And there are still con artists who deny there is a leftist hegemony of the media. — Rafaella Leon

I don't recognise this at all. What country are you talking about?

There are lots of different contexts, and for each I think there is a different answer. Advocates (not in the sense of a Barrister, but in the sense of supporting people to process information and communicate) are at pains not to advise or influence a person one way or another. Whereas a regular support worker might advise from time to time if that's what a service user wants. In cases where someone has impaired mental capacity (or perceived that way) people will feel freer to make decisions on their behalf, and the legal and ethical basis for this is very much a live issue in social care. It is almost universally accepted that very young children do not and should not have autonomy, and it is up to parents what leeway they allow their children. Exactly what role a friend should play in one's decision-making varies from friendship to friendship. Sometimes people want their friends (and/or family) to be heavily involved in their decision-making. Others regard the role of a friend to supportive but non-advisory, more like an advocate.

Article 8 of the ECHR concerns autonomy (among other things) and sets out some boundaries, although much of the detail of this is in case law I think. But it's good that the general approach is for public bodies not interfere in someone's decision-making unless it is necessary in pursuit of one of the legitimate purposes and that interference is done in a minimal and proportionate way.

General Comment 1 on the UNCRPD is well worth a read (it pertains to Article 12 of the UNCRPD). It sets out that best interest decision-making should never happen (if I remember correctly) even when someone is incapable of making their own decision. Their legal right to make their own decision is never lost, even if they are unable to exercise it. Where we cannot ascertain a person's will and preferences we basically guess what they are likely to be and act according to that, regardless of what we judge to be their best interests. I may have got that wrong but that's how I remember it.

Mental Capacity legislation varies from country to country and sets out how to support people to retain capacity and sets out the powers and duties around making decisions for others when they lack capacity to make those decisions for themselves.

In thinking about autonomy it is important to be clear about which decisions belong to which agent by default. For example, while a disabled person might rightfully expect very considerable choice and control about exactly how their support is delivered, the decision about whether they are eligible for support or not in the first place is not theirs to make, that is for the local authority to decide according to law, guidance and policy. Sometimes autonomy advocates are wrongly criticised based on this kind of mistake, saying something like "We can't allow too much autonomy or people will decide to award themselves absurdly large care packages," which completely misses the point.

Ironically, many posters on this forum interpret my neither-fish-nor-fowl terminology as confirmation of their own magical New Age beliefs, or as a denial of empirical reductive Science. — Gnomon

Do they really?

Gender then is the entire constellation. — Dawnstorm

OK, I've read you post a couple more times. I'm still struggling with it, not sure why!

Are you saying that it's not just gender-the-social-construct that is socially constructed, but also the concept of sex and even the first person phenomenology of the gender dysphoric (or even euphoric) person?

If so, is this simply an a fortiori move from "Everything is socially constructed, gender is a thing, so that's socially constructed too." I get the feeling it's more interesting than that. For it to be more interesting, I'd like you to contrast gender with a concept that is not socially constructed (or at least not as socially constructed), so I can see the difference. I'm being awfully demanding here, you don't have to do anything obviously, and this might be quite a lot of work for you. You've already been very helpful. So this is a general invitation for anyone who things gender is socially constructed, to contrast it with a concept that isn't.

I imagine that if instead of saying “I am a woman” when someone is uncomfortable with having a penis and more comfortable with having a vagina, people said “I want to be a woman” or “I like being a woman” or something else that made it clear that what they’re communicating is something about their state of mind, there would be a lot less pushback against them. — Pfhorrest

I think you're probably right. But I suspect some trans people will strongly object (not that I know that). When it comes to identity people can be quite firm about what they want to say of themselves, insisting that "No, I mean what I say, I am a woman." I could be wrong though.

You may have done the right thing, but the value in play is not at all effected by the conditions vis a vis the other children. In fact, there is no set of contingent conditions imaginable that undo or even mitigate the ethical value, the "badness" of the one child's torture. It is impossible to conceive of such a mitigation. — Constance

Well, I'm not sure about that. From the perspective of someone who most of us would think is a selfish asshole, simply not being the kid in question renders their torture ethically neutral. But I'm a relativist, so I would say that. That's the contingent set of circumstances, the fact that I (i.e. selfish asshole bert1) could have been the kid, but phew!, I'm not.

Turns out to be a rather fruitful turn of speech. I am grateful to counterpunch.

It's "get fucked" or "fuck off" — Kenosha Kid

It's possible to get fucked off. As in "You better shut you're mouth pal before I really get fucked off with you."

But the easy problem has no merit in its explanatory explanatory basis. Such things do not touch ontology. — Constance

I'm not sure I disagree. Which bit of what I said are you replying to? Sorry it's not obvious to me.

