Exactly. Treating a relative label, like masculinity, as an absolute descriptor, is a fundamental error. — LuckyR

Or you could say trying to pin down an essence will hide the fact that the term is half of a whole that can't stand independent if its opposite.

Or you could say trying to pin down an essence will hide the fact that the term is half of a whole that can't stand independent if its opposite

I don't disagree, though in my experience while masculinity is "opposed" by femininity, it is more useful to view them as opposite poles on a broad spectrum, rather than two sides of a dualist paradigm.

I don't disagree, though in my experience while masculinity is "opposed" by femininity, it is more useful to view them as opposite poles on a broad spectrum, rather than two sides of a dualist paradigm. — LuckyR

The advantage of that is that you have the middle point of the spectrum: the Hermaphrodite, which is a potent symbol.

That's a fair assessment, but people (here) are still mistaking my intervention here for a prescriptive one where it is intended to be only an allowance. — Isaac

Apologies if I've given this impression to you as well, it isn't my intention.

That my functionalist explanations are unwelcome is clear (to say the least), but that's not the issue. The issue is solely that those other explanations' dependencies, which you highlight above lack the concreteness required to find acts of disagreement with them to be acts of oppression. — Isaac

My sympathies are, I believe, functionalist too. So we have that as a shared background of understanding.

I don't actually think so. A perfectly good functionalist account of legal practice could still be given. We could say that when people carry out such-and-such an act, there is a tendency for another group to place some kind of curtailment on their freedom. In fact this explanation works better because it gives a closer account of why some criminals get away with their acts and why sometimes the police do not pursue a prosecution even though a criminal act has been committed. We are not compelled to discuss legal codes, we don't need them as principles and starting from that actually requires a whole load of caveats and addendums to make it fit the reality we experience, we could reduce them to mere mechanisms. — Isaac

It does depend upon what you want to do with the model. If we focussed on a particular law and its attendant behaviours, that law is indicated to provide a context of interpretation for correlating behaviours relevant to it. In that respect there are two regions of entities, the first contains laws and types of acts which break them, the second contains acts of their transgression and the curtailment of freedom. Those two vocabularies of description don't need to overlap on all points, but you do need to be able to take the context of interpretation on the law level of description to fix the relevant scope of tokens in the functional description context. You may also need to propagate back from the functionalist context to the law one to refine scope.

An example there might be Kahnneman and Tversky's analysis of sentences meted out by judges for similar crimes before and after their coffee break. They were different. To analyse that, you need to posit court proceedings in a more functional register in order to model how the enactment of the ruled laws is dependent upon (what count as) contingent properties of the acts of judgement on the law level. Nevertheless, if you wanted to study the rulings on a particular law using the latter functional vocabulary, you would use precisely that construct to fix the scope of which judgement occasions were present in the function level construct you were correlating events in those which involved the chosen law in the law level construct.

I think either construal can be done without granting an unrestricted sense of concreteness to any of the entities in this discussion - laws in legal construct land, correlated classes of behaviours in function land. Neither is "fundamentally" more real than the other, since they're both means of differentiating a shared substrate of less conceptualised tokens (events, behaviours, perceptions, coffee breaks) that both registers of descriptions parse in overlapping but distinct manners.

Introducing a functionalist vocabulary of description, then, will de-concretise a subject matter previously articulated in terms of pre individuated posits for methodological reasons rather than ontological ones. As a choice of lens on a shared substrate of events, rather than as stipulations of ontological primitives in that shared substrate. This occurs whenever you hold two vocabularies of description up side by side. Like previous references to hormones and desires+sensations - grehlin and hunger.

I understand the following as the move you're making in this discussion:

An effect holding up a functionalist description alongside a non-functionalist one, of the same subject matter, has is that the application of the functionalist description style deconcretises entities in the non-functionalist one. That makes it difficult to predicate or apply judgements to the entities construed in the non-functionalist account because the means by which they were individuated from a background context has been challenged. As an example, one could only consider a law just if that law can be sensibly posited as an entity in the context it would be judged. If a functionalist vocabulary of description applied to that context construes positing such that law as a contestable act, then it is no longer necessary to consider the law as just, or unjust, in the manner it may previously have been as the law was inappropriately reified in that discourse. — fdrake, summarising an imaginary Isaac

All is well and good with that. I agree that it is a sensible way of think of the effect of introducing a functionalist vocabulary of description. But I want to highlight that, if I've read you right, the underlying logic of the move - introducing a functionalist vocabulary of description - lets you doubt the conditions of individuating posited entities in any non-functionalist language of description concerned with the same subject matter.

It also isn't a unique feature of functionalism - eg do you see atoms as atoms or as quantum clouds? It's a feature of holding up two perspectives of the world which individuate (more nebulously encountered/less precisely conceptualised) events differently.

