Cheers. Don't credit me; it's Wittgenstein, via Anscombe.

In my view, this makes ethics not the negation of science but its completion. — Truth Seeker

Compliment would be better.

To be clear, you are implying that traditional Christianity (viz., roman and orthodox catholicism) are ratshit. — Bob Ross

No. I've said that the arguments for your variant are ratshit.

We can stipulate whatever definitions we want. And provided we keep in mind that they are stipulations, that's fine.

But what I would do is set out for you examples of how the use of "sex" and "gender" differ. That's were your error sits.

...you don't have a chance of persuading others... — Philosophim

No one should be under the illusion that Bob or Leon will change their minds as a result of the discussion here. Our posts are a performance, to an audience. Eventually, as the ineptitude of the response becomes unavoidable, a thread like this becomes too much like kicking a pup. Then it's time to go back to expounding Gillian Russell's text.

Banno, my dear friend, you didn’t answer my question. — Bob Ross

Yes, I have.

You expect me to provide you with essences of sex and gender, failing to see that this very question is dependent on your essentialist framing of the issue.

The meaning of a term is seen in its use, not some abstract expression of essence. I've done what I can for you; its up to you to do the rest.

The difference is in the direction of fit. In science we change what we say to match the way things are. In ethics we change how things are to match what we say. Science tells us how things are, ethics, what to do about it.

It was behind my old thread, Demarcating theology, or, what not to post to Philosophy of Religion. But you might well start a secular version...

In so far as philosophy consists in linguistic plumbing, perhaps some presumption is required - keeping the sewage away from the drinking water.

Just to be clear, if this were my forum, I'd have removed this thread and blocked Bob and Leon.

But this is not my forum. And I have no desire for it to be my forum. This thread is interesting because some folk here have such ratshit ideas; explaining why they are ratshit provides some amusement. Were this my forum, it would be much less entertaining.

To misquote Groucho, I'd not join any forum that would have me as a moderator.

The pretence of victimhood is a cheap rhetorical move.

That wasn't clear from what I have already said?

Meaning is found in use, so there is always some ambiguity. But here we can be pretty explicit.

An example of a biological appraisal: This body has two X chromosomes. A biological fact, normatively neutral.

An example of a gendered appraisal: Having two X chromosomes counts as being a woman. A social fact, and normatively loaded.

The failure of your essentialism is that it mistakes having two X chromosomes for taking on the feminine role. It tries to introduce the normative stuff at the level of biology.

(I added the italicised "your" because there are variants of essentialism that do not promulgate the incoherence seen in your account)

...historically in the West negative attitudes towards homosexuality predominated prior to Christianity. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That does not match my understanding.

Latin culture worship the phallus, denigrating the passive participant in intercourse. It wasn't being homosexual that was mocked, but being penetrated. The dogma that same sex acts were sinful in themselves enters from Leviticus. It was Christianity that invented the notion of such acts being "against nature"

In fact, I haven't received a single private message complaining about this discussion. — Jamal

You will ruin the pretence of victimhood saying things like that.

Taking on the extreme, as is my want:

Reasoning employed in service of a prior commitment doesn't count as philosophical reasoning. For Christians philosophy is just commentary. Christians enter into philosophical discussions in bad faith.

In my understanding of Gadamer, a "fusion of horizons" is only available when the discussion proceeds in good faith; when the participants are open to the conclusion that they are wrong. Christian faith forecloses on that. A faithful Christian cannot engage in hermeneutical reasoning. Attempt to use Gadamer to blend theology and philosophy begins by misunderstanding him.

The whole enterprise of this thread is fatally flawed.

In knitting terms, the set up hasn't changed much. Each row is a time t, and has a colour, p, and the row you are presently knitting is row n, but the garment - a scarf? - goes forever in both directions.

The rather scary looking Definition 5 just asks that we consider two scarves, identical right up to an including the row we are presently knitting, but differing thereafter. The one is a future-switch of the other.

And we can add the notion of preservation and fragility. A row that is already knitted is preserved - no further knitting will change it. A row that has not yet been knitted is fragile - it might change.

And extending those terms to the temporal case, a sentence is preserved if true in M, and true in all future-switches of M (Definition6). It is fragile if true in M, but there's some future-switch where it's false (Definition 7).