Thanks Dawnstorm for taking the time to explain all that. It will take a bit of digesting. It's interesting to get a sociological perspective. I want to go a bit meta at this point and look at constructivism (is this the sociology version of philosophical idealism?). I also want to go simpler and try to understand language use in very basic terms. For example, what are forms asking for when they ask for your gender? They used to ask for your sex, but they've changed to gender now. I presume they are asking for sense 2.

Anyway I'll chew over your response and reply again. I'm also behind with replying to Pfhorrest in another couple of threads.

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

Thanks for your help Dawnstorm. I still struggling to get the concepts straight (no pun intended). I'm stuck on the logical relations between the concepts.

Just here you said that a male might have just masculine traits. Could a female have just masculine traits? Or does the definition of 'female' preclude that?

Just to go back to absolute basics for me, I'd like to disambiguate the term 'gender' as follows:

1) 'Gender' can mean biological sex, as defined by chromosomes or genitalia or whatever. Perhaps hormone levels, I don't know, but it's biological stuff that defines it. So that concept is reasonably clear in my mind.

2) 'Gender' can mean how one feels from the inside out. This is Pfhorrest's concept of 'bearing'. I think this is a useful coinage as it reduces confusion between different senses of 'gender'. This concept is also pretty clear in my mind. And this is the way the concept seems to be primarily used by the people I talk to in my work.

3) There seems to be a further concept of gender. This is what I don't really understand, unless this concept is identical with the concept of gender stereotypes, or societal expectations of what a certain biological male or female should choose in terms of career, values, hobbies, friends, what books they should read and what clothes they wear etc. This corresponds fittingly to one pair of opposites you mentioned: feminine/masculine. But it does not correspond to the other pair of opposites you mentioned: male/female. This is because in normal usage, the adoption of certain masculine or feminine gender stereotypical behaviours is NOT sufficient to make one a male or female. This can be proven (I suggest) by conceiving of a man (sense 1) who only does feminine things. This does not make him a woman, it does not change his gender. We merely say of him that he is a man doing feminine things. If he FURTHER says that he identifies as a woman, and that feels right to him (in the sense 2 of 'bearing') then this does change his gender. We then, if we are polite, refer to her and consider her a woman. It is senses 1 and 2 that determine a person's gender, and sense 3 only adds masculinity and femininity to that. So what I'm questioning is that sense 3 is not really about the male/female opposition, and wholly about the masculine/feminine opposition.

No doubt I am still very confused, but does that make my confusion clearer? Can you help me any further with this?

Narcists and megalomaniacs are apparently not to be supported but gender confused individuals are ok to support. — Book273

I don't think gender dysphoria is confusion. People who identify as the opposite gender from their sex have not made a mistake, as if they need to look in their pants to check if they got it right. They know perfectly well what sex they were born as. It just doesn't feel right in a really profound and important way (as far as I know from my conversations with such people). There's no confusion. Or is there?

Should I also be supportive of those who believe their capabilities are greater than they are?

Supportive yes, but you can politely point out that they have made a mistake.

What about those who believe they are far less capable than they are?

Again, we should politely point out their mistake, perhaps.

What if I identify as being of another race, is that supportable, or should someone simply tell me to look in the mirror and move on?

Yes, as long as it is done sensitively. That's because it's clearly a mistake, at least in most cases.

The point is it's fine to tackle mistakes, but feeling you are not the gender others perceive you as is not a mistake. You can't fix it by getting people to look at their genitals.

It's important to be realistic and not come up with examples that don't really exist. Gender dysphoria is a pretty common thing that people actually have. Is race dysphoria actually a thing? Species dysphoria isn't as far as I know. I guess there are bound to be the odd one or two people who very strongly feel they should have been born as a horse (or whatever), but this is such a rare thing I don't think our intuitions about that should guide what we think about gender dysphoria.

I feel a bit uncomfortable about discussing this as I don't really know what it's like to have gender dysphoria, but I know a number of people who do and it comes up in my work, so I am interested.

Banno be blasted, I'm going to look in some dictionaries to see if this sociological sense exists according to lexicographers.

EDIT: Well that didn't help. Can anyone give me some examples of the sociological usage of 'male' and 'female' in a few examples sentences. Sorry if I'm being stupid.

If I identified with being a divine power, is it reasonable of me to expect everyone to address me as "Oh most Holy Divine One."? I think not, nor should I ever expect it. — Book273

This is not an apt analogy. Narcissists and megalomaniacs are very different from people experiencing gender dysphoria. And complying with their preferences has very different consequences in each case. Its seems simply polite to address someone who feels female and wants to be recognised as such, to do so. And the consequences of doing so seem wholly positive to me. Even if you disbelieve them, and you think they are faking it be cool or something, it's better to give the benefit of the doubt.

