Isn't the distinction obviously one of direction of fit? An "is" statement will be felicitous if what is said were modified to match what is the case. An "ought" statement will be felicitous if what is the case is modified to match what was said. — Banno

That's very interesting. I hadn't thought of it like that.

I've been wanting to think this issue through since Pfhorrest started making this point. I'm unsure of the subject.

I voted for the third option but only because I'm a panpsychist and I think the way the world is is possibly the result of a negotiation between subjects. But I could have voted for any option - each has its argument.

In favour of the first option, I have been wondering if the fact that I am me and not another one (or no one in particular) makes a difference. In matters of fact, it does not matter who is making the scientific observation. The whole idea of science is that it doesn't matter who does it. We should get the same result. Whereas in matters of ethics it (arguably) does matter. From a God's eye view, everyone's suffering is of equal importance. But for me, one person's suffering is of massive significance compared to all the others. That one is bert1. So there's an asymmetry that doesn't exist (does it?) with the descriptive stuff. I can think of some rebuttals to this, so I could be wrong. I'm undecided on the subject.

But why bother with such things though? Why not choose to "not play the game" so to speak? — Darkneos

For me, because I would feel ashamed with myself I think. However foolish the game may be, it affords one an opportunity one would not otherwise have. Namely, to learn the rules and prove to oneself that one is, if not competent, then capable of a little improvement. If someone says they don't value improvement, and they feel no shame at all in the refusal to take part, there is no reddening of the cheeks as they refuse the relationship, then so be it. I'm not sure I would believe them.

EDIT: This is one of my more pompous posts. A fine display.

The rule is big muscles and/or big wallet. Romance is nice and flattering, but a girl has to be practical. — unenlightened

I more or less concur. Weird and good looking works for teens. Then things get awfully practical. Fit and healthy, strong, lots of money.

EDIT: there are somewhat different rules for specialist groups.

I was thinking about the history of philosophy and how in all it's history philosophers haven't really solved a single important question. — Thinking

But this isn't true. Many problems have been solved by philosophers, but there is no consensus on which ones, and there is no method we can use to settle the matter. Scientific questions are different, we have a method to settle disagreements.

I want to know WHY people choose to go on. — Darkneos

I'm not sure and it's a good question. For me the possibility and actuality of relationships keep me going, I think. And I am most despairing when I find myself unable to relate to others well. Maybe separation creates the possibility of value, but then if relationships don't work well, or others are uncooperative, there is a tendency to want to take one's ball home, permanently. That'll show the buggers. I know I feel it quite a lot.

Do you notice an awkwardness in your thinking? Awkwardness almost to the the point of an inability to think the words at all? — Ken Edwards

A little, yes.

This guy feels the same as you..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjYQUmNtwt0&list=PLCdW3jMJiDFAYG5-VFQy0eLyHqdGnstnB

Skip to about 31 mins.

And physically, everyone is the centre of the universe.

Hitting bottom is not a pleasant perspective to look forward to. — Nikolas

Mmmm.

I will never understand the thinking of the masses of defending the consumption of something that is toxic to their own existence. — Gus Lamarch

I'm not defending the consumption of anything. I'm saying its irrelevant to the merit of an idea.

I don't agree but in any case, the insight has stayed with Ori after he has sobered up. It's very odd to stipulate conditions which must obtain before philosophy can be done, even odder to not consider a view because of what state the person conceived it in.

Do you also wonder why number two is number two instead of, say, number three? — litewave

I suspect not, as that is an entirely different issue.

What do you mean? You're not allowed to have insights when drunk?

Why is one lump of clay a brick, and another lump a vase? — unenlightened

That's a different question and much more easily answerable. There can be an explanation in terms of prior causes, a historical story.

EDIT: Whereas if we tell Ori's historical story, he can just say "But why am I this historical story and not another one?"

This is not philosophy, but the delusion of someone under the influence of drugs... — Gus Lamarch

It is philosophy and it's not a delusion.

Are you asking why you exist? — Bartricks

No he isn't. He's asking why he is this one rather than some other one.

Your question is perhaps another angle on the classic one, who am I? — Jack Cummins

He's not asking that one either I don't think.

I'd do a story in which something subtle didn't happen, call that thing Q. I didn't notice it at first. But it made me feel uneasy. Maybe I notice its absence again. Eventually it hits me. If Q didn't happen, that means that P, an incredibly important thing that would definitely result in Q can't have happened either! What a shocker!

Modus tollens:

If P then Q
Not-Q
Therefore not-P

Yeah, maybe. To be honest I don't know what it is. It struck me as the sort of thing a philosopher might say.

Actually I suppose there is a sort of point. You can make generalisations, and in doing so you create a group that that generalisation holds true for. But the act of generalising precedes the group. Or does it?

EDIT: I also find the cunt/wanker distinction interesting. These are undefined empty insults on the face of it, but they have an intuitive sense to me. There was a RHLSTP episode which included a brief discussion about it with Mark Steel.

https://www.comedy.co.uk/podcasts/richard_herring_lst_podcast/rhlstp_182_mark_steel/

I think removing the desire to attribute characteristics to entire groups as if the group itself was an individual is a good place to start. — NOS4A2

That's all very well. But take the group of cunts. They're all cunts aren't they? They just are. Same with wankers, there's no non-wankers among them.

"What Its Legitimacy" was a way of demonstrating that the legitimacy of something - even the vocabulary that we deem to be the "standard" - can be completely revealed to be empty by the simple misplacement of some letters, for it needs the subjective statement of others, and how the realization of the same can raise the fear of many when their truths are pointed out as wrong.

And I proved to be correct when they decided to "re-legitimize" their views on the vocabulary's own legitimacy, by changing the title without any respect for the discussion and my freedom of expression. — Gus Lamarch

Hah! I think that's a legitimate win for Gus.

What it's the title supposing to means?

Sages of yore — Thinking

I'm one of those I reckon. I'll make up some shit about panpsychism and causes in a bit if I get the time. Basically forces are wills, maybe.

If you don't care because you are, as you say, selfish, you are looking in the wrong place: Your regard for others doesn't matter. — Constance

You mean my regard for others is ethically irrelevant? And which person I am is ethically irrelevant? If we divorce ethics from particular interests and a point of view, doesn't it just become irrelevant to that person? I mean I need a reason to do the right thing that is consistent with what I want. If x y and z are ethically correct, but I don't give a shit about them, I'm not sure where we go from there. Objective ethics are irrelevant ethics. They don't connect to anything.

EDIT: convergent intersubjective ethics are quite different from objective ethics. They are still wholly relativist.

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: