Doubt necessarily implies a sentient, self-conscious entity holding it. Doubt is a thinking process. If you do not agree with this, then what is doubt to you? — Caldwell

Well they set it out. Set out the logical implication in one of the standard forms of logical notation so we can check its validity.

In other words: "the willingness to fight a common enemy is merely an illusion." Fighting people who kill your friends and neighbors may look and feel like a shared purpose but in reality, it is merely the struggle by elites to control people and territory. — Paine

No. Not 'in other words' at all. What I've said about the lack of cultural natural groups and the issue of unified common goals are totally separate. you can't just pretend I said the same thing by putting "in other words..." in front of it. Either argue against what I've actually written or don't bother.

a self-evident mechanism for how the coercion is brought to bear. Is there some kind of fear of anarchy as depicted by Hobbes? Repression of instincts ala Freud? Or more like the class struggle discussed by Marx? It certainly rules out a view of 'natural' society put forward by Locke. — Paine

Here's not the place to start debating the merits of the various theories of social conformity. You've already alluded to several, so you're clearly aware that such theories exist. It seems odd then that you would want to say the notion lacked any mechanism. It seems even a cursory glance at any sociology or psychology textbook would provide you with a dozen such mechanisms without having to lift a finger.

Yes, Isaac, there can be civil wars. — ssu

Right. so...

You have peace when countries accept the present drawn borders. — ssu

...is patently false.

you arguing that Ingushetia is a part of Checnnya and Chechnya has somehow broken away from Russia? — ssu

The question was whether it should (as the USSR wanted (the Chechen-Ingush ASSR) or shouldn't. There's no 'right' answer, there's no God-given lines we 'discover' by examination. there's just power plays.

I'm left with a sense that you believe these misadministration are a direct result of how trans rights organisations comport themselves? If so, why do you think that's the case? — fdrake

It's generally been the report of the clinicians involved There was a swathe of resignations form Tavistock before it was closed and most cited an environment where speaking out was considered 'transphobic' in some way. With Stock, Moore, Birchill etc, that's exactly the environment these campaign groups are creating. The same is true in academia, I hear the same from colleagues. Now, either it's coincidence that this environment spread to clinicians (where it is more dangerous than just unpleasant), or it's a result of the campaign to create such an environment.

I would also need to know why you believe this state of affairs isn't a good look to engage properly with your opinions. — fdrake

I think that's answered best by something I've already said. I don't believe there's a 'right' way for people to interpret their biology. I don't think the chemical and electrical signals in our brain actually mean anything absent of a narrative of which there is no one right fit. That makes it important for there to be a community with enough freely available narratives for people to be able to find ones which make sense of their particular experiences. The harder, more complex a society is, the more narratives it's going to need. Also (highly speculative), the further we get from a 'natural' lifestyle, I suspect the more 'out of sync' some of our brain activities will get and the more complex narratives will be required to make sense of them. A society which seeks to close down options as 'unacceptable' is in danger of causing harm. That goes for people like Fred Martinez not finding a narrative he could use in the modern culture he found himself in, but it goes equally for the young lesbian who doesn't want to be told that her feelings of sexual attraction to same sex phenotypes is 'abusive' because she 'ought' to be attracted to anyone calling themselves a woman.

If we can't make a society in which a few incompatible narratives can be allowed to exist alongside one another without resorting to court or institutional bullying then we've lost hope.

Is this being evaluated in terms of long term alleviation of mental health symptoms associated with gender incongruence? Would appreciate the paper link. — fdrake

Dr Cass's Interim Report https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Cass-Review-Interim-Report-Final-Web-Accessible.pdf

The CQC report on Tavistock https://api.cqc.org.uk/public/v1/reports/7ecf93b7-2b14-45ea-a317-53b6f4804c24?20210120085141

The gonaotrophin evidence report https://www.evidence.nhs.uk/document?id=2334888&returnUrl=search%3Ffrom%3D2020-01-01%26q%3Dgender%2Bdysphoria%26sp%3Don%26to%3D2021-03-31

I believe a consistent case could be made for cancelling/deprioritising resource allocation to these treatments, but to me it seems suspicious why a broad point like insufficient evidence of improving long term health outcomes is being leveraged in the context of trans healthcare rather than for the broad swathe of treatment it would apply to. Why appeal in this context and not others? — fdrake

I don't think it should be limited to this case at all. I'm in favour of a broad reach here, but the reasons for focussing on trans issues are, as Dr Cass highlights, that the numbers are increasing exponentially. There's no precedent for that. We have therapies which are ineffective (or weakly evidenced) for all sorts of mental health problems, and many are growing, but linearly. The numbers of children seeking treatment for gender-related issues has increased beyond anything we've ever seen outside of epidemics. The need for proper protocols for treatment is therefore very urgent and the need to stem any wrong-turns is heightened.

