You've missed the distinction I was going for. The partioning of an anatomical parts is not sex either. A penis+certain chromosomes, etc., no more equals sex than a penis does. That's just a reference to which body parts someone has.

Sex has an identity claim over the top of this. It's not pointing out existence of anatomical features, but asserting only certain anatomy can occur with an identity of male or female.

My point here is not that gender is dependent on sex (though that is true of notions of gender defined through an indexical of sex category), but that sex is, like gender, a social category of identity and relation. Sex is not about describing anatomy. It's about forming an order in which bodies take on a given identity or property in our understanding.

The reason the sex/gender split cannot recognise trans people properly is in how it distinguishes sex. It cordones of identities of male and female only to bodies of certain characteristics. People being unable to separate gender from sex is not the problem. Plenty of people do exactly that, conceive of gender in a way where sex is no longer it's foundation.

The problem lies in the social ordering in reference identity aren't just about gender. Many of them are about the signifcance of the body in relation to identity. Sex itself is the problem here, entirely on its own terms. If we have an account that only certain bodies can be an identity, we have system of sex roles in effect.

The anatomical is the body, sex is social. Sex is a category into which someone placed or belongs. To be a man or woman on account of having a certain body is no less a norm than the question of wearing a dress, having long hair or partaking in a certain role in society.

In the sex/gender spilt, people ignore the biggest criteria cited for being a man or women of the all: the body. Sex (which is an identity) is supposed to have an immutable connection to the body, when it it is no more grounded in defining the presence of a man or woman than wearing dresses or not. Why does a man have to have a penis to be a man? It's just another individual characteristic, like wearing dresses or not.

The sex/gender split does not genuinely allow for recognition of many trans identities. Sex being understood as setting the identity or male or femle, it always leaves behind an idea trans people aren't truly men or women because their body means "they really are" their rejected identity-- "Ah yes, they say their gender identity is female, but look at their male body.."

The sex/gender split is outright saying trans women are really male (they have a "male body"). It does not recognise the trans woman is female, and so has a female biology, even if she has penis and no breasts (to use the crude example).

It's really gender secret way of maintaining itself in the face of its obvious contradiction. By keeping male and female identity essential to the body, it allows the social forces which want to distribute bodies, in certain ways (e.g. only those with penises get to be in charge) to continue, even after it's been shown to be incoherent. The expectations males must do one thing, women another is maintained, for the supposedly immutable bodies are still there assigning who someone is or not.

You're so close.

All you have to do is fully remove the idea of the body determining identity. The trans women is not a women because she senses female biology (the biological entity of a human, whatever parts it has, is male, female, etc., on its identity), but rather because she is a woman and so whatever her biology, she is a woman with the biology of a woman.

Bearing seems distingishing identity isn't about conforming to a standard or not, but a feature of one existing being. The trans women isn't a women because they have to meet a social standard of belonging to womanhood, but rather because they are a woman who happens to have dysphoria about their body.

To make the distinction clear, we might consider the person who has dysphoria about their body-- feels belonging with a body of breasts, a vagina, etc. -- but doesn't have any problem with an identity of male. (i.e. they are a MALE who feels/ought have a different body, rather than having an identity of woman. )

I wouldn't take bearing to be talking about the opposition to social construction. Social construction, in the modern usage, isn't a specific kind of cause (All social constructions involving a body have a biological cause involved! ), but a reference to a fact of existence which is a social practice. In this respect, all our identities and categories are social constructions because they are a contingent practice of our social existence.

No, that's just terrible evo psych postion committing a naturalistic fallacy.

And yes, we definitely have to fight against it, since it is our myth holding in place patriarchy. We're just fighting a human culture though, not our bodily existence at any time and place.

It can be: humanity might just have done patriarchal social construction throught its history. Just as money is a social construct which comes with societies with money, patriarchy is a social construct which comes with patriarchal societies.

My big post will have to wait till the weekend when I can devote some hours to laying out all the social constructions of sex and gender, but I can squash the gender dysphoria myth quickly.

Not all people who fall under a trans umbrella have gender dysporia. Most might have a gender identification, that's to say they have a particular identity and what to be recognised by it, but this is not equivalent to dysphoria. Some bigender, genderfluid, genderqueer, etc., people are fine being identified as a gender people might assume. Just because one is a women, it doesn't mean one is not a man and vice versa.

Even if one is to reject being a man or women, it doesn't necessary mean dysphoria. Sometimes people aren't seriously bothered by their bodies or even others misidentfying them. The latter can just be an annoyance, rather than a deep disgust with oneself.

Finally, even those who do experience dysphoria, it ebbs and flows. It's a particular psychological state, not one's identity. The existence of a trans person is not equivalent to dysphoria, even amongst those who experience it.