In that regard, the move is the metaethical equivalent of carpet bombing. If we grant that the side by side comparison is ground to doubt any normative claim - due to the underlying mismatch in how tokens are grouped/individuated in the functionalist and non-functionalist description types -, we'd grant that it applies to all normative claims which permit of at least one functionalist and one non-functionalist means of conceptualising them. That scope is extremely broad.

However, it's ultimately a methodological move rather than an ontological one - about a means of describing a more nebulously encountered/less conceptually precise subject matter than what it somehow "contains". No descriptive category would be committed to reified entities if the ability to hold perspectives which differ in this manner, side by side, on the same subject matter was employed.

The only way that this reification takes place is that someone treats any mode of description as having ontologically privileged entities in it. Which is good to highlight when it happens. But it should also be acknowledged that our beloved carpet bombing melts categories like sex as well as law, perception, gender, norms of scientific reasoning, good practices of inferences... Everything really. I think this also chimes with @Moliere.

It's also thus an inappropriate intervention in an inference between one regime and the "downstream" norms which apply to it. As it undermines the ability to construe that regime in a manner which allows norms to be applied to it in the first place.

However, that inappropriateness only applies, I believe, when the move being applied is holding up a functionalist description next to another description. Rather than seeing the subject matter through functional and non-functional means. If the norms are downstream of the non-functional articulation of the subject matter, we could see how a functionalist description of the subject matter perturbs (allegedly) downstream norms concerning the entities it conceptualises. This is why I highlighted the intersection between describing behaviour and sensations + the phenomenology of trans embodiment + speech acts declaring gender, it's a connection which allows the mutual perturbation of all of those regimes.

Why I brought up that example is that it illustrates that none of the vocabularies of description need to be discarded, even after their entities are seen as deconcretised. Since deconcretisation is a function of making another map, rather than changing the territory.

This is a very simplified story though, as I'm sure @Moliere would be keen to point out that we can't just adopt these perspectives like we'd change scientific instruments, we theorise from within them. In that regard the norms are never downstream of any folk vocabulary of description. And since the semantic resources of folk vocabularies are used in the articulation of non-folk ones, we have good reason to believe that the principles which flesh out the entities in non-folk categories of description are also tainted by the messiness of the folk ones. Which isn't to say folk categories get the entities right, it's to say folk categorisations and norms of association act as a constraint on forming new vocabularies especially on relatively novel social phenomena. Like there being a decent case (already gestured toward) that gender came before sex "in the order of knowing", even if not before it in the order of being.

Masculinity, like anything else, stands out against a backdrop of its negation. You'll pick up on your own masculinity when faced with an opposition to it: your wife, mother, daughter, female divinity, female archetype, etc.

Is it a piece of genitalia or genetics that makes the masculine? Yes and no. Imagine that every human has a penis. We reproduce with machines that produce new creatures with penises. Will a penis mean "male?". No, it will just be part of "human "

But in a world with humans who don't have penises, having one means something. It means something. See what I mean? — frank

I generally view your opening with favor -- we come to understand a great deal of our concepts through contrasting them with other concepts: But my contention has been that the backdrop of masculinities' negation is childhood, rather than the feminine.

In a culture which covers up the penis, then the penis isn't as important to gender-identity as many other things that we actually do get to see on the regular.

Now in any given gender-identity -- here speaking in general of a particular identity some individual would affirm they are -- one may be attached to the body in such a way that the identity wants the penis, or identifies with the penis, or is the penis. When speaking of wanting someone in the way that a man wants we usually can pick up on the erotic desire being expressed, and understand that this is an expression of an individual's sexual desire, and if we're sexually active with that person and have pleasured their penis before then, and only then, is the penis a part of our mutual understanding of that gender-identity. In one sense there's the relational element of a self to the body, and then there's the relational element of the penis to a sexual partner who affirms the penis in their desire for it.

But what of the impotent man who, in his manly way, had it blown off by a land mine but still has sexual desires as a man does?

I'd suggest that the bodily attachment is just one way to relate to our masculinity, and that we're not just our penis. In fact we can be a man without it entirely.

I'd suggest that the bodily attachment is just one way to relate to our masculinity, and that we're not just our penis. In fact we can be a man without it entirely. — Moliere

I agree. My point was that the constitution of masculinity is in what it's not as much as in what it is. It's one of those obscure MerleauPonty type things, although it goes back to Plato.

Much of the time we are all covered up--chests, breasts, vulvas, penises, balls, butts, arm pits, knees... "Why are we covered up?" has been asked and discussed often enough. Many people are embarrassed by their naked bodies because we are always clothed. There are a few situations when we are naked with strangers -- shower rooms at gyms and pools, for example. These are healthy settings, but are usually rushed. A sauna is less rushed, but time limited -- unless one wants to end up cooked.

A nude beach or nudist camp is more 'therapeutic' because our nakedness is prolonged and not instrumental -- naked for the purpose of washing up. Uncovering everything -- neck to ankle -- is good for anyone with "body issues" provided one is reasonably selective about where one undresses. A highly competitive gym might not be the best place for a skinny, out of shape, or fat person to compare physiques. Better are places with a normal mix of body types and details into which an individual fits.