I think we'd need an argument that also takes into account the very low regret rate of transition surgery - which is much less than other highly promoted, even deemed necessary, surgeries which manifestly alleviate some source of harm (lined earlier, can relink if required). — fdrake

The argument (for me) is the one I gave above. If we have a material solution vs a mental solution, the material solution will be favoured (regardless of long term outcomes). It's easier and we have a psychological bias in favour of believing external causes more than we believe internal ones. Also, the end points are insufficiently robust at measuring personal gains, they still ask about 'satisfaction' or 'regret' which are both socially mediated. Clinical interventions ought not be measured on the basis of the degree to which society finds the end goals attractive.

it seems this is another place where the means of your criticism applies generically to healthcare services, rather than to gender affirmation specifically. — fdrake

Again, I refer back the the alarming rate of increase in children seeking treatment for gender-realted issues. It is unlike any health issue outside of epidemics, that we've ever experienced.

What do you think distinguishes the seemingly benign example of administering anti-fungals for a non-fungal rash with no test from the less benign example of administering gender affirmative interventions after other mental health screening has been done? — fdrake

In essence, nothing. I disagree that the prescription of anti-fungals for a non-fungal rash is benign. We're facing, in the next few years, an anti-biotic resistant c.diff and s.aureus problem in hospitals which is rapidly overtaking all other causes of hospital-related death. That crisis was brought about by northing else but the over-prescription of anti-biotics. Medical interventions are not isolated. Our biochemistry is not like the custom car whose parts can be swapped out. We ourselves are a very finely tuned ecosystem of chemicals and biota, and socially we form an even greater such system.

That said, I'd refer to what I've said before about the rates. There's not been a recent 100-fold increase in the numbers of children seeking rash treatments, so the not-so-benign prescription of dubious anti-fungals is not so pressing an issue.

Also, this is just a literature request: I am interested in "potential side effects of failing to administer" too, do you have any literature on this? — fdrake

Nothing springs to mind, but It's my wife who is most active in this field, I get most of this from her. I'll ask.

As far as I know, even non-surgical interventions are relatively difficult to obtain - if they were handed out like candy there would be much fewer complaints about the process being obstructive. I believe that's also evinced by the NHS report. — fdrake

That's true, to a point. But as I said. The Mermaids campaign slogan is not "things are fine just as they are, but let's not let them get worse". If there are currently sufficient barriers to treatment (and if treatment is something which oughtn't be 'handed out like candy') then things are fine as they are, the campaign objective of Mermaids are wrong.

Though there's no guarantee that every healthcare system has similarly strict/harsh/draconian/badly administered barriers. I think that's a mark against the factual claim that there's been an effective pressure by drug companies to popularise transition treatment and hormone therapies - they're still seen as insufficiently available or badly administered by trans rights groups. — fdrake

I agree we'd have to conclude that any pressure has not been effective. I don't think it necessarily leads to a conclusion that it isn't present, nor that it isn't a danger which needs to be weighed. If I know Bob is generally a liar, I take whatever he says with a pinch of salt, I verify his claims with others before believing them. That done, I might make good decisions based on my advisors. It would be a mistake then to look at my quality decision-making ans say "looks like Bob wasn't so bad after all". Clinical guidelines needs to be aware of social pressures, lobbying pressures and the weakness of evidential bases. That they already are is not an indication that those pressures do not need attending to. Again, the Mermaids campaign slogan is not "things are fine just as they are, but let's not let them get worse".

I suppose there is an angle there where pharmaceutical companies are making policy decisions for trans rights groups, or some entryist angle, but I wouldn't believe that without hard evidence in context.

Hard evidence in context is what I meant by concreteness. Give me documentation about exactly how one pharmaceutical company has influenced one major service provider and I'll be more convinced this line is relevant. — fdrake

I'm not sure exactly what level of evidence you'd want. A repeating theme throughout my opinion here is going to be - why would I give them the benefit of the doubt here? I don't owe these corporations anything and they've done nothing to earn any trust. If a convicted murderer is found with a gun in the car, it's of more significance than if I were found with a gun in my car (I hunt).

I'm wary of going down another rabbit hole. I've been bitten once. There is a chain of funding connections between billionaire with heavy investments in pharmaceuticals and funding for trans rights groups (including a lot of University-based centres, particularly in the US), but there's no smoking gun, there's no document which says Joe Bloggs funded 'Drugs for Trans' and now he's a Lupron-billionaire. I don't see why there would be. Our economy is literally designed to protect people who want to influence events in favour of their investments. If you don't believe that, then I don't see any way we can proceed.

So yes, there is a string of evidence (I'm not the sort of person to simply arrive at conclusions without such), but no, none of it is concrete in the sense you're' looking for, so I'm reluctant to spend the time it would take to accumulate it all into a long post if it's not going to progress the discussion in any interesting direction. I don't think it should be needed for the points I'm making...

Here's a good article on the reach of the pharmaceuticals https://www.bmj.com/content/330/7496/855 in the BMJ. If you're of the view that corporations with this amount of reach, who could earn around up to £1million in profit from each transitioning young person, are nonetheless simply restraining themselves on this occasion out of good will, then again, I think we've hit a dead end. Our understandings of how the modern economy works are just too incompatible.

If powerful corporation have a) the power, and b) the incentive to bring about situation X, then situation X comes about. I'm going to suspect those corporations of having had a hand in it. To not would imply they have both will and means, but nonetheless restrained themselves, but then just got lucky anyway. I find that unnecessarily implausible. As I said, I don't owe these companies anything, I've no reason to withhold judgement until I have court-worthy documentary proof.

