Yep.

So the solution is to beg entry from the dumb people who run dumb institutions, in hope of being part of them?

Something does not add up here. And I am extremely skeptical of the claim that media portrayals influence attitudes, rather than vice-versa. It smacks of 'representationalist' politics to me. I don't know; maybe the 'linguistic turn' in AP is part of this general shift in attitude toward top-down views of the world, things being how they are as a result of how they're represented.

I don't think it's a one way street, either from representation to material conditions or vice versa. The point is more that each feeds back - or rather forward - into the other. Is there a disproportionate focus on representation, given the relatively meager way in which it effects the day to day life of ordinary people? Certainly. But as far as 'tactical' politics goes, the politics of representation is low hanging fruit: it widely visible and easy to engage with. Asking to be represented in the Oscars is alot easier to do - and achieve - than advocating for funds for ramps and elevators. Not to mention sexier. But once you've cleared that hurdle, then you've got a foothold to say, "hey, we're really are everywhere now, how can you not install ramps? How can you get away with you rampant sexism? This is no longer what people do: watch a movie sometime!" We can't even do that at this point.

I take representations to be impotent reactions to material conditions. Trying to change the material conditions by changing them is like trying to make the sun go out by putting on sunglasses.

And even if it weren't, it still perversely advocates granting institutions like the Oscars legitimacy by admitting that they are so important that we can't live without brown people (who, according to liberal politics, form a coherent class, 'people of color,' as distinct from white people, who are unique and prestiged in that they are 'colorless,' have transcended ethnic culture, and so have a duty to provide culture for everyone who has not yet made the climb) getting statues from them. But the Oscars are just the institution we're supposed to hate, according to the liberal narrative -- no no, they say, we only hate them insofar as they don't do the benevolent brainwashing they're supposed to. I just don't buy it. I don't think that supporting this kind of rhetoric about representation is harmful, but rather emblematic of how impotent and deluded liberal politics is. Maybe this talk of ontology has something to do with it.

Maybe if someone who has my skin color plays the lead role in Transformers 6, I'll become a bound variable...the more you think about it, the less it makes any kind of sense.

At this point you might not even be nothing...

Oh God, I wish! No income taxes.

Also, I don't buy the paternalist angle (see above, 'benevolent brainwashing' and so on).

In what sense wouldn't it be doing so? Call it a value judgement if you like: this would just to be say that our ontologies are based on value judgements; call it a desire for revenue through property taxes: this could just be to say that a particular ontology is motivated by such a desire. When Quine simply defines 'the ontological problem' as 'what is there', nothing in the question motivates a response in terms of our saying 'such and such is'. When, as a disabled person, a city doesn't build the ramps and elevators required to access otherwise "public" space, is not your very existence (or being, as Quine is wont to say) being in some way denied? When, as a gay person, your ability to express your desire is curbed by draconian laws that make "sodomy" a felony, is not the same at work? Perhaps you think this is overwrought, but some of the largest political movements in history - over race, over gender, over class - have been born from just this impulse to wring social and cultural existence out from systems which do not acknowledge them to exist in some way or another. — StreetlightX

I don't think "being" is involved in any significant sense in such issues, unless it is defined in such a fashion as to mean something which presumes existence and includes other considerations, ethical, legal and political. In that case, though, it would seem ontology isn't a distinct area of study or inquiry.

Of course, those who achieved the adoption of laws or obtained court decisions addressing the rights of the disabled and gays didn't do so by maintaining that their being was being denied. Maintaining that it was denied or is being denied would only serve to obfuscate the questions addressed by the courts and legislatures which are and have been decision-makers as to such issues. I don't think treating social, political or legal problems as involving ontological questions would be beneficial to their resolution.

There is a sense in which the legitimacy of the being of gay and disabled people has historically been denied; as though their forms of life are not to be accepted as fully real.

I think of the Academy Awards as silly as well, and am uninterested in them for that reason but also because my preference is to watch movies only when they appear before me, gratis, while I'm sitting in a comfy chair in my living room, if indeed I watch them at all. So I tend to have little or no knowledge of or interest in the movies the industry congratulates itself over when it's time for the Oscars to be given, let alone the actors who appear in them.

I don't mean to be tiresome, but wonder whether ontology is properly or usefully applied in this or other cases of social, political, legal, cultural controversy. What do we accomplish by treating such controversies as matters of "being"? In what sense is "being" at issue? It seems that there are objections because too many (or only) whites are nominated, too many (or only) whites involved in deciding who is nominated for and receives an Oscar. If the Oscars are about dispensing awards to outstanding movies and outstanding participants in movies, ideally race wouldn't be a factor in making any determination. But the situation is not ideal. So, what are the concerns? If the concern is that what is considered outstanding is prejudiced because too many whites are involved in determining who and what is outstanding, how does this involve "being" or how can it be rectified by the study of "being"? Would ontological analysis result in there being less whites involved? If the concern is that non-whites are being actively discriminated against when it comes to nominations and awards, is that the case because non-whites are denied "being", and will that cease when they are accorded "being"?

Does the question of "being" depend on the being in question finding all, most, or at least some of the terms of existence satisfactory? Gay people, disabled people, white people, black people, immigrants legal and not, etc. are not denied "being" by unsatisfactory arrangements or by perfectly satisfactory arrangements either. One "is" under the terms of existence, whatever those happen to be at the moment, until one "is no more" -- aka, dead.

That doesn't suggest that amelioration of discrimination isn't worthwhile. It is. I didn't exist less before the state sodomy law was repealed, and I didn't exist more after repeal. I liked having those laws repealed, but it didn't alter my 'being' or 'existence'.

