The Concept of Enlightenment 21

The accepted wisdom is: a species of hominid. Which immediately locates human life within the horizons of biology; basically treats humans as no different in kind to animals and implicitly endorses a form of utilitarian ethos i.e. everything in service to the goal of propagation of the genome. — Wayfarer

You're speaking like the classification of humans as a hominid is an arbitrary one. As if the grouping of organisms into families is not evidence based.

Homo sapiens < Homo < Hominidae < Primates < Mammals < Animals < Eukaryotes.

(there are other steps involved too)

Eukaryotes - organisms with at least one complex cell (we had to look, then called it a thing).
Animals - organisms with many complex cells with certain structures (different metabolisms, animals move, etc), they consist of eukaryotic cells.
Mammals - animals with a certain temperature regulation mechanism, male/female sex, females do childbearing, have fur or hair, boobs.
Primates - mammals that have hands, feet.
Hominidae - primates with complex cognition.
Humans - hominidae that are us.

(there's more detail)

Life is grouped into these categories by looking for presence/absence of attributes, how cells function etc; demonstrable similarities and differences in form and function; physical and genetic characteristics. The morphology and genetics can be checked; and it is checked.

The same kind of reasoning that makes primates mammals; all primates have mammalian temperature regulation mechanisms, the reproductive stuff works much the same; makes humans hominidae; great anatomical similarity with each other, complex cognition.

You can believe all this without believing in the selfish gene; or placing the genome as the causal nexus of all evolutionary action (the central dogma) - epigenetics is a thing, there are heritable changes that do not involve changes in DNA. Hell, you could believe in the central dogma and the selfish gene and still not instrumentalise reason. These are conceptually independent, but not ideologically-politically independent. So:

None of this has commited anybody, ever, to the worst excesses of dehumanising instrumental rationality. What does make people commit to the worst excesses of instrumental rationality is the ideological climate they live in. I broadly agree with the critique of enlightenment instrumental rationality put forward by Adorno and Horkheimer:

In the enlightened world, mythology has permeated the sphere of the profane. Existence, thoroughly cleansed of demons and their conceptual descendants, takes on, in its gleaming naturalness, the numinous character which former ages attributed to demons. Justified in the guise of brutal facts as something eternally immune to intervention, the social injustice from which those facts arise is as sacrosanct today as the medicine man once was under the protection of his gods. Not only is domination paid for with the estrangement of human beings from the dominated objects, but the relationships of human beings, including the relationship of individuals to themselves, have themselves been bewitched by the objectification of mind. — Dialectic of Enlightenment

You're targeting a relatively small part of the picture; science; when you should be picking on what makes us instrumentalise the world; education, politics.

The disenchanted life is still worth living.

I'm not really addressing what social scientists do — Wayfarer

You are not addressing it, yes, you are bracketing it as if it's irrelevant. I don't believe it is as you emphasise:

I'm talking about a specific claim, which is reductionism in philosophy, — Wayfarer

an importance of non-reduction. Which I do too, inappropriate reductionism is self harm using Occam's Razor; sometimes scientists and philosophers within domains; like physicists and philosophers of physics; take the conceptual grammars they work with as a given and apply them inappropriately. You don't need to care about the movement of atoms in people's bodies to make a good account of political power structures, or the neural representation mechanisms of syllogisms to understand maths. We agree strongly that framing; questioning styles; need to be tailored to and by the studied topic.

Reductionism un-asks, or renders always already unintelligible, important how questions; like "mental states supervene on neural states", or "chemical properties supervene on quantum dynamics"; the how is bracketed, as if it was of no relevance for the domain (just picking on supervenience because it's something I've been thinking about recently).

You seem to state that reductionism un-asks, or renders always already unintelligible questions in general which are relevant fo their studied topics; and with that I agree entirely. But I can agree entirely with you here because you're painting with far too broad a brush.

