One cannot seem to self-identify by the first criteria as a member of some category in the second definition because the second definition makes it clear such membership criteria are taught and imposed by culture, not determined freely by individuals. — Isaac

If gender is imposed on an individual, then how can an individual choose their own gender? — Harry Hindu

God however is a being, or being i.e. not an objective ‘substance’ but a knowing being, is he not? — Wayfarer

PART 2 DEFINITION I. By body I mean a mode which expresses in a certain determinate manner the essence of God, in so far as he is considered as an extended thing. (See Pt. i., Prop. xxv., Coroll.)

PART 2 PROP. II. Extension is an attribute of God, or God is an extended thing.

PART 1 DEFINITION VI. By God, I mean a being absolutely infinite—that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality.

Trans people only seem to exist in western countries where a small fraction of parents raise their child as the opposite sex rather than in a gender-neutral environment — Harry Hindu

You need to define gender in order to define transgenders and where they are. Is gender a feeling or is it a social construction? — Harry Hindu

Gender refers to the socially constructed characteristics of women and men – such as norms, roles and relationships of and between groups of women and men. It varies from society to society and can be changed. While most people are born either male or female, they are taught appropriate norms and behaviours – including how they should interact with others of the same or opposite sex within households, communities and work places. When individuals or groups do not “fit” established gender norms they often face stigma, discriminatory practices or social exclusion – all of which adversely affect health. It is important to be sensitive to different identities that do not necessarily fit into binary male or female sex categories.

noun
noun: gender; plural noun: genders
1.
either of the two sexes (male and female), especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones. The term is also used more broadly to denote a range of identities that do not correspond to established ideas of male and female.

members of a particular gender considered as a group.

the fact or condition of belonging to or identifying with a particular gender.

the perception or recognition of one's characteristics as a particular individual, especially in relation to social context.

I don't think it makes any sense to claim that a person looking for metaphysical accuracy is being prejudiced. Some might be, as you suggest, using it as a cover for their prejudice, but you cannot assume that a) all such questions are covers, and b) all true supporters won't question the metaphysics. — Artemis

So the definition you present here basically comes down to the latter of my two suggestions earlier: gender is self-id and a social role. In which case, part of the reason trans-people would so desperately want to transition early would be to "pass" more easily and not be the subject of harrassment. — Artemis

Of course details like "what exactly is transgenderism" determine treatment. It's like the difference between how you'd treat someone with paranoia versus a victim of stalking. Or how you'd treat an obese person trying to lose weight versus an anorexic one. Or treating an ulcer versus Crohn's disease. All these things share symptoms, but are hugely different cases and therefore need different treatments. — Artemis

Transgender (sometimes shortened to “trans”) is an umbrella term used to describe a wide range of identities whose appearance and characteristics are perceived as gender atypical —including transsexual people, cross-dressers (sometimes referred to as “transvestites”), and people who identify as third gender. Transwomen identify as women but were classified as males when they were born, transmen identify as men but were classified female when they were born, while other trans people don’t identify with the gender-binary at all. Some transgender people seek surgery or take hormones to bring their body into alignment with their gender identity; others do not. — UN

Gender identity reflects a deeply felt and experienced sense of one’s own gender. Everyone has a gender identity, which is part of their overall identity. A person’s gender identity is typically aligned with the sex assigned to them at birth. Transgender (sometimes shortened to “trans”) is an umbrella term used to describe people with a wide range of identities – including transsexual people, cross-dressers (sometimes referred to as “transvestites”), people who identify as third gender, and others whose appearance and characteristics are seen as gender atypical and whose sense of their own gender is different to the sex that they were assigned at birth. Trans women identify as women but were classified as males when they were born. Trans men identify as men but were classified female when they were born. Cisgender is a term used to describe people whose sense of their own gender is aligned with the sex that they were assigned at birth. Gender identity is distinct from sexual orientation and sex characteristics. — UN

Gender expression is the way in which we express our gender through actions and appearance. Gender expression can be any combination of masculine, feminine and androgynous. For a lot of people, their gender expression goes along with the ideas that our societies deem to be appropriate for their gender. For other people it does not. People whose gender expression does not fit into society’s norms and expectations, such as men perceived as ‘feminine’ and women perceived as ‘masculine’ often face harsh sanctions, including physical, sexual and psychological violence and bullying. A person’s gender expression is not always linked to the person’s biological sex, gender identity or sexual orientation. — UN

Actually, that's a really important, fundamental question before medicine should be practiced. — Artemis

I think doctors offering transitions to underage persons are probably (in good faith) trying too quick to accommodate transpeople's desires. Which is understandable, but it might not actually be in the best interest of transpeople until we can solve a whole list of medical and metaphysical concerns first. — Artemis

Can you explain what case you are making then? Cause imho your last post sounded like you did not have answers to those questions but would still endorse selectively allowing underage persons to take on the risk. — Artemis

I still think "patriarchy" is a noun naming a non-existent phenomenon which is the Number One imaginary Bogeyman of feminists. — Bitter Crank

I don't think there's a responsible, compassionate case to be made that we should try not to answer these very basic questions before proceeding with treatment that is possibly more dangerous than non-medical intervention. — Artemis

Yes, I do. Because, why only often? Why not always? What is the percentage? Is there a way to tell ahead of time? And on what basis are they happier? Because they actually feel better in their own skin or because other people are nicer when they "pass"? And if the latter, should we be allowing kids to modify their bodies because other people are jerks? — Artemis

Because they actually feel better in their own skin or because other people are nicer when they "pass"?