And I think people generally hold this view too, just not with pharmaceuticals (for reasons outside of the scope of this thread). How much evidence have we all demanded to consider the Shell-funded reports on climate change suspicious? How much documentary proof did we all require to mentally convict Trump of the various wrong-doings for which he's still not been criminally convicted? What paper-trail do we all demand to suspect Russia of a second, third, fourth war crime given it's first? The merest hint of a scandal is enough to render any politician's speeches nothing but empty rhetoric.

For some reason articles like that in the BMJ, a string of criminal and civil convictions for fraud, the partial responsibility for over 100,000 deaths in the ongoing opioid crisis... never seem enough to raise suspicions about pharmaceutical promotions above tin-foil hat wearing conspiracy.

But it may be a clash of incompatible world-views. Happy to drop it if so, I've been there before to no gain.

Absolutely.

Which is why the way forward is not to be found in company organisation, but rather in progressive taxation. The population and future populations deserve to be compensated for their loss to whatever degree brings them up to an acceptable standard of living. Thus the government takes, from those who have benefited, enough to pay the bill due to those who have given.

Or... from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.

It's as if we started creating a documentary film, then forgot about the guy behind the camera. We wanted to remove personal bias from the account, and we ended up removing the person altogether.

Now we want to put the cameraman in the documentary? — frank

Weird how those most dogmatic about the unquestionable 'truth' of sciences known full well to be biased are the same ones adamant about the bias in sciences not particularly known for such.

Those posting in this thread against the 'truth' capturing capabilities of neuroscience, arguing for 'bias' and 'blindspots' there, are the same cohort of people who argued with Covid and Ukraine that the medical establishment and intelligence establishment respectively represent unimpeachable truths without bias or blind spots. That to question them was conspiracy.

Replication rates in the woefully corrupt pharmaceutical industry are half what they are in neuroscience. Yet you'd want us to believe their grasp on 'truth' is unquestionable, yet that of neuroscience is riddled with bias and blindspots.

So does science have biases and blindspots or not? Are scientists biased by their fundamental metaphysical ideologies but miraculously unaffected by any other ideology (political, social, etc).

Your picture of the dogmatic, biased, blinded scientists when it comes to consciousness seems at odds with your faith in the unbiased, detached scientist of public health, or the dedicated non-political, intelligence officer.

Is it just neuroscientists who are so weak?

ah, the border-free no-nation world again.
Easy enough to understand, except we're not there. — jorndoe

No. We're not in a world where Russia are going to withdraw from eastern Ukraine either. Why the sudden burst of pragmatism?

The topic was the motives and objectives of 'Ukraine'. Since 'Ukraine' is an arbitrary line drawn on a map, it doesn't have any unified motive, nor objective and if one were to take an aggregate (vote, poll, whatever) the outcome would be different depending on where you put the line without any hint of a natural break.

As such appeal to such a notion morally is absurd.

Of course, appeal to such a notion pragmatically is very useful (democracy is a pragmatic appeal to the aggregated will of an arbitrary group of people), but that's not what's going on here. Not only does Ukraine not currently have a functioning democracy (a pragmatic problem), but the the results of any such democratic process don't carry great moral weight. My country democratically voted for Brexit. They were wrong to. It's wrongness is not somehow superseded by its being the 'will of the people'.

It is wrong to risk the lives of innocents over a border dispute. It being 'the will of the Ukrainians' doesn't make it less wrong.



Nothing in there says anything like "willingness to fight a common enemy is merely an illusion.". If you want to argue against the media-bogeyman version of one who is opposed to the war then start a blog. If you want to argue on a discussion forum, then read the comments that are posted and respond to them.

The comments you cite say that there is no such thing as a Ukrainian identity, history, language and culture. I've also argued that there's no such thing as the will of the Ukrainians, or the motive of the Ukrainians. I've argued that no such thing exists because Ukraine (like all other countries) is an arbitrary line drawn by powerful people based on the amount of resources they had the power to control at the time. It does not in any way 'capture' some natural grouping of people all of whom think alike. It would be no more real then me taking a quick glance at the posts on religion here and announcing that "the belief of TPF is that there is a God".

None of this prevents groups of people from ephemerally having common goals. what it does is remove any moral weight behind that commonality. Large groups of people can agree on a course of action and still be morally wrong about it.

Why waste our time demanding evidence for something you wouldn't deny? — hypericin

I'm not. Not once have I 'demanded evidence' for phenomenal consciousness' If you can't follow a simple argument there's little point continuing. try reading what I've written rather than arguing against what you think I probably wrote. I'm sure you've got a nice stack of stock arguments against your imaginary standard reductionist scientism acolyte, but I'm not him, so if you want to argue against me you'll have to first try to understand what I'm saying.

Have you read the stuff on Anomalous Monism I posted earlier? Does the concept make any sense to you?

But wait, I thought:

I wouldn't want to deny we have experiences — Isaac — hypericin

Yes. I wouldn't want to deny a Bishop moves diagonally in chess either. Doesn't mean there's a scientific explanation lacking for why. Human cultures create facon de parler. It doesn't magically bring into being some entity. We're not gods.

How exactly does your conscious mind (if it is) receive information about the world, if it doesn't experience? — hypericin

Through dendrites.