I regard science as 'reductionist' insofar as it reduces the scope of discourse exclusively to the objective domain. — Wayfarer

I gave you an example of non-reductionist scientific work, bridging neuroscience, evolution, sociology and clinical psychology (and explaining/gesturing towards why it was non reductionist). It analysed first person reports, states of feeling and their patterns; how patterns between these different ontological registers intermingle (brain hormones + feelings + socialisation); and a clinical upshot of this. Science need not be reductionist, and need not generate reductionist worldviews. You surely agree with this if you:

Like, I don't deny *any* of the facts of evolution or cosmology or any of the other sciences - to me, the question is about meaning and interpretation. — Wayfarer

expressly don't deny any of it, and if your worldview is consistent with it, then - what? But your beliefs evidently do impinge upon these domains since:

(you) question the notion that mind is a product of evolutionary biology. — Wayfarer

On the one hand you want to reserve an isolated realm for your philosophical speculation; rendering it out of the reach of science. On the other, you want to project the impact of your speculation back into the scientific domains!

I don't trust this.

and besides most people are inclined to think that 'the transcendent' is a byword for nonsense — Wayfarer

It's not a byword for nonsense; transcendence - when juxtaposed or contrasted with immanence, elevated above it - is a machine for making nonsense. Simultaneously a concept and a trauma of reason.

I regard science as 'reductionist' insofar as it reduces the scope of discourse exclusively to the objective domain. — Wayfarer

But what all of this omits, is the acknowledge of the nature of being, the first-person perspective with all of its struggles and joys. It has no way of dealing with it, so relegates it to the personal (you can trace the consequence of Protestantism in this respect). — Wayfarer

This is so lazy. I think you're speaking from a place of ignorance about how science studies humanity. I read a paper about traumatic stress yesterday. It contained:

(1) Analysis of self reports; felt intensities, profiles of feeling, social contexts they're in. From a broad spectrum of traumatic stress survivors (Holocaust survivors, Chicago kids who'd been stabbed, women who'd been raped, other instances...). They were aggregated from detailed first person accounts.

(2) Some of these people were also studied with blood tests, brain hormone levels, at different times after the traumatic incident(s), the properties of their neural endocrinology was interpretively but not reductively-causally linked to their first person reports. The paper even provided a lot of evidence for (not direct quote) "psychological symptomatology can be constant within person even when their neural endocrinology changes"; IE, a non-reductive account of the first person affect and the third person brain state. So they analysed how two hormones worked, how they worked in incidents of traumatic stress, the first person feeling dynamics that come along with the hormone dynamics etc etc. Some of this was based in mathematical models of hormone feedback which were then used in tandem with the self reports and the endocrinology to form a integrated complex system account of traumatic stress.

(3) They looked at hyper-vigilance and other traumatic coping mechanisms (avoidance, dissociation etc.) in evolutionary game theory in terms, first person terms, when they're likely to develop into pathology, how they develop into pathology (long term studies of people exposed to trauma), the neurological differences between those who developed pathologically and those who didn't, the symptomatology of both cases...

(4) There's more but I've made my point.

This analysis was phenomenological, historical, experimental, mathematical, sociological, and clinical all at the same time. Scientists reason like this. You're just inventing easily refutable bogeymen.

Very perceptive, and also accurate. Why? Because the kind of truth that it's a demonstration of, is not objective by definition, but existential. It's (mystical truth - me) concerned with the notion of truth in the first person, which is always going to escape third-person, objective description - one of the points coming out of the 'Blind Spot of Science' article a few months back (which again, elicited remarkable hostility.) — Wayfarer

Modern thought is not over-emphasizing reason. It's over-emphasizing sensate values, what can be weighed, measured, felt and touched. That's what 'empiricism' means, after all - we have to sensorily experience it for it to be real (where 'sensorily experience' includes instruments.) — Wayfarer

Are you sure you're not over emphasising the role of sensate values by basing your worldview off of experiences of revelation? You seem fundamentally contradictory on this point.

On the one hand, you consider science as reductive to the notion of first person experience; nevertheless you believe that (mystical) first person experiences (of revelation) are a better revealer of truth.

Like, I don't deny *any* of the facts of evolution or cosmology or any of the other sciences - to me, the question is about meaning and interpretation. — Wayfarer

But you do think they're over emphasised in our understanding of the true nature of reality? I do not.

(1) A human mind requires its associated human body to exist for that mind to exist (Y/N)?
(2) Humans were preceded historically by the universe without us (Y/N)?
(3) Human minds are ape minds. (Y/N)?
(4) Ape minds evolved along with ape bodies. (Y/N)?

Whereas in the secular view, meaning *can only be* subjective and personal. — Wayfarer

It seems to me you want to have your cake and eat it too. Introducing a distinction between 'third person' and 'first person' knowledge, only to collapse it all down into 'first person'; which is nevertheless the only way the truth of things in general can be revealed.