People are labouring under the expectation gender means something other than gender. Gender isn't recognised as itself amongst many people. They think a membership granted by having some other fact.

So what can the trans person mean in this context? The usual accounts of gender membership don't work. Their identity is opposite or other to other gender asserted in these accounts. Something else has to be found. Feelings are usually that. It's both presence of something other and a feature common to instance of trans identity. One of few replacements for genital, chromosomes or long hair to be found.

Feelings become the account of how someone is trans or not in these instances. So terrible confusions will remain until it's realised one is not speaking about something other than gender, but rather a fact of gender itself, set by nothing other than itself. (In which case, one is trans because they have a gender which is other to what is expected under some notion of gender).

Hume is outright rejecting the claim you ascribe to these natural philosophers, physical necessity.

It's not a question of ignorance of concept in the sense of never having come across it. Hume is actively taking a metaphysical position that physical necessity is impossible on the grounds the world is distinct from our concepts, that states are their own author, rather than being determined by what we think they must be.

That's why he's one of the best metaphysicians and scientists.

He doe not allow our concepts to override the question of what they world is doing.

We cannot have a concept which delivers all information about future states. Hume is rejecting these natural philosophers because they put our ideas above how the world behaves.

Hume rejects physical necessity because it requires ignoring the difference between our concepts and what constitutes an existing state. It must suppose existing states to be given by our concepts, rather than recognising they are they own beings who may or may not behave a we expect.

But that's the assumption: that all battleships will work like this, such that any which don't float have some kind of problem explicable in these rules. Hume's point is we might encounter a battleship which fails to behave as stated in our laws. For example, a battleship which appears with all the features of one which out laws expect will float, but then behaves differently.

The point is that when we ascribe that battleships necessarily behave as per these laws, we start to engage in guesswork. We guess that all instances of a battleship must behave this way, rather than respecting a given battleship defines it.

It's not that we do not know, even with a certainty, that some battleships behave a certain way.

Rather, it is our concept of necessary behaviour is being stated in the wrong terms. We can know, with certainty, but only when we grasp how a given individual state behaviour. We cannot substitute out the existence of a state with our concepts and laws.

No. It isn't that "battleships will float" as if battleships suddenly appear out of the blue, but we know how to make battleships float because we discovered the law of floatation. Why pretend that we don't know the things we know with certainty? What makes you think there is any value to humanity in that? — Ron Cram

The assumption is unscientific. If we apply the stipulation battleship will necessarily float, we place our own concepts about the battleship over how any given battleship behaves.

We have an idea of how battleship must behave which will lead us astray if we encounter instances of battleships which behave differently. Instead of allowing the state we observe to set what it does, we come in with out prejudice any battleship must float, simply because that's what other ones have done.

1) X is in Y.
2) X depends notionally on Y (X cannot be understood without reference to what Y is).
3) X is not a part of Y.

To me, this is sheer conceptual confusion. Yet, 1), 2) and 3) should be true of all finite modes if they existed. So you better admit that no finite modes exist, on pain of contradiction. — bobobor

Spinoza's distinction between substance and modes is precisely understand all those three are true of all finite modes.

Finites modes (X) are of the singular unity substance (Y ).

Any finite mode, notionally, depends on Y (substance) because no finite modes occur outside its unity. (for there were modes outside substance, there would not be the unity which is of all modes). It's not because substance is some kind of being which is making the modes exists, but rather simply because anything which does exist is of the unity.

Finite modes are not part of substance at all. For that to be the case, substance would be rendered just another contingent being, present only on account of these specific modes. The unity of substance requires it be beyond any of its modes, since it is not given by any particular mode.

We can seen this in how an identification of substance gives no insight into which modes are present. If I mention how there is substance, I fail to describe anything about which finites modes exist. Similarly, if i mention there is a finite mode, I fail to speak about the unity of substance. If I describe Spinoza's Ethics exists on my shelf, I failed to identify substance.

No conceptual confusion, 1), 2) and 3) are all true of existing finite modes.

Patriarchy refers to a feature of society and culture in which women are oppressed or devalued in relation to men. It isn't one specific action which men take against women (though those do happen), but a feature of certain social contexts and relations. In this respect, participation in it or its presence is not limited to or divided on sex and gender lines.

Our capitalism is a patriarchy because it has these relations, whether they are enacted by men or women. This question isn't about whether someone belongs to a virtuous sex or gender, it's about how they understand and treat women. Women can partake in this just as much as men.

It's more than just a notion of women withholding sex. To think that supposes women were there to have sex with men in the first place, hence the withholding part, rather than just not partaking.

The very idea of political lesbianism is drawn up against this notion. Political lesbians aren't heterosexuals in relationships with men in which they withhold sex. They are (sometimes) heterosexuals who make the choice not be with or for men at all. Rather than withholding sex from men who would otherwise get it, the political lesbian is holding a position she is not for the desire of men at all.

