Does it mean to act as if one has ovaries and a womb? — Michael

My wife does not have ovaries or a womb, but she does have breasts and a vagina. Should I be worried I am an unwitting homosexual? (She used to have them but transitioned surgically due to cancer.) Should I tell her to use the mens'

So bite me!:smile:

Proper debate on here. — Malcolm Parry

Stupid leading question leading nowhere, deserves a little ridicule.

Of course! Whatever is considered acceptable is considered acceptable until it is considered unacceptable. Slavery was accepted and normalised. When I was at school, corporal punishment was accepted and normal; now it is not. So bite me!

But how is that different than Bruce Jenner identifying as a woman? Why is that tolerated?" — RogueAI

I don't think it is different. What is tolerated depends on the culture of the time in relation to the social construct in each case.

"All biological males are born equal in dignity and rights."

Remember the uproar when Rachel Dolezal, a white women, identified herself (or tried to) as black? That didn't sit well with a lot of people. — RogueAI

Yes, I remember it well. Have you read Faulkners' Light in August? In a deeply racist country, as in a deeply sexist society such identifications are fraught, and passing is difficult and exposure devastating. But what is your point?

It is a curiosity of a society coming out of a state of open oppression that the status of the oppressed starts to become attractive.

Now, I’m liberal, but to a degree
I want ev’rybody to be free
But if you think that I’ll let Barry Goldwater
Move in next door and marry my daughter
You must think I’m crazy!
I wouldn’t let him do it for all the farms in Cuba — Bob Dylan

I remember too when one was asked whether or on one would 'let your daughter marry one?' for real. A joke against sexism and racism is kinda smart lyrics eh?

And this is the problem with anti-trans policies [...] It’s dehumanising. — Michael

:100:

Here is an interesting comment on the economic effects of climate change. Basically, since we have been persuaded that adaptation is easier/cheaper than net zero, adaptation is what is going to happen. Here are some adaptations described. Of particular interest are a few remarks about "internal refugees", the unpopularity of whom in the US were recorded by Steinbeck in "The Grapes of Wrath".

At what point is a person white or black? — RogueAI

You might as well ask 'at what height is a person tall or short?' Make up an answer in situations when you need to decide that is appropriate to the situation. Some fairground rides have a minimum height for safety reasons, and this is set by the physicality of the ride not the person. At the make-up counter, various shades are available Hairdressers have various products available to more ore less nappy hair.

The question I think one ought to ask as a philosopher is "Why do you ask?" And the answer mostly given in this thread and others comes down to 'rape culture'. Allow me to pontificate a little:

Patriarchal capitalism requires rape culture in order to control the sexual activity of women. The sexuality of women has to be controlled so that the succession of the kingship, or lordship, or property owner can be secured to his offspring and not another's. It must therefore be the case that for a woman to have sex with anyone but her owner is a disaster worse than death. Rape being established as the unspeakable trauma from which there is no recovery, by means of strong taboos on nakedness and so on, the control of women on safety grounds becomes justified, and the idea of 'unwanted pregnancy' comes into being.
The whole social importance of sex springs from the simple fact that men cannot know their own children from those of another except by controlling (protecting) their women. Thus virginity is a virtue in a woman, and a weakness in a man. Consider any aspect of cultural sexual differentiation in terms of this simple explanation, and see if it is explained. Foot-binding? Keeps the women close to home. etc.

I actually don't understand how biological absolutism has anything to do with the struggles of blacks and gays. How is it even vaguely related?
— frank

I have no idea. Ask the posters — Malcolm Parry

frank is asking you.

There is a fundamental difference between trans and other issues.
A Black person is black, a homosexual is homosexual, A trans woman is not a woman. — Malcolm Parry

This where it started. I'm not sure what your comparison was intended to show by way of 'fundamental difference', but it was ill judged and unhelpful. Obviously, since race is socially constructed, it makes for a very poor comparison with sex differentiation to the extent that you are arguing that it is absolute and inalterable in every case. On the other hand, to the extent that gender is also socially constructed, the comparison can be made to some profit, but then, in terms of gender, a trans woman exactly is a woman, just as one who "passes" for white exactly is white.

Now that he has attained full status as dead white male, I shall have to seriously consider reading him.

He points out that the Enlightenment, liberal tradition is self-undermining, and this is precisely why it has bottomed out in relativism and perspectivism and has such a deep problem with a "slide towards multiplicity." He then goes about defending his preferred tradition as a tradition (as opposed to denying it is one). — Count Timothy von Icarus

The observant amongst you might notice why this makes him attractive to one as old-fashioned as me.

