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. — Leontiskos

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.

Ok, but what is a ‘nature’ then? — Bob Ross

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.

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. — 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.

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. That’s what it does for the body. You may divorce the functionality from teleology, but let’s start there. — 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.

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 doesn’t seem coherent; but I’ll wait to elaborate on that until you give me your account of what a nature is. — 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)

How can it though if you are claiming that Epicureanism is Aristotelianism without the social obligations derivable from one’s nature? — 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.

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 father’s role as the father. — Bob Ross

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 is much more to say, of course. I might try. — Jamal

I agree. There's much more that needs to be said for a proper summary.

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. — Bob Ross

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.

I am not arguing that we can know everything about the nature of something at first glance: we’ve impacts the natures of many things over many thousands of years. It’s an empirical investigation: it is not a priori. — 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

Ok. We aren’t 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 OP’s discussion. — Bob Ross

... it was explicitly your description of the anus' teleology that got me started on this line of thinking.

Likewise, Epicureanism may be an alternative: we would have to explore that; but it definitely doesn’t seem coherent with nominalism (which you accept since you reject essentialism).

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:

Well, it wouldn’t be real; because reality is objective, and socially constructed ideas are inter-subjective (even if they are expressing something objective). — 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.

An attempted (very, obscenely brief) summation of the Introduction:

Philosophy is a discipline unto itself, and ND is an attempt at sketching a method for philosophy in light of its various previous attempts such that it is not slap-dash, not arbitrary, but still up to the classic task of philosophy: truth of the world we find ourselves in -- the truth of the non-conceptual through concepts.

OK with your help I finished the introduction now. Thing, Language, History I read as Adorno's answer, actually -- and the follow up is a "close second" through Benjamin's adherence to a tradition rather than the immediate. The last section sets out what Negative Dialectics aims to do in philosophy: save rhetoric as something more than a mere means to an end or something to be discarded as trickery.

I find the metaphor for how philosophy can be positive -- as the prism that directs the light -- Interesting.
Adorno is using one of the oldest metaphors in philosophy here that, to my mind, would run somewhat counter in some readings to what I think I've read so far. Maybe not -- the concept is not the thing (the prism is not the light) but that which operates upon the thing in order to render it perceptible. The light was there but only became a perceivable object by passing through the prism of concepts forged by philosophy.

Or maybe philosophy is the hand which spins the prism, itself the idea. . .

Something like that. It's an interesting metaphor to think through.

I'm finding this useful for the beginning. I reread the first paragraph several times before deciding to find someone else's interpretation just to get started. It is dense.

Ok, so, then, you are viewing gender as a social construct—correct? — Bob Ross

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.

They aren’t telling you what you ought to do; so they are not imposing ethical commitments on you. — 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.

How is it eudaimonic when eudaimonia is achieved by properly fulfilling one’s nature—not chasing pleasure or avoiding pain? — 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.

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? I’d be interested to hear how. — Bob Ross

I tried to address your concerns in the preceding paragraphs.

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 isn’t immanently. — Bob Ross

That's perfect acceptable to me -- but then it seems you can't make normative claims like:

A body part doesn’t 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 doesn’t 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. That’s obvious biology at this point. Now whether or not it is immoral to abuse the anus is a separate question — 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.

I don’t understand what objection you are making with the Kinsey report: can you elaborate? To me, it’s just a report that people feel happy, when they don’t believe it is immoral to, having all sorts of sex. — 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 we play the former we play Hume's Guillotine then I'm pointing out modern medical ethics. as well asIf 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)

Who knew that honey was the ejaculate of interspecies sex? — unenlightened

The perverted plants knew, all along -- having sex thru other species all under our noses (and with others' noses and knowses).

What are these ties then? How do they work? If there’s 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? — Bob Ross

"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.

They do deny doing ethics insofar as they don’t 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.” — 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.

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; it’s eudaimonic. — 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.

Christianity isn’t going anywhere in the West: it is essential and integral to the very Western values we espouse; and there’s 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. — 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.

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. — 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?

This isn’t relevant though to the OP even if I grant it. The OP isn’t facially discussing ethics: it is discussing what you would call ‘descriptive claims’.

If Hume’s 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 Huemer’s); or, worse, you end up being a moral anti-realist. Just a companions in guilt response here. — 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.

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.

Ethics ultimately applies, but it isn’t 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.

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?

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. — Bob Ross

Sure.

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 ethics—which puts the cart before the horse. Ontology is prior to ethics. — Bob Ross

Says who?

Levinas notes the opposite.

