Yes, absolutely.

There are many ways a fallacious argument might be interesting.

It's underlying truth claim might be correct, so it would be a mistake to think everything being said ought to be rejected because of the fallacies.

We might find it interesting for how it might jolt us out of a particular mode of thinking or imagine differently.

The fallacious statement might be an example which shows as something about claims and reasoning, such as examples in his thread, where a fallacious argument is used to show how the presence of fallacies don't address the truth claim of an argument.

Then what are you actually saying with an argument, if not making the case for the fact of some state-of-affairs? — Harry Hindu

One does that all the time, assuming one's argument is making a truth claim.

The point is the fact of someone making a case (one's argument) is a different fact to what is true or false (the thing someone makes a claim about).

I’ve got no problem the logic. The necessary meanings of logic are how we distinguish and reason about things.There are many different logics. Fallacies are one of these logics. Of itself, this is perfectly fine.

Fallacies and their logic are a field of knowledge we may be an expert on. Just as I know how I felt yesterday, what’s in my backyard, what’s important for me to do today and how planets are moving, I may know about fallacies and when people commit them. If the subject was fallacies someone had committed, I would have exactly what’s needed.

The problem with fallacies is not they aren’t real or that logic somehow doesn’t work, it’s they don’t address a claim being made. If I’m talking about which shops are in my local area, I’m not making claim about how fallacious my argument is or not. My subject of interest is another fact entirely, one which is not actually a fact of my argument at all.

We can see this easily in examples. Let’s say I claim there is a fruit shop on my street. I make the argument:

“I am a poster of The Philosophy Forum. Since I dislike fallacies, I am an idiot who can never be trusted. Ergo, there is a fruit shop on my street.”

I’m sure the fallacy minded will have a lot of fun picking that one apart, finding all the different sorts of missteps in logical inference I’ve made. But what have we said/learnt/discovered about whether there is a fruit shop on my street? Absolutely nothing. The metric which justifies the claim “There is a fruit shop on my street” or gives a reason to reject it hasn’t even been addressed.

The fallacies of my argument doesn’t actually give us a reason to conclude the claim should be rejected. I could commit all those fallacies in my argument and it might be true there is a fruit shop on my street.

If someone want to now about the fruit shop is there or not, fallacies and their logic does not them. The subject is not my argument and whether it has made a fallacious misstep, it’s the empirical fact of whether a shop exists on my street.

To comment on the truth of the claim, someone needs the appropriate definitions of fruit shop and knowledge of if the shop exists. Talking about fallacies I’ve committed gets no-one any closer to knowing if there is a fruit shop on my street.

In any case fallacies make comment on the structure os someone’s argument, not the content of their claim. This is fine if you are interested in the fallacies of their argument. If, however, you are interested in whether their underlying claim about something is true or not, talking about fallacies is utterly useless. They only give you cause to think an argument has fallacious reasoning. They don’t give a reason to accept or reject the underlying claim.

I'd be against because fallacies are a terrible way of relating to philosophy. At best the only describe some kind of logical error in abstract. It's not helpful to engaging with philosophical claims because doesn't really address them. In the face of a claim regarding what is true or not, fallacies only pick out some element of logical structure of an argument.

Pointing out a fallacy doesn't actually tell us about whether a philosophical claims is worthwhile. People argue poorly (or not at all sometimes), for true claims. If we are thinking about pointing out fallacies, we've lost sight of what we are interested in. We cease to be investigating what is true or which claims are worth accepting, and have insert became obsessed whether someone has said a word we think to be wrong.

The VR of fallacies holds no truths. All we see there are some rules we've grown to like playing in, a game of handing out jellybeans or not, depending on whether someone has said all the right words. Fallacies are for debaters, who are not interested in learning anything.

So, in your view, does nature precede culture? If not, then how do you prevent your theory from falling into an infinite regress? — Harry Hindu

Nature does not precede culture. Environment and culture are part of nature. Any time a body causes anything, it interacts with its environment. There is no biological cause without an environment. There is no impact of the environment without the affected person's biology. The Nature vs Nurture dichotomy is a myth.

Let's say a person has gene which causes them to have a trait. The genetic effect cannot occur without the environment a person interacts with. They present with this genetic event only if the environment allows. If they were in a different environment, one which would alter the gene/what the gene produces, a different trait would have been caused. Genes cannot have their effect without an impact of environment. No genetic event occurs without its suitable environment.

Similarly, an environmental or cultural impact on someone's behaviour or traits cannot occur without their genetics and wider biological. A human, for example, can only be influenced to learn a language or cultural practice because their body/biology responds in a particular way. If human biology was different, if we didn't generate these sorts of experiences in response to social environment, we wouldn't be subject to a cultural influence. If my body didn't respond to hearing people speak by learning language, no-one would be able to teach me their language. To be socially influenced, I need my particular body, my biology.

There is no infinite regress because biology and environment were never isolated. SOmeone who exists is, at all times, a product of both biological and environment states. There are no causal events which are the body or environment isolated. Every single state of a person is a product of biology and environment. There is never one without the other.

Wrong. I said that biology is impossible if not for the differences and similarities. If there aren't just two sexes, then why don't humans have a wide range of features? Why don't some of have trunks for noses, tails, or some other organs that we might or might not refer to as sexual, or gender? Here's the quote:
If you did a principal components analysis using the combination of all five traits, you’d find two widely separated clusters with very few people in between. Those clusters are biological realities, just as horses and donkeys are biological realities, even though they can produce hybrids (sterile mules) that fall morphologically in between.

Why are these five traits occurring together in such large numbers as to create these clusters of biological realities? — Harry Hindu

I know that... but you equate those differences similarities with the social category of sex. Unless those differences are categorised as "male" and "female," you claim these traits are impossible.

But these traits are not a classification of male or female. They are the existence of bodies. When these bodies exist, they will be so regardless of how they might get categorised. These bodies could be in any sex category, or not in a sex category at all, and they wouldn't be any different.

In any case, the existence of the given body is why a particular body with traits exists. The mule is not a sterile body because of how it's parents were categorised in terms of sex. It is so because the two bodies in reproduction produced this body of a mule which is sterile.

If differences between bodies are real, then how is it that doesn't determine "fate"? — Harry Hindu

If you mean "fate" in the sense of many different ways a biological entity comes to exist, it absolutely does (in conjunction with its environment, of course). The real differences of body just aren't sex classification. Bodies will be doing their thing regardless of whether they are categorised as male, female, sexless or anything else.

A penis is penis, whether of a male person, female person, intersex person a sexless person.

Our similarities or difference in form explains the differences in behavior. Can you lift a large fallen tree with your nose? An elephant can.

If social constructionism isn't a cause, but a state, then what is it that you propose to change (the cause) that leads to a new effect (gender-neutrality)? Also, how is it that you have come to realize any of this on your own if your ideas are simply the result of cultural constructionism and the culture you grew up in constructed a binary concept of sex and gender? — Harry Hindu

They do not. The elephant can life a tree with its nose (unlike me), but not because of form. It can do so because it has a body/nose strong enough to lift the tree. The elephant can lift this tree because it is a state(s) with a nose strong enough to do so. Explanation is in the presence of the body not the form. Change the existence of body in question, say a elephant with a weak nose or a human with a strong one, and the opposite behaviour will be true. Existence accounts for our behaviours, not ideas.

A change is achieved by developing a certain understanding of gender and it relationship to our behaviour, identifies and bodies. It's a question of engaging biological and environmental influences to produce a new gender-neutral culture. Like any culture change or new understanding, one teaches it with a variety different biological and environmental influences.

States of "social construction" are caused by a variety of biological and environmental influences. The fact social construction is a state doesn't mean it isn't a product of other things (e.g. biology, environment, cultural states, etc.), it just means to be a "a social construct" is to be one type of state rather than a cause.

My ideas are a result of my biology interacting with the environment I've lived in over my life. There is no separation between "realised this on my own" and "a result of the culture I grew up in." All my ideas, even my entirely original ones (if their are any), are a result of the culture I grew up in. My culture was the environment which interacted with my body to produce my ideas. Culture does not have to representationally insert an idea (e.g.someone teaching me what a word means) into my head to be a cause. My culture just needs to be an environment " that didn't cause my body to have a different idea" to are an influence in forming my ideas.

A lot of ideas are also formed in relation to those in my culture. This very discussion and my augments about sex and gender, for example, are a product of the binary concept of of sex and gender in my culture. Trans people, gender neutrality as opposed to a binary, etc., are all concepts formed out of the gender binary. If I lived in culture without a gender binary (and didn't I imagine it), my argument would be totally different and I probably wouldn't even understand most, if anything, people were talking about in this thread.

