In all of this migrating comments nonsense, this didn't get transferred:

Because ey don't identify as being male or female, and, so, it is not correct to subjectify them as either. By doing so, you have referred to another subject who is not present.

I will also begin demanding that you refer to me by the pronoun "xe" if you don't just decide to agree with — thewonder

Holy moley--"correct" again.

There is no "correct" when it comes to this stuff.

I demand that you let me use language however I want to. I don't identify as a conformist to what others want.

You seem very confused. Do you know the meaning of the word "exception"? — S

Oy vey.

Pee Wee, is that you ?

I'll just point out that your above statement is self-defeating, as it is itself an exception to the fallacy of appealing to the masses — S

What's the appeal to the masses there?

I didn't say anything like "There are no exceptions to it by popular view, so that's correct."

That means that there are. — hairy belly

Topsy turvy day?

It does if that's the criterion for correctness. And of course there are exceptions. There are plenty of exceptions. — S

No, there aren't.

Because ey don't identify as being male or female, and, so, it is not correct to subjectify them as either. — thewonder

Holy moley--"correct" again.

There is no "correct" when it comes to this stuff.

I demand that you let me use language however I want to. I don't identify as a conformist to what others want.

Do you get my meaning? If so, then what’s the problem? — Noah Te Stroete

Your "meaning," I'd say--sure. I can understand unusual usages of terms. Which is my point. You don't have to use the term the same way I do, or the same way that most people do, in order for others to understand you.

“Correct” as in that it works. A concept’s use is correct when used in a way that people understand one another — Noah Te Stroete

A common definition of "correct" is "free from error; in accordance with fact or truth."

How does "it works" connect to that definition?

It's a little bit nitpicky and a little too difficult to get a decent handle on, but you really should use the chosen pronouns. It's sort of like how in the 50s, when you didn't know the gender of the subject of a sentence you would just have to assume that he or she was male. It took kind of a while to alter the language so that people would say "he or she" etc. The gender-neutral pronouns are kind of the same way. If the person does not identify as being male or female, then you should refer to em by eir chosen pronouns. — thewonder

You should do this because?

I feel like ey might correct him. — thewonder

Not for long, because they'd not enjoy the debate they'd get into about it.

the obvious problem with that, however, are those cases which are in fact exceptions to the fallacy — S

The problem is that there are no exceptions. The only time the consensus opinion is relevant and not fallacious is when we want to know what the consensus opinion happens to be, but that never makes the consensus opinion correct (by virtue of being the consensus opinion).

I'm just saying that I think that you should care because Gender Trouble is like the seminal work on contemporary Queer Theory. — thewonder

I have no problem with however anyone wants to be, whatever consensual choices they want to make etc.--I'm very much a minarchist, laissez-faire libertarian in that sense, but I don't agree with a lot of the sort of LitCritty humanities theorizing that goes on. I think a lot of it is garbage philosophically. Of course, I feel that way about a lot of philosophy in general, especially LitCritty, continental, PoMo, etc. stuff. (But not just that--I think there's a lot of garbage analytic philosophy, too).

Judith Butler is the author of Gender Trobule, and I would bet that ey would want for you to refer to em by eir chosen pronouns. — thewonder

Sure, but that doesn't impact whether I care. I might call her Lurch, even.

You can't always get what you want.

This is a regularly occurring misunderstanding on your part. He did not commit the fallacy of appealing to the masses. — S

He just said that what makes itcorrect is consensus usage. That's what the argumentum ad populum fallacy is. (And that's what it is in consensus usage, so if you believe that makes something correct, you'll not disagree.)

There are correct uses of concepts determined by a community of users. If the users didn’t have a general correct use for concepts, then communication would be impossible. — Noah Te Stroete

Saying "Communication is impossible unless such and such is the case" is different than saying that "such and such is correct."

But "communication is impossible unless a concept is used in a conformist way" isn't the case anyway.

Not that usage is the same as the semantic content of a concept anyway.

I’m claiming that’s how it works in practice. That that is how it works in practice is a true description. — Noah Te Stroete

What you said is that there are correct concepts.

Is Judith Butler "Ms." Butler? I think that you should refer to em as Mx. Butler. Granted, I am just using the Spivak pronouns as I don't know what Judith Butler prefers. — thewonder

I actually don't care what she prefers unless I'm given something I consider a good reason to care. ;-)

It’s not an argument. It’s a description. — Noah Te Stroete

Claiming that something is correct because it's common is an argumentum ad populum.

Aside from pro-conformism sucking in my opinion :joke:, that's an argumentum ad populum fallacy then.

I would not serve on a jury if there was any chance that the death penalty could be applied. — EricH

I would just never agree to vote "guilty" in that case.

There are many situations where I'd never agree that someone is guilty due to not agreeing with laws/sentencing/etc. I strongly believe in jury nullification. Of course, not everyone does, but at least in the U.S. the jury's verdict has to be unanimous.

This is now far afield of the OP, but I will just say that the vast majority of concepts have generally true or false values. Communication fails when one or both interlocutors are wrong about concepts used. ‘Cat’, ‘chair’, ‘normative ethics’, ‘sun’, ‘Dow Jones Industrials Index’ all have correct usages. Communication fails when these concepts are used incorrectly. — Noah Te Stroete

What do you take to be correct, just conformity to the norm?