And a sentence that is future-switch preserved is Past, (Definition 8), while one that is future-switch fragile is Future (Definition 9)

In the first-order argument, we found that we could not derive sentences about all the individuals from any set of sentences about some of the individuals. Here, we find that we cannot derive sentences about the future from sentences about the past. We are now well-positioned to construct a general account of barriers to entailment.

Now some considerations of the model - how the logic is to be interpreted.

There is a sequence of times, t₁, t₂, t₃... forming a set T, with one of them nominated as "now", n. There is a binary relation "<", understood as "t₁<t₂" means t₁ occurred prior to t₂.

"<" is

• Transitive: if t₁<t₂ and t₂<t₃ then t₁<t₃.
• Dense: there is a time between any other two times.
• Extendable: Any time has a time before it, and a time after it.
• Total: given two times, one is before the other.

So time flows in one direction - the breach of symmetry again. And it is continuous, goes forever into the past and the future and there are no gaps.

Yep, the set T is analogous to the real numbers. Russell chose this set up from among a number of alternatives, She might have chosen a different set, with beginnings and ends or analogous to the natural numbers rather than the reals, and achieved much the same outcome. Nothing in particular hangs on the choice of temporal formalism.

Every atomic sentence in the model is assigned either a 1 or a 0 (roughly, true or false) at each time by a function I, such the same sentence may be true at some time yet false at some other. So I may assign 1 (true) to p at t₁, and 0 (false) to p at t₂, and so on. I(p, t) = 0 means 'p is false at time t.

As for your question - whether I’m a moral realist - the answer depends on what kind of realism we mean. — Truth Seeker

If I may, there's an ambiguity in "realism" that needs sorting. There are varieties of moral realism which suppose that moral facts are much the same as physical facts, found lying about the place. That's hard to support. Other varieties just point out that there are true moral sentences. The problem is with the notion of realism, not the ethics.

The article now turns to applying this schema to other examples, starting with temporal logic - the grammar of time.

Some explanations.
P - past existential, so Pp is read "p was true (at some time) in the past"
F - future existential, so Fp is read "p will be true (at some time) in the future"
G - future universal, so Gp is read "p is going to be true in (all of) the future"
H - past universal, so Hp is read as "p has historically (always) been true"

In the particular/universal first order logic case, the model was extended by adding more individuals and their predicates. Here, the model is extended by changing a future. The mooted barrier becomes "No set of premises about the present or past entails a sentence about the future".

Just as a particular fact will remain true when the model is extended, a past fact Pp will remain true into the future. And even as ∀xFx can become false by adding more individuals, Fp may become false if the future turns out differently than expected.

So we have a structure similar to the previous first-order logic example, but in the place of extending the model we have what Russell calls "future switching", switching amongst alternative futures.

For the purposes of this temporal logic, sentences about the present behave in the same way as sentences about the past, so we can consider the "P" operator to also apply to them.

So your overall point is that those five interactions didn't "contend with (your) view"?

I don't follow that at all. They might not be what you were expecting, but they form a neat dialogue on your claim.

Again, your "epistemic symbolism of society’s understanding of the ontological reality of sex" just seeks to collapse gender into biology, which is again no more than your failure to recognise the distinction between sex and gender.

It's bang on.

Yes, I did:

You still haven't contended with the revised version I asked you to. — Bob Ross

Yes, I did:

What a terrible argument. A woman wearing a dress is not like a triangle's having three sides. There are no triangles that do not have three sides, but there are women in trousers. — Banno

And so on. I'm sorry you haven't been able to follow these connections. This is how threads of this sort become echo chambers, one party repeatedly demanding accounts the other has already given because they do not match the expected response.

The fact of the matter is that no one from the opposition, expect perhaps Jamal, has even tried to contend with the OP — Bob Ross

That's an extraordinary claim.

Taking on the role of the victim in the face of overwhelming critique is a cheap, purely rhetorical move.

Of the very same post:

↪Banno - A substantive post. :up: — Leontiskos

I don't see how these comments help forward the conversation. — Bob Ross

So it was a substantive post that did not help forward the conversation.

Perhaps the problem is not with my post?

To be honest, this thread is revealing itself as liberals being incapable of discussing an alternative gender theory. Virtually no one has even quoted or tried to contend with the OP so far: instead, they are trying to cancel me. — Bob Ross

Well, again, that's because you are not discussing an alternative to gender studies, but foreclosing on it. Your claim that gender is just biological sex has been thoroughly debunked.