I know what they are perfectly well. I was just ignoring them because they weren't relevant to the point I was making.

And natural kinds is a terrible concept anyway. Scientific disciplines deal with describing states of the world, not conceptual rules. We might say natural kinds are a certain from of universalist illusion.

You have a strange understanding/confusion about nominalism then.

The whole point of nominalism is that the singular, general or universal doesn't exist at all, that existence is characterised by many different things, rather than a singular universal which defines or determines the all. Nominalism is an understanding that only difference/different things are real (by "real", I assume you mean something that exists).

Indeed. Just lots of entirely different instances of marks with their own numerical identity. So lets say we have two sets of seven marks "!!!!!!!" and "!!!!!!!." These are never identical.

Each does have a numerical value of 7, but is is not achieved thorough a universal numerical value delivering an identical meaning of 7 to each.

Rather, the value of 7 is a feature of each unique set on its own terms. Just as two different people have brown hair solely in how they exist, these sets both have value of 7, solely in how they are present as a unique individual. The 7 of one set is never the 7 of the other. The similarity (7) is formed entirely out of difference.

The fact there are seven "!" marks present.

Now, it is also true: "!!!!!!!" is also one mark, (a singular "!!!!!!!" entity), two marks ("!!" "!!!!!" entities next to each other), two marks ("!" "!!!!!!!" entities next to each other), two marks ( "!!!" "!!!!") next to each and so on, etc., of for entities of every combination, but this never changes there are seven individual "!" marks present.

If we are talking about the number on individual marks, the person who say anything other than seven will be wrong by the truth of this instance "!!!!!!!."

I'm not sure what you are trying to talk about here. My point was just you are correct to think our thoughts are involved here, that our understanding of numbers is our way of thinking.

The "not quite" is because these thoughts don't constitute the existence of the there things we might be thinking about-- e.g. our thoughts about numbers aren't the numerical truth we are thinking about, much like our thoughts about a tree aren't the tree we are thinking about.

Not quite, us thinking about the marks is definitely a way of us thinking about the marks. That's our thoughts after all.

But it's more than that. The number of marks is also a truth of the instance itself.There is a distinction between, for example, "seven marks" and "five marks" in this context. One reports the number of marks in this individual instance correctly. The other does not.

It much the same as an instance where people might disagree over whether I have a cake in my fridge. We open the fridge and are presented with a cake on a plate.

There are multiple ways we might think about this encounter. Someone might take what they see and say: "Yes, there is a cake in my fridge." Another person might take what they see and say: "There is no cake in my fridge."

Both of these will be our way of understanding the instance in question (each is a human thought and perception), but these thoughts are distinct in that one reflects what is in my fridge (" Yes, there is a cake" ) and the other ( "There is no cake) does not.

The same applies to the exclamation marks in this example. Some thoughts ("there are five marks") are wrong with respect to what is true of this instance. Other are correct ("there is seven marks").

Yet, yet instance of seven marks is, itself, objectively seven marks. Nominalism doesn't get you past the identity of a given thing itself.

Form is an epiphenomenon. Our similarities or difference in form never explain anything. All casual events are achieved by difference of existence/body. In the case of any entity, any similarities or differences in form are achieved through the difference of their own existence

If a person is to have a similar form of body to another person, it is achieved through the existence of their unique body. The fact of bodies having similar form can only be achieved by the difference of a person’s existing body. For two people to have testes, for example, it the existence of the different bodies which obtain the fact. Only the unique existence of the other’s body can present the similarity of form. Form is only along for the ride of what the different bodies are doing. Bodies are doing the causing.

In describing the presence of states of bodies, such as the presence of certain chromosomes, genitals, gonads, hormones and other bodily characteristics, like facial hair, breasts, larynx size, subcutaneous fat, etc., there is absolutely no problem. There are states of biology present in the first instance.

The trouble is these states are not sex. All those biological states are so regardless of how they get sorted into social category like sex and gender. The trans person body does not change when they take on a sex or gender different to what some people expect.

This is true of anyone. If everyone got up tomorrow and understood they just didn’t have sex or gender, their bodies wouldn’t be altered at all. The social fact of being categorised as one particular gender or sex has no impact on the body. The biological reality has no concern for how it is categorised.

Since descriptions of selection, differences in behaviour, trends in properties of bodies across mass populations are actually descriptions of states of the body, they are unaffected by which, if any, social categorisation of sex is present or not. If we, for example, do not understand deer to have the sex of “male” and “female,” there biology will be unaffected. And we will still be able to describe all the differences in the bodies we encounter. We would still see bodies with antlers fighting each other, other bodies which give birth to baby deer living in herds and reproducing with a victorious body with antlers.

Biology does not care for which category, if any, you put it in. It is itself and does what it does.


There is a great irony to all this handwringing over sex being a social construction.

Who is thinks biology is a social construction? Certainly not the person who distinguishes biological states from the social fact of sex and gender categorisation. They hold biology to be immune to impact from the social facts. Bodies are bodies, they say, no matter how we categories them. Those deer wth antlers will still be fighting each other, whether we think them male, female, sexless or anything else, for they are biological bodies doing so.

For the person panicking over sex being a social construction, the opposite is true: they think the biological facts depend upon the presence of the social fact of sex and gender. Supposedly, the very existence of deer with antlers fighting each other depends on the understanding/categorisation they are “male.” Just as you did here, they try to claim biology is somehow impossible unless there is a social fact of a particular sex category. They are literally arguing that the very existence of biology (deer with antlers) depends — they are actually the ones who think biology is constructed by a social practice of sex categorisation— on a fact of it being categorising a certain way ( “male” ).

Yet we have our own personal categorizations based on personal experiences that can come into conflict with the socially constructed ones. How do you determine which ones are based on personal experience vs being programmed by culture? — Harry Hindu

There no such distinction. All our personal experiences are affected by culture because the language and concepts we learn and develop are done so within the context of our culture. At the very least, for example, a person's personal experience is going to be formed in or in context of the language of their culture.

Species is indeed a social construct. The act of understanding that one body belongs in one catergory is identity or another is a social state.

This doesn't mean there are no differences between the beings and bodies we catergorise as one species or another. Many differences abound between these individual bodies, just as there is great variation between bodies within a singular species.

As outlined in an earlier post, the use of "social construct" doesn't mean a social cause as opposed to a biological cause, but rather refers to a certain kind of state: the state which is our act of thinking about the catergorisation. Differences between bodies are not being rejected at any point. All that's being pointed out is the presence of a body is not the same state as those bodies being of a sex and gender catergories.

In terms of differences between sex and gender, they are two different states of social catergorisation itself. Both are "social constructs" which amount to someone being of the given catergory. One may have sex. One may have gender. One may neither. One may have both. In any case, to have sex or gender just means to belong to the catergory of that sex or gender.

I'm not sure what you think I'm saying here. My description here works with whatever hypothesis you want to propose. I'm talking about the social fact belonging to gender and sex.

Regardless of the specific biological or environmental causes, any one who thinks, for example, that having penis makes them male, is constituted by a certain social fact.

If they had, for example, instead been taught/imagined that having a penis meant they were not male, then their experience would be a lot different. They wouldn't think they needed to become male. If the had a sense of a body with penis, it would be about becoming that not male body.

My point here are not to explain why people are trans or not, but to point out our identities have been built out of social influence, regardless of any specific causes which make anyone present one identity or another.

The classic "born in the wrong body" idea of a trans person, for example, is built out of our social expectations regrading bodies and gender/sex. If one body's didn't matter to gender/sex, there would be no need for someone to switch identities because of their sense of body. A person with a penis and dysphoria, for example, could go through a body changes, have SRS, yet have no need to become "female."

We have to be a bit careful here. David Ramier resisted Money’s attempts to socialise him as female because he expressed a male identity and reflected the female one. This is not exactly the same resisting all social influence.

There are couple of levels in which Ramier could be or was affected by socialisation.

First, there is a possible surface level cause that Ramier’s aggressive socialisation into a female gender role might have affect his sense of self. If Ramier identified with behaviours associated with the male gender role in his environment, then he might have been driven to despise the female identity he was given. I don’t think it’s likely, but it is possible social influence.

Secondly, and far more interestingly, is the constructing sex and gender categories themselves. Children don’t start out with an understanding of gender and sex categories. We have to teach them. In this respect, David Ramier was absolutely influenced by our social constructions of sex and gender.

To even think of oneself as male or female, especially with respect to certain sorts of behaviours or bodies, one has to learn (or imagine) specific concepts of bodies and what it means for categorisation. David Ramier didn’t just, for example, think he was fine with a gender/sex of female and just take issue with his body (e.g. “I am female but my body is wrong”). His body was bound up with an particular idea of what being male of female entails, an concept, a “social construction” state of categorisation applied to bodies. He was deeply influenced/constituted be the social construct of sex and gender.

