So, you assume Judith Butler self-identifies as female, and you characterize her as a woman, eh? You victimize her by failing to understand the restrictive nature of the antiquated theatrical performance you oh hell who cares what she or anyone else identifies as people should just shut up about their gender and be whatever the fuck they think they are and stop telling us about it and live their lives it's not like they're important and we'll all be dead soon anyhow. Amen.

Oh boy...

You know, you have a DUTY to fight for [social cause that I find important]. If you don't do that, then you're complicit in OPPRESSION. I totally don't sound like George W. Bush with this "for us or against us" rhetoric.

You said it...

Should be "oh person".

"Oh construction," actually. We can be nothing more according to the wise of our bleak times.

We can be considerate, in these bleak times, towards each other, including the women among us who probably get put off posting by sexist crap.

And risk being accused of patronizing? Don't judge me, by the way.

Maybe it might be too long, but I'm currently reading the free, online version of Metaphysics by Michael J. Loux. You can access it here. I have been thoroughly enjoying it thus far and would recommend it to anyone with a passing interest in an introduction to contemporary metaphysics.

We never were anything more, at any time. The issue is that so many misunderstand, many of the "scientific" persuasion, what this means. It does NOT mean that everything is caused by culture, in the sense of the nature/nurture debate. Rather, it means that any state of our community is always "constructed" out by its own presence: it is there because it exists instead of something else. Here "cultural construction" refers not to a case, by rather to the presence of some manner of existing, as it's presence over something else is what formed the present situation.

With respect to our "performances," it is not their origin or cause which matters, but rather that they exist instead of another state which might have been. Here performance is not about playing out a "fake" role per se, but rather about the absence of a nature outside ourselves: the absence of a force which necessitates any state of our existence.

What we are is a function of our existence as a part of, and interaction with, the rest of nature. There is no us outside of nature. What exists now is a result of that interaction. That it exists and something else does not exist tells us something about what we are and the consequences of that interaction.

There is more to it than that though. What we are is its own state, with its own particular description, not merely the description of the prior interactions which lead to an outcome.

In the context of social relations, where understanding is transmitted through labels and categories, this aspect is actually critical to how we identify people and communicate about them. Our understanding of what category or label someone belongs under is defined in the description we make of them.

Gender categories, for example, are "performed" because they are a descriptive act on our part. It is our act of describing someone as belonging to a particular category or label which is the social environment of someone being understood that way. Regardless of the cause of these categories, there presence is an act of our discourse, a performance of ourselves, rather than a prior interaction which has nothing to do with what we are doing. The category of "male" and "female" is the existence of us speaking and thinking a certain way about people, rather than the presence of any prior state of particular biological trait.

In this context, prior states of interaction don't actually describe the state in question. To say that a particular behaviour, trait or act of classification is caused by various interacting forces (e.g. atoms, people, desires, etc.,etc.) leaves out the caused state in question.

If we say, for example, that the categories of "male" and "female" have arisen due to a combination of various biological and environmental forces, it doesn't actually point out how those categories are the existence of our discourse. It leaves out understanding of what is happening in the moment, leaving us unable to distinguish between the existence of our discourse and something in the world. We end-up, for example, with the false impression that it is logically impossible for someone to be understood under a particular label or category because of their biological traits.

We categorize, certainly. So, we categorize yet again, and claim that what we are now is a separate category, different from others like the categories male and female. That further categorization may well be useful and beneficial for certain purposes, just as our other categories may be. Or it may not. There's no special triumph or unique insight involved in the creation of another category.

I'd like to suggest a somewhat silly but actually quite interesting essay: Do Video-Game Characters Matter Morally?.

The point is not about the creation of category. It is the fact that it is created by us, irrespective of its causal origin. Whether a category originates from "biology" and "culture," to speak in the crude terms of the nature/nurture debate (the answer is, of course, always BOTH in any instance, as every moment of human life is biology responding to a present environment), are categorisation is merely cultural (which is to say an existing aspect of human understanding and culture, rather than the necessary nature of any person).

When it comes to the questions of the ethics of categorisation, this understanding is critical. Not because creating any category is necessary any good, but rather because it enables someone to understand what the use of a category is, allowing them to avoid the naturalistic fallacy that any person must belong to any category because of some other trait they possess.