Actually, one trip to a nudist camp or nude beach may be enough. The first time I undressed completely on a nude beach was the cure. The many repeat visits was just for fun.

In a culture which covers up the penis, then the penis isn't as important to gender-identity as many other things that we actually do get to see on the regular. — Moliere

Or the penis may become more important because it is always covered up.

Men whose penises have been blown off, shot off, or ruined by cancer greatly desire a replacement -- either one fashioned from his own tissue or a transplant (some penis transplants have been done). Even if the replacement is not 100% functional, the essential piece of tissue is present. Appearances have been preserved. Better, of course, if it works.

Some men (many?) seem to be anxious about exposing their penises to unflattering comparison with other men's dicks. A lot of this anxiety derives from too little exposure to what other penises actually look like. So, quite often there is furtive glancing to the side while standing at urinals.

Too much masculinity is invested in the penis--a mistake. Masculinity is found in the whole body and in the brain. The penis doesn't hang alone as the sole signal of masculinity, and the penis doesn't 'produce' masculinity. Men with big dicks are not more masculine than men with small dicks.

Or the penis may become more important because it is always covered up. — BC

True! Especially in self-evaluation we certainly have some kind of attachment to our body.

But unless we actually want men to have penises, we make this judgment sans-knowledge of the physical make-up of most people's sensitive parts. That is the way we normally use the word isn't really in reference to a particular person's genitals (making room for the notion that our judgment of whether a person is a man is in relation to whether he has grown up, i.e., boyhood rather than womanhood)

Too much masculinity is invested in the penis--a mistake. Masculinity is found in the whole body and in the brain. The penis doesn't hang alone as the sole signal of masculinity, and the penis doesn't 'produce' masculinity. Men with big dicks are not more masculine than men with small dicks. — BC

Yup, I agree.

:up: I enjoyed reading.

Thanks for the interesting comment @Srap Tasmaner.

Right, "stream" and "creek" are different words that denote the same things, meaning -- at least in this case, maybe not in all cases -- they also have the same function within people's regional dialects. That function relates regularities in the physical environment to regularities in speech behavior. It's not that functionalism ends up having no role here, because it's functionalism that identifies the equivalence of "stream" and "creek," so functionalism can answer the question "Why do say 'creek'?" but it can't answer the question "Why do you say 'creek' instead of 'stream'?" — Srap Tasmaner

I'm gonna get some symbols out. Most of this is trying to understand your position, then trying to relate it to other comments in the threat.

Let's say there's a class of entities E. Some of these are small watery bodies which can be correctly referred to as streams, creeks, cricks etc. This has the flavour of a set:

E= {the union canal, the water of Inverleith, the Thames..}

In writing it down, there's an act of the imagination which leverages previous uses of language, and knowledge of bodies of water, to put distinct named entities in the set. I think that the predicate "is stream" and "is a creek" would have the same extension in E. Since everything that is a stream is a creek.

There's no reason, which could be derived from that extension alone, to explain why someone would use "is a creek" vs "is a stream" in everyday language. Since by stipulation everything which is a creek is a stream. Therefore, as you say, an account could explain why someone uses "is a creek" rather than "is a stream" through the history of language use without reference to the ability to discriminate between tokens which satisfy "is a creek" vs tokens which satisfy "is a stream" - like the Thames vs the water of Inverleith.

Your first point was that gender might not be an observable regularity like a creek, so an object like 'man' might be in part determined by whether people say 'man' of it, and so on, practices, comportment towards, blah blah blah. This would speak to Isaac's constructivist tendencies, 'man' as off the shelf narrative for making sense of things.

I see two ways of reading this, the use of "is a man".

1 ) "is a man" has an arbitrary extension because (it's a discursive, historical practice and the only thing which fixes it is that practice)
2 ) "is a man" has a non-arbitrary extension because (it's a discursive, historical practice and the only thing which fixes it is that practice).

I have deep reservations about that account because there are extremely salient observable differences between people because humans reproduce sexually and always have, just like our ancestors who lacked speech and culture. I think it likely we make almost exactly the same sort of intuitive inferences about the sex of members of our species as other mammals do. The question would be whether those intuitive inferences play a major role in our speech and culture or have they long since been swamped by other factors. Unclear to me, but even infants seem to distinguish male and female early, so I'd count that as evidence the machinery I'd expect to be there is there.

I'd have strong reservations about ( 1 ), too, because that would make the discrimination between instances of tokens which satisfy "is a man" arbitrary. Like "is a stream" vs "is a creek". I'd have fewer reservations about ( 2 ) because the extension which is fixed "only" by discursive, historical practices can nevertheless leverage (weasel word placeholder) properties of (synthesised classes of) the referred to objects. Like the presence of breasts in discriminating a woman from a man - not perfect, but a sufficient regularity that it goes into the "what a woman looks like" norm and also into the "what man should not have" norm.