Banno, why do you straw man me? — Bob Ross

If you think that my interpretations of your claims is a straw man, one possibility worth considering is that your account is not as coherent as you suppose.

Here's my critique in outline.

1. Aristotelian essences are hollow.
2. There is a usable and interesting distinction to be made between biological sex and socially inaugurated gender.
3. You account of Aristotelian ethics is shallow. Other Aristotelian theorists, such as Nussbaum, do not reach the conservative conclusions of your account.
4. In claiming that certain gender traits are biologically determined, you move form an is to an ought, a logical error.
5. I hold that the stance you take concerning issues such as sexuality and abortion to be immoral.

It might not be obvious where this break of symmetry originates. It is built in.

In the knitting analogue, we only ever add rows, never deleting them. There's the broken symmetry.

Atomic Existential statements, such as Fa or "Row three is green", once made, are never taken back. This goes for all particular statements - it's the definition of "particular".

But universal statements, once given, can be made false by new particular statements. That's the definition of "universal".

The intuition sometimes has to give way to the logic; but with practice the intuition can change to match the logic.

The definition of a particular sentence is that it can't change when we knit more rows.

The negation of the particular sentence "Row one is green" is the particular sentence "Row one is not green". However, the negation of the universal sentence "All rows are green" is the particular sentence "Not all rows are green". This break in symmetry is central to what comes next.


Contraposition
∀xFx ⊨ Fa, by contraposition gives ¬Fa ⊨ ¬∀xFx. This looks like particular ⊨ universal... but it's not, because ¬∀xFx is particular, not universal. Negating the universal in this case yields a particular.

In terms of our knitting,

∀xFx ⊨ Fa. if every row is green, then we can conclude that row one is green. A universal implying a particular.
¬Fa ⊨ ¬∀xFx. If it's not true that row one is green, then it's not true that every row is green. A particular implying another particular. Contraposition doesn't generate counterexamples to the particular-universal barrier thesis, because the barrier only blocks inferences from particulars to universals, and ¬Fa ⊨ ¬∀xFx is an inference from a particular to another particular. Note the broken symmetry.

Yep. A general criticism of Liberalism is that in allowing all views, it fails to provide any guidance; that it devalues value. Liberalism concerns itself with the interactions between our various dogmas, seeking to avoid mere violence as the arbiter, looking towards open interplay between our ideas as a way to decide our actions. While it provides guidance as to how to interact with others, it does not tell us much about what to do.

Liberalism solves this by associating itself with other ideas. In the US it became associated with
laissez-faire economics of the worst sort, leading to gross inequity. European liberals resisted this to a greater extent, adopting social programs in an attempt to mitigate it's worst aspects.

The virtues of liberalism are tolerance, pluralism, avoidance of violence. the vices of liberalism are normative emptiness and the inability to guide life. It was never meant to stand alone.

Liberalism provides a way to interact, without telling us what to do. Critical theory provides a way to understand what is going wrong, without telling us how to fix it. @Tom Storm's pragmatism reminds us that nevertheless we must act.

Seems to me that the three of these together mitigate against the grand social programs that would explain the whole, and leads us back to the critical, piecemeal improvement of individual human lives.

Small steps, not grand schemes

This axiom is derived from a commonsense observation: human behavior is an expression of biological adaptation — panwei

Sure. But doesn't your argument take steps beyond this? Either to human behaviour being determined by biological adaptation, such that we have no capacity to act against this mooted biological imperative; or that we ought only to act in accord with this biological imperative.

The first is to deny that we make choices. The second, to confuse what we do with what we ought do.

I guess Banno would probably point to something like Nussbaum’s capability framework as a more useful approach. — Tom Storm

Indeed, I did. Somewhere away from mere tradition and the Grand Ethic we might find the piecemeal improvement of individual human lives.

I'm glad you found the paper interesting. So we agree there is (or perhaps may be) a logical basis for the is/ought distinction?

The other point of contention is your "Hume's psychology... precludes knowing virtually any facts at all", which is far too strong. Experience grounds our knowledge.

is there some more substantive point on which we disagree?

