way, was clearer than both.

Further, I know with certainty there's others who are better at Heidegger than I. I have a reading on B&T, but that's about it.

So it could very well be that Heidegger says the exact same thing in a different way, but I'm just picking up some of the bits from Derrida and some of the bits from Heidegger.

On the whole Heidegger's political orientation at least makes me interested in a re-expression of his philosophical ideas. I think there's something there, but I also think that Heidegger's romanticism is the bad kind of romanticism. Derrida, while playful, doesn't seem dressed up in the romantic gestures of Heidegger towards a forgotten past where only a God can save us from ourselves as much as he's looking towards a future. But that's just a seeming on my part, and not what you're asking after.

I understand the difference between vorhandenheit und zuhandenheit, and I think that is a valuable phenomenological insight, but it is also an example of categorization. — Janus

True -- but it's a category meant to disrupt the old categories of being-as-presence, as if presence is the whole of metaphysics. This act of revealing/creating categories which our present categories are reliant upon is the similar connection I see between the two thinkers. For Heidegger the question of being, and for Derrida the same -- only Derrida continues this move to other categories within other texts because he believes that Heidegger trips across something which he, as a lecturer on the history of philosophy for his day job, sees occuring throughout texts within the canon. Rather than a phenomenological reflection, though, he turns this into a reflection upon texts to attempt to demonstrate this pattern of the super-transcendental, in a way -- categories without name. And since there's this idea going on that categories don't capture being, but rather set it out in a certain way, and since we only have categorization to utilize within philosophy to set this out, this is the reason for the difficulty in the writing of Derrida -- he's trying to say what normally cannot be said and becomes yet another part of the super-transcendental.

At least that's where my thoughts go about. As I said in my opening I'm not at the level of saying "And this is why you should read him", only at the level of being persuaded there's something worth studying there.

Although I should point out that my understanding is that the former is a reflective presence, while the latter is not so much an absence as it is a transparence. The hammer becomes "invisible" when I use it, but it is there nonetheless. This is also foreshadowed by the ideas of the conscious and the unconscious, or the explicit and the implicit. I am not consciously or explicitly aware of the hammer as I use it, but its presence in my hand is unconscious and implicit.

Now, I can talk about these ideas in plain language, but I cannot think of any of Derrida's ideas that I could do the same with, unless they come to seem trivial. Differance, the idea that words only have their meaning in terms of other words which leads to the indefinite deference of meaning is, I think, either trivially true or just plain wrong. Logocentrism was foreshadowed by Klages, and the irony is that there is no philosopher more logocentric (or logorrheic) than Derrida. Are there any other of Derrida's ideas that can be explained in plain language, while remaining insighful and not becoming trivial? This is a genuine question since I have never penetrated far into the Derrida landscape, and so cannot claim to know that there could not be anything there that I've missed.

I think that question a step too high for me. I'd have to read more to make the point definitive. I can justify my interest, but I'm not so certain I can justify everyone else's interest. There's a lot of philosophy out there, after all, and only one life to live.

I'll take a plain language stab at it @Janus

Derrida is saying, at a minimum, that "tone, language, posture, gesture," are philosophically important -- else he wouldn't have written what he wrote, since Heidegger already wrote it.

But also that provides a clue into reading his philosophy: start with Heidegger, and then try and read what's different.

On the surface, at least, they both seem to share a certain suspicion of categorization. The present-at-hand and presence perform similar roles in that they have a non-visual complement -- the ready-to-hand and absence, which are meant to show how our phenomenology and language rely upon not just the metaphysics of presence, but this other unexamined side as well.

The tone, though! What a difference! Heidegger the joyless and serious spiritual questor for a Truth long forgotten, vs. the joyful and playful linguist. And in a way this makes sense with the above because tone, language, posture, and gesture are the absent components of writing in looking at language from the perspective of the metaphysics of presence.