That is not only a social fact, it used to be a legal fact too. — T Clark

In some ignorant benighted countries certainly.

Anti-miscegenation laws are laws that enforce racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships by criminalizing interracial marriage sometimes, also criminalizing sex between members of different races.

In the United States, interracial marriage, cohabitation and sex have been termed "miscegenation" since the term was coined in 1863. Contemporary usage of the term is infrequent, except in reference to historical laws which banned the practice. Anti-miscegenation laws were first introduced in North America by the governments of several of the Thirteen Colonies from the late seventeenth century onward, and subsequently, they were introduced by the governments of many U.S. states and U.S. territories and they remained in force in many US states until 1967.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-miscegenation_laws


Thus the law was used to try and maintain the absolute separation of the races. The law creates the facts, and my family would have been illegal and therefore not a family. And I'm the one who's not nice, if not actually insane? Is there a polite way to call out bigotry?

I prefer discussion but it appears to be beyond you. Which is fine. — Malcolm Parry

You prefer pontification; but only your own. I thought you were going to leave back there?

I’ll leave it there. — Malcolm Parry

Good idea, your flames are no substitute for an argument.

That isn't very nice. — Malcolm Parry

Your racial absolutism wasn't very nice. And I didn't even mention black albinos, or non-negro blacks of Papua and Australia, or ...

And discrimination is discrimination, ha ha.

A Black person is black, — Malcolm Parry

My wife is at least as white as she is black, but she is clearly black. such are the mysteries of race-mixing. Our daughters are only slightly black, but are still black. And fuck your attempt to clarify reality for us all.

I do not agree that love is immeasurable and illimitable. Love is an experience shared by all. I am leaning into Plato's claim that love is a desire, a desire for the beautiful and good. — GregW

Well the best of luck with that. We don't have to agree.

You are saying these are parts of love. But what is love as a whole? — GregW

Well if you want to theorise, I might say it is the transcendence of identity. That is, whereas rationality identifies a self and acts in its own interest, love is not interested in self as a limit to action. Because it goes beyond the limits of self it is beyond the ratios of comparison and attains to the immeasurable. In this sense, to answer you question in a way satisfactory to the rational mind would be to set a limit to the illimitable.

Concerning the object of one's love, one is painstaking.

for example: https://www.sorefingers.co.uk

Other body parts can become painful when other activities are beloved.

But love pays the price, no matter how high.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. — Jesus

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+15%3A13&version=KJV

There is a secular myth, that Jesus tricked Judas into betraying him, thinking he was magic and would escape, in order to forestall a populist rebellion against Rome, using Jesus as a figurehead - ie he sacrificed himself to prevent a massacre.

Speaking of show offs, some clever dick writing for posterity ...

I'd like some coherent story of what these NHI people are doing here. Are they getting us ready to join the interstellar community? — checking that the quarantine is holding? —eco-bio research? ...

I'm looking for a plausible reason for them to deal with governments and hide from people. That's a hard ask, I think, but important to the credibility of the 'revelations'. I can see why paranoid governments would want to keep secrets from us, but aliens - not so much.

I'm afraid I'm not quite playing the yes/no game, but that's because I'm not sure who is in charge of these revelations, the governments or the aliens?

It doesn't matter whether the picture is big or small, coarse or fine; philosophy is what one does when the picture one has in mind fails to correspond to the world one lives in. Accordingly, the most useful tool in the philosopher's kit is the eraser. (But try to use it on the picture, not the world.)

Run away while you can!

I have an argument for it. Please read it and tell me what you think about it. — MoK

I have read it. I think I will leave you to it.

Quite oppositely, time is needed for any change, as I argued in the OP. — MoK

Quite oppositely, time is needed for no change.

If plank state 1 is followed by plank state 2 without apparent rhyme or reason and that negates a meaningful concept of time — Hanover

Well no, it doesn't. You have there a constant 'plank' and a change from 1 to 2. That is an ordered change. To the extent that if the plank were to change back and forth from 1 to 2 to 1 to 2, one would have a clock - tick, tock, tick, tock.

you've created an untestable theory because it's possible laws exist that just can't be understood. — Hanover

Up to this point I haven't promoted a theory as such; I have rather proposed a meaning for the concept of time - the necessary ingredients as it were, particularly taking account of Einstein's theory that space and time are in some sense equivalent. But bringing the observer more into the picture, if the observer is placed in a sensory deprivation tank, then he is obliged to observe himself, his breathing his heartbeat, and the flow of his thoughts. This is an experiment you can do for yourself, and some people find it a wonderful way to relax, and others a frightening claustrophobic out of control panic. But either way, one of the things that many report is the weakening of the sense of time, somewhat as the sense of time in a dream is weakened. This suggests, as one might have expected, that the sense of time involves a calibration of internal and external regularities - heartbeat with music or the swaying of the trees, or whatever. Without that ongoing calibration, the sense of self - one's very identity - starts to dissolve, with relaxing or frightening results.