I think what the Christian conservative use of neo-Aristotelian ideas of essence shows is that teleological frameworks are powerful and thus open to abuse. — Jamal

This seems to me to touch on my questioning of the veracity of Bob's Neo-Aristotelianism . My vague recollections of Aristotle do not much cohere with the reactionary and authoritarian direction that our Aristotelian friends hereabouts seem to share.

So it may well be that I am mistakenly blaming Aristotle for the errors of @Bob Ross, @Leontiskos and perhaps @Count Timothy von Icarus.

What is admirable in MacIntyre is the critique of emotivism, a suspicion of abstract moral theorising and especially the embedding of ethics in a social context. But I'm sceptical as to teleological accounts that link what it supposedly is to be human to what we ought do - although I might be convinced - grounding "ought" in teleology appears to be a category mistake. And the turn to "traditional" values is just too convenient.

The core of my disparagement of Aristotelian essentialism is the hollowness of "that which makes a thing what it is, and not another thing". It doesn't appear to do any work, and to presuppose a referential approach to language that I hold to be demonstrably false.

There is indeed an unresolved tension in my thinking, in an admiration for both Anscombe and Foot (to whom Macintyre owes a great debt) together with a more progressive attitude than either. I do not accept the authoritarianism of Anscombe, nor the emphasis on tradition in Foot. I'll add Rawls and Nussbaum to the mix, and I think we might translate Aristotelian ethics into a modern, inclusive agenda. I'd hope that we might proceed without a "thick" ethics of tradition or evolutionary constraint, and proceed instead with a "thin" ethics of autonomy, dignity, and realised capabilities. Small steps over grand themes.

Excellent post, Jamal. I hope you succeed in shaking up the conversation here.

My brain is clogged with too many sedimented layers of philosophy which have explicitly dismantled the entire framework on which the is-ought distinction is built. — Joshs

Are you telling me that you read the wrong books? I think Iv'e mentioned that previously. :wink:

But the account you gave, , aligns well enough with my own, with the addition that points out, if one is not giving consideration to others, one is not doing ethics. says much the same thing.

Psychological approaches like enactivism assume that we always already find ourselves thrown into action, so the ‘ought’ of motive doesn’t have to posited as a separate mechanism from the ‘is’ of being in the world. — Joshs

I'm not sure how the conclusion follows from the premise here, but despite that I think I agree with the sentiment. Isn't his the familiar existentialist claim, that we don't first exist as neutral observers, but that our very existence is saturated with normatively? And even then, the question of what to do remains; and the answer is not found in what is the case, but what we would do about it. This is not a rejection of the is/ought barrier, so much as a expression of it in phenomenological terms.

Hume's division isn't logical, it's metaphysical and epistemic. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Your are invited to read Gillian Russell's new book, and the article being discussed in my most recent thread, that sets out in detail various barriers to entailment including the is/ought barrier, using a first order logic an model theory. I'm still digesting the argument there, but your claim is not self-evident.

I wasn't much able to follow the rest of your post. You noted that we do regularly invoke "ought" statements such as "you ought try the chicken", but seem to think these mitigate against the is ought barrier rather than demonstrate it. There's a play on the word "fact", which in this context can variously refer to what is the case, or to only "is" statements. It appears that you think that n "ought" statement cannot be true, which is a vies some quite prominent philosophers have adopted, but which is sorely tested by the obvious validity of the syllogism you set out. And we've elsewhere discussed and I think rejected the view that Hume's account of induction "precludes ever knowing such facts". points out two other issues with the approach you seem to be adopting, that "better than" already presume judgement, and that "ought " may be used instrumentally or categorically.

So to this:

It’s hard to imagine a circumstance in which the utterance ‘the coffee should be chosen because the coffee should be chosen’ would be useful, — Joshs

Quite true of instrumental choices, where it makes sense to give look for further explanation; but what about "you ought to treat others fairly because you ought treat others fairly"? One might imagine Kant saying such a thing, with the force that this is were we make a start, that this is our foundation.



In any case we mentioned here might find agreement in pointing out that it is by no means evident that we ought do what we have supposedly evolved to do. Evolution does not answer, indeed hardly even addresses, the questions of ethics.

haven't you previously resisted a reduction of what ought to be the case to what one wants to be the case? — bert1

On the grounds that "ought" has a social aspect, yes. Small steps. Not what I want but what we want.

