Look, it doesn't matter much to me whether you want to come across as a liar or an idiot, so interpreting my statements as contrary ones is your call. Either way, all you're demonstrating is that you're not worth engaging with which you've over-established already. — Kenosha Kid

Forgive me if I don't really care what you think or say about me. When you can actually think for yourself and not just regurgitate everything you read, I'll be happy to have a reasonable discussion with you.

No, it wasn't. Also, you quoted the text and it was perfectly explicit. It didn't require your layer of your bullshit interpretation. — Kenosha Kid

Yes it was. Also, no it wasn't.

A truly woke person realizes their pawnship and navigates within that role to peace, joy, and a fern garden with lots of moss and a little buddha statue at the end of the path that leads from the rock garden in a world where the weather has become the water feature due to el nino.

What were we talking about? — frank

Actually, for me, it would be a little statue of Shiva, in a garden of hemp. That is the epitome of peace and joy for me.

:cool:

Yeah, bruh. What were we talking about?

That is not what I wrote. — Kenosha Kid

You didn't have to. It is implied in what you wrote.

There can be different interpretation of facts but when people believe lies despite the availability of facts to the contrary there is no subjective nature to discuss. — Benkei

But when all of your "facts" seem to indicate that your side doesn't do anything wrong, isn't capable of oppressing others, and that the other side is the problem, then that should be a red flag that your "facts" are merely propaganda.

If it were actually a fact that one side is worse than the other, then what reason would we have in keeping the other side viable? And in eliminating the other side, did you just eliminate the available choices we all have?

The fact is that both sides are the problem. Political parties are the problem. There should be no sides in a political discussion. There should simply be individuals expressing their opinions, as no one else has the right to speak for someone else, especially if they can speak for themselves.

That said, assertions how other people are pawns is being emotionally invested in your own assertions as well. So by pretending you're above it all, you just demonstrate you're completely in the same game as those you tell yourselves it's ok to ignore. — Benkei

LOL. No, being emotionally invested means that you are afraid to be wrong. But being afraid to be wrong means that you will never make mistakes. If you never make mistakes, you will never learn. Have you ever been wrong in any of your political/ethical views, Benkei?

I am more than happy to be proven wrong that most Americans are pawns in the political game between Reps and Dems. I just need evidence.

BLM never called for violence. — frank

Yet blacks were causing violence. Who is BLM? They obviously don't speak for all blacks.

BLM never called for violence. They did their best to quell it. — frank

And not everyone at the Capitol was rioting. The fact that people can make these distinctions for one side and not the other is just more evidence of the propaganda bubbles that they live in.

But then, the Boston Tea Party was branded a riot at the time - the American and French revolutions began with riots. One man's terrorist is another man's martyr. This is the subjective nature of ethics/politics. This is why we need more level heads, that aren't emotionally invested in their assertions, and aren't trying to speak for others that they don't know, to have a reasonable discussion.

A simple solution would be to abolish political parties. That would ease the division between us, but division is what the Dems and Reps need to stay viable. So it is no surprise that they are the ones stoking that division and then people like KK, Banno and Michael are just a few of the pawns in their game. A truly woke person is one that realizes they've been a pawn and refuses to be one any longer.

Thought you weren't interested in reading my posts?

Anyways. I'm not interested in "winning", like you. You think this is a game, obviously. I'm simply interested in having a intellectually honest conversation, but you don't seem to understand the concept.

In short, either white privilege is real and denying it is denying its victims, or white privilege isn't real in which case we should see no evidence of it. Not sure how you're missing the connection here. If I live in a racist society, and I am advantaged by that, and I refute the existence of that racism, I am protecting a racist society, therefore am racist. — Kenosha Kid

If you live in a racist society, you're a racist. Duh! Everything else you said is totally irrelevant. Do you live in a racist society, KK? If all of society were racist, then you wouldn't have black presidents, vice-presidents, judges, and congressmen. So what society you're talking about could only be one that exists in your head.

Meh. Just not much interested in your posts. — Banno

Sure, because you know that a reasonable exchange between us ends up with you looking to fool.

But you are interested in accusing me if being companions with someone, who I spoke to once, that was banned for using racial slurs, without reading my posts?