An initial distinction between "is a man" vs "is a creek" is that the former is harder to treat extensionally. There's wiggle room about what counts as a small stream, but no wiggle room about some strongly characteristic properties - it's gotta be small, there must be water, the water must run. Those let you rule out, I believe, any entity from streamhood or creekhood or whatever, and probably suffice for showing an entity is a creek (up to wrangling about "small"). Contrast "is a man", where strongly characteristic properties can be deleted and preserve the predicate - like having vs not having a dick - or be present in women - like being highly muscular and having a deep voice.

Satisfying the predicate "is tall, has short hair, is very muscular, has a deep voice" - stereotypical attributes of a bloke - could serve as a good reason to declare someone a bloke. A justification of the speech act. And that reason would serve regardless of whether the person "ontologically"is "really" a bloke. Vs counting as a bloke in a nebulously defined circumstance.

But we're not nearly done with functionalism, because one key question is whether everyone saying "I'm a boy" is even doing the same kind of thing.

It's a good question.

Such a claim could be overwhelmingly down to the sex-determining mechanism evolution bequeathed you

Yes. "It's a boy" at birth because dick (as the story goes) and...

, or it could serve a psychological or a social role.

"I'm a boy" as a result of self exploration and embodiment constraints (insert possible phenomenology of trans embodiment here)

Or all of the above.

But even before trying to figure that out -- which looks daunting -- we have to think carefully about where the functional account takes hold and where it doesn't. That is -- and now we're coming back to creeks and streams -- there might be a nice functional account of why you say "I'm a boy" but not of why you say "I'm a boy" instead of "I'm a girl," because that might be just a matter of personal history, like saying "girl" instead of "femme" or "Fraulein", or like saying "creek" instead of "stream".

Yeah! I think that is a good point. Functionalist approaches here work like an acid, annihilating salient distinctions as well as irrelevant ones, by treating every means of counting as X in the same socially constructed, designated token indifferent manner. Even when there's stronger constraints on what to count as X entails, like the stream (as a token).

Sorry that's a lot of words that don't advance any particular claim or the discussion. Just really clarifying for myself as much as anything where I think the discussion stands.

It was a good post. I'd be interested in hearing what you think of my response to @Isaac here. I trust the functionalism (with reservations), but like you I don't trust the arbitrariness using that in an unrestricted manner suggests about what counts as a man in our common uses of the word.

I've really been going hard on the Sellars huh.

Functionalist approaches here work like an acid, annihilating salient distinctions as well as irrelevant ones — fdrake

I accused @Isaac of almost exactly this a long time ago, of more or less ignoring the truth-value of an individual's statements and treating them simply as, shall we say, "responses," such as a social psychologist might elicit when doing research. The interesting thing about responses (mostly, not entirely) is not whether they're "true" but what buckets we can classify them into, how they correlate with other observables, etc.

But the other part of @Isaac's approach is some version of pragmatism, so "truth" was already off the table. People say what they say because it works for them, for whatever definition of 'works,' probably dependent on context. And obviously functional accounts are designed to answer the question, works at what? So not only does pragmatism create an opening for functionalist explanations, it invites them. Some people are going to think they're pushing back on the functionalism, when they're really pushing back on the pragmatism; that's clear enough in this thread, where it's natural to take identity claims as having a truth-value, and some will even insist that they do.

All of which is to say that in part this discussion struggles with anti-realism of the sort Dummett described. If I believe there's no fact of the matter about someone's gender, what I say might strike you as ignoring a crucial question of truth, namely the proper extension of a predicate.

What you describe as eating through all distinctions captures that anti-realism, but it's not the functionalism it's the pragmatism, and it's only all distinctions if pragmatism amounts to a super-mega-ultra functionalism, which it kinda does. But there are stopping points along the way, and that's obvious in the sort of functionalism you find in anthropology and linguistics. There are structures that are relatively fixed because the behavior analysed is said to play a role advancing a goal, which is also treated as relatively fixed. (Communication, social cohesion, etc.) You can always take one more step on the pragmatist highway and ask what purpose those goals serve, and eventually, but maybe very eventually, you'll land at homeostasis (if you're Damasio) or surprise minimization (if you're Friston) or maybe apo's thing.

That's my understanding, and that's another post not really advancing a position. I will try to come back to this later. I do want more biology and less culture than @Isaac, I think, which won't endear me to anyone.

(Btw, have you looked much at Sellars's inferential semantics? All I remember is that he starts with an explicitly functional account, "English •red•s are German •Rot•s" and so on. I never got very far in those papers. And I don't do Brandom, because I'm not that cool.)

I've really been going hard on the Sellars huh. — fdrake

I kinda like the way he writes, torturous as it is. (There's at least one long audio-only lecture on YouTube, and it helps to hear his prosody. He tends, as I do, to overdo it with the parenthetical constructions.)