What's your alternative? I suppose you can't say, because that's "third person". — fdrake

I can guess what you believe, but I don't think you'd ever publicly assent to any of it.

(1) Reality is a collective idea, everything in it is an idea.
(2) Reality is continuously created by acts of understanding.
(3) Acts of reason are just a subset of acts of understanding.
(3a) Over emphasising reason blinkers us to the true nature of reality.
(4) Evolution is false.
(4a) Evolution is false because thoughts being derived from or generated by or being causally involved with material substrates goes against (2) and (3).
(4b) Secular understanding of evolution is a particularly pernicious and persuasive ideology that stops us from understanding the true nature of reality as referenced in (2) and (3).
(5) Mystical understanding "resonates" with the true nature of the reality, grasping it in its act of continual creation.

Secular culture provides no criterion for differentiating Scientology from Catholicism, but I think it's a crock, and he was a fraud. — Wayfarer

Actually yeah it does. Catholicism is an old religion with a storied history, it's worldwide, commonly accepted, has had professional theologians for years, believes in Jesus etc. Scientology is a recently invented cult authored by a terrible science fiction writer structured like a pyramid scheme. You can secularly distinguish them very easily, using stuff that does not commit you to the truth of any account.

My beliefs are generally compatible with Christian Platonism, which I often argue for. But you have to be willing to accept the premisses, and no better thread than this to demonstrate the implications of that, eh? — Wayfarer

Exactly! Someone has to buy in partially for a soft sell to work. Also note: as expected, you are saying that your beliefs are consistent with something without arguing for their truth. You give me suggestions that, if I accept, validate your beliefs, but they do not demonstrate them.

This is exactly the structure I spoke about.

As it is, I argue that the kind of materialist theory of mind that Dennett and others argue for, adopts the rhetorical and technical vocabulary of philosophy, to argue that wisdom proper, sapience, is an illusory byproducts of the Darwinian algorithm. — Wayfarer

What's your alternative? I suppose you can't say, because that's "third person".

Again - this is a thread about (a)theism, right? So the implications of my philosophy are, let's say, spiritual if not religious. So if you're interacting with atheism, then what would it take to 'demonstrate' it? You know the scholastic 'proofs of God' were never intended as rhetorical or apologetic tools to convert the unbeliever; they were exercises of edification for the faithful. — Wayfarer

Tell me what you believe, and I'll tell you if I think it's false. Sound good?

It's concerned with the notion of truth in the first person, which is always going to escape third-person, objective description - one of the points coming out of the 'Blind Spot of Science' article a few months back (which again, elicited remarkable hostility.) — Wayfarer

So, charitably, you argue in a way in which you do not seek to demonstrate the truth of your beliefs to others. You use the trappings of rational argument and evidence, historical precedent, interpretation of science, insofar as it is consistent with your "first person understanding" to invite people to see the world as you do.

This isn't philosophy, this is a soft sell.

You can, although it's certainly not something I claim to be. But it is a domain of discourse, with recognized luminaries, and wide historical scope. I could provide some references and further argument, but I know what the response would be. — Wayfarer

L. Ron Hubbard is a recognized luminary of Scientology, a profound expert on the practice of dianetics, and articulated a fully self consistent cosmology. It is a widely practiced religion, with texts and practices, steeped in ritual. But I doubt you care about that, because it's not what you believe.

Because the kind of truth that it's a demonstration of, is not objective by definition, but existential. It's concerned with the notion of truth in the first person, — Wayfarer

I understand, the reason you argue in this way is because you know you can't demonstrate any of your points. But that's not a deficit of your thinking style, or the thinking style which is consistent with your beliefs, that's a deficiency in truth and understanding.

The double negative there has me completely stumped, but I bet that if I asked you for an example of what 'mysticism' is, or a paraphrase of its meaning, you would be unable to oblige. — Wayfarer

You can't become an expert; cognizable, articulable understanding; on that which cannot be understood; the mystical; affective, non-articulable understanding. You can become an expert on what people say about it, or what they believe, and how they practice their beliefs.

don’t expect that to be understood, but it is an understanding with a long pedigree — Wayfarer

You never define it! And for obvious reasons. You have a gesture of religious pluralism and commonality, which resonates with revelation and satori, you phrase this in terms of your considerable knowledge of comparative religion. You also usually go to Buddhism at some point nearby, with occasional references to mindfulness being incorporated into clinical practice, health benefits of it etc. If not that then quantum mechanics and the observer effect. If not that then neo-Platonism and the concept of transcendence. The point you argue for is always argued for in terms of its consistency with other points; never a demonstration of truth, only a demonstration of consistency. And that will not do.