Again, the question is not what is responsible for consciousness. It's the brain, everyone knows it. The question is how the brain is responsible for consciousness. — hypericin

Neuronal activity. But that doesn't seem to satisfy because you switch definition of 'consciousness'. People with blind sight are 'unaware' of the message from their retinas. They're unaware because to be aware we need the message to reach the working memory and the lesions in the striate cortex prevent that. Awareness just is messages in the working memory, nothing more. It's this form of awareness people with blind sight lack. There's a pretty full explanation of how.

You mean in general, no such thing? If you mean the same in all respects, then sure. Yet, a good lot of Ukrainians have come together against the invader doing their "Slava Ukraini" thing or whatever. I'd count that (even if temporary) as a kind of Ukrainian identity marker or proclamation. — jorndoe

Sure, but same goes for a load of people getting together to do anything. Run a marathon. Clear mines. Save lives in wars zones. There's nothing unique about getting together to fight a common enemy which creates some moral purpose which we then are under an obligations to respect. The Nazis got together for a common goal.

The argument given is not just that Ukrainians have some kind of common identity, but that that identity ought be reflected in international borders and that we, hundreds of miles away, ought respect and support that no matter the cost.

It's absurd. And getting together for a common aim doesn't even begin to justify $50 billion spent on preserving it. Did the starving millions not have sufficient 'identity'?

What is fallacious is your argument that the diversity of motives proves that the willingness to fight a common enemy is merely an illusion. — Paine

Where have I said that?

You have peace when countries accept the present drawn borders. — ssu

How's that working out for the citizens of Iraq? Libya? I suppose the ethnic violence in Rwanda was just a bit of high jinx. Somalia? Sudan? Myanmar? Literally any civil war ever...

So the Ingushetia region of Chechnya should have remained part of Russia? Kosovo should have stayed in the remnants of Yugoslavia?

You do say the daftest things sometimes...

You don't know anything and I or any other swede with insight into details won't ever tell you either since it's part of our national defensive instructions during a time when Russia is actively doing cyber attacks and activating sleeper spies. We just caught two top Russian spies who we've been feeding bad intel to over the course of five years since discovery. — Christoffer

Shh!

Who exactly is arguing from its felicitous use as a word? Only you, for me. — hypericin

You are. Your only evidence Dir the existence of an entity/event in need of explanation is that we use the word 'experience'. Other than that, you can't point to it, you can't specify it, you can't identify it in any way other than saying the word.

I think it is just fine. It is a biological explanation for a change (loss) of phenomenal experience. — hypericin

Then you have your answer. The cause of phenomenological consciousness is the striate cortex, since you find lesions there to be an adequate explanation for blindsight.

All of these things are measures — Christoffer

Phew! That's good to hear. Global climate change is sorted then.

President Biden opened a global summit on climate change Thursday morning by announcing that the United States will aim to cut its greenhouse gas emissions in half, based on 2005 levels, by the end of the decade.

'Aiming' is not a measure, it's political rhetoric.

And the argument was supposed to be supporting the notion that Europe considered itself under growing threat from Russia since 2014. A couple of political gestures toward some token military changes hastily cobbled together to make a NATO application look less needy are hardly evidence of a long known serious threat.

aiming — Christoffer

aiming — Christoffer

aiming — Christoffer

...

It was decades since we last did something like this. — Christoffer

You haven't done anything yet.

UK doesn't have any imperial aspirations towards Ireland... except naturally the part of the Island that it has. — ssu

Classic.

It should speak volumes that Ukraine, a relatively poor country, sports Europe's most effective military. And it is taking a beating as we speak. Yet, despite pursuing a policy that practically forces Russia to expand its military, there's not a hint of urgency in Europe's military expenditures. — Tzeentch

Exactly. And also true of foreign policy in general. No efforts were put in place to significantly reduce reliance on Russian exports, no efforts were put in place to seriously address ties to Russian investment. No efforts were put in place to win over Russia's allies abroad.

The rewriting of history has begun. Now, apparently the country we all happily relied on for energy, and foreign investment. The one whose allies we happily rattled. That country we apparently always knew was a serious military threat because of it's obvious imperialist intent. It's not at all a hastily constructed narrative to promote war profiteering.

They don't have bellicose neighbors. Especially when UK and/or Spain aren't declaring that they (Ireland or Portugal) are artificial countries and basically they belong to be part of their nations again. — ssu

I'm not going to bother correcting you. You just said that Ireland does not have bellicose neighbours who challenge their rights over territory.

The matter of agency is whether the common response to being invaded has been to fight back. The issue has come up here in the context of those saying that such a response is insignificant because the people fighting are only ciphers in a proxy war. — Paine

Yes? What connects the acceptance that there are motivations to fight back with somehow having to pretend those motivations are more politically important that the object of the most powerful nation on earth? The former is an argument about their mere existence, the latter is an argument about their importance in determining if western policy is morally acceptable.