The lesson to take from the Ramier case is not that people are immune to social influence, but that much of the world is beyond a social influence we might which to impart. (be that David Ramier resisting female identity or a trans person resisting a cis identity that Harry Hindu wishes to enforce.

To trans people, the world is full of Dr. Moneys, all trying to make them into the cis gender person they are not).

More than that, I'm saying it means they are not really sex differences. The context in which sex categorisation gets applied is the individual. Such averages are never relevant to describing the individual at all because you are dealing with one rather than the aggregate. As such, the presence of sex is no reliable guide to describing the individual at all.

At the individual level, all sorts of traits occur in all sorts of combinations. Dimorphic trends in masses bodies or concepts we might use as proxy for that (i.e. sex) cannot be trusted. Sex differences are dissolved because at the individual level, traits aren't exclusive to people of one sex or another.

The issue isn't with a dimorphic difference in bodies or describing that. If we are dealing with a large group of bodies and their differences, we can describe that perfectly well. There is no barrier to doing that within the context of any species. One just looks at the bodies an describes them.

Sex, however, is not a description of bodies. It's a categorisation of the individual. The moment sex enters the frame, we cease to be just be talking about a large aggregate of bodies we've seen. We start talking about an individual, where they belong and what we can expect of them.

Using dimorphic description of bodies, myths are created about who individuals with a sex are and what they might do.

Instead of looking at how the body of an individual might exist, we start making assumptions based on a dimorphic generalisation to the individual. We mistake dimorphic description of aggregate bodies for an account of any given individual with a sex.

It's an outright failure of description. We are mistaking description dimorphic masses for an account of an individual with a sex.

Bodies, it's a difference in bodies. On average, some bodies with a certain traits (e.g. penises, testes, etc.) are taller than some instances of other bodies with certain traits (e.g. vaginas, breasts, etc.).

This is certainly not a sex difference in the context of an individual. Some individual woman are taller, on average, than the average of men. To be taller or shorter is not a sex difference with regards to an individual woman and her sex.

You have bodily difference between people, sure.

They just cannot be said to be sex difference, as they are not determined by a fact of sex categorisation, but by the facts of the bodies. Those bodies could be categorised in all sorts of different ways.

It's actually the "X is X" equivocation which this is avoiding. Since it distinguishes the fact of body from the fact of social categorisation, no longer can people make the equivocation between sex/gender and the body. If someone talks about "a male," I can no longer just assume they necessarily have a certain bodily trait. I have to actually to the work of describing their body, if I want to deal with it.

Maybe, but I'm not interested in the ad hoc "just so stories" of evo psych preachers here. You don't go to the Flat Earther for an account of Earth in 3-dimensions.

I'm interested in people who are studying the subject in question, gender and sex, in relation to individuals, identities an society.

The "social construction" of gender and sex is made all to clear in this case of David Reimer.

What happened in that case? The social fact of sex and gender categorising failed David. Instead of "constructing" an understanding of David as he existed/as he belonged to sex and gender categories in himself, Dr. Money "constructed" the opposite. He got everyone to understand and treat David as something he was not. Instead of creating social states in which people understood David's sex and gender, he did the opposite: created states of misunderstanding David's sex and gender.

David was failed because people built up the wrong idea about his sex and gender. People failed to build the concept of sex and gender which understood him. He was harmed not some notion of sex or gender's origin, but a failure of people to form an understanding which reflected him. Dr. Money build David a spike pit into which he was repeatedly thrown whenever sex and gender came up. He should have David a house to live in (i.e. watched David, noticed his sex and gender identity, and instead build the idea he was male despite lacking a penis).

It's not a question of source at all.

The argument is that gender and sex are themselves social states. Here a distinction is being made between states of the body (e.g. penises, vaginas, chromosomes, etc.) and the state of belonging to a gender or sex (e.g. "This person is male, the person is female, etc"). People are distinguishing a difference between the facts of the body and the facts of how someone is categorised under a sex and gender.

The point isn't that gender or sex has a cultural source. It's, literally, that gender or sex categorisation is a cultural state itself, an act of a person using a certain language/category to describe someone else, rather than a biological state.