Everytime you respond to me, you end up looking biased and stupid.

Riiiight. So now you're affiliating me with Brett when I've never spoken to the guy before now? If you had been paying attention, you'd have noticed that I have said that racial slurs are ad hominems, just like calling people racist is. But you and your companions aren't interested in facts, only propaganda.

The funny thing is that if Brett didn't use a racial slur but instead used terms like, "idiot", "moron", or even "shit-ass" or "fuck-face", he wouldn't have even given a second notice, because people think those names are OK to call people.

The fact is that not all blacks are offended by racial slurs, just like not everyone is offended by being called a "dumb-ass". So you are simply taking on yourself of speaking for others for which you dont know anything about, while at the same time generalizing all blacks as if they are all equally offended and interpret the word the same way.

Why? Did he question the existence of white privilege?

It's a large quantity of wrong. I addressed the part I thought most amenable to progress. If I need advice about what to address from you, I'll give you a heads up but frankly it's well outside your jurisdiction. — Kenosha Kid

Its not wrong that if you question the existence of white privilege you get called a racist. That was the point of what you quoted. Your reply simply doesn't address what I said, but that is expected from you.

Why don’t you actually try and address Harry Hindu’s post. — Brett

Brett, KK has difficulties answering tough, direct questions. Dont expect any substantive answers from them.

Who said anything about misusing "racist"? — Michael

I have. You obviously haven't been paying attention either, but that is expected of an authoritarian. They only care what they think.

I'm saying that if someone is a racist then it's acceptable to criticize them for being a racist, and that if someone is black then it's unacceptable to criticize them for being black. — Michael

Who and when on these forums has criticized someone for being black? If there hasn't been any, or the percentage is minute, then how can you argue that racism is the prevalent idea, or is even a serious problem?

Who and when on these forums have generalized whites by using terms like, "white privilege"? Lots of people in this forum. And when you disagree with them and point out the weak points of their argument, they call you a "racist".

If someone criticized a back for being black, it would be redundant to say, "racist". I mean, what do you really hope to accomplish by calling someone a racist whose racist actions are on display for everyone to see?

I've never used the term "white privilege". Others talk about it because it's a fact of life. And it is wrong that there is white privilege, but that's not to say that every white person is responsible for it. — Michael

You still seem to be focused on whites when whites are only a fraction of the world population. As I have been saying, white privilege is not a fact of life. Does that make a racist?[

People don't tend to have much control over what happens in other countries. There's nothing I can do to address racism in Japan or corruption in Russia. — Michael

What a lazy cop-out. This forum has members in many countries and this isn't the only forum on the internet. Thanks for showing everyone how truly biased and lazy you are.

No, white privilege refers to "the implicit or systemic advantages that people who are deemed white have relative to people who are not deemed white; it is the absence of suspicion and other negative reactions that white people experience." — Michael

Then what point are you trying to make, if not to guilt-trip whites into thinking that it is wrong to have this "privilege", when in Asian countries there is Asian privilege and in African countries there is black privilege? What should be done about the privilege in those countries? To say that we should only do something in this country is singling out whites to be criticized.

It had nothing to do with what people call each other on a philosophy forum. You were asking about the political views of progressives, and questioning what you believed to be an inconsistency in their position. I'm explaining to you that their position isn't inconsistent; their position is that it's acceptable to criticize people for unacceptable things — Michael

Sure it does. And it is morally inconsistent to call people names for calling people names. It is also unacceptable to misuse "racist", in calling people who are not racist, "racist" simply because you can't argue against thing they said.

On a philosophy forum logic should be the arbiter of what is acceptable or not. Ad hominems are logical fallacies. It is also lazy thinking. It is more work to attack an argument than it is to attack a person.

As I keep having to point out because certain people like to go off the tracks and attack something that I haven't said...
Calling someone a racist when they aren't is just as insulting. If you dont get that, then that's fine as it is just more evidence that there is no objective morality and we could sit here and argue all day about our subjective views of what is more insulting, but I'm not interested.

Calling a person a "rat" is a pejorative, calling a rat a "rat" isn't, it's neutrally descriptive. Calling a black person a "nigger" is a pejorative, calling a racist, a "racist" is neutrally descriptive. — Baden

LO-Fucking-L!