Your observation about personal reasons is an equivocation between different ideas. If there had been no willingness to fight back, siding with Ukraine would have been merely a feeling of regret rather than a life-or-death attempt to repel invaders. — Paine

So now I'm taking too much notice of Ukrainian motives? If we ignore why Ukrainians are fighting, that's bad, but if we talk about all the different reasons they might have for fighting...that's bad too. No, the exact amount of notice to take of why Ukrainians are fighting is just enough to justify US foreign policy and no more. Once we've established that they want to fight back, that's it policy justified. No don't look any deeper as to why they might want to fight back, it might start coming undone...

Experiences are events, whether or not they are somehow illusory. As such they require an explanation. — hypericin

No 'Experience' is a word it's felicitous use in conversation is not empirical evidence, Scientists perfectly cogently used to use the word 'ether' too. turned it it referred to noting whatsoever.

our capacity to use such words as 'orange' to conceptually discretize continuities is subject to scientific explanation. — hypericin

It is, yes. It has nothing whatsoever to do with photons, It has to do with culture, that's why colour words are different in different languages, use different breaks and continuities - because it's just a word, and words don't magically identify empirical objects with scientific accuracy.

Suppose you lost your ability to experience sight (assuming you have it), even though you can still clearly respond to visual events. In what "world" would you look for an explanation of your plight? — hypericin

There already is a very good explanation for Blindsight. What is it you think the explanation is lacking?

My daughter agrees with this — jgill

Well, I'm glad I haven't taken on your whole family!

if they are let in they should immediately be given work visas. — jgill

Yes, although, as I said, the entire welfare check could be picked up by a minor tax increase on the wealthiest. I'm in favour of Universal Basic Income so that would apply to immigrants too.

Lots of land in the USA, but not all of it is habitable. — jgill

I suspect the question of whether land is habitable might depend quite strongly on the quality of life one is emigrating to avoid.

Is this the LGB Alliance you're talking about? Any other examples? — fdrake

Examples of court cases? No, I think that's the one all this has pretty much coalesced into. but I'm talking about the wider debate, the attempt to demonise people like Kathleen Stock, the harassment of feminist journalists like Julie Bindell, Suzanne Moore, Hadley Freeman... But also the giving of medical advice to children contrary to NHS guidelines. It's not a good look.

I figured it was time I started asking you hard questions as well. — fdrake

OK. I'll have a go.

For me, both therapy approaches seem wrong because we shouldn't be tinkering with bodies or brains as if they were custom cars which can have parts swapped our with little effect on the whole. Not without very strong cause. We simply don't know enough to do that.[hopefully replaced the bolding correctly, it doesn't transfer in quotes] — Isaac

I'll start by saying that this is really intended to be an argument about sensible priors in the absence of good evidence. so there's obviously two parts to question 1) is there really an absence of good evidence, and 2) given (1), have I made a case for avoiding medication being a sensible prior.

To tackle (1). I've not yet heard any update to Dr Cass's meta study for the NHS. It may be that I'm out of the loop, but at this stage, the best data I have on evidence is that it is "weak". That goes for 'puberty blockers', gender re-assignment surgery, and gonadotropin therapies. So I consider (1) to be a given, but I may be persuaded otherwise in the light of new evidence.

So to (2), a much harder case to make. Is leaving things alone the best policy if you've only weak evidence an intervention will help? I have to admit that this comes from a gut feeling. I'm going to justify it, but I'm going to be open about the fact that the justification is post hoc. I wouldn't have to give it a moment's thought to feel it's wrong to give medication to someone because it might help them. I suppose an obvious life-or-death situation would change my mind, but it would have to be clear, not just more guesswork on weak evidence.

So, to actually attempt a post hoc justification. I think the first argument is one of a sensible baseline for therapy (of any sort). If we don't accept a 'state of nature' as a baseline, then we have no grounds to distinguish pathology from merely bad design. Is my appendix a pathology? Should women's cervical openings be a little wider for easier childbirth? Do I have the optimum number of fingers? It's essential in medicine to be able to identify a pathology. That's done by assuming that whatever flaws it may have, there exists an archetype which acts as a default model of physiological function, and that archetype is based, not on a sci-fi 'blue-sky-thinking' ideal. It's based on a 'state of nature'.

The second argument is one of responsibility (not going to invoke the bloody trolley scenario but...). We are generally held to be more responsible for that which we actively do than for that which we reasonably fail to prevent. I'm responsible if I detonate the bomb, but I'm not responsible for not interfering with its detonation (unless doing so would be really easy - hence 'reasonable'). As such, doctors and other clinicians ought pay closer attention to the potential side effects of the drugs they administer than to the potential outcomes of a failure to administer. Side effects are weighted more heavily. In the case of weak evidence for both, weak evidence of side effects trumps weak evidence for negative outcomes from a failure to intervene.

So. Having done that (?). Can I return the challenge?

You say...

it's of weak relationship to any norms of administrative treatment in this context. It would need to be more concrete and evinced. — fdrake

I've taken a similar approach with the highlighting of qualifiers. What measures the strength of such a relationship and in saying it needs to be 'more' concrete, you're implying some target level of concreteness that's not yet been reached? What is this target level? The pharmaceutical companies have been legally (in some cases criminally) convicted of fraud. I'm struggling to see what greater level of evidence would be required that they engage in fraud. I can see a point about not assuming every drug is promoted fraudulently, simply because some are, but I can't see how one would support a proposition that multiple convictions for fraudulent activity do not weigh at all into an argument about whether some current activity might not be entirely on the level.