People are not actually "erased" or "rendered invisible" or turned into non-beings by people saying nasty things about them, or worse, not discussing them at all. They are being ignored, not being turned into non-beings.

I suspect that ignoring them is considered to deprive them of their being, which would thus render treating someone poorly, unfairly, improperly--or it would seem treating them well--an ontological commitment or the result of an ontological commitment. Presumably it would do the same as to any conception or perception of anything as well as any interaction with anything, or so it would seem to me.

So the solution is to beg entry from the dumb people who run dumb institutions, in hope of being part of them?

Idk, I kinda doubt it. The Oscars is indeed an index of - and an influence on - people's attitudes about class and race but I'd say a better route would be to undermine its perceived authority. * What I found silly in your post was the idea that the Oscars don't matter because you think they have no artistic importance.

And I am extremely skeptical of the claim that media portrayals influence attitudes, rather than vice-versa.

Well, quite obviously attitudes influence media portrayals. I don't recall anyone arguing otherwise. Are you really skeptical of the claim that media portrayals influence attitudes or do you just not like the way some people talk about media influence?
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*This is where you can say 'yeah but the *material conditions* are what most urgently need to be addressed. I don't disagree with this, but, considering the only way to address suffering you seem to find permissible is antinatalism (the mass espousal of which I'd hope you admit is sheer fantasy) I have trouble taking anything you say about changing conditions as sincere.

I don't think "being" is involved in any significant sense in such issues, unless it is defined in such a fashion as to mean something which presumes existence and includes other considerations, ethical, legal and political. In that case, though, it would seem ontology isn't a distinct area of study or inquiry. — Ciceronianus the White

I'm not entirely concerned about what you do or don't think. The question remains: is there anything in Quine that in principle limits the question of being ('what is') what is said? And if so, what would motivate what I suspect is an arbitrary line in the sand? Note that none of this is to say that acknowledging the ontological implications of social or political acts in some way may or may not be 'beneficial to an issue's resolution'. Rather, it's a question of the bearing of the political or the social on the question of being: if what "is" cannot be limited to what is said, then do social and political acts (for instance) feed back into the question of what it is to be?

What I found silly in your post was the idea that the Oscars don't matter because you think they have no artistic importance. — csalisbury

Isn't the point of the Oscars that they're supposed to have artistic influence? Doesn't the fact that the don't make their pretensions ridiculous on their own terms?

Well, quite obviously attitudes influence media portrayals. — csalisbury

But it's common to think of all social and political issues as 'top down:' some group of people designs the way the laws work and so the way society is run, and therefore any flaws in society are traceable to bad decisions, presumably made by bad people whom we need to shame into behaving correctly, so we can design society the right way. Analogously, social attitudes are built top-down: the way we think about people governs the way we treat them, and representations of people govern how we think about them. Thus, identity politics is the most basic form of politics, and representation and existence or legitimacy are taken to be deeply entwined. So you may think this is obvious, but it seems not to be obvious to many people. Or if it is, their direction of attack makes no sense (and don't give me the 'feedback loop' nonsense: if they really think it's a loop, why is their approach so unidirectional?)

Are you really skeptical of the claim that media portrayals influence attitudes or do you just not like the way some people talk about media influence? — csalisbury

Yes. I think by and large media is a slave to those who consume it, and those who craft the media are impotent to enforce tastes deliberately on those they broadcast to. In other words, the only reason bad movies exist is because people watch them, and the second they stop is the second they will cease to exist. Media portrayals that don't reflect pre-existing prejudices will be destroyed, usually before they are even made, rather than change the prejudices to match the portrayal.

*This is where you can say 'yeah but the *material conditions* are what most urgently need to be addressed. I don't disagree with this, but, considering the only way to address suffering you seem to find permissible is antinatalism (the mass espousal of which I'd hope you admit is sheer fantasy) I have trouble taking anything you say about changing conditions as sincere. — csalisbury

The mass espousal of anti-natalism is not a fantasy. Statistically, a large portion of the world are de facto antinatalists: they do not produce enough children to continue the human population. So in Western societies the birth rate is not even replacing the population, and their populatins are literally dying due to a de facto antinatalist trend. The material conditions that facilitate this are economic freedom and access to birth control: that is, precisely when people can control when they want to have children, and have the economic and social freedom not do have them, they don't. If you believe that material conditions will steadily improve, then you are hard pressed not to believe people will start having less children. If all the world was the West (which it may soon be, how things are going), we would literally need artificial incentives just to keep people producing children. Having children sucks. People promote it nominally, but they don't put their money where their mouth is when it comes right down to it. If they don't have to have kids, most of the time they don't.

I'm not entirely concerned about what you do or don't think — StreetlightX

Help! StreetlightX is depriving me of my being!

But if your concern is whether Quine does or does not in principle limit the question of being to what's said, I'd say that in this article he does not, perhaps because that possibility doesn't occur to him, perhaps for other reasons.

You see, I was trying to respond to what seemed to be your thoughts regarding the application of ontology. Your thoughts concerned me regardless of whether mine concern you. Perhaps we have different ontological commitments, though.

But if your concern is whether Quine does or does not in principle limit the question of being to what's said, I'd say that in this article he does not, perhaps because that possibility doesn't occur to him, perhaps for other reasons. — Ciceronianus the White

Here's an argument: if Quine does in fact want to limit ontology to the 'semantical plane', then he makes language in some manner otherwordly: no longer naturalized as one manner of acting or doing among others, language acquires a status that is somehow discontinuous with the rest of the world and everything in it. The onus would then be on Quine to justify this discontinuity of language with the rest of the universe, a move that would in fact be metaphysical - in the pejorative sense - through and through.