It's one big cluster you're very devoted to, you've studied a lot, and when challenged on a single part of it you use the rest of it to argue for the challenged part. It's slippery. But apparently it's a taboo to believe in this stuff, so I guess that's ok.

I protest. — Wayfarer

Yes, but you have not reasoned.

I don’t expect that to be understood, but it is an understanding with a long pedigree — Wayfarer

There aren't domain experts on that which cannot be understood.

I find that kind of theological noncognitivism really hard to discuss. — Pfhorrest

It's hard to criticise because it's arational, when noncognitively derived frameworks impinge; as premises, framings, inferences; on cognitively constructed ones, that's idiotic; an incapability imposed upon reason. Rationalisation rather than rationality. Luckily for us, as @Wayfarer pointed out:

And there are religious scientists - George Lemaître, as I'm sure you know, published the first paper on what came to be called 'big bang theory'. When it was published a lot of people thought it sounded too much like 'creation ex nihilo' - so much so that 'By 1951, Pope Pius XII declared that Lemaître's theory provided a scientific validation for Catholicism.[36] However, Lemaître resented the Pope's proclamation, stating that the theory was neutral and there was neither a connection nor a contradiction between his religion and his theory.[37][38][17] Lemaître and Daniel O'Connell, the Pope's scientific advisor, persuaded the Pope not to mention Creationism publicly, and to stop making proclamations about cosmology.[39] Lemaître was a devout Catholic, but opposed mixing science with religion,[40] although he held that the two fields were not in conflict.[41] (Wikipedia). — Wayfarer

thinking styles are modular; they can operate independently of each other depending upon the topic and its framing. It seems to me Lemaitre's wisdom was the secular insight to separate religious belief from rational thought.

That seems to be what my mom believes, and she'll try to talk "philosophy" with me and tell me how to her, God means believing in beauty and a kind of inner light permeating the world and uplifting people, doing good and trying to create good and beauty for other people, and she'll ask me don't I believe in that, and... I don't know how to respond, because it's not a propositionally coherent question. I agree completely with the goals of creating good and beauty, and uplifting people, and generally being positive and optimistic, but I don't know how to translate agreement with that goal into an answer to a question about what exists. It's really frustrating.

Yes, lots of baggage. The claim "The Christian God exists" should be treated with the same epistemic standards as "Rocks exist" or "Joy exists", but its interpretation for those who believe often refers to the ineluctable mysticism that fogs their thinking; it permeates as affect and sentiment. Which, of course, are not ever to be discarded, but to be recognised for what they are. It is then no surprise that when looked at soberly, or when extracted from a community that enforces/socialises religious belief, people come to doubt it. Living in absence of or in contradiction to religion is a much more convincing 'argument' against it for those who have to live like that.

(Edit: and before you buggers start going on about hinge propositions, while they do not have reasons to be adopted, they do have tractably analyseable causes, which we can bring to light - argument, therapy, learning).

Mysticism, far from open mindedness, is a circumscription of thought.

Therefore, my atheism could be said to be a consequence of my philosophy in the sense that, after the fact, my beliefs could be categorized and restructured so as to make atheism a consequence of some general philosophical framework that I endorse, but not in any other sense. — SophistiCat

I think that's a very important thing to highlight.

A philosopher's worldview has dual aspects: it operates as an association of perspectives and ideas through high effort cognition - a rational-communicative artifice. A robot doing philosophy might envision this as a series of believed propositions and believed logical relationships between them. But it also operates as an association of perspectives and ideas through experience and memory; an emotive-performative practice.

The two aspects of a worldview do not operate independently of each other, visceral experiences, socialisation effects and broader socio-historical context inspire reason, sentiment, reason about sentiments and sentiment about reasons. A philosophy is an embodied practice as much as it is an intellectual body of work.

Only very systematised or extensively articulated worldviews approach the rational-communicative archetype that typifies philosophy, and even with that there is much variation in style. Nietzsche expresses the force of his ideas with rhetorical flare and biting wit; aphoristically and with skilful affectation, Spinoza expresses the force of his ideas through the obsessive portrayal of their logical-conceptual dependence; architectonic and always impossibly precise.