If people look at that person and think "that's a woman", and they treat that person as they would treat a woman (however that is), then they have a female gender in the sociological sense, because that sociological sense is all about societal perceptions. — Pfhorrest

I have not heard that usage, not even once. At no point have I ever heard a man referred to as a woman because of the roles he performs. Do sociologists do this? Do they go around calling male cleaners female?

Are cleaners female (or lumberjacks male), by definition, in this sociological sense?

EDIT: Of course I have come across gender stereotypes. But this has never led to any confusion about the gender of the person performing that role. People are just horrified that a female is doing such and such male-associated role, or vice versa. It's the mismatch that causes the horror. But if they adopted the sociological use, there would be no mismatch.

I don't understand the social property thing. Lets say we have a biological male who feels and identifies as male in Pfhorrest's sense of 'bearing'. But lets say he works as a cleaner, wears a pink leotard (he doesn't give a shit about colours) to his ballet class, and insert a load of female-associated stuff here of your own choosing. In what sense does he have a female gender? In no sense at all it seems to me. How is it possible to correctly refer to this person as a woman and use female pronouns?

Maybe I just haven't been exposed to such usage.

But matter and form have a relationship, no?

However I do think the answer to the “hard problem” proper is trivial, and all the actual hard work is in answering the “easy problem”. And that the substantive question of why we have the specific kind of first-person experience that we have, rather than the trivial question of why we have any first-person experience at all, is bound up in the “easy problem” as well, because experience and behavior are inseparably linked. — Pfhorrest

:nod:

What’s the big issue with dualism? Why’s it such a boo word? — Wayfarer

Charitably, it's a boo word for a good reason: the interaction problem is rightly considered fatal to substance dualism.

Less charitably, some think that dualists (substance or property? Unspecified?) necessarily believe silly spooky things that every sensible grown up non-magical thinker knows don't exist.

I don't think there are actually any substance dualists. I haven't met any at least. Maybe there are some on the forum, I don't know.

Apparently, Descartes ruined it for everybody else. Also, there seems to be this fear that any non-material conclusion leads to woo. Which is bad, because we should have a nice, tidy empirical explanation for everything. Or something. — Marchesk

Strawson argues that Descartes was not a substance dualist at all, but a kind of property dualist. I'm not a Descartes scholar so I can't comment on that, but I'm not convinced there are any genuine substance dualists at all. Even people who believe in souls and spirit etc do not, when pushed, typically say these things are made from a separate substance, as they will want to say that these things clearly interact with regular physical bodies, so they can't, ultimately, be utterly different in substance from matter. Either matter is reducible to spirit, or spirit to matter, or both reducible to some third thing, or both are irreducible properties of one substance. Everyone is a monist it seems to me.

I guess there's no sharp line between knowledge and opinion, but BC's post contained no argument or rationale whatever. He does this quite a lot. I should take a look at the posting guidelines before I comment next time.

At the moment of brain death our consciousness exits stage left and is never again seem on the stage. That's why death is a tragic event: there's nothing after death. Which is why many people heartily believe in a happy heaven afterlife. If you want to make death much worse, you can teach children that there is a ghastly hell, and they will probably spend eternity there because their behavior and thoughts are BAD.

For me, the finality of death adds to the goodness of life. Time goes by so fast when you are alive.

Remember: It's is a once-around world, a once around life. And when you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer. In Heaven there is no beer, which is why we drink it here. — Bitter Crank

On a philosophy forum you are not entitled to your opinion, even if it happens to be true.

As I explained, these two are contradictory. Unfalsifiable means impossible to falsify, which implies necessarily true, therefore proven. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think it implies necessary truth. For example, the claim that there is some particular configuration of stars and planets beyond the edge of the observable universe. That's unfalsifiable, because we can never check it out, no matter how close to the speed of light we accelerate a probe. But it's certainly not necessarily true.

What do you think of this? Is there another reason to exist other than our own feelings? — existentialcrisis

I think you are pretty much right.

Suffering is bad and everyone's is equally important for the same reasons that observations can falsify beliefs and all observations matter. — Pfhorrest

bert1's suffering is much more important than anyone else's, because I am bert1. Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me. Do it to Julia.

That doesn't work for observations about beliefs. It doesn't matter if I observe that bricks don't hang in the air, or someone else observes it and tells me about it.

Have I completely missed your point?

What is a modern conception of substance?

The interaction problem is that if there are two substances that interact, they must have something in common by virtue of which they can interact. But if they have something in common, that common thing is more fundamental than the substances, so the substances are not really substances after all. Conclusion: there cannot be a plurality of substances that interact. There could, perhaps, be a plurality of substances that cannot interact ever, even in principle. But as they can never have any bearing on our universe whatever, it's not worth even thinking about them.