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. — 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.

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. — 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.

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 throat’s ability to gag (which is for avoiding choking). — Bob Ross

Have you seen what birth does to a vagina?

It's not pleasant.

Like I was trying to note to Jamal, this is the real debate for sexuality ethics is indeed...ethics; and this isn’t 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. — 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?

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.). — Bob Ross

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:

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. — 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).

This is the sort of hyperbolic, elevated, aggressive language that intentionally makes these issues impossible to discuss rationally. — Leontiskos

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.

It's not crazy to me what @Jamal said -- it was something I felt.

Well you've moved from "no difference in the world" to ↪Jamal'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. — Leontiskos

No one -- absolutely no one -- thinks about Aristotle while fucking.

Yes or no?

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: — 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.

The most obvious reason this proposition is false is because an organ that is inherently sterile is different from an organ that is sterile through some impediment. — Leontiskos

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

I'd like to start somewhere in our presuppositions.

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.

Yeh, we're the same there. I'm also willing to take my chances.

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. — Leontiskos

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?

There is a difference between an organ that is inherently sterile and an organ that is accidentally sterile (or sterile through some impediment). — Leontiskos

There is not any difference in the world -- only in the philosopher's mind.

I hope we can have a fruitful dialogue. — Bob Ross

We've always managed to do so so far. I hope and suspect that we will.

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.

Would you mind if I suggested another starting point?

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. — Bob Ross

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.

it would ideally be good to find a cure for these kinds of conditions analogous to finding a cure for schizophrenia. — Bob Ross

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.

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 wouldn’t 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. — 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.

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. — 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.

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 isn’t a thread about the ethics of LGBTQ+ behavior: it is a discussion about an aristotelian alternative to modern gender theory. — 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.

It’s 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. That’s a history of a personality expressing its subjectivity. — 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.

To answer your question, your ethical claim here presupposes a flawed understanding of harm, rightness, wrongness, badness, and goodness. — 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?

What is love under your view? — 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:

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 don’t believe in real natures: so what is love?

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.

Can we agree on this (notwithstanding the semantic disputes)??? — Bob Ross

I don't think so.

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. — 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...

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. — 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

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.

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.

This is no different than how a person can argue that we should try to find a cure and help schizophrenics — Bob Ross

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.

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. — 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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Yes, but they are fully men because they have male souls; and they simply aren’t, in existence, properly living up to their nature. — Bob Ross

How do you know? Did you check their soul for the soul-penis?

Some harms can't be undone through legal recourse. So then, what do we as a society decide to do about trans children desiring mastectomies? Should doctors be allowed to do it at all or should it be off limits until the person is an adult? This seems like a human rights issue that's unique to trans individuals, no? — RogueAI

It does. Especially given the scenario.

There I have pause. But mostly because I'm not trans.

I'd like it if it were possible that trans individuals had more say on it than myself. Not sure how to do that in a practical way, but it is the sort of thing I think towards.

Even then, though -- given that we're human I imagine bad decisions will be made. Sometimes a person was sexually abused in a way that made them express what looks like trans-desires, but were really desires to not be sexually abused.

I'm not sure that we can decide such cases in law.

Ultimately she ought not to have been abused to the point of being confused, right? But that's such a unique circumstance that I don't think something like "rights" or "law" would address it...

should trans children have their breasts removed? A 17 year old? Maybe I can see that. A 14 year old? No. — RogueAI

Should children have any -ectomy's ? Is that something we can decide by law?

I'd prefer to let the people in the situation to decide with their doctor, and if a bad decision is made then the person can pursue legal recourse. Like in your story.

I'm generally uncomfortable with making a rule to fit an exception. Usually, the rule is very right for a particular circumstance, but rides over the particulars of other cases.

No, I don't think so.

I think the story you linked is a tragedy.

I don't think this is unique to trans individuals, though. Healthcare decisions are not easy in any other situation that might call for mastectomy. If she wins that's fine by me: I understand wanting recompense for being mistreated.

I don't think her case the usual, though.

from my point its looking at what they are asking for as rights and verifying that everything they are asking for is a human right. The OP goes through and agrees that some of these things are rights, while others of these are not human rights. Were there any you agreed or disagreed with? — Philosophim

I mostly agreed with the basics -- but where I disagree is in analyzing such-and-such as a right.

No one claims a right to being gendered correctly. That's the sort of thing decided at the social level rather than the legal level.

It's that part that I'm uncomfortable with. It looks like you're saying trans people want the power of the law to punish others for misgendering them -- that's not a real thing, in my experience.