Of course, I wouldn't advocate a position that no medication can now be trusted, that would be absurd, but I do think it has to constantly weigh in the balance now. We're just unfortunately in an economic system where that's a constant factor. If one is weighing risks, one has to include in that calculation the risk of fraud.

I think you're broadly in agreement with Chalmers here. — frank

I don't see how. Chalmers famously labelled it the 'hard problem', didn't he? I'm suggesting it isn't a problem at all. I can't think of any way we could be much farther apart than that.

Do we also agree the theory "social constructions alone determine gender incongruity" isn't established, and is likely to be too reductive — fdrake

Forgot to answer this. Yes. I think that social constructions are 'selected' to make sense of biological interocepted data. That biological data is likely to be non-homogenised, and so groups of people will likely reach for the same narrative for similar reasons. Given the disconnect though, I think it unlikely there'd ever be a one-to-one correspondence, just a loose, fuzzy correlation.

perhaps Mermaids aims of depathologizing trans identity and making treatment more accessible perhaps could be attained by making the current system better administered, the people who administer treatment more informed, and educating GP gatekeepers to treatments (this includes voice coaching and other non-invasive interventions etc). — fdrake

Yes, I think that's definitely true (the changes being needed). I have strong doubts this is what Mermaids are actually doing though, based on their other activities (for example their attempt to de-legitimize LGB charities), but the question of what trans activists are actually trying to do might properly be secondary to any question about the nature of the trans phenomena. One thing I think we can adamantly agree on is that trans identity is a real thing, so there's something there to account for outside of any campaign group's activities around it.

There was an NHS report to this effect (can cite if required) — fdrake

I believe I've read it. This one?

a lot can be gained by making the current treatment work better without a fundamental reimagining of how trans identity is seen by doctors. — fdrake

Yes, I think this is a strong way forward. In fact it might even strengthen the barriers against medical intervention for some if the principles already in place were applied properly. We saw, at Tavistock the effects of too lax an approach.

If we assume that the only reason for gender affirmation interventions is, essentially, peer pressure to shame their recipients, that would collapse the distinction between gender affirmation and "conversion therapy". The latter is universally traumatogenic, the former has a less than 1% rate of regret. — fdrake

Yes. In some ways that's one of the issues I see. If we say that some aspect of the person needs to be adjusted to match the other, then why not the brain? It's relatively plastic, responsive to pharmaceutical intervention... Why not make trans people happy with the body they have by adjusting their brains rather than make their current brain chemistry happier by adjusting their bodies. Is there a reason, other than efficacy, why one is icky and the other not? The reason I don't think the relative efficacy of the treatments gives us the whole picture is that even research into "conversion therapy" seems wrong. It's not that it currently doesn't work, it's that we don't even want it to.

For me, both therapy approaches seem wrong because we shouldn't be tinkering with bodies or brains as if they were custom cars which can have parts swapped our with little effect on the whole. Not without very strong cause. We simply don't know enough to do that.

For the current trans movement, it seems tinkering with the brain to make it better fit both society's expectations and somatic biology is taboo, but tinkering with the body, for exactly the same reasons (replace somatic biology for psychological biology) is not only OK, but revolutionary. Something to be cheered on with great enthusiasm. I honestly have absolutely no insight at the moment into why.

So, going back to efficacy, is there a reason why sex change works and therapy (not limited here to conversion therapy alone) doesn't? I can think of a few, but only speculative. To be clear, I'm talking here about all therapeutic solutions, not just "conversion therapy".

1) if one wants a new car, but can't afford it, the situation can be dealt with one of two ways; one can either be given the money, or one can undertake to change one's relationship with material possessions. The former is more likely to work because it's easier. Its simply something about our psyches that we believe in the power of material changes more than we do in the plasticity of the brain. Arachnophobes will commonly think removal of all spiders is more likely to make them feel better that CBT. But they're wrong. The material change is only likely to shift the anxiety elsewhere whereas CBT for phobias can be very effective. People are frequently incorrect about the likelihood of an approach working and this can lead to failures in those approaches which require long term commitment.

2) I don't think the social peer effects can be ruled out. The placebo effect of having a cure for which everyone congratulates you ("how brave!") rather than berates you (the stigma of mental health treatment remains undented) is enormous when considering that the end points are all expressed in mental terms (how 'satisfied' you are, how many 'regrets'...as if such end points were not themselves social!)

3) I know I've mentioned it before and you've diligently (and probably, sensibly) avoided it but I can't ignore the fact that the sex change option is supported by one of the largest industries in the world with the largest lobbying power by far. We can't pretend that isn't going to have an impact anywhere in this. Therapy is cheap and creates only employment. Drugs are expensive and generate huge profits for very powerful industries with a proven history of pushing profitable solutions over efficacious ones.

I think we have made some progress though, — fdrake

Agreed. It's good to talk without the usual knee-jerk tribalism these topics so often descend into. As I've said, I've had colleagues affected by this. There are establishments, academic and otherwise, where this very conversation would at least be flagged, if not muffled entirely.