If one takes the point of view of god, which I can best describe by means of analogy with a programmer creating a digital world, one can see that the characters within the world cannot be aware that the programmer is starting and stopping the program as he develops his world according to his whim. He can quite easily make the program at some point transform every aspect of the digital character's world at a stroke. This would correspond to death and afterlife, assuming the character did experience it and connect his afterlife to his previous life in 'his' memory.

The observer's sense of time can be seen to depend on memory, an observer with no memory has no past and therefore no sense of time. Memory is the subjective continuity, regularity is the objective continuity.

This seems to suggest the only reliable description of time requires a conscious observer, right? — Hanover

What other kind of description, reliable or unreliable can you suggest for anything whatsoever, other than that of an observer? Perhaps a stick insect constitutes a description of a stick? And a bird might mistake the description for reality? It's a stretch...

Time is ordered succession. (So is space)

Consider a ball rolling down a hill. The ball moves from moment to moment always downwards in relation to the hill, which remains constant. Strictly, it is a matter of our convenience and habit to say that the ball moves and the hill is still. They move relative to each other.

But imagine, that halfway down, the hill tuns into a bucket of water and the ball becomes a fish, and the movement becomes the fish swimming round in the bucket. Now there is only one thing tying this moment to the previous one; which is the constancy of the observer, in this case the imaginer - you.

If everything changes, there is nothing to tie one moment to another; time would fall apart if it was just one damn thing after another. Everything is tied together by order, and kept distinct by change, and this is the nature of space-time.

Conservatives like order, and liberals like change, and neither notices that they are inseparable.

This is technically off topic, but a survivalists handbook wouldn't make a topic and there is a whole philosophy of environment casually assumed in this handy guide to planning.

So were some hypothetical person to have:

1. XX chromsomes
2. A penis
3. Testes
4. Low testosterone and high estrogen
5. Breasts

Then they have 3 female traits and 2 male traits and so are female and ought use the women's changing rooms, compete in women's sports, etc.? — Michael

That's according to Harry-biology, but other biological determinants have been suggested, which is why, according to me, there remains biological ambiguity, of which your hypothetical is an example. Why we cannot in such a case say "three fifths female and two fifths male" instead of forcing such people onto one or other side of the rather arbitrary line remains mysterious to me. It smacks of the one drop rule to me.

Desire is a projection of memory.

Thus the determinism of the mind is an introjection of the determinism of the world , which is a projection in turn of the need for stability and predictability.
— unenlightened

I don't immediately understand this. Could you elaborate a little? — bert1

I desire ecclesiastical cakes because I have enjoyed ecclesiastical cakes in the past AND I expect ecclesiastical cakes to be the same in all relevant ways. So my desire is predicated on the assumption that ecclesiastical cakes and my tastes are predictable and consistent. {I decided to leave that autocorrection just for fun} In other words, desire presumes determinism. The next eccles cake might make me ill, or taste foul because it was made with palm oil instead of butter, or I might have developed an allergy to currents, but my desire already presumes consistency.

So mind projects consistency onto the world even to the extent of mechanising the production of eccles cakes and regulating by law the ingredients, in order to back-project as it were, that consistent predetermined nature onto itself as desiring ego. It is the mind and only the mind that predetermines what it will 'inevitably' decide.

They are all chained by desire, and their freedom is nothing but a conflict of desires. is that right?

Desire is a projection of memory.

Thus the determinism of the mind is an introjection of the determinism of the world , which is a projection in turn of the need for stability and predictability. The storyteller is constrained by their need for neatness.

Wilful Willy hurls a brick through the cake shop window showering the remaining cakes with glass fragments - the other poor lost souls all die of internal injuries, caused by greed, except Abdul who dies of a brick to the head. "Just what I wanted", says Wil.

I've set it up that way I guess! — bert1

In your story, you are god and always correct.