The rest of us consist in fragments, nameless aleatory conceptual personas summoned by our (collective) interpretations. As much mood and spittle as thought and sculpture. When reflection leaves us, we return marginally changed and perhaps change others. Were it our job to systematise our thoughts we might be more like landmarks in the terrain of ideas rather than passing place personalities displaying erudition. All we can do is try to learn and inspire others to learn.

Learning systematic thought is always underpinned by the associative (mechanisms of) transitions we make in a space of reasons. Reasoning is a constrained and hopefully discovery fuelling/revealing mode of association (a robot might see this as truth preservation through syllogism); but what is good for the gander (association in general) is good for the goose (reason). What shifts belief, what orients reflection; are processes both affective and deliberative, and always in response to some exposure; some impetus to act like I will. When a presumption forms or is inculcated by such exposure, it informs the processes of reasoning that can come to attend it. When we have thought for a long time with such a presumption, perhaps when such a presumption has formed before we learn to reason; such a presumption may be embodied as a thought pattern, a tick, or a habit of spending too long in the evenings trying to show someone on the internet that they were wrong.

In terms of the OP; the existence of God is often such a presumption. God might mean your family's love and your inclusion in your community; sin might mean the destruction of many things you care about. Such a presumption is unlikely to be swayed by mere reason; intellectual exercises rarely perturb deep socialisation effects much. "God is all things" and like statements should thus be understood performatively. Doubt in such statements undermines us; a fish out of water drowns.

Theology's always rubbed me the wrong way. I think if you 'let god in' to your thinking it has disastrous effects. It isn't really the god that does it, it's the kind of thinking that allows god in in the first place. Some general principles I think are important, and how god relates to them:

1) ontological materialism; paying attention to dynamism, becoming and individuation. A summary of this standpoint might be a focus on studying how systems become imposed on or emerge out of assemblages; genesis of structure and structure of genesis.

God only has a holiday home in becoming.

(2) a methodological rejection of idealism, foundationalism and correlationism; refused givens, thought is tailored through conceptual links which aim at and are embedded in a contextually circumscribed real indifferent to its conceptualisation

God's the biggest given to let in, and rarely indifferent to how he (!) is conceptualised.

(3) methodological pluralism - anti-architectonic thought; the phenomena should dictate not just what we think but how we think; ontologies and epistemologies produced are always regional and topic specific respectively.

Having one thing which constraints all adoptable styles of thought is bad.

I've asked those questions numerous times and you're just now finding it interesting? — Harry Hindu

Actually no, not once in this thread have you ever asked what I thought a social construction is. I checked. There are no questions like "fdrake what do you think a social construction is?" or "how do you think social constructions relate to bodies?" or "how do you think social constructions relate to performativity theory?" or "how do you think performativity theory relates to bodies?", all of which I would've responded to just as charitably as your genuine question about what I thought.

What you've actually done every single time (and I've checked) you've used the term 'social construction' in our discussion, you've assumed that my account of them is the same as your account of them. And you've assumed that your account of the relationship of gender (when conceived as a social construct) to gender identity is correct. And you've assumed that your account of the relationship of gender expression to gender identity is correct, and you've assumed all of these things by how you've accused me of contradicting myself. You want me to argue on your terms, your unstated assumptions, that ensure everything goes your way. And you insist on this so much that you're committed to the belief that the UN has no freakin' clue what the definitions it uses mean.

What I've been doing in our discussion is challenging those assumptions of yours, which you have misinterpreted, or wilfully ignored, or characterised as irrelevant. If you bracket your assumptions above, you're way more likely to see my account as internally consistent.

My motive for bringing in the UN definitions is precisely to challenge the assumptions you made with a credible source. So let's go through your assumptions of how stuff works, now that you've done me the pleasure of actually describing how you think, albeit in a limited fashion related solely to the idea of social constructions.

Throughout this, it's important to keep in mind that there are lots of varieties of social constructions which behave very differently. "Social construction" is an umbrella term for any piece of social artifice. Their only points of commonality (as I see it) are that particular social constructions are the name of an entity (like "St. Johns' University" or "Google") or social process (like "baptism" or "driving lessons") that occurs as a result of or is constituted by (and these are inequivalent!) the actions, ideas and personal states of its constituents. Its constituents may also be other social constructions; like the different sub companies of a big one, or the different variations on a religious ritual, or the cosignatories on a treaty.