On the other hand, there might be no harm in replacing

the semantic resources of folk vocabularies — fdrake

with something like

words

YMMV

Sellars's inferential semantics — Srap Tasmaner

Nothing in depth, SEP's article and Brassier's talk on it. I've been trying to use what I know in the posts, but I don't have the comfort level for an in depth discussion of it. AFAIK Sellars is also functionalist and a form of pragmatist with respect to truth. "Means" is illustrative, it's not a relationship between a word and a thing because it's not a relationship at all - the best you get is that one word (or speech act) precisely illustrates another. In addition, what it means for a statement to be true is for it to count as correctly assertible in a given context - which is a question of making the right moves for producing correct statements in that context.

I think a point of tension between (what I understand of) Sellars and (what I understand of) @Isaac 's functionalism+pragmatism cocktail is that Sellars allows some room for isomorphic relationships of the entities in some speech acts to environmental objects. Like when we were discussing creek and crick like what counts as a crick counts as a creek, that "what" requires a coordinating series of instances which makes (what counts as a creek) equivalent to (what counts as a crick). And that equivalence is more of a... logistics of organising items of language... than a semantic relationship of expressions. Pragmatism in a "use theory of meaning" and "use theory of truth" rather than pragmatism having "correctness = best approximation" and "belief = tendency to act as if".

Whereas I read Isaac as highlighting that the fact that the "underlying substrate" of language use can't be reached, thus everything is arbitrary up to how it's used. I don't think Sellars would agree with the arbitrariness.

YMMV — Srap Tasmaner

LOL. Thou hast zinged me.

It did not cross my mind that words alone would have counted. The picture in my head was of speech acts of identification and the underlying norms which enable them, which aren't all words. Intuitions. Sensations. Wanted to be broad. Like why not treat pain as part of the semantical resources of folk vocabulary when we can say "pain", just a feeling brah.

Thou hast zinged me. — fdrake

But I did so knowing there would be a perfectly cogent explanation for why the more flexible locution was preferable.

I'll get back to you on the other stuff.

arbitrariness — fdrake

The other way to say that is "random variation".

For all these cases, there are only statistical regularities. Whether something fits a set of criteria for being a stream rather than a river, whether someone from a given region will call that a "stream" or a "creek", whether someone fits a set of criteria for being a man, whether someone who does (to whatever degree) will identify as a "man" or as a "woman".

@Isaac's interest -- as I understand it -- is not the essence of manhood, or why people identify as man or woman, or even why people might try very hard to get people to talk the way they want them to, but the relative speed, if not quite readiness, with which trans-inclusive -- arguably, "trans-centric" -- vocabulary has been taken up by institutions, celebrities, the very online, anyone in a spotlight.

You want to make the point, I think, that because "man" and friends are only statistical regularities, that -- something, I'm not clear. Freedom. @Isaac counters that the moves that come next are also just statistical regularities ("responses"), and therefore -- I don't know, power, capital, big pharma.

You think there's a salient methodological difference between your approach and his, but to me you're just applying population analysis to different phenomena (real people for you, things people say for him) and then taking the fact that you can choose such a population to analyze as support for what you wanted to say next anyway: a struggle you want to support, a power structure he wants to highlight.

The other way to say that is "random variation". — Srap Tasmaner

I don't trust random variation as a concept here. When I think about random variation, I imagine that it occurs along a predefined concept. Like you repeat a measurement of pressure, and the measurements are different due to unpredictable atmospheric fluctuations, thus the results differ. That's random variation, but of pressure. The system you're measuring is the same regardless of the result of the measured variable within it.

The salient distinction between random variation and what I intended to convey was the multiplicity and ambiguity of what system is "being measured". Or out of the analogy, what the underlying concept and/or construct under analysis is - what are the operative rules, what are the acts of conceptualising tokens relevant to gender aggregating and filtering into tropes of those tokens. Like does woman mean no pee pee, but what about if demipenis?

Where I was going with the stream example comparison, setting up an "isomorphism" is that I see Sellars as opening up a flavour of naturalism with the functionalism, when those tropes are constrained by regularities in the phenomena in question. Like we know natal sex and gender have a strong relationship, so our conceptualisation of gender should be able to include a relationship between those. And we know that recognising someone as a gender depends on their behaviour and appearance, so that should go into the concept somehow.

Which is also a restatement of the debate we're having, opening it up again, but that is intentional. I read @Isaac as denying that these tropes' contents are attenuated by regularities - so the existence of the tropes is causally influenced by regularities, but not what goes in them. Like we could have conceived of gender as separate from genital presence/absence, and can come up with a purely functional description of people without necessarily using either category. But the fact that we could create this functional perspective alone doesn't, thus, undermine the presence of constraints induced on those tropes by regularities. Thus there is room to make the content of our concepts "non-arbitrary" without "fixing" that content as a collection of essential characteristics (and entities) within what the content regards.