And that's why no-one argues we need to make change to our biology to reach a gender-neutral "utopia." The fact of sex or gender, a social categorisation of a person with a body, is different to the fact of having a certain body. Changing one's biology, one's body, would have no impact on the sex or gender one belongs to, since the sex or gender one belongs is not given by the fact of a body.

Social influences or construction are actually a biological event. Our response to environment are biological, always have been.

The Nature vs Nurture dichotomy was misleading form the very beginning. There are not biological vs environment causes. All biological causes occur in an environment and are subject to its influences. Any environmental influence impacts upon a life form though reactions of its body. All social/environment influences are biological. Any biological effect is a product of it environment (i.e. there was not an environment which prevent that effect or caused biology to behave different).

In most modern context, at least when you get into the people who study the subject, "socially constructed" does not mean "caused by a social force rather than a biological force." Rather, it means where dealing with a certain sort of biologically/environmentally caused state of a social environment or interaction.

With sex or gender, this state of the social environment, the "social construction," is a concept/categorisation/language used to relate to people. It's not a distinction of a biological influence as opposed to a social influence, but an analysis of the sort of state (no matter its biological and environmental causes!) in question.

You did, in the last post before my response. This part:

That's not going to happen in American public schools. Or I should say, over my dead body it will. That is not the role of public education. Even a small step in that direction would be extremely dangerous. The more benevolent the intention, the greater the danger due to the naivete and hubris of it.

You are outright saying that schools (as in the examples of Sweden un was talking out) teaching children not to gender stereotype is one of the greatest threats we could ever face.

Sounds pretty political to me: "We must ensure that our schools and community reproduces/doesn't change present understandings and expectations of gender."

From this I took that he meant gender binary expectations were stronger in the US

Sweden, I assume. Or anywhere that takes an active role in downplaying or rejecting gender stereotypes as a social outcome.

What I am wanting to contrast here is the American culture that seems to be highly gendered and gender prescriptive, and adversarial, with the playing down of gender differences in Sweden. It seems to me that the whole tone of the debate in the US is overheated and ideological, and is putting great pressure on folks to conform or else to rebel to an extreme. But what seems to happen is that even the idea of reducing the conflict and relaxing the rigidity of the stereotypes is taken as a threat to gender and part of a campaign to emasculate and defemminise. — unenlightened

From this I took that he meant gender binary expectations were stronger in the US, which puts pressure on people to either confirm against their will or rebel for the sake of defying the oppressive binary. I got he was saying this seems to be the perpetual state of the discussion, to a point where it's impossible to pose a relaxed position that gender doesn't matter to imaging how someone might act or exist. It's seen by proponents gender binary side as destroying men and women.

You are mistaken because gender neutrality doesn't have a problem with anyone belonging to one gender or another. All it does is decouple necessary traits from a gender binary. Gender neutrality is fine with there being men and women, whether those men and women are trans people or not. It accepts someone belong to a gender in terms of itself. They are their gender, regardless of which particular traits they have.

You are correct to think this is also about sex. Since gender is only itself, it cannot be reduced to having one particular trait or another. This is no limited to behaviours or preferences. It's also true of body parts. Gender is not the only arbitrary category in play. Sex is also an arbitrary category because it a second order social classification.

When say someone belongs to a sex, we aren't describing the body they have. We are sorting them into a certain social category. Describing a body doesn't actually involve this move. If I cite someone body (e.g. the have a penis, these chromosomes, these other characteristics, etc.), they could be in any social category I wanted and it wouldn't affect there body at all.

Someone with a vagina could be categorised as "man," someone with a penis could be category could be categorised as a "woman."Their bodies wouldn't be affected and any one could describe their body perfectly well. Sex is not the body. It's a social category a body is taken to belong to.

Trans people aren't trans on account having to have a particular trait to be a man or woman. They are trans because they are the opposite of what it expected under a certain sex/gender assignment. It's not a description of how they are a man or women. Their "transness" is a reflection of their meaning in terms of binary gender/sex understandings which are present in society.

In a society which understood sex/gender in terms of itself, as the arbitrary social categorisation it is, trans people would not be trans in this respect. They would just be men and women as they are, whether they had a penis or a vagina (or any other trait) because no one would expect them to be otherwise.

But we don't live in that society (at least, not yet), so people want some way of understanding the man with a vagina or the women with a penis in terms of their binary understanding of gender. "Trans" is this marker. It says: "This man/woman is not what I expected given what I think of men/women. They are a different man/woman in this respect."