If Pete chooses not to buy a cake, he's not Particular Pete any more, he's Absolute Pete. — bert1

So Pete does not determine his choice, but is determined by it?

And not all bears shit in the woods either. :joke:

Well we have Leo XIV. It is not as gentle a name as Francis, but we will see, and I will judge by how he deals with children, women, the poor, how Christian he is. "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God." Mark 10:14

Yes.

I can find nothing here to disagree with, except your writing is pretty good actually, and especially for a non-native speaker.

Do you truly think this is what was being said? — AmadeusD

It was said, on several occasions, such that I developed a stock response. I guess you are too young to have experienced the rigidity of gender norms that used to prevail.

Are you seriously suggesting that the reason for privacy in ablutions is to avoid rape during ablutions? — AmadeusD

No, I am seriously suggesting that there is a strong taboo against exposing genitals; particularly to the opposite sex, as if visual contact were dangerous. (That it is not dangerous can be attested by any naturist.)

It is rather odd that society mandates the covering up of the sex, but then turns that same covering into a conventional display of it as gender
— unenlightened

I don't think it's odd at all. 98% of people identify strongly with their sex, and so express that. — AmadeusD

We express what we are obliged to cover up. It's entirely normal of course and almost universal — for humans. But humans are weird. If we want everyone to know our sex, why hide the parts that distinguish it most clearly?

Millions of women world wide enjoy sport but you would happily dismantle the structure that allows them to do that.
— Malcolm Parry

Yes, that is nuts, — RogueAI

Indeed it is nuts; or rather "crazy". But it is not what I said. It is an uncharitable and invalid inference from what I did say. I don't much like sport so I would be happy if there was less sport, but I am not going to dismantle sport supposing that were remotely possible. But what I advocated for sport is that those concerned should make their own arrangements according to the sport. Snooker, I noticed has started to have matches between the sexes and good luck to them. Basketball probably ought to have segregation by height if anyone wants my opinion; fishing seems to have women in the ascendent position, I don't know what their policies are.

Why would I interpret charitably what I think is a crazy stance? — Malcolm Parry

You wouldn't and you don't. So please just ignore the crazy people instead of baiting them. Because in responding to them you are already implying that they are amenable to persuasion and argument. Why do you keep asking a crazy person questions? Have you no sensible people to talk to?

So you are happy for women’s sport to be destroyed and for women to risk assault when needing a to go to the toilet away from their home? — Malcolm Parry

I am happy for all sport to be destroyed, at least as a public display. And I am happy that women are generally not risking assault more when going to the public toilet than when walking down the street. Thus toilets need no more security than streets.

So you are happy asking leading questions like some cheap attorney rather than interpreting charitably and engaging with others on equal terms?

Setting aside the clear stab here(it was funny, so fine lol) I am bisexual, and married. LOL. I do not care what people look like, generally. The ambiguity means the rules are irrelevant. There is no restriction, in those cases because anyone can claim an identity and move along expecting you to assent to their self-image. If that seems reasonable, we don't have much ground on which we could talk about it. — AmadeusD

I apologise, it was a bit pointed. But I couldn't resist the opportunity to make the sharp point of 'what really matters' to people about sex, which is who one might have it with. But the reality is that there is no restriction to anyone who can 'pass'. But anyone who cannot pass, (which is to say cannot conform their physicality to the stereotype) as either normal, is already subject to social condemnation, revulsion and hatred. The UK law in effect forces such people into places where that hatred and revulsion will be worst. We are interested in people, not genes, and people just are fucking weird. I am old enough to have been stopped in the street and given lectures about how my long hair meant they couldn't tell if I was a boy or a girl. To which my reply was generally, "If you can't tell, it is none of your business." I still maintain that.

It is rather odd that society mandates the covering up of the sex, but then turns that same covering into a conventional display of it as gender. To the extreme that defecation has to be done in secret behind a locked door alone. As though pulling one's pants down made one sexually irresistible??? Humans are ALL weird. Perhaps we are bonobos pretending to be chimps.

If you mean chromosomal sex, then say that. If you mean phenotypic sex then say that. These have no effect on whether one is a male or female organism. — AmadeusD

But The debate is about the law, about male and female toilets, prisons, and safe spaces, and these things have neither phenotypes nor chromosomes.

using visually-represented phenotype to determine sex is bonkers.
— AmadeusD

Why is it bonkers? — frank

Because it leads to ambiguity, and some people find ambiguity intolerable. Fear of coming on to a ladyboy, perhaps?