When you go shopping, you take a list of the things that you want. When you receive a receipt at the check out, you will get a list of the very same things. The two lists may be the same, but their purpose is very different. One is what you wanted, the other is what you got.

That's the difference between ought and is. The receipt from the checkout is what is the case, the shopping list is what ought be the case.

The difference is in the intent one takes to each. One guides your actions, the other describes them.

And that's pretty much why you can't get an ought from an is; at some point you have to change from what you see about you to how you want things to be - to change your attitude. And that's not a issue of deduction.



So in your essay, if the conclusion is an "ought", there has to be a point at which that ought is introduced. And that seems to be "the compelling force". So even if "doing X is a logical requirement dictated by that fundamental purpose" then isn't that fundamental purpose is hte source of the "ought"?

And if so, it's not an "is".

Indeed, the removal of homosexuality from the DSM is a fine example of a moral move that was not just despite, but against, conservative Cristian dogma. Of the gap between Aristotelian morality and the impoverished Christian interpretation hereabouts.

@Count Timothy von Icarus, you have more familiarity with Aristotle than I - what do you make of ? Is Bob in line with neo- Aristotelian thinking?

So, if I've again understood all that, mental illness is not only a social label, but includes a measure of human flourishing. Looks fine to me.

I've a bit to do with disability advocacy, using the social model of disability. A classic example is that steps prevent a wheelchair user from accessing services. Steps - something hat is not essential, but convenient - prevent the chair user from flourishing. So there is a good argument for putting in ramps.

Similarly, a mental illness prevents the individual from flourishing - perhaps the voices and paranoia make social interaction problematic. Unlike the stairs, the problem is a direct result of the disease, not a an imposed social consequence.

In the case of of homosexuality, is what prevents the individual from flourishing more like the stairs or the voices? Is it a direct result of their homosexuality, or is it imposed by the attitudes of others? Is it intrinsic or socially imposed?

Homosexuality was removed from the DSM because, unlike mental illnesses, it does not intrinsically impede an individual’s ability to flourish; any barriers arise from social prejudice, not from the orientation itself.

@RogueAI, :victory:

Looks like this thread is revealing itself as the Conservative Christian echo chamber that it at first pretended not to be. No doubt it will go for another forty pages of theological babble.

No need for others to provide the walls. But it remains a puzzle as to why such stuff is permitted in a philosophy forum.

A good example here is reason. Reason is ordered to truth. But reason can be instrumentalized and ordered to lower desires. And this would be "contrary to nature." Likewise, cancer is contrary to nature in that it is a misordering of body. — Count Timothy von Icarus

So is a thing unnatural because it is not "oriented to God", as you seemed to first say, or because it is contrary to a things internal order... Or are these, for you, the same? Presumably, it is only we limited creatures who see things as evil or unnatural, since everything must ultimately fit god's plan...?

So at least for god, if not for us, nothing is unnatural, or misordered?

I suppose it comes down to faith.

As Tim asks,

How could one be "utterly ethical" and at odds with Goodness itself? — Count Timothy von Icarus

It appears that there is here also a variant on the Euthyphro...

I dropped some of this into GPT and uninvited, it proffered the following amusement:

Seems to be what was referenced by . Eating of the fruit supposedly introduced the unnatural...?

The problem of what is natural and unnatural seems more difficult than the problem of good and evil, since the handy answer of free will is unavailable. Again, if everything has a divine origin, then how could anything be unnatural? Either not everything is of divine origin, or the term "natural" has no opposite.

The Fall appears to be both within the scope of God's will - at least, foreseen and permitted - and yet somehow outside of his will, in order that it introduce the unnatural.

But it's not up to you and I to make sense of this mythology.

The problem remains - if everything has a divine origin, then how could something be unnatural?

But if "The Good" were to be interpreted as equating to "a singular deity which wills all stuff into being"... — javra

One might go a step further and puzzle over how anything could be unnatural, given that presumably nothing can occur that is against the will of an omnipotent, omniscient being. That is, equating the will of god with what is natural carries the problem of evil into the problem of the natural.

(There's a literature here, too, stemming in a large part from a paper by that pesky David Lewis. We are apparently not to mention such things.)

If I've understood all that, you are saying that what is natural is what god wills?

Well, at least the divine origin of the normative is explicit here.