There aren't really any stereotypes though, just people being themselves (or not, as the case might sometimes be). Decoupling doesn't really mean anything in terms of how people behave, apart from avoiding essentialist associations between a gender and some sort of preference or behaviour. In terms of a behaviour or liking something, there is no impact. All that is taken away is: "Men are like X, Women like Y." No-ones actual preferences are at stake.

The stereotypes are self-sustaining myth. People make the mistake of confusing their preferences for a notion/rule of where they belong. They walk away under the illusion to be of a preference means they must of a gender prescribed in a stereotype.

In the process, it forms an illusion that someone's preferences are being attack. Much as we've seen in this thread, where gender neutrality is mistaken for some notion of everyone being genderless and not having any sort of individual preference.

Gender neutrality has more to do with avoiding certain kinds of binary and isolation. It's not a supposition that people don't have gender or preferences in their behaviour, likes, etc. All it's really doing is decoupling the idea certain behaviours or preferences are the exclusive nature of one gender or another.

It doesn't actually mean people have "neutral" gender and no personal preferences which fit with some stereotypical accounts/myths of gender.

There are grounds for believing there is more than a map: the independent of thing from experience of a thing. When we consider some sort truth or fact we know, our interest isn't in how we have a map which shows us it. We are curious about what is beyond the map. Our object of knowledge is not our experience, the map, by the underlying territory on its own terms.

Our experience (the map) is not the truth maker. The other thing, that which is independent of the state of experience in question, is the truth maker. My backyard does't have a tree because my experience shows one. It one because that tree itself exists. Similarly, with a logical truth or ethical truth, it is not the case because my experience says so. It is the case because whatever independent logical of ethic truth is present.

The position I'm outlining is the exact opposite of what you claim: it is materialism, in which the representation of experience has no role in determining truth or existence.

If we were to pose one, by having an experience (map), had the truth of the things shown, we would be an idealist who thought existence or truth was achieved through representation. We would be equating our experience (map) with the thing it showed (territory).

Any materialism requires we be restricted to maps. Since our experiences of representation are not the independent truth or existence of anything shown, they can only be limited to maps. Under a materialist position, it impossible for our experiences to be more than maps.

Epistemology can only ever be a map because its presence is not that of the things it shows-- i.e. the independence of existing things and truths from experience/epistemology.

We don’t really, for I was not discussing whether there was territory or not, but rather identifying the status of a map and how it related to claims being made. But I will digress for context.


When we experience which reports some sort of truth, be it the presence of an empirical object or a particular ethical significance, we have a map. All we have to show us what is there or not is the experience. Our experiences/maps are the means be which we learn about any territory which might be present.

For example, if I am to know about the tree in my back yard, I do so through the “map” of my experience. I have perceptions and ideas which, even if they show an underlying territory, are never the thing I’m perceiving or thinking about. No matter how much territory my experiences might show me, they will only ever be the map— a thing which is showing me something else outside of it. My knowing of the tree will never be the tree itself. Each of us is a different thing.

I am indeed saying it is not possible to experience something which isn’t our experience. By definition, any instance of experience is only a state of our experience. This is why the fact of me experiencing the tree in my backyard isn’t the tree. Two different states are present, my experience of the tree (map) and the state (territory) of the tree I know about. At no point can our knowing(map) become the thing which is known (territory). Our knowledge can only ever be a map. When we examine our knowledge, we are always limited to maps. Our experience/state of knowledge is never the territory it reports. But this places no limit or restriction on knowing things. Maps are what show us the territory.

So with respect to emotions, yes, it is perception/knowledge of something that is not mental. If someone feels an emotion, it’s an existing state. If I know someone is happy, for example, I have an experience which is reporting on a truth of how someone else exists. I have a map (my experience they are happy) which shows me a territory (their existing emotional state of happiness).

In terms of mind/body dualism, a person’s thoughts, feelings, etc. are not actually mental. Since the are particular existing states, they are material occurrences of causality, much like anything else, just with a different form. Some things are trees, others atoms… some are experiences.

I've not commented on that issue because it wasn't what I was trying to discuss. With respect to that point, I would say the map (our experience) is never the territory (things we might be aware of in our experience).

I'm not sure why you are bringing up this point. All along my point has been about the reasoning of your position. Whether maps are territory or not, when there is a map and territory, isn't relevant to this issue I'm talking about.