...yet she wasn't proposing it at all, as stated in her last paragraph.

Several responses are working under the idea OP is suggesting every woman be a political lesbian, hence the handwringing over the question of when and if women will have sex with someone they find attractive.

They've entirely missed that the political lesbian is being considered from the point of individual here. It's not being posed as a grand goal all woman partake in to achieve the grand society.

The question is focused on something far more localised: whether women avoided sexual relationships/sexuality with men is a viable individual response to avoiding certain patriarchal relationships in their lives (which it is, since a man cannot dominate one in a patriarchal relationship order if he is not there).

I'm not sure I'd be inclined to stick around to talk much given the level of engagement in most of the responses. Even amongst some of the people who are normally sensible. Look at how many people seemed to have missed the following line in the OP:

Also, my argument is not suggesting all women engage in political lesbianism, rather it is suggesting that if heterosexual women find this to be a relevant option towards achieving equality, then it is a viable course for feminism. — Bridget Eagles

Yet here we are, with half the thread acting like someone is proposing every woman desperate to have sex with men is meant to be a political lesbian.

They aren't so different, just talk about different topics. Largely, the are translatable into each other. The differences of one we can put in the context of others without really causing a contradiction or disagreement.

The Rosetta Stone is to understand God as univocal being rather than an existing creator of causality.

I'll keep how "the problem of evil" is common to all moral decisions and how each of as acts as (a?) God under my hat then. The similarity between DCT and the act of following a moral standard will probably be too much.

I was making a pointed joke about the OP's argument just being another form of Divine Command Theory. Why did Banno have to listen to Reason? Well, Reason is just always right in what it says.

*edit*
But it seems the OP understood that, so I'm not sure what they are trying to go for.

It's alright, but probably a circumlocution.

This is one of the strangest threads I've ever read. I have not seen a moral realist (which the OP appears to be) so insistent to assert moral values are just subjective. I think the whole conversation is a confusion.

The OP seems to be missing crucial concepts which distinguish something which is independent, but might be understood (or not) in our experiences.

Such a rebel Banno, arguing with God's Reason's prescriptions.

Come on, you gotta listen to the commands of Reason.

We need to unpack this one a bit. Why does Hume makes this move? He's answering a question about a certain kind of "proof." Do we have experience of these unseen objects at the given time? We do not. Clearly, they do not meet a standard of observation. Beyond this, I don't know for sure (beyond all other possibilities) whether the stairs are present. All sorts of stuff could happen to the stairs, including the stairs ceasing to be.

Hume is really just sticking to a certain demand justification. A demand, which we might add, applies both ways.

If the letter reaches him without the stairs, he will have a world without stairs (whatever that might be) which brought him the letter. The stairs have just been replaced by something else. He will be confronted by the need for an unseen object in an absence of stairs too. Bewilderment in either case. We cannot make the accusation Hume believes their are no stairs.

For the same reason he cannot accept there are stairs, he cannot accept there aren't any. He cannot see the occurrence of either.

What's driving this juxtaposition is not the existence/non-existence of any particular object or not, but rather the distinction between one's own experience and everything else in the world. Whenever we encounter information or a proposal about something beyond are immediate experience, we are put in this situation.

In making this point, Hume isn't trying to pose some kind of universe without external objects or even without external objects which we know, but laying out what is demanded by a certain kind of justification. The true sceptic doesn't deny himself the comforts of knowledge because they understand this scepticism isn't strictly a measure of what is known. It's a measure of whether a claim has been justified to a certain standard.

Nature being to strong means Hume,in the terms you are using, thinks there are external objects.

We are affected by nature in certain ways. Things happen to us, all around us, within are experiences. The sceptic is destined to fall to what appears in our impressions. From beginning to end, someone can whine they don't have "proof" a billiard ball is about it hit them in the face, but then it does. Nature is too strong for our wish for "proof" to matter.

From here, we can actually extend scepticism to a proof of external objects. The motivation of the sceptic is entirely driven by the existence of external objects. What is the monster we fear so much as a sceptic? Making a mistake, taking an unjustified/untrue position, the world being other to what appears own our experiences.

To participate in any sceptical project is a tact acceptance of the externality of objects. If there were no external objects there couldn't be a mismatch between what appears to us and what was true. Scepticism would be incoherent. It needs a world which can be other to our experience.

A world other than our experiences also has implications for how a scepticism can conceivably function. It must turn not only on certain assertions of what is true (as they might be wrong), but also on any sceptical rejection of a claim (as a claim might also be true). The coherent sceptic must, like Hume, oscillate between scepticism of one claim and accepting it (i.e. scepticism of rejecting it).