Social constructions are ideas about the physical world — Harry Hindu

No, institutions are social constructions and are not just ideas. We do not think the law into being, we must act and think together to bring it about. Corporate persons are not ideas, they are legal persons, which are social constructions in the above sense.

They can be expectations or assumptions of some physical person — Harry Hindu

Not simply this, they can be expectations or assumptions expressed in a binding agreement between countries, like a treaty. Or they can be a hierarchical management system for a large company. The 'individuals' constituting or generating any given social construction need not be individual people at all even if they necessarily involve (individual partaking, co-constitution) the actions of people.

You've gone in two sentences and you've already missed a lot of the nuances of our social ontology.

We all have certain functions and limitations based on our physiology. — Harry Hindu

This is true, but one wonder's how Boris Johnson's spleen constrains his politics. Also see above points. This joke illustrates your all too hasty collapse of social ontology into individuals' bodies.

When these expectations and assumptions begin to split from from those actual functions and limitations, they come racist, sexist, etc. — Harry Hindu

This is garbled. 'Split from' how? How is it possible to 'split' expectations and assumptions from the bodily functions which generate them? Aha! I agree with you, composites of individuals acting together result or partake in emergent relational dynamics! Just like social constructions!

And... you think sexism and racism derive from the inappropriate having of opinions about bodies? Or simply that the opinions are no longer solely determined by bodies? Or... I don't even know man. I mean, what even is this? Racism and sexism because the... beliefs about (who believes, what do they believe about, where do the beliefs come from gaaarh)... bodies are... split from the bodies...

They being to force people into boxes that that have nothing to do with their physiological functions and limitations, yet they are based on those functions and limitations — Harry Hindu

Yes, you actually believe it, sexism and racism are having ideas about bodies which are not solely determined by the bodies. Or rather than the bodies do not... reliably signal? a necessary... interpretation of... themselves... Yeah.

. Saying that blacks are criminals because they are black is racist because it is an assumption about a person based on the color of their skin - their physiology. — Harry Hindu

Wait. Waaait. You actually think this:

Sexism = any opinion deriving solely from sexed body bits.
Racism = any opinion deriving solely from skin colour.

I thought you didn't want to..

split (assumptions and expectations) from those actual functions and limitation (of bodies)

I mean, we're both going to agree that men are taller than women on average. And we're going to agree that this has nothing to do with expected skill of a typical man or woman in a technical field (I hope).

Perhaps you mean that a prejudicial belief induced by observing someone's anatomical characteristics cannot be based solely on an accurate appraisal of those anatomical characteristics in their relation to the topic of prejudice? IE, you expect a random man to be taller than a random woman drawn from the population of people on Earth, and this is not sexist because it's based on accurate statistical information about human bodies; but if someone expected a random man to be smarter than a random woman drawn from the population of people on Earth, this would be a prejudiced belief because the information isn't accurate. (Edit: This is completely artificial from how norms function too... expectations and passing judgements are not based on statistical information.)

Well, this isn't right either Harry. For obvious logical reasons; this criterion does not distinguish false beliefs about statistical properties of anatomy from prejudiced ones; but you're making a waaaaaay less benign error.

Your analysis is based on prejudiced beliefs rather than systemic injustices and systems of learning prejudiced beliefs. Perhaps if you focussed more on the latter two categories you'd see the need for social constructions; you know, when you've not rendered them irrelevant to the issue by fiat.

Edit: anyway, the talk about sexism is related to but distinct from the understanding of gender as a social construction, my keyboard warrior tendencies over-rode my sense of logic, sorry peeps!

You really were sitting on a mental dumpster fire here! It's a lot more entertaining now we've opened the lid, let's watch it burn.

What is a social construction? What does it mean to be sexist? — Harry Hindu

So just because I find this interesting. I take a naturalistic view on social construction. That might seem like a contradiction in terms, but it's quite a defensible thesis.

The general reputation of social construction is the kind of thing you'd expect to see on Tumblr or out of the mouths of over zealous social anthropology under graduates: "Morality is just a social construction!", without ever explaining what a social construction is, this 'just' is the operative word, not the 'social construction' part.