That sentence is logically absurd because a doubt implies some sentient, self-conscious entity holding it. — Olivier5

How does doubt logically imply a sentient, self-conscious entity holding it? What logical steps form that implication? Perhaps you could render it in classical notation, that might help.

You are welcome to produce an alternative definition of "doubt" if you think it useful, — Olivier5

Why would I do that? Pointing out that the definition is an arbitrary cultural artifact is not the same as saying I want it replaced with another one. It's simply pointing out that we didn't 'discover' doubting needed a doubter. It's how we defined the word 'doubt'. It's not a fact of nature, it's a fact about how we speak.

I think it’s an understandable reaction to the claims in popular science to the effect that consciousness has been, or will soon be, explained away by neuroscience. That is, a scientism that thereby devalues our stories. Do you recognise that this is a thing? — Jamal

Yes.

I think there's two separate questions here. The first is whether neuroscience explains this 'phenomenological' use of the term consciousness. I think the answer to that is no (mainly because I can't see how it possibly could).

The second is the question of whether the 'phenomenological' use of the term consciousness makes coherent sense, is a useful term. I also happen to think the answer to that question is no. But it's a different question and the fact that the answer is 'no' doesn't, in my view, justify a claim that neuroscience has 'explained' it.

The OP...

the laws of biology, chemistry, electricity, and quantum mechanics in no way explain consciousness—or even hint that consciousness is possible. — Art48

If the OP wanted a within-paradigm discussion, then drawing in biology, chemistry, electricity, and quantum mechanics mightn't be the best way to go about that.

As usual, a claim is made against science, then when a scientific paradigm is invoked in the defense of that claim, the argument shifts to a non-overlapping magesteria one.

Well, if a scientific paradigm has no place in discussions about consciousness, then will everyone please stop going on about neuroscience (the failings thereof) in relation to it.

you agree that we have experiences, and therefore some scientific accounting for them is necessary, to have a complete understanding of the world. — hypericin

No. That's exactly the notion I'm disagreeing with. Us being able to use a word in conversation is not an indicator that that word picks out some empirical object or event in need of a scientific explanation. I gave the example of 'orange'. A perfectly useful word. There's no scientific explanation for the boundaries of the colour, nor is there any need for one. We just find 'orange' a useful level of distinction, not too fine to be cumbersome, not too broad to be useless. Nothing in the physics of photons explains 'orange' as a category, nor should it.

This is an improvement from when you did not see any kind of Ukrainian identity as being germane to what is happening. — Paine

Still don't. There's no such thing as a Ukrainian identity. Ukrainians identify in all sorts of different, occasionally completely incompatible ways. That's why there was a civil war going on before this invasion.

The idea that an arbitrary line on a map encompasses a unique identity is patent nonsense.

The way you present it as an elective is odd. That would be more a reflection of intent if Ukraine was trying to invade Russia. — Paine

I'm simply saying that, in a conscripted army, motivations to fight are even more diverse than in a free one. Even in a regular army people's reasons might range all the way from borderline psychopathy to heroic selflessness. Most common seems to be nationalism. In a conscripted army, you can add to that range the fear of reprisals for refusal.

The idea that 'Ukrainians' are all fighting for the same reason is, again, patent nonsense.

As such, we cannot possibly 'take into account' their agency. They are not an agent, they are hundreds of thousands of separate agents with separate goals, taking them into account is nigh on impossible. It's certainly not something to be done by clinging slavishly to the account of their agency given by parties with a strong vested interest in presenting it a certain way.

Over 2,400,000 migrants encountered at the southern border last year. Then there are those who sneaked in. How would you handle this? — jgill

Let them in.

Is America going to run out of space? No.

Is America going to run out of money? Jeff Bezos alone could afford their welfare cheques. Just the latest year's increase in the defense budget would cover it.

So why not?

As to stemming the flow, perhaps not enforcing a global trade and debt-management state designed exclusively to grind these countries into the ground and enrich America might just stop people wanting to leave them so badly.

So your idea of a discussion forum is that someone posts a claim and everyone who disagrees with it should refrain from posting in that thread.

That explains a lot about your approach to this forum.

What things don't share the same world? I don't know what you mean. — frank

"Share the same world", It's a colloquial expression - thought it was more universal, but apparently not. It means to be involved in the same activities. The use of the word 'consciousness' as it's used here and the study of neurons are not 'in the same world' they don't overlap in their activities. There's no need for one to explain the other, it wouldn't even make sense it'd be like expecting physics to explain what a googly is in cricket.

That a person needs to hold a doubt for there to be a doubt, is implicit in the definition of doubt: "a feeling of not being certain about something, especially about how good or true it is." — Olivier5

Exactly. And unless you want to argue that the dictionary was given to us by God or created by an act of nature, then nothing in it is 'discovered'. We declare definitions to be what they are, we could have declared otherwise.

The best distinction I can come up with is that one - skin whitening - shames the body that it's applied to, and one is either an expression of that body's nature or is caused by a shamed incongruity between body and norm. I think the first is prejudicial violence "these people need to be white!" whereas the second is expressive change "We need to be otherwise!".

You could maybe rejoinder that someone could want to change their skin colour for precisely the same reasons. In that case, I think it's either a bullet bite scenario (which I don't like) or I should parry with a distinction. If we use unenlightened's social pressure/identity+shame dynamic as a proxy, the skin bleaching is explainable entirely by shaming social norms, my response to him was that trans identity is isn't explainable by shame, only trauma is.