My point is the move to deny territory to ethics is unjustified just based on someone is experiencing a map.

That's more or less the very question I'm asking you to consider. You insist that empirical observation have territory, while other maps, such as idea of ethics, aesthetic or logic, do not. I'm asking how you arrive at this conclusion when you only have a map in either case. How do you know the empirical maps have territory while the ethical ones do not?

How do you justify empirical maps have territory, and so are not "just psychology," but that other maps, like ethics, have no territory and so are "just psychology"?

I'm not sure I would describe "good" indefinable in any real sense. fdrake's many examples seems to imply people know what they are talking about. In any of those cases, people are talking something and how it is significant.

The reason examining "good" is unsatisfactory seems to be a product of it being inseparable from whatever something it is about. If I take away that which is good, I no longer have a good to talk about. I'll always left grasping at nothing because I've actually removed anything that's good and all reason I have for identifying it.

Keeping in mind "good" is about something, I don't think there is much that's controversy to deal with. In talking about "good," we are specifically referencing the value of something. If we say something is "good", we are point out the presence of whatever thing we are talking about is valuable. We have reason to think it out to be there on account of the normative value of its presence.

In this context, Banno's approach doesn't seem the difficult to envision. We can analyse the presence of whether this something is valuable or not in propositional terms of a kind. The OP connects because it's this distinction that ethical significance is of something, but not just the existence of something (which destroys the naturalist claim).

Since good is only itself, just existence of something (e.g. pleasure) does not give us good. The twin "indefinability" of "good," that "good" is never explicable on its own but nothing else amounts to it, is what gives the normative/ethics distinction from other concepts we might have (such as the existence of something).

My point is about the maps. In any case, when we have an experience reporting something (a map), it is a state of our experience, a feeling, a sensation, an idea, etc.

Whether we are treating these maps as directly descriptive (i.e. showing exactly what's there) or just an incomplete pointer to something else, it tells us something, reflects a truth independent of our experience, the territory.

My point is how can you conclude our maps of empirical observation have territory and our other notions don't? In any case, we only have the appearance of our map (our experience) and do not get outside it at any point. How can you justify empirical observations are maps with territory, while ethics, logic, math and aesthetics are maps without territory?

The problem is all our accounts we give are the way we think. When we make an observation of empirical evidence and analyse it with our descriptions and scientific through, we are entirely within our own minds. From beginning to end, we are using reports of our thoughts, sensations and feelings to give description of what is true.

Are our observations and theories "just psychological" because they appear in our mind? Is the fact that what we our conscious of when we make an empirical observation enough to say what we are thinking about is just a creation of our mind?

No, we take our experiences report something true about the world, about facts that are independent form our psychology even though they only ever appear to us in our mind.

The question is, why would we assume this must be different for truths like ethics, math or aesthetics? They, like empirical observations, appear to us in our minds. And like empirical observations, we have nothing but an appearance, sensation or idea in our minds to report their truth. Why assume that only that empirical experiences report independent truths?

Which was my point. Nietzsche identifies any proposed God is just another mortal. "God is dead" doesn't refer to whether a being named "God"exists or not, but to a metaphysical point that dispenses with any being beyond the world or the finite. Even a God, if they existed as claimed, would not be God.

For sure, but my point was claims about what God does/if God exists are empirical cliams. If someone stands up and says: "This being of God exists and cause this." it is not a transcendent claim at all. They might try to say its transcendent to escape empirical scrutiny, but that doesn't make it true.

I used "impossible" for this reason. The existence of a transcendent being is an oxymoron. The catergory of things being claimed, existent transcendent beings, is incoherent and so they are impossible.

My point about the empirical is that this point doesn't give us reason to reject the empirical claims made about God. If someone says: "God was here yesterday. They spoke to me." or "God existed than and was a being who caused a flood.", we are actually dealing an empirical claim which isn't touched by Nietzsche's argument about transcendence.

The incoherence of transcendent doesn't mean there cannot be, for example, a being who takes an action to cause a planet or lifeform to exist. "God is dead" is not to say that a powerful being does not exist. It's just says they cannot be transcendent.

That should have been "causal entity". (which I have now corrected).

What I meant is Nietzsche's argument about the death of God doesn't preclude the existence of a god as an existing being.

For example, we cannot preclude the existence of a being who does the actions of a Christian God on the grounds transcendence is impossible. If we want to say there isn't such a being, we need an empirical account which falsifies such a being.