Whereas I read Isaac as highlighting that the fact that the "underlying substrate" of language use can't be reached, thus everything is arbitrary up to how it's used. I don't think Sellars would agree with the arbitrariness. — fdrake

(self quote)

When it's granted that a functional description of a phenomenon in a context deconcretises the entities we take as present in that context , that thus isn't sufficient to show that the deconcretisation destabilises regularities in that context which were previously expressed using the behaviour of the concretised entities . When you referenced Sellars' inferential semantics, I think this construction is effectively quantifying over phrase "senses", what count as as what. To be clear, those sortals are concepts which aggregate and judge relatively nondescript tokens in the subject matter into intelligible chunks. And those acts of judgement, themselves, may be coordinated by some regularities in the subject matter - like the smallness of the stream. In essence, what commits us to the inference that this or that body of water is a creek would commit us to the inference that the same body of water is a crick, but not necessarily promote the same speech acts!

Having one's functionalist cake and eating a real cake too, even if it might be a soft layer biscuit or granular chocolate arranged cylinderwise.

So if I can put it into something like a syllogism:

1 ) If there is room for doubt about the terms of debate regarding gender norms in terms of the ability to conceive of gender in a functional fashion, then that doubt arises from the deconcretising effect of the functional description on the entities in the debate.
2 ) The deconcretising effect of a functional description on the subject matter tokens (bodies, behaviours etc) in the debate operates by undermining the norms by which tokens are aggregated into relatively stable entities/posits in that debate.
3 ) If ( 2 ) is true, then either the aggregation of tokens into relatively stable entities is undermined in virtue of the ability to provide an alternative grouping of tokens, or by the fact that this instability highlights that any grouping of tokens must proceed solely upon the basis of fiat.
3 ) The first disjunct in 3 - If the aggregation of tokens into relatively stable entities is undermined in virtue of the ability to provide an alternative grouping of tokens, this applies to any issue which a functionalist perspective can be applied to - which, I believe, is any issue. Hence the "meta-ethical equivalent of carpet bombing" comments.
4 ) The second disjunct in 3 - if the aggregation of tokens in a subject matter into relatively stable entities is undermined by the fact that these groupings must proceed solely upon the basis of fiat, then those groupings should not be constrained by empirical regularities in the tokens that coordinate word uses about them (like the small stream to "crick" and "creek").
5 ) I've provided an alternative functional approach where "the empirical regularities in the tokens" coordinate word uses in the subject. In this case things like social performance, the phenomenology of trans embodiment and so on. Stressing that the empirical regularities don't let you "read off" entities from the world in pre-individuated non-conceptualised chunks, but acts of conceptual judgement are nevertheless coordinated with each other through regularities in the subject matter tokens they concern.

So I believe we're in a place where either the capacity for a functionalist description of a subject matter works on everything, and thus works like "the meta ethical equivalent of carpet bombing" or alternatively we can debate whether the capacity for functionalist description necessarily precludes coordinating regularities in those descriptions' subject matter, like the spatial properties of the stream which enable it to correctly be called a creek or a crick.

We've yet to have that debate about coordinating regularities. I'm mostly writing this to orient where I am in the discussion too.

You want to make the point, I think, that because "man" and friends are only statistical regularities, that -- something, I'm not clear. Freedom. Isaac counters that the moves that come next are also just statistical regularities ("responses"), and therefore -- I don't know, power, capital, big pharma. — Srap Tasmaner

So my interest is ultimately about the nature of inferences in this discussion, rather than about the entities in question. The bridging of the inferential aspects of this discussion and the entities in its subject matter was achieved, I think, through the references to the deconcretising effects of functionalist description. So my recent intervention in this discussion is bombing the bridge.

Why would I bomb the bridge? I imagine it's because Isaac and I have a longstanding disagreement on whether the "true nature of conception" has to turn you into some form of Kantian within a transparent veil of judgement, or whether you can keep a qualified realism. And it shows up most places we disagree on things. And also because I don't think the inference works and I am a pedant.

On the record, I'm definitely more sympathetic to the trans rights groups and the attendant lobby than Isaac is, but I also think these things should be talked about in depth for ethical reasons. And also because when some norms of society are made a/recognised as a nonsense that's practically an invitation to philosophise.

what the underlying concept and/or construct under analysis is - what are the operative rules, what are the acts of conceptualising tokens relevant to gender aggregating and filtering into tropes of those tokens — fdrake

There are a couple different ways we can approach the concept of concept here: there are empirical questions about when and how members of a given population acquire a concept we're familiar with; there are questions about the content of that concept, empirical questions about how members of a population actually use it, and methodological questions about how we categorize data. There's some trouble here, because we might want to say that two people have different versions of a concept, and this comes out in the differing ways they use it, but why say that instead of saying that they just have different concepts, even if they denote those concepts by the same word? I don't think there's a simple answer to that.

I think part of the problem is imagining a concept as an unchanging mental tool. It's not just that individuals might use a concept differently, but the same individual might use it differently over time or in differing contexts -- 'context' here being quite broad, since the difference might be mental rather than environmental.