All humans have a right to live and pursue happiness.
Trans humans are humans.
Therefore, trans humans have a right to live and pursue happiness.

There's no "extra right" just because a person is black. It's not that black people are asking for a new, special right in being treated with equality.

So it goes with trans health issues.

It's only because people see trans people as freaks that this sad line of questioning seems plausible to anyone.

It's especially odd given that most of the time this line of questioning is from a cis perspective: as in, the answer will have no effect on the life of the asker. But it will effect trans people.

Buried somewhere in there is the simple notion that it is people who interpret computer output, not computers. Fine. — Banno

I'll admit I was wondering how to respond to the difference between dyadic and triadic @Leontiskos -- not that you're in gobbledegook territory for me, but I'd put the point with less of a theory of meaning and symbols. That's sort of the question or the beginning for much of my thoughts here: Why does what I read mean anything at all?

What is meaning?

Mostly I just assume that we mean things by words. Insofar that we hold meaning constant between one another -- clarify terms -- then we can start talking about what is true.

But there are other ways of using words -- and that's where the "triadic structure" comes under question for me, in a way. Not that it's false, but that it changes, and so meaning would also change.

There's the truth-conditions meaning, there's the meaning between people trying to get things done, there's the meaning of lovers, and friends, and artists....


I don't want to overspecify meaning as a triadic relationship in opposition to the computational theorists of mind, I guess. There's something to Saussure and meaning, but it's wrong too. And I'm a little skeptical of triadic relationships not because they're uncommon, but because they're very common in any psychology.

More charitably that might be what you're referring to: that we have to remind people that, in fact, while this looks like a human, it's not a thinking human.

There I agree. But I would given what I've expressed so far :)

https://bbc.com/future/article/20251008-truth-terminal-the-ai-bot-that-became-a-real-life-millionaire

I like your rendition of the argument just above your question: Nice and clear, and it tracks well enough with my understanding at this point.

If Adorno goes from particular to universal, shouldn't we a bit suspicious that he always ends up in the same places: commodification, instrumental reason, bourgeois consciousness, capitalist exploitation, etc? — Jamal

I don't think so, necessarily. Supposing Adorno is speaking the truth then seeing that universal in a particular should be the re-occurring general themes.

I'm not sure that these are the universals I would come to, but then Adorno's defense of individual thought comes to mind: Adorno speaks what he sees. But he would of course acknowledge that others may be at a different part of the dialectic, also reaching for the universal but finding another universal in the particulars. That is, though these are Adorno's universals that does not then mean that these universals are all the universal there are or are possible.

Make some sense?

Finally got to reading it today.

I feel conflicted on a first read: There's a sense in which I can grant his argument and a sense in which I could defend Sartre's in light of this criticism. The part that makes a good deal of sense to me, but which would be called "bad faith" on a Sartre-friendly reading, is that the general may have the will to renounce all of his murderous plans and go live a life within a monastery, but he will be punished by the social powers that be.

I think where Adorno is tying this in an interesting way is his highlight of Sartre's politics; in a sense we could say that doubling down on bad faith in the face of the party apparatus which limits individual freedom is itself a kind of bad faith: To say "We are spontaneous!" in the face of state coercion is still true, but it ignores the real problem at hand: The material conditions.

Where I'm hesitant with that is in thinking that Sartre has a kind of response there. But it needn't be voiced here, either.

One way to read this section, especially in light of the previous section, is its part of the "Burn the Fields" rhetorical strategy: Where a philosopher will take the relevant predecessors who have tried to do similar things but then go through one by one and demonstrate how they are failures in light of some critique which makes way for the growth of a new philosophy.

That seems to be most of what I get out of his criticism: It works well enough for our purposes here. It's not like his target is all in his head: there are real people he's referencing and he's noting how the philosophy actually played out so I can see some merit.

I'm just one of those who can usually find something to say in defense of a philosopher if I want to :D

Are we any different? Do you know how we learn? — Janus

We are. And I have a decent idea on how to teach, so one could say that I have an idea about how we learn. One which functions towards other minds growing.

We learn because we're interested in some aspect of the world: we are motivated to do so by our desire.

The LLM does not. Were you to leave the computer off in a room unattended it would remain there.

For us learning is a deeply emotional process. If we are frustrated and then elated after having solved some problem we are more likely to remember the lesson. That is, it's our own directedness which ends up teaching us rather than a scorer who tells me "Yes" or "No".