As I have been arguing all along is that people that aren't racist are being called racist! Pay attention!

If someone is a racist then it's acceptable to call them a racist and criticize them for being a racist. If someone is black then it's not acceptable to call them a nigger and criticize them for being black — Michael

What does calling a person a racist accomplish in a philosophy forum that calling someone a nigger, doesn't? Calling them a racist doesn't accomplish anything. Laying out the arguement of how it is a logical fallacy of a false cause and ad hominems is the acceptable path to take.

But your simple mind can only seem to understand how to lower yourself to their level of intelligence. Calling people names is just childish.

Disagreeing that white privilege exists isnt criticizing blacks for being black. It is criticizing the argument. That is the difference. So to call people racist because they are criticizing an argument is no different than calling someone a nigger or cracker for criticizing your argument.

Isn't white privilege criticizing whites for being white?

Any event can be characterized by a statement. Whether or not it ever is, is a separate matter. — Andrew M

A contradiction. If you dont know whether or not a event is characterized by a statement, then you can't say for sure that any event is characterized by a statement.

It is more accurate to say that any belief can be characterized by a statement however, whether or not the belief ever characterizes events that are not other beliefs, is a seperate matter.

Then you didn't properly answer my question.

Again, my point is that calling someone the R-word is just as unacceptable as calling someone the N-word because they are both examples of ad hominems, and ad hominems are logical fallacies that simply don't move the discussion anywhere. On a philosophy forum worth its salt, they should be kept at a minimum, but you seem to think that its acceptable for some to do it and not others. So much for your ideas of equality and eliminating privileges. :roll:

Lots of people. The Ku Klux Klan, for example. — Michael

Lol. The KKK is not lots of people, nor are all whites part of the KKK. Guilt by association is another logical fallacy. So much for engaging in philosophy on this "philosoohy" forum.

No, I think that my judgement of what is acceptable is correct. I believe that I am correct in judging pedophilia, racism, sexism, and homophobia to be unacceptable, and that anyone who judges any of these things to be acceptable is wrong, because the objective fact of the matter is that these things are unacceptable. — Michael

This is all based on the faulty idea that morality is objective.

My point all along is that you have simply redefined questioning a faulty premise that you have assumed to be true, to fall within the category of "racism". Its no different than a religious fundamentalist accusing me if being a devil-worshipper when I question their assertions about the existence of their God.

Talk of "white privilege" isn't criticizing people for being white. When people talk about white privilege they are making the claim that white people have certain advantages over non-white people because of racism against non-white people. — Michael

Who is being racist against non-white people?

Closing whine thread. — Baden

Puhh-leeez. This is so typical of the kind of stuff I see on FB and Twitter.

And if Trump had won, and you started a thread complaining about how he won illegally, it wouldn't have been a "whine" thread, but a "patriotic call for action," right?

This is what I'm taking about how one side defines the argument in such a way that makes the other side appear to be the "whiners", "racists" and "bigots". Name-calling isn't acceptable, period, especially on a philosophy forum that is seriously about philosophy.

Nobody gets to define what is acceptable, but everyone gets to judge what is acceptable. — Michael

Its the same thing.

No I don't. I think that it's acceptable to criticize people for being racist or sexist or homophobic but not acceptable to criticize people for being black or a woman or gay. — Michael

What about criticizing people for being white, as in "white privilege"?

You seem to think that your judgements of what is acceptable, is more acceptable than what others judge as acceptable.

Politics is just another word for hypocrisy.

The difference is that it's acceptable to be black but not acceptable to be a racist, and so therefore it's acceptable to say bad things about racists being racists but not acceptable to say bad things about black people being black. — Michael

Acceptable by who? You only get to speak for yourself. Look who gets to define what is acceptable and label others actions as racists when they are simply disagreeing with you, and not being racist. Demonizing others and calling them racists just because the don't believe in the "white privilege" myth isn't acceptable either.

My point was, is it wrong to verbally abuse anyone at all? You seem to think blacks and homosexuals are free to say what they want without being challenged, because to challenge them means that the challenger is a racist or homophobe. This is the left's political discourse in a nutshell.