Suppose instead we start with the assumption that a concept is a behavior policy that is designed to be revised. I can think of two natural ways this happens: you might initially categorize an individual (correctly, given your current version of the concept) as falling under a concept, but revise the concept so as to exclude them; or you might initially exclude an individual (again, correctly) but then revise the concept so as to include them. Categorization mistakes -- which I'm distinguishing, perhaps without justification, from revision prompts -- might not be completely irrelevant: if your current version of a concept is particularly prone to application error, that in itself might be reason to revise it, and, on the other hand, concepts that almost never fail might be particularly resistant to revision. And there's cost: concepts are cost-effective simplifications, so a concept that's 80-90% right and cheap is going to be more useful than a much more expensive concept that's a few basis points more reliable.

This is one of the issues behind my "random variation" comment: there will always be exceptions, both for the sort of psychology I'm describing above, and when doing analysis and building a model. (The two processes differ only in resource constraints.) I think some exceptions lead to revising and some don't, and how that happens or doesn't is the interesting bit -- we're talking about learning. And analytically, we're in the same boat: some variations are just noise, but some we choose to treat as noise because they're not what we're interested in.

And "interested in" brings us back to the point of concepts and some kind of functionalism, because concepts have a role to play, they have a use. It's one of the things I find a little unnerving about your account: it's very highly intellectualized. So while I see the point (even with scare quotes) of

"empirical regularities in the tokens" — fdrake

I think it's a mistake to describe them "purely" this way -- it has to be empirical regularities that matter to us, or to the wombat or to the aardvark or whatever. I'm not sure the "disinterested" concept is a thing.

And here I would distinguish between the rationality of a concept, meaning "goal advancing", and its reasonableness, meaning "defensible to another". Revisions to a concept "toward" disinterestedness (if that's a thing) will be along one of these axes, I should think, but they're not necessarily the same. A concept that's cheap but slightly inaccurate, for instance, might be rational but difficult to defend or to persuade another to adopt. (And people will likely hold proposed concept revisions to a higher, or at any rate different, standard than their original process of concept formation had to meet. In some cases, those processes may be just unrelated.) When you say you're more interested in the inferences than the entities in our discussion, that suggests to me the "reason" side of things rather than the "rationality", but I'm not at all sure you're distinguishing those as I would, so "inferences" for you might be taking in what I would lean toward treating as two different sorts of things.

I am, for the moment anyway, avoiding questions about the epistemological status of the regularities our concepts relate to. I don't have an account I'm really comfortable with. If the discussion turns on that, I don't have much to say, except to describe the difficulty I find myself in.

I think there are chunks of your post left unaddressed here, which I hope is fine, we're not really debating so much as exchanging ideas at this point.

***

Sad that a good chunk of this turns out to be a long-winded way of saying "context-sensitive and purpose-relative" which I have tried, unsuccessfully it seems, to swear off.

I think there are chunks of your post left unaddressed here, which I hope is fine, we're not really debating so much as exchanging ideas at this point. — Srap Tasmaner

Yep!

There are a couple different ways we can approach the concept of concept here: there are empirical questions about when and how members of a given population acquire a concept we're familiar with; there are questions about the content of that concept, empirical questions about how members of a population actually use it, and methodological questions about how we categorize data. There's some trouble here, because we might want to say that two people have different versions of a concept, and this comes out in the differing ways they use it, but why say that instead of saying that they just have different concepts, even if they denote those concepts by the same word? I don't think there's a simple answer to that. — Srap Tasmaner

There's some trouble here, because we might want to say that two people have different versions of a concept, and this comes out in the differing ways they use it, but why say that instead of saying that they just have different concepts, even if they denote those concepts by the same word? I don't think there's a simple answer to that. — Srap Tasmaner

I think that's true. Do you think this analysis also applies to crick vs creek? Maybe we can sidestep the issue of whether your potato is my potato by saying that both are correctly assertible in "the same conditions". As for what "the same conditions" are, I have no idea.

Sad that a good chunk of this turns out to be a long-winded way of saying "context-sensitive and purpose-relative" which I have tried, unsuccessfully it seems, to swear off. — Srap Tasmaner

Seems your context relativity is my ceteris paribus.

I think part of the problem is imagining a concept as an unchanging mental tool. It's not just that individuals might use a concept differently, but the same individual might use it differently over time or in differing contexts -- 'context' here being quite broad, since the difference might be mental rather than environmental. — Srap Tasmaner

I think that's also true. There's another parsing where they're using different concepts, and what changes is their relationship with them. Though the individuating processes of concepts, and the entities within them, are still an issue in both accounts.