:up:

Only the disgusting ones, especially when they are naked — Merkwurdichliebe

Probably unsurprising, but I'm going to say that all bodies are not disgusting. Bodies are an abstraction from the concrete perception of another individual. In the present you see a form, and that's all you can say theoretically. Your disgust is only yours, and not a society-wide disgust. I can honestly say I don't care (EDIT: in terms of disgust -- obviously I have sexual desires) about seeing naked bodies in the least regardless of their form.

The only condition I can think of in which some bodies are disgusting is that if I desire all bodies to be attractive to me, sexual or otherwise. But that's clearly a groundless desire, given how our notions of aesthetics are different from one another.

I think that's a great scene. Given Woody Allen: I think he was expressing his own anxiety about sexual contact but then putting it out there out large because he knew this would speak to people's emotions. He took a risk, and it paid off because we still remember this scene -- some for their masculinity, and some because they relate to Meg Ryan.

It hits several points of conflict for our own sexual lives, which is why it's interesting.What if I'm not man enough to even do the basic function of supplying orgasms to my partner, when I get orgasms? It doesn't seem that fair, at least if fairness is something you care about. And given the manly interest in protecting and providing, it's an anxiety.

All this is relevant to the Masculinity thread because Universeness and I are engaging in typical masculine rhetorical maneuvers. — BC

I had that thought too -- which is why I didn't say anything. I recognized "yup that's actually better than all of my theory -- here is a masculinity"

Well now what are we going to argue about?! :D

Good chat! I think I thought to the end of my thread.

Oh yeah. I like analytic philosophy, but I'm basically team continental, if I'm forced to choose.

The search for reality seems to me to be sublimated search for god. — Tom Storm

Also, often true! In philosophy it's more explicit, even. The god of the philosophers, even if philosophy is only a type of literature, is a prominent figure in the literature.

Are you saying we can encounter small "r" reality, but nothing which transcends this, hence language is anti-realism? — Tom Storm

I'm stretching so I'm not sure what I'm saying, exactly. But yup! I'd add that if we're consistent then language, in all its forms, is nothing but ooks/eeks -- meaning isn't real, but our ooks/eeks which enable us to do human things are.

More imaginative wonderings that should be taken with salt:

I think the response from the realist side would be "what is "ultimate" doing in your sentence?"

Is the adjective that important? If we can talk about reality, then the realist is right. Maybe with some modifications down the line to acknowledge things like our cognitive apparatus -- but even a pragmatic contingent reality is at least real.

But on the other side I'd say that this is to miss the point. The Cartesian Demon scenario isn't even being considered, but rather asking after, upon accepting realism, what is the relationships between the sign and meaning? Then finding that the relationship is itself meaningful, and hence, on the other side of reality. So language is anti-real. (though reality is, by definition, real -- of course)

Ah! OK. Got it.

Maybe the thought is -- where does it stop? On which side? The realist or the anti-realist?

True.

Are you asking after what the point of philosophy is, given practical problems?

I'm mostly interested in what a realist theory of language might be. — Tom Storm

I don't know Lawson, but I also don't mind taking a stab at odd questions. Take my imaginative wonderings for what you will.

At the very least I gather that a realist theory of language somehow incorporates language into what is real. But language is a fascination for philosophers because it's the topic where maps and territories are contested. It's fairly easy to admit that in spite of the possibility of the Cartesian Demon in a logical sense you certainly don't believe in it and what you see is what you get. (sight being an important metaphor for the history of European-derived philosophy) -- but we relate our language, which is in the world under the realist notion, to the world. How is it possible to use something in the world to represent that world and at the same time refer to reality? Why can I pick up a few stones and arrange them in a tray to calculate something about the world? Is our understanding of the stone movements, and our bodies, a part of the world? But then how do we access the world?

The other side might acknowledge the illusion of language standing apart from the world we live in, but note that it has to be a part of that same world because they are, after all, related somehow. So the anti-realist will ask: How is all this meaning possible, then? How can we have a finite set of symbols which can produce an infinite set of meanings? What is this real relation between symbol and meaning?