The question about gender reassignment I think comes after the question about whether someone is trans, and the ethical norms are different. Oppression vs expression, shame being imposed from without vs undoing shame from within. I'd prefer not to think about it in terms of shame, because as you've highlighted people from more supportive social backgrounds (I imagine) have less chance of being traumatised about their gender incongruence. — fdrake

So, using your definitions from above, would it be an unfair paraphrasing to say that you see the difference between sex-changes and skin-whitening as being that in the former the participants don't mind, but in the latter they do mind (but feel they have to)?

You seem to want to stop short of saying that a normal (non-pathological, supportive society) expression of trans identity would involve any traumatic need to change sex. There might, however, be an idle preference for doing so, but the trauma is societal in cause.

With black kids in a non-racist neighbourhood, there would equally be no non-pathological need to change skin colour, but the difference is that none would even have an idle preference for doing so, such that when society offers it as a 'solution' to it's own racism, no one would take it otherwise.

If that phrasing is close to right, then I think I can agree with it in principle (whether it's true is a far more difficult thing to determine, but I agree it could be). The problem with that account is two-fold:

1) It kinda makes it sound like society is OK to push harsh bio-chemical interventions on it's minorities (rather than simply tolerate them) on the grounds that they "don't mind". I can't get to feeling good about that, even though I've no strict moral objection. I can get to a reluctant "Oh well, I suppose if they don't mind then I've no reason to stop them", but it's not something I'm going to waive flags over, I'm not going out on the street to cheer on the fact that society's found a way to get out of it's obligation to tolerate differences by using drugs.

I come back to the fact that the pro-trans activists are not pushing a reluctant stop-gap awaiting a better solution. They're pushing this as the end goal.

2) If the free and un-coerced consent of the trans community to this stop-gap 'solution' is the only thing separating it from the unconscionable skin-whitening 'solution' to racism, then it is vitally important that the community is unaffected by any form of social coercion. It is vitally important that the discussion around gender and sex takes place in an environment where people are free to express their views and encounter a range of opinions on the matter so that they can make up their own minds.

Do we have such an environment, do you think? Are trans activists generally working toward, or in opposition to, such an environment?

Putting it pretentiously, I'm under the impression that there's something affirmative in gender transition, but only something negating in the skin bleaching one. "Make me not this!" (skin bleaching) vs "Make me not this AND make me this" (transition).

Do you get the same impression? — fdrake

Not really, no. I think that 'identity' like any other concept is socially constructed, a post hoc story we 'pick off the shelf' to explain the various biochemical goings on in our heads which are (absent of any story) just a lot of electrical signals and chemistry. I don't believe people are born with stories already programmed, I don't see how they could be. I think we learn, through our culture and environment, to make different types of sense out of the interocepted data we get from the internal receptors in our brains.

As such someone who is black wanting to be white and someone who is male wanting to be female are both societal stories offered to explain a whole host of (probably completely incongruous) neurological goings on. One person might, then, identify as trans for a whole bunch of completely different neurological reasons to another. Same for identifying as 'white'. It's just a story, offered by society and it matches up with set of interocepted neurological goings on in need of an explanation, in need of some sense made of them.

Obviously, we all share similar neural goings on, so some stories are going to be very popular if they make sense of those shared processes, but it's also true that some stories are going to very popular if they're presented to the exclusion of all others and with huge social pressure to conform. This makes it very difficult to tell whether it's the quality of the story (good at explaining the interocepted data) or the PR of the story (advertised itself well) that accounts for its popularity.

As such, I don't see any reason why we couldn't find ourselves in a future where 'being white' was presented as a thing some people are, given a lot of good PR and thereby become just as popular a story as the trans identity is today.

Note, none of this denigrates the stories (life is quite impossible without them), nor is it an attempt to de-legitimise trans identities (calling it 'just a story' is not meant as demeaning - everything is 'just a story'). It's a warning that because everything is 'just a story' society has to be very careful about the way in which it presents its smorgasbord of available stories, especially if some stories lead to serious consequences (trauma or drugs).

Remember that when gravity was first introduced into physics as a thing to be explained — frank

But gravity was a word for the effect of empirical observations. We'd expect it to have an empirical explanation. Objects we measure seem to be drawn by some force (which we can also measure) so we need an empirical theory for what's going on. There's a gap there to fill.

With 'consciousness' (in the non-coma sense), there's no empirical objects being effected by a measurable force. They just don't share the same worlds at all, there's no gap to fill, no problem to solve.

Some people use 'consciousness' to talk about a possibly loosely connected set of vague feelings they've got. Why would we even want a neurological theory as to why, let alone expect one?

There's no direct neural correlate of angry either, nor fear, nor memory, nor 'idea'... These are all terms which do a job in human cultural interaction. It would be a miracle if they all happen to describe exact brain activities.

Denver is being flooded with Venezuelians ... the numbers are overwhelming. — jgill

4,000.

Less than the normal amount by which the population of Denver grows every year.

Did you notice the 'overwhelming' number of additional people last year from natural population growth?