And here I would distinguish between the rationality of a concept, meaning "goal advancing", and its reasonableness, meaning "defensible to another". Revisions to a concept "toward" disinterestedness (if that's a thing) will be along one of these axes, I should think, but they're not necessarily the same. A concept that's cheap but slightly inaccurate, for instance, might be rational but difficult to defend or to persuade another to adopt. (And people will likely hold proposed concept revisions to a higher, or at any rate different, standard than their original process of concept formation had to meet. In some cases, those processes may be just unrelated.)
— Srap Tasmaner

When you say you're more interested in the inferences than the entities in our discussion, that suggests to me the "reason" side of things rather than the "rationality", but I'm not at all sure you're distinguishing those as I would, so "inferences" for you might be taking in what I would lean toward treating as two different sorts of things.

The interest in inferences I said, sorry, is just the one we ended up talking about with functionalist accounts. So yes I think this is "reason" rather than "rationality". Largely reason within this thread.

But I suppose also more broadly now that you mention it. I don't much care what someone identifies as, I'll try to treat them as what they say they are, or failing that what they seem to me to be. I don't expect rationality in that, other than that it feels right to them. I'd expect (something closer to) rationality in a law about it though. I do care about what would make that identification count as correct, in the abstract, quite a lot though - which I imagine is about the "reason" side of things.

We're also quite close to a fundamental dispute about the role of political power in the generation of concepts, but I hope we can put that aside too.

Suppose instead we start with the assumption that a concept is a behavior policy that is designed to be revised. I can think of two natural ways this happens: you might initially categorize an individual (correctly, given your current version of the concept) as falling under a concept, but revise the concept so as to exclude them; or you might initially exclude an individual (again, correctly) but then revise the concept so as to include them. Categorization mistakes -- which I'm distinguishing, perhaps without justification, from revision prompts -- might not be completely irrelevant: if your current version of a concept is particularly prone to application error, that in itself might be reason to revise it, and, on the other hand, concepts that almost never fail might be particularly resistant to revision. And there's cost: concepts are cost-effective simplifications, so a concept that's 80-90% right and cheap is going to be more useful than a much more expensive concept that's a few basis points more reliable. — Srap Tasmaner

I think some exceptions lead to revising and some don't, and how that happens or doesn't is the interesting bit -- we're talking about learning. And analytically, we're in the same boat: some variations are just noise, but some we choose to treat as noise because they're not what we're interested in. — Srap Tasmaner

And "interested in" brings us back to the point of concepts and some kind of functionalism, because concepts have a role to play, they have a use. It's one of the things I find a little unnerving about your account: it's very highly intellectualized. So while I see the point (even with scare quotes) of — Srap Tasmaner

I think it's a mistake to describe them "purely" this way -- it has to be empirical regularities that matter to us, or to the wombat or to the aardvark or whatever. I'm not sure the "disinterested" concept is a thing. — Srap Tasmaner

I also don't believe in the "disinterested concept" if it comes down to brass tacks. More or less disinterested concepts, maybe. More or less disinterested uses of concepts, yes. I didn't mean to construe those empirical regularities as non-conceptualised observables, like raw sense data impressed upon a blank mind, rather as occasions which constrain our behaviour and what may be correctly asserted. Though there's also context sensitivity in what counts as an occasion and what counts as correctly assertible. I suppose that is unavoidable.

So regarding categorization mistakes, we could agree that calling the Thames a creek is incorrect because it's not a small stream. If a person believed things like the Thames counted as a creek, and they found they were wrong, they would be prompted to revise their understanding of the concept along with changing the use of the word; learning what counts as a creek.

We seem to be precisely in a period of transition about what counts as a man or a woman. So what's correctly assertible as a man, or a woman, is up for grabs. Which gives us the political power discussion again. If the norms regarding who counts as what are changing in all contexts, we can't say in a disinterested fashion that any person counts as anything else with regard to some norm without it being a political act in virtue of prompting others to adopt our use of language.

I'm really not sure what we can do with the discussion if it bottoms out in an "ontology and epistemology are politically relative in times of transition". Pick your poison I suppose. Interested deployment of concepts to the highest degree. We might end up having to accept different schemes of classification (gender, legal gender, protected category gender) for what were, originally, the same concept (sex=gender).

Not sure where to go from here, but I would add this: I think an individual is a community; I think much of our behavior, including our verbal and social behavior, is driven by specialized processes that are somewhat independent of each other.

Sometimes when we readily agree, it's because we might as well be talking to ourselves; there are very similar mechanisms in our brains making very similar inferences.

Narrative is a way of unifying our intuitions, our inferences, our behavior. The difficulty trans people face in coming up with a unifying narrative about themselves is similar to the problems others face in coming up with a unifying narrative about them. We might readily agree on a number of details, while taking very different approaches to crafting a narrative to unify those details.

So there's a question: these unifying narratives, why do we produce them and how? Given that our brains do so much so similarly, how does this end up giving rise to such dramatic differences?

Not sure where to go from here — Srap Tasmaner

Same. I think we went to the bottom of the barrel and found out that the answer was in another barrel. If it exists at all.

I'll have a think and get back to you.

I've been reading along and have appreciated the back and forth. No concrete thoughts on my end, but I wanted to give a good hurrah for your shared reflections.