When it comes to the questions of the ethics of categorisation, this understanding is critical. Not because creating any category is necessary any good, but rather because it enables someone to understand what the use of a category is, allowing them to avoid the naturalistic fallacy that any person must belong to any category because of some other trait they possess. — TheWillowOfDarkness

All cinnamon buns are giraffes. If you answer in the negative, it will hurt my feelings.

All cinnamon buns are giraffes. If you answer in the negative, it will hurt my feelings. — Pneumenon

That's an ugly strawman of dubious ethical intent.

The point was about how we categorise, not what any object was. We may, indeed, think of cinnamon buns under the category of giraffes.

This is entirely possible and it doesn't change either cinnamon buns nor giraffes at all. More critically, it doesn't even change our understanding of cinnamon buns and giraffes as distinct things, assuming we only alter the category we use of the object, rather than the understanding of the object itself.

So there is no "madness" at stake here, no ignoring what the world is in favour of some personal fantasy world. There is only the category we are classing someone under and whether we are respecting how they feel they ought to be classified.

In answering negative, I would not merely be hurting your feelings. I would be disrespecting you own sense of the world, of what classification you belonged to, of what you were named.

I would, Judith Butler, be classifying you under the category "queer theorist" no matter how much you thought or felt you were Pneumenon who belonged to the brigade of post-structuralist nonsense stompers. I would be calling out to the rest of society to do so too and, in response to your protests you didn't belong to these categories, to treat you as a delusional denying of human nature.

I would hurt not only your feelings, but through the actions of others, through what the thought of you for claiming you are classified as "Pneumenon" rather than "Judith Butler," your social standing, perception of you mental facilities and affect what other think you are capable of.

There is an ethical question and cost far beyond merely someone getting upset here.

So there is no "madness" at stake here, no ignoring what the world is in favour of some personal fantasy world. — TheWillowOfDarkness

You're not ignoring reality in favor of a personal fantasy world. You're ignoring reality in favor of a social fantasy world.

I would hurt not only your feelings, but through the actions of others, through what the thought of you for claiming you are classified as "Pneumenon" rather than "Judith Butler," your social standing, perception of you mental facilities and affect what other think you are capable of. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Feelings, classifications, social standing, and perception. No reality, though.

Feelings, classifications, social standing, and perception. No reality, though. — Pneumenon

In a sense, yes. And that is the problem with the accusation of ignoring reality. Classification is not any sort of object we are describing. There is no “reality” we are meeting when placing someone in a category. We are performing an indexical association, not describing a state of the world. The placement of someone in a category, even the “normal” categories, is not a description of any object we observe or can pick-up. There is no standard of “reality” to meet. To ask the question: “Is are classification accurate to reality?” does not make any sense. It isn’t doing this sort of descriptive work at any point. At this level, there is never any reality to our classifications, including the "normal" ones, and there never will be.

Unfortunately though, this is not what you mean. What you mean is that feelings, classifications, social standing and perception have no place in accounting our social reality, despite the fact they constitute our social existence. A position which either seeks to equivocate descriptions of social reality with something else or views them as irrelevant to analysing and talking about the world. Either way, it results in an abject failure to understand our social relationship, understanding of each other and how these interact to affect our states of experience. It seeks to ignore elements we must be interested in if we are to give an accurate account of our social relationships.

What results is a profoundly ignorant position which simultaneously treats the fictions of our classifications as if they were objects in the world (e.g. someone being classified as "male"= a body with a penis), while dismissing the existing states of our social interaction (feelings, acts of classification , social standing, perceptions) as irrelevant to giving an account of our social interactions. It is not only deeply unethical (ignoring how our social practices defined how others are treated), but is, with respect to giving descriptions of what is happening in society, anti-scientific, as it precludes talking about the exact states one needs to if they are to describe our existing social interactions.

In a sense, yes. And that is the problem with the accusation of ignoring reality. Classification is not any sort of object we are describing. There is no “reality” we are meeting when placing someone in a category. We are performing an indexical association, not describing a state of the world. The placement of someone in a category, even the “normal” categories, is not a description of any object we observe or can pick-up. There is no standard of “reality” to meet. To ask the question: “Is are classification accurate to reality?” does not make any sense. It isn’t doing this sort of descriptive work at any point. At this level, there is never any reality to our classifications, including the "normal" ones, and there never will be. — TheWillowOfDarkness

So, ah, at what point do social classifications become independent of reality? And how do we do this magic trick where we create a world that is completely separate from real things?