It's not supposed to be an argument. It's supposed to highlight the topic. Bilogoists study sex, sociologists study bioloigists studying sex and as such many of them assume that sex is gendered, because they're part of soiciety (as they are themselves, which many of them are aware of). — Dawnstorm

And sociologists understand that in order for a species to procreate and continue to exist, its members need to distinguish males from females. Sociologists need to be able to do that to.

I'm not sure if the "Using...alone" construction suggests that if you add more stuff in (like, say, hormones) things would get more clear. My own hunch is that the more details you add the more useful classes you could get. The key word here is "useful". A sociologist (of a certain kind) reads such a word and automatically asks "for whom" and "how". — Dawnstorm

The same way that female peacocks use male peacock traits to select the best mate and father of its offspring.
I already stated that how it is used is to distinguish males from females in a society where it is the law to cover your body. Gender as a social construction is sexual selection - the preferences we have for specific traits in a mate.

Sociology is just one characteristic of biology and stems from our physiology. Searching for mates and mating is a biological process.

This forum contains plenty of pro-capitalists, who are part of the right. There are lots of religious social conservatives too, who are also part of the right. What it doesn't generally contain are vocally active racists, misogynists, and so on, because hate like that isn't actually philosophy and thankfully is against the rules here. — Pfhorrest

Hate was the primary reason you voted against Trump. You "progressives" like to believe that you are all open-minded and accepting of others differences, but your actions speak louder than your words. You people are are so filled with hate its insane.

But then that's part if the problem. You think its ok to verbally abuse others you disagree with, but racism is a big, "No-No"? Whats the fucking difference?

And yet people do it all the time. People "create" sense. Whether you think it's silly or not, it's part of social reality in some way or another. It's hard to get out of the mindset, a bit like being stuck in a metaphorical spiderweb. — Dawnstorm

"People do it all the time" is not a good argument. People used to believe the Earth was the center of the universe. Did that make it right? There is such a thing as mass delusions.

Another way of looking at it is that in a society where you are imprisoned for not wearing clothes, hetero and homo sexuals will need ways of identifying mates, and it is predictable that the society would develop a means of identifying the sexes. That is what a gender as a social construction is - rules for the sexes to abide by so that they be easily identified in a society where there are rules for covering your body. In a society where there are no clothes, what would gender be, or what use would gender have? As a matter of fact, these preferences that humans have and expect of the sexes is what biologists call sexual selection, not gender.

I definitely agree that the biological factors are more conclusive, but to get a precise picture I'd need to describe a body as completely as possible before making the categorisation. That's not what we usually do, and once we have that wealth of details, who knows whether man/woman would still feel like a sufficent set of categories. — Dawnstorm

The biological factors are more conclusive because they are the constant across all societies, while the social constructions (the rules for he sexes to abide by) can vary from society to society. If the rules are arbitrary, does that mean trans-people feelings about their "bearing" is arbitrary? In a society where there are no rules about what sex wears which clothes, or a society where clothes don't exist, what would the "bearing" of a trans-person be like?

Biological sex is based on a combination of traits:

- chromosomes (in humans, XY is male, XX female)
- genitals (penis vs. vagina)
- gonads (testes vs. ovaries)
- hormones (males have higher relative levels of testosterone than women, while women have higher levels of estrogen)
- secondary sex characteristics that aren’t connected with the reproductive system but distinguish the sexes, and usually appear at puberty (breasts, facial hair, size of larynx, subcutaneous fat, etc.)

Using genitals and gonads alone, more than 99.9% of people fall into two non-overlapping classes—male and female—and the other traits almost always occur with these. If you did a principal components analysis using the combination of all five traits, you’d find two widely separated clusters with very few people in between. Those clusters are biological realities, just as horses and donkeys are biological realities, even though they can produce hybrids (sterile mules) that fall morphologically in between.

But some would separate the physical universe from its mental counterpart and suggest "universe" is only the physical universe. Same with "objects": physical and mental. — jgill

They would need a good reason to do that. What would be the reason when we know that the physical and mental causally interact? Seems to me that the physical and mental are all part if the same causal universe.