We learn through relationship. LLM's do not. You can even automate them, to an extent, and have them feed inputs into one another and let them go on autopolite forever: The LLM does not have a real boundary of self or even a set of beliefs which it will adhere to. It generates tokens that we use and it tries to display the tokens we want to see in response to some input. While the LLM does learn it's not doing it in a manner a human does: Even if the experts don't understand how LLM's learn we can look at the differences between what we already call intelligent and compare various lifeforms to the functions of LLM's and it's very apparent, to me at least, that even ants or cockroaches have a greater intelligence than LLM's.

If they speak in tokens at all they are tokens beyond me, but they demonstrate intelligence by manipulating their environment to seek out their own goals and working in community together to get there.

It's that bit on community that I think is especially lacking in LLM's -- every LLM, in order to participate in the human community, must have a human which decides to treat the LLM as if it has beliefs or thinks or has an identity or will and all the rest. Rather than a community the LLM is wholly dependent upon us for inputs in order for it to continue learning. Were we to leave them to their own devices I doubt they'll do much. There is a project in New Zealand which tries to do exactly that by tending to an AI and then letting it "make decisions" that are filtered through the human network that tends to it. But all it is is a group of people deciding to see where an LLM will go given some human guidance in the social world. It's predictably chaotic.

Cool.

I think I'd put it that neural nets are just as rigidly rule-based, but with rules that allow difference.

Suppose a Pachinko machine: If a puck lands on a perfectly round peg with momentum only in the down direction it will bounce straight up and bounce again and again.

We could shave on part of the peg to make it more likely each time that it will drop left or right.

That's pretty much all a neural net is: It gets fired and then decides which path to go based upon how the dice are thrown.

And after repetition it "learns" the "rewarding" ways and "unlearns" the "disrewarding" ways.

EDIT: Scare quotes cuz the learning is the sort of thing you can ascribe to a regular circuit that learns how to keep a motor running due to a holding coil.

I used to think along these lines, but listening to what some of the top AI researchers have to say makes me more skeptical about what are basically nothing more than human prejudices as to LLMs' capabilities and propensities. LLMs are neural nets and as such are something radically other than traditional computers based on logic gates — Janus

Neural nets aren't radically other from other computers, imo. Each node is weighted in this or that way, and based on feedback will change. These nodes were, so I think, meant to represent neurons which fire electrical pathways in a similar manner to circuits in the sense that you can represent a particular firing-event as a ladder-diagram between molecules.

I brought in roaches because I think they have greater rights to claiming "thinking" than LLM's. They adapt to the world they find themselves in and make decisions based upon that environment -- these are "inputs" in a sense, but they aren't the inputs of a logical feedback machine. A roach is not a bundle of transistors.

LLM's, however, are. They're different from computations that followed one kind of logic, but they still follow a logic that has nothing to do with thinking, from my perspective.

Top AI researchers aside. I have reason to be skeptical of them ;)

I'd like to think that I'm making an assertion in addition to stipulating: Not just "this is how I'm using the words" but also "this way of using the words is true about what thinking is"

I can see the computational theory of mind as a plausible first step, but I can't see how even LLM's are at the level of mind of a cockroach: cockroaches adapt like we do more than LLM's adapt like we do.

At that point, given we don't think cockroaches think, I'm uncertain why we think LLM's think anymore than any other electrical circuit -- it's only now that we're in an uncanny valley, where LLM output looks like human expression, that the question arises.

Superficially, one might think that the difference between an AI is exactly that we do have private, hidden intent; and the AI doesn't. Something like this might be thought to sit behind the argument in the Chinese Room. There are plenty here who would think such a position defensible. — Banno

For my part it's not the hidden intent as much as that the AI is not thinking at all -- at least no more than a bundle of circuits are thinking. We set up circuits in such a way that we can interpret them with "AND" or "NOT" and so forth -- but the circuit isn't doing any logic at all as much as responding to the physical forces we've discovered and bent to our will.

I think the Chinese Room defensible in a certain way -- namely when we're interpreting it like it's a circuit in a computer taking the tape and operating upon the symbols to generate another symbol that can be stored in memory. So Google Translate does not understand what it is translating -- it has no knowledge. It's doing what we set it up to do.

Basically I think the whole computational theory of mind as false. There are good analogies, but we can directly see how LLM's aren't human beings. If they registered an account here I'd guess there's some human being behind it somewhere.

Suppose the human species were raptured tomorrow: The LLM's will quickly die out, unlike the roaches and trees.

Arguing over what Marx or Kant or Hegel really meant -- not a bad use of time.