The general reputation of social constructions is that they have very little to do with anything material; this conception sees them as they're cultural artefacts, floating social facts, generated by the aggregate of individual assumptions and perception we have about shared practices. You can turn the causal structure on its head and get the same idea; the cultural artefacts and floating social facts generate the aggregate of individual assumptions and perceptions we have about shared practices.

You seem to want to situate identity in either of these conceptions; either individual identities partake in the generation of social conditions; as if they are prior to them; or social conditions partake in the generation of identities. You also seem to insist on a purity of definition, social constructions and identities and never the twain shall meet, based on your metaphysical intuitions about social constructions and identities.

In opposition to this, I see it reciprocally; people partially construct social stuff, social stuff partially constructs people. It's a blending on all levels; a reciprocal dependence that undermines any demand for their scission. There are points of overlap, and processes outside of the two.

I'd like you to bracket and articulate these assumptions so we can discuss them. We'd probably make more progress that way than talking cross purposes.

Loyalty, familiarity and appreciation of their good points are the reasons S was treated with such leeway.

No, it's about what you think — Harry Hindu

Wait. Waaait. You think a person's identity is just about what they think?

We already went over how one gets various identities. Your problem is that you are confusing biological real identities (being born with certain body parts and functions) with SHARED ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT THOSE IDENTITIES. — Harry Hindu

Oh I get it maybe, you think gender is about anatomical/natal sex, and not just influenced by it (as part of a complicated system of bodies and social processes)?

There's a teething period. You'll find out who you find worthwhile to engage with and who you find worthwhile to read.

In my view, we don't restrict discussion to approaching academic quality discussion since the public nature of the forum makes that overly restrictive. We don't ban-hammer tone as much as would be expected in academic discussion; just consistent bad behaviour.

In my book it's a shame we get irritated with our fellow idiots, or even get irritated at others' irritation. Though it is expected and usual.

If identities are socially constructed, then that means that they are identities that are given by others, or assumed by others, not by an individual by themselves. — Harry Hindu

Ok! How do you think someone gets an identity? Or do they just 'have' it from when they're born?
And how do you think someone becomes influenced by or involved with a social construction?

Harry, I've never thought that sex is a social construct.

I'm glad. I was also half seriously apologising for the worst sin.

Forgive me for intentionally being an idiot.

How dare you assume yeast derivatives' identity is not persistent across cultures.

But point taken.

You lot who hate tribal signalling and infighting sure do have the same talking points.

I'm standing right where I was.

Maybe if I moved to Australia and kept eating marmite, the magical Australia juices would fill me with their succour and I would come to love the thick black yeast product.

If "gender" is a social construction, then that means that their identity is a shared assumption of others, not personal inclination, and something that they can't change themselves, unless they move to a different culture. — Harry Hindu

People don't like the taste of marmite.
Therefore no one can develop a taste for marmite.

Forget about intersex people and the other proposed gender identities for now.

People with male natal sex never have female natal sex.
People with female natal sex never have male natal sex.
People with male natal sex sometimes have female gender identity.
People with male natal sex sometimes have male gender identity.
People with female natal sex sometimes have female gender identity.
People with female natal sex sometimes have male gender identity.

How do you 'change gender identity', you adjust your gender expression to become more comfortable with your gender identity. You can't change your natal sex.

Is the association between natal sex and gender identity a source of social tension and mental pain? Yes.
Does the association between natal sex and gender identity aid in propagating sexism?
Maybe. Specifics matter here.
Does that mean the distinction between natal sex and gender identity is sexist?
No.

I made a thing for you.

It then goes on to say that "especially with reference to social and cultural differences than biological ones." Is it talking about the differences between cultures? I — Harry Hindu

Sex characteristics are associated with gender archetypes. Gender archetypes are associated with sex characteristics.

Clearer?

I guess I've been operating from a viewpoint that sees gender essentialism as obviously if not definitionally false (if it's something biological then it's not gender, it's sex; if it's social then it's not sex, it's gender) — Pfhorrest

Yeah I figured. I think it's obviously false. Though social-body interactions do obviously happen (passing/not passing and avoiding/having resultant feelings of disaccord is as much a constraint on vocal chord movements as it is on speaking style). I imagine we agree that while norms and sensations make bodies act in different ways, they both are sources of influence. And that sex characteristics and gender are so messily coupled in norms and perceptions it's difficult to tear relevant behaviour (like childhood non-conformity in our discussion ) apart aetiologically.