On the other hand, if we say that some future, "ideal" physics is what is meant, then the claim is rather empty, for we have no idea of what this means. The "ideal" physics may even come to define what we think of as mental as part of the physical world. In effect, physicalism by this second account becomes the circular claim that all phenomena are explicable in terms of physics because physics properly defined is whatever explains all phenomena. — Wikipedia

Is there any difference between this and monism? (Or Unvocity for Street?)

To suppose that a universe devoid of consciousness can be molded so as to make consciousness arise, is to inject consciousness from outside the universe. — leo

I agree with you (more or less) but the standard rebuttal to this will be:

"We're not claiming consciousness is 'injected into the universe' (which is another way of characterising strong emergence, it seems to me). What we are saying is that consciousness just is one of these 'moldings', as you put it, and its actions. So, for example, consciousness just is the integration of information in a system such as a brain; or consciousness just is the modelling of a world by a system; or consciousness just is the action of a brain, in the same way that walking just is the actions of legs. So there is no need for any strong emergence, weak emergence is enough."

TMF, what is the difference (if any) between physicalism and monism, for you?

Sure, I'll try.

First I just want to question the assumption that consciousness ends at death. It's an understandable assumption, because we also assume that consciousness disappears when we, say, take a general anaesthetic or get knocked out with a punch. It seems to me possible that it is not consciousness that it affected, but identity. If we define ourselves a la Hume, as a bundle of memories, perceptions and thoughts etc, bundled together in an integrated functioning whole, it seems to me that that is exactly the kind of thing that is fairly fragile and easily disrupted, say, with a blow to the head. We stop functioning as one thing. Our singular identity is lost. And death is an even more emphatic loss of coherent function than being knocked out, so a fortiori, whatever we think happens when we get knocked out, also happens at death, just in a more permanent way. I'm a panspychist for separate reasons (which I won't rehearse now), so I think there is still consciousness there, as consciousness is a basic property of all matter/energy/substance/action/function or whatever concept you want to take as most fundamental.

So, how do we choose between these possibilities? What's lost? Identity or consciousness? We can use language as a guide: "I lost consciousness when I got hit on the head." That probably is the default position we are educated into by habit and language. We could rephrase this in terms of loss of the humean self: "I got hit on the head and could no longer think, forgot everything, had no perceptions. Then when I came around these things returned." It seems to me to describe a loss of identity. To pick up 180s metaphor, the tune the orchestra plays is identity, not consciousness.

I'll stop there as it's a bit late for me. I can go on some more another time if you want.

Yes

At death identities change, but nothing happens to consciousness.

The question is trying to ask why we have two different views of our own mental processes - an introspective and extrospective view of one's own mental processes. — Harry Hindu

Because the fact that I am bert1 allows me two different perspectives to examine bert1's mental processes: introspection and extropsection. Whereas other people only have extrospection as a way of observing bert1's mental processes (to the extent that the can do so at all).

Is that question equivalent to "Why am I some particular person, rather than no one in particular?"?

And what is it about you that provides you with different evidence of your consciousness than I have of your consciousness? — Harry Hindu

I can introspect myself, but others can't.

Thanks Apo, that's made things much clearer.

Just skimmed it, thanks Oliver5 for pointing to it. Very interesting and easier to comprehend than Apo. That's not necessarily an insult to Apo - maybe Apo would be just as clear at paper-length. Need to read more carefully, but at first glance there's no explicit dissolution or even mention of the hard problem, which is odd as it was written in the last few years. Perhaps he does not see philosophers of mind as his audience.

And if you say I have tried frequently enough, and you have failed to understand just as often, well where is the issue likely to be? — apokrisis

I don't know, and I still don't. It's a risk. I'll be pissed off if I go to a lot of trouble understanding your stuff and it turns out to be bollocks (at least in respect of the philosophy of consciousness). I might ask pfhorrest for advice on this. They seem to have studied everything so might have some useful advice.

Anyway, I'm not trying to baffle you. But it is a whole system of thought I am saying you would need to learn rather than some particular theory that ought to make more sense from a simple cause and effect perspective. — apokrisis

I appreciate that. Thank you. I don't know if I'm guilty as charged with the cause and effect monolithic thinking, but I might be.

Thus what I point out is that panpsychism tries to make sense by smuggling in a triadic relational perspective — apokrisis

I think that's a compliment. Monism and dualism are bad, triadism is good.

I was also going to remind of the formal duality that has been established between information and entropy. As signal vs noise, order vs chaos, message vs meaninglessness, we can see why information and entropy stand in relationship as the two faces of the same coin, the two dichotomous extremes of the one opposition. — apokrisis

This is classic Apo. Perfect specimen.