Unfortunately though, this is not what you mean. What you mean is that feelings, classifications, social standing and perception have no place in accounting our social reality, despite the fact they constitute our social existence. — TheWillowOfDarkness

So is our "social existence" (as opposed to the physical kind?) hermetically sealed off from the rest of reality, or is social consensus all that exists? Because if that's the case, you and I can enthusiastically agree that gravity isn't real, and then have a flying contest off the roof of the nearest bell tower. I'll go last.

That's a strawman. I was referring only to classification not being about "reality" in the sense they aren't descriptions of an object of the world, such as a person's biology, what crime someone has committed or someone's test scores.

To be classified as "male" is not a description of someone having a penis. To be proclaimed a "murderer" is not description of an act of killing. To be given a grade of A is not a description of one's correct answers in a test. Any of those classifications may be given to someone who does not exist in the manner that many would (foolishly) think is necessarily implied by the classification. Each of these classifications is a different to description. We use them as shorthand to imply someone about a person we haven't actually described, it index them to a meaning we think they ought to have in society, to proclaim there significance about a person we haven't described often in the service of achieving an ethical goal rather than what is true. In reality, they are nothing more than where we have categorised someone. Description of a person who actually exists in the implied way is absent. There is no standard of "accurately describe the object" to meet with a classification.

Our social classifications are most certainly not separate from reality in the sense belonging to the set of what exists or is true. Social classifications are existing acts. They are material states, just as our acts of eating breakfast, walking to the store or listening to music are. Physical states of the world, the same as any other (i.e. a states of existence). They constitute people having a particular understanding of others, they result in people taking particular acts towards others because of their classification or social standing, they form the presence of one set of outcomes for people as opposed to any other. Social consensus is a state of the world. It is physical in kind, like any other state of the world.

Trying maintain reality while making everything humans say arbitrary is a losing proposition.

Unless, you know, the world, states of existence (which uses of language are), are finite and arbitrary*....

*(as per QM and radical contingency).

You are trying to maintain the fantasy here. You are the one suggesting there must be a logical ideal from which the world necessarily results.

Spurious appeals to radical contingency and "quantum mechanics did it" don't stop the world from making sense. They also don't force reality to bend to social consensus.

I I doubt "irrespective" works here any more than it would as to any other category. I don't see this as a radical change, and think it's been coming about gradually. And I don't think the old categories will necessarily vanish. As long as they're useful, they'll be around. As for the new, we'll see. There's something intricate and artificial about them. I expect we'll see them used more by academics than others.

The world always make sense. Sense has never been at stake because classification is a different act to description. Each classification is its own language game. They all work. Since classification doesn't describe states of the world, there is no limit to sense of classification. Anyone can be, for example, classified as "male." It is merely a question of who someone is using the category for at the time. It is all question of "ought" not "is." When we classify, we are not describing what someone is or does, but rather specifying a category by which they ought to be understood.

"Bending the world" to a social consensus has not the point nor has it been attempted. Classification is its own state, a way of thinking and acting which exists concurrently with everything else. It is a state separate to both existence of an object and the existence of someone describing an object.

It isn't about new or old categories. The point is, rather, about what constitutes a category and how people belong to them. What is at stake is not any particular category, but rather understanding that our categorisation of ourselves and others is its one state of existence, as opposed to a feature or description of someone's biology or "human nature."

For good or ill, we can't disregard biology, and we do have characteristics which are peculiarly human relative to other creatures and things in the universe. It seems senseless to think otherwise, at least until we start altering ourselves physically and this becomes widespread. Even then biology and nature will largely dictate what we are, how we think, what we do. The problem is that we employ narrow categories and apply them in a simple-minded manner.

Okay, I give up. If you're going to take it as axiomatic that language or "classification" or whatever exists in a magical never-never land estranged from everything else, then I can't help you. I'll just classify you as "wrong" and be on my way.

That's a category error and a strawman. No-one has suggested any form of biological alteration, delusion about the body or that we are anything but our biology and nature. The point is how we categorise is its own particular state, an outcome of nature (ours and the environment), which is not any particular biological trait. Biology and nature aren't dictators of what we are. We don't sit outside ourselves necessitating what we are. Our biology and nature is ourself, including the states of our social interactions and experience.

Here the point has nothing to do with altering or ignoring biology. It is about recognising that acts of social categorisation are not any other state of ourselves. This point is about the meaning of categories, about avoiding the error of equivocating the separate states of a biological trait (e.g a penis) and the act of categorising someone (e.g. classing someone as "male").