Yes a nothing cannot be anything more than a conceptual fiction, otherwise it would not be a nothing, but a something. — Janus

A conceptual is a something that points to nothing, except for the causal process that created the concept, like I already showed:
<Something> + <Opposite> = <Nothing>

And gender expectations aren't generally strict. In fact, if a male person only has masculine traits, people tend to think of him as hyper-masculine rather than as the norm, and when it occurs in adolescents we tend to think of it as "a phase". There may be strict elements, though, depending on where and when. — Dawnstorm

What are all of the masculine traits? What are all the feminine traits? Once you have them listed, you will see that some traits stem from biology and others from society. You will then notice that the ones that stem from society are actually not masculine or feminine, rather they are human traits. It makes no sense to attribute those traits as masculine or feminine. Actually doing so is engaging in stereotyping precisely because they are human traits and not masculine or feminine traits.

Is 80 million votes against Trump really that hard to believe? He worked very hard for over 4 years to demonize half the country, after all. — praxis

:rofl:
Demonizing half the country is what politicians on both sides have been doing for decades, and your just now noticing? I guess you're right because Hillary lost after demonizing half the country. But then that is why people vote for their political party - because they have been indoctrinated to think that the other party are demons.

Couldn't have stated it any better myself. It IS absolutely insane to believe that Biden got more votes than Hillary and Obama even though he came in last place when he ran against them in the primary back in 2008? And we're suppose to believe that Americans wanted Kamala even though she quit the race because she was in last place in the primary? Obama chose the loser as his VP and Biden chose the loser as his VP. The Democrats are in the habit of choosing losers for their presidential candidates and we're suppose to believe that they actually won?

I don't think anyone has argued that a nothing could "exist ontologically" (not sure what the 'ontologically' is doing here); to argue that would be absurd since anything that exists is something, not nothing. I think you might be attacking a strawman of your own devising. — Janus

Then you haven't read the OP, or the back and forth between us?

In other words, the probability of something is greater than the probability of nothing, and that's why there's something rather than nothing. — TheMadFool

Seems to me that the MadFool is implying that nothing is as real as something, but is the opposite of something and that something can come from nothing.

Seems to me that if nothing is only a concept then nothing, as a concept, came from something as a concept. There is also the concept of opposite, combined with the concept something begats the concept of nothing.

And here you seem to be saying that there is nothing that exists as a concept (epistemological) and as something else (ontological) like a vacuum:

Nothing is nothing, absolutely nothing. <Nothing> is the concept of nothing — Janus

I'd say that a possibility or potential is not until it is; when it ceases to be a possibility or potential and becomes an actuality — Janus

How do you know it wasn't an actuality all along and only appears to be a potentiality because we are simply ignorant of the actuality in the future. Isnt it strange that actuality only exist in past evenrs and potentiality exists in future events that corresponds to our knowledge of such events?

We all heard it: gender is a social construct. — ninoszka

Yeah, but what is a social construct? Aren't "social constructs" a nice way of saying "stereotypes"? It's a term used by the socialist left that enables them to enforce the use of stereotypes without appearing to be stereotyping.

When a man says that they feel like a woman when they wear a dress, they are reinforcing the stereotype that to be defined as a woman, you need to wear a dress. You can wear a dress and still be a man, or wear pants and still be a woman, because what clothes you wear isn't what defines a man or a woman.

Nothing is nothing, absolutely nothing. <Nothing> is the concept of nothing. It is a real concept, not imaginary. The idea of nothing, as idea, is indeed something, but it is the idea of the opposite of something: namely nothing. — Janus

I didn't mean that concept itself isn't real. Concepts have causal power. Concepts are real and they are something - that I think we can agree. My point is that the concept doesn't correspond to anything real in the world. It's just a concept. We can imagine things that have no corresponding ontological reality to them. I challenge you to point to nothing in the world, like you can point to something. Are you talking about a vacuum?

Impossibility is not something existing, but the condition that some particular thing cannot be. If nothing at all existed then there would be neither possibility, impossibility nor probability; that is the point. — Janus

It's the same point I made on page 2 of this thread - the concept of nothing is something. I'm still waiting on someone to show me that nothing is more than just something as a concept, but as something that exists ontologically as opposed to just epistemologically.