I see it like... since it's so difficult to tear them apart, essentialism must be false, but since it's so difficult to tear them apart, it's very easy to see things in essentialist terms.

So you can make sensible definitions like you did in the OP, there's still lots of difficult work to do in giving exegesis of basic points/teaching, and I hope that bearing helps you clear up some TERF misapprehensions.

It’s an interesting scientific question, but not of much philosophical interest, and I’m a little suspicious of putting too much emphasis on it for sociopolitical reasons. I’d say it’s similar to the question of what makes someone gay — Pfhorrest

I think it's a pretty interesting philosophical issue though. There's certainly a subtext of 'so they're not really women/men! Aha!' from related discussions sometimes, so I share the hesitation.

But I would also hesitate to frame it as a purely scientific question, as gender essentialism and (strict?) constructionism do bear on it. IE: there are some social factors related to gender which are determined solely by bodily sex characteristics for the former and there are no social factors related to gender which are determined solely by bodily sex characteristics for the later (and they are determined solely by social structures).

I think if you make that kind of thing a purely scientific question, you cede rhetorical ground to those who collapse gender and sex on (very shaky) scientific grounds, and those who do so are both very wrong and often politically motivated when they do it.

This is probably more about... cultural effects of the framing of an issue... than the OP or essentialism/constructionism.

Just gonna close the thread.

:up:

The "close to" part is that bearing isn't just about disaccord, but also about accord; or equivalently, since accord is often invisible, not just about having the feelings, but also about not having the feelings. People who feel nothing in particular at all about their physical sex still have a bearing, it's just a different bearing than those who do feel something or another about that. Just like people who are indifferent to who they have sex with still have a sexual orientation. — Pfhorrest

I'd do the same thing with accord, socially mediated feelings of accord with one's sex characteristics etc... But point taken. You really don't care here about whether the sensations of dis/accord are socially mediated (in their causal structure) or not.

Pretty much. I'm not saying anything about whether or not that is the case, but it has no bearing (pun intended) on defining the concept of bearing, which is all I'm doing here. — Pfhorrest

:up:

I'm curious though, do you care in general whether the sensations of dis/accord are always socially mediated?

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). — TheWillowOfDarkness

I think you're privileging gender over sex; specifically, I think you're making gender conceptually dependent upon sex illegitimately, whereas sex and gender 'only' ontically correlate (most people are cis) and socially couple (anatomical dicks are male sex and count as male gender) through norms. Moreover, the norms that partition bodies into anatomical characteristics are not the same norms that gender bodies socially.

Though, I do think it's unfortunate culturally/politically (for the acceptance of trans identities) that sex and gender are so correlated, and accept this as a fact of our social norms while doing what I can to highlight distinctions. It's true that anatomies within sex categories vary very much, and intersex people exist which implodes the partition of human bodies into only anatomically male and anatomically female representatives, but it's nevertheless true that there are male sexed bodies and female sexed bodies. Even if male sexed and female sexed do not jointly exhaust the possible sex characteristics of human bodies, and even if there are indeterminate cases. Analogically, the placement of orange on the colour wheel does not destroy the placement of red and yellow.

There are norms of judgement in categorising bodies into sex characteristics, 'this is a dick' 'this is a demipenis' 'this is a clitoris','this is a vulva' but I see no more reason to doubt the existence of clusters of anatomical properties (that allow of variation in their representative parts, a dick's a dick if it's a schode or a schlong, but a dick is not a demipenis) that correspond to the usual anatomical categories. If we see something different, we invent medical categorisation on the fly.

What's important is that these norms of medical categorisation of bodies or cells or bodily functions are not the same norms which associate gender with bodies.

That us to say, I’m only proposing a term for feelings that do not concern social factors, but I’m not saying anything at all about the causes of those feelings. — Pfhorrest

Fair enough! Maybe anyway.

Sensations associated with bearing = sensations associated with felt disaccord with one's sex characteristics which are not socially influenced OR sensations associated with felt disaccord with one's sex characteristics which are socially influenced.

And for the purposes of this thread, you don't care whether there are no sensations associated with felt disaccord with one's sex characteristics which are not socially influenced? (IE, you don't care whether all sensations of felt disaccord with one's sex characteristics are socially influenced)