Like, if gender is based on self-id and not physical attributes, why is changing the physical of such importance as to outweigh possible health risks. — Artemis

This can be a viable form of feminism because it allows for the action of sex, which typically demonstrates men as aggressive and dominant and women to be subordinate and passive, to be removed from the sphere of heterosexual interactions. This, as a result, removes the disparity in the treatment of genders through sexual interaction

"Within a few months of beginning hormone therapy, you must assume that you will become permanently and irreversibly sterile. Some people may maintain a sperm count on hormone therapy, or have their sperm count return after stopping hormone therapy, but you must assume that won’t be the case for you." — Artemis

Yes, I believe that's reasonable. However, it's not necessarily what all trangender people want. Some advocate for allowing preteens to start medically transitioning before their natural hormones change them in directions they do not believe they want. I disagree with the whole concept, but I can understand their position. — Artemis

So, yes, knowledge must always be phrased as a modus ponens. — alcontali

What do you mean by that? Mathematical models proves that Newton's laws must be true? — TheMadFool

So you've changed the usual meaning of "identity politics." — frank

Assuming there is some politics of identity to mesh with? Where roles are established and accepted, there may be no politics of identity, not because there are no identities, but because there's no conflict over it. — frank

↪fdrake I'm in academia, so – I generally choose how much effort to spend on which projects, whether it's worth being a perfectionist or not, whether I should do something well or if doing it just OK is good enough, when to eat lunch and what to eat, what grades I give students, what positions I apply for in looking for new work, what I decide to research, whether I decide to continue researching something or drop it, what I read, what I write, whether I feel like being friendly to people or not, and so on. I have a lot of latitude in what I do personally, though there are a lot of constraints as well. — Snakes Alive

Like what? When my hand is "not tipped by force or circumstance?" Sure. — Snakes Alive

Presumably, if they do it voluntarily, you aren't in control of them. — Snakes Alive

To understand a thing is to know the manner by which it might be destroyed. A fundamental understanding of the basic building-blocks of the Universe is essential, then, to the total destruction of everything.

As usual, I think you know a lot more about this than I do. Reading more about chaos and complexity are high on my reading wish list. Any particular recommendations? — T Clark

Maybe I don't understand or maybe I disagree. It is my understanding that chaotic systems are completely unpredictable given passage of sufficient time. Sufficient time is determined by a time scale which varies based on the system. — T Clark

The idea of randomness kind of snuck into this discussion. It's not something I've thought enough about to be comfortable with my understanding. Your post is really helpful. I'm going to keep it to use as a reference in the future. I'll quote it to pound other posters into submission. — T Clark

Mm, I was not entirely comfortable with my use of the ontological/epistemic distinction. I suppose what I wanted to emphazise was the necessity of an intervention by an agent, or at least another system, the interaction between which would alone give sense to any measure of randomness. Any 'epistemic' investigation would of course, be a subclass of this type of intervention, but you're right that the former would not exhaust what fixes the background against which randomness would appear. — StreetlightX

I think the example of the light switch/light bulb system captures the definitions you gave in your opening posts. That is, determinism (or non-determinism) relates to the system itself while predictability relates to an agent's knowledge (or information about) the system. — Andrew M

This is the salient distinction I was trying to tease out with fdrake. Putting it another way is to say that randomness is indeterminability. Ontological randomness would be ontological indeterminism, which is defined as microphysical events being not merely epistemically random, meaning they are not determined by anything at all, they simply happen without cause. — Janus

A quick comment on some of the discussion here: a clean way to understand randomness is as equiprobability: if, given certain outcomes, the likeliness of each happening under repeated iterations is the same, then your system is random. There's no 'discrimination' as to the end result (no 'asymmetry that would favour some outcomes over others). — StreetlightX

One thing that follows from this understanding is that randomness can only be spoken of in relation to a fixed system. Something is random insofar one cannot choose, in advance, between fixed outcomes. So a coin toss is random because the two outcomes, head and tails, are fixed in advance, and what makes the toss random is the equiprobability of outcome. Conceptual problems creep in when this relation to fixity is lost: if the coin turns into an elephant, that's not random, that's nonsense. — StreetlightX

A further consequence of this is that randomness is an epistemic, and not ontological concept. If randomness is system-relative (defined only in relation to a fixed system), then no event 'in-itself' is either random or not-random. Instead, you need a distribution of (potential) events relative to a system in to qualify something or some event as random or not. But importantly, what counts and does not count as belonging to, or constituting a system, is itself relative to the kind of investigation one conducts. — StreetlightX

Are you trying to program a structure by attaching invariants? — alcontali

Saying that it is a "group" automatically attaches a set of invariants. If you add enough invariants to the structure, i.e. you may use up all your degrees of freedom, then indeed, at some point there will only be one candidate definition that fits the bill. It could, for example, leave only one K possible. You could obviously also over-specify and propose the structure of something that cannot possibly exist. — alcontali