Hume isn't laying out a rejection of external objects, knowledge or philosophy. He's analysing the relationship of our reason to knowledge, trying to break with a philosophy which holds our reason or concepts are how our knowledge obtains (as in poor surface readings of Descartes and Berkeley).

We might say Hume is trying to recognise the life of the external world, that it is the things outside us which determine their existence, rather than us having an experience or concept. In this metaphysical space, he is constantly sceptical because he recognises our concepts are distinct from how something is true/made true.

I would say "garbage" is only an assertion of pejorative. In terms of anything "rational", which I assume we are taking to mean some kind of logical or justified argument in relation to content, such an account has nothing. Just calling something "garbage" is not a rational justification for anything. We've for to a detail an argument of how content fails to be rational by some standard.

You misunderstand my point. It's not about properties because sometimes they change. What stays the same is not an accidental or necessary property, but rather an entity which is doing it's properties.

I have changed many times over my life. How have I stayed the same? Well, I remain the same existing entity, which is why my changed properties belong to me rather than something new. The fact I changed depends on the sameness of my existence.

I am saying something else entirely. The words we use in this situation refer to something. They describe something. In making out statement, whether do a thought experiment or not, we are speaking about something. Our language is referring to something specific when we say "universe." We are disingishing the fact of where these electron and proton belong-- they are of this specific universe (as opposed to not).

So you're telling a falsehood then? These particles are not of this universe?

More to the point, this move engaging in a special pleading. How it is that our language about the electron and proton means something, but our language about the universe does not? If it were all just a thought experiment that said nothing, our language of proton and electron would not refer.

Clearly not, we are talking about something.

"Universe" picks out a particular distinction, something is true in virtue of it. To speak of this universe is different then to speak, for example, of our own. In this case, universe is speaking about similarity between the electron and proton, such that they have the relation of change and replacement (as opposed to just talking about any old instance of a proton and electron).

We just aren't talking about a something which is one particular existing thing. In the sense we are speaking now, we might even say this universe is something which does not exist, which is how it stays the same even when existing things (proton>electron) do not at all.

I never said otherwise.

Belonging to this universe is just a property of these particles. There isn't a seperate object of universe we might observe and measure.

But something has stayed the same: the universe.

There is now a proton instead of an electron. In this change, something has stayed the same: we still only have this singular universe. So the universe has indeed undergone a change. It is now a proton rather than electron. Still the same universe though. This is how we say there is a change.

If it weren't the same universe, the change wouldn't be there at all. We would have one universe which was an electron, and another which was a proton, neither of which replaced the other.

Agreed. That's how it is the same universe.

If we had another universe, then we would have two things and there would not be the one undergoing change.

The universe stayed the same.

Otherwise, our universe would not have changed at all. We would instead just be talking about some different universe and the status of ours would be going unmentioned (has it even changed? We don't know, since we aren't posing anything about it at this second point).

Parmenides has it right. The reason change is an illusion is precisely because something else is involved. When a change occurs, the same defines it. The world can only change if two different instances are the same, such there is an alteration of one. Same with person. If I am to change, the new way of being must the same, me, or else fail to be the change in myself at all.

Change is defined through something remaining the same
We might think the change has destroyed the same, but it is an illusion. A change is always a song sung by the same, it's an event performed by something which is the same.

Well, that's the trick.

I mean they are always entirely different, despite any similarities they might have. No matter how similar I am to the penguin, I am in no way the penguin. The idea similarity overcomes or eliminates entire difference is an illusion.

Always. That's how analogies work. Two different things are noted to be similar in some respect.

The trouble here is in the space question, material existence, there is nothing shared, no matter how similar or analogous they might be. If someone says, "You run like a penguin", it doesn't make me a penguin.

I know, which commits you to a position, like a nomilnalist, that these abstract objects are not at all material existence.

In which case you are really in little disagreement with the nominalist: like you, they hold potentials are non-existent. Both of you look out into the material world and assert the possibilities are not found there.

The analogy makes no difference here. All that's required for this similarity is the assertion potentials are not material. Both of you agree potentials are not manifesting states of the material world.

Not true.

Remember the problem was supposedly that possibilities had to exist, had to possess the univocal or equivocal sense of an actual state.

If we are to reject this, whether by analogy or definition as an abstract object, we are committed in the first instance to a position possibilities do not exist at all. Indeed, it is precisely in being possibilities are abstract or referred to by analogy that they are not a material (actual) state.

This intuition is correct, but it has a serious consquence for our account of possible worlds: they cannot exist all (since existing things are actual).

Rather puts a dampener on the supposed contradiction between possible worlds and the material.


That which does not exist does not need it's existence grounded. Materialists get completely off the hook because the non- existence of abstract objects releases any need for them to appear as existing states.