I never said it was relationships of nothing. Pay attention. I said its relationships made up of other relationships — Harry Hindu

You said "Just dynamic relations." But it can't be relations(hips) of relations(hips) because there needs to be something to have any relation(ship) in the first place.

For example, take "x is to the left of y from reference point a." "Is to the left of" is a relation(ship), but we can't have that without having two somethings to be situated in the specified way with respect to each other.

Adding relationships doesn't help. "To the left of to the right of" or "To the left of the parent of" or whatever relationships don't make any sense sans things to be related however they are.

You actually make sense here — Noah Te Stroete

Haha--as if that's surprising.

Concepts have generally true or false values, otherwise communication would fail more often than it does. — Noah Te Stroete

Obviously I don't agree with that (and not just because I think that communication often does fail--hence your surprise that I make sense), but it's a huge thing to get into different theories about how communication works.

As long as what to you is my face I call a horseshoe, then my concept about what a horseshoe is is correct? — Noah Te Stroete

Concepts aren't correct or incorrect.

So people need not agree on what a horseshoe is? There is no collective knowledge? I’m sure I misunderstand you, and that’s not what you’re saying — Noah Te Stroete

Clearly, people sometimes have very different concepts in mind by the same term. And sometimes they have very different concepts in mind and it's not obvious to us, too.

Sometimes when it's clear that they have very different concepts in mind by the same term, we can translate their concept into terms that make sense to us and that seem to be coherent and consistent with how they're using the term. Sometimes we can't do that. (For the latter, see me and most continental philosophy and most "mysticist"/"esotericist" etc. philosophy for example.)

I would say that there's no collective knowledge. But knowledge certainly has social influences and assistance.

No, its just dynamic relations. Every "particle" you point at is a relationship. — Harry Hindu

It has to be dynamic relationships of something. It can't be dynamic relationships of nothing.

As are horseshoes, which are not made any which way. — StreetlightX

Whether someone calls it a "horseshoe" or not depends on their individual concept. It's simply a matter of what they personally require to call something a "horseshoe."

My guess is he is going to say that natural phenomena have a "final causation" which is different kind of thing than a human goal. So, each natural phenomena is trying to "reach" some "end" and this "reaching" is in its nature. Thus, doing something that impedes this nature is immoral because it is "unnatural". — schopenhauer1

Right. Which I don't at all agree with, but for some odd reason, he chose the tactic of trying to insist that I actually did agree with it.

I'm asking you to provide evidence. — Riley

Okay. In my opinion, "One word... evidence" doesn't ask that very clearly. It would be better to say something like, "What is evidence that there isn't a primary thing that things do?"

The evidence is that you're using "primary" in the sense of a preference or goal, but preferences and goals are only things that individual persons have. They're mental phenomena. Things like rivers, say, do not have preferences or goals, they do not have mental phenomena.

we cannot expect precise, logical and repeatable behaviour. — Pattern-chaser

Then you're not talking about causality.

Different people react differently. — Pattern-chaser

Which means that the cause isn't the speech, but something else. Something about the person in question.

There are a lot of things that would minimize violence that I wouldn't be at all in favor of. These things include:
* Not allowing people to leave their homes,
* Stopping and frisking everyone in public, whenever they enter a store, etc.
* Not allowing motor vehicles

Etc.

Too much stuff to address. One thing at a time.

There is no primary thing which something does.
One word... evidence. — Riley

So, to start off, I have no idea what this is saying. "There is no primary thing [that] something does" is something I said. So basically you're repeating something I said. And then the next line is "One word... evidence." I have no idea what that's saying in context. Are you agreeing with me? Disagreeing with me? Are you saying there's evidence that there's a primary thing that something does? What evidence?

hate speech from the POTUS directed against them — Pattern-chaser

I don't follow daily politics very much. What speech was this?

We know, confirmed by empirical observation, that any utterance telling someone to murder someone else sometimes causes someone to murder someone else, because the utterances are made and the murders sometimes happen. — Pattern-chaser

"Cause" isn't "sometimes."

If the utterance is causal to the action, then when the utterance is made, the action is going to occur.

The current understanding is that particles are perturbations of the quantum field. In that understanding they are not "objects", like microscopic billiard balls, but intensities that interact in lawlike ways. — Janus

Which might be true (that it's a currently popular view), but it's incoherent, and stems from what's essentially platonist-oriented math worship.

Hate speech doesn't cause violence. So supporting hate speech isn't supporting violence.

We know, confirmed by empirical observation, that any utterance telling someone to murder someone else doesn't cause anyone to murder anyone else, because the utterances are made and the murders are not made. If the utterance was causal, that couldn't be the case. Something else has to be the cause.

Conflating? No, I don't think so. I'm connecting the two. Causally-connecting. — Pattern-chaser

Conflating because you're jumping from support of free speech to support of bombings, for example, as if there's no distinction between the two.

Why can thing which has an end include that which it can do. — Riley

Huh?

. . . Including stopping beating? I just disagree that this is teleological. — Riley

Okay, but it's what I've been saying, over and over (that something's nature includes every state in can be in, including things like "not beating" or "being crushed" etc.), and you keep insisting that I'm simply endorsing teleology.

There is no "primary" thing that something does--every and anything that something does is just as "valid." And things like hearts do not have goals. Only people have goals.

So are you still insisting that we agree and that I'm endorsing teleology?

Evidence that I disagree includes saying, "I don't agree," and includes saying things like, "A thing's nature is any and everything it can do, any and every state it can be in, including states that are caused by other things."