Here you seem to misunderstand that you can have a coarse biological classification scheme and yet still not use that for legal or public policy. — substantivalism

Wrong. You continue to purposely misunderstand what I have written. If legal or public policy is not based in reality, then what use is it? Do you make this same case for all scientific conclusions, like on the environment? Do you not use scientific data to support the idea that the environment is changing? Hypocrisy is your brain on politics.

Most of your replies felt like a critique of any form of anti-realism. "If it's socially constructed then it can be undone, anything can go, and it makes following it pointless because there is no grounding. How can you say what you say because according to you I can invent whatever I want in a contrary fashion." — substantivalism

When did I ever imply such a thing. Notice you had to quote this yourself and did not quote me as saying this. Straw-man.

My argument about social constructs has been in exposing the inconsistency between gender being a social construct and a personal feeling. It cannot be both because one is the antithesis of the other. It is their feeling that is at odds with the social construct. So, which is it? Is gender a feeling or a social construct?

You appear to be equivocating.

Here are two plausible interpretations of your claim:

1. They believe they are biologically male when they are biologically female. That is the delusion.
2. They believe they are non-biologically male when they are biologically female. That is the delusion.

If you mean (1) then your claim is false because they do not believe that they are biologically male.

If you mean (2) then your conclusion is a non sequitur. — Michael

Well, I have been asking what a transgender person means when they say they are a "man" or "woman". I am trying to clarify what they mean by asking questions about what they actually mean - something you have been averse to yet is required to solve your problem. I have already laid out the inconsistencies of their definitions of gender as a social construct, feelings, sexist tropes, etc., I have been waiting on you to clarify since you claim to understand them but you'd rather make arguments without any clear definitions of what it is you are actually talking about.

It's not a logical fallacy to defer to what mathematicians say about mathematics, to what physicists say about physics, or to what psychiatrists say about psychiatry.

Psychiatrists do not classify gender incongruence as a psychosis. Unless you have studied psychiatry you are not qualified to have an informed opinion. — Michael

It is if that is your only argument and the argument does not address all the other issues I showed with it that you did not reply to (more cherry-picking).

It appears that you are not qualified to have an informed opinion on logic and proper reasoning. Appealing to authority IS a logical fallacy. You need to reconcile what you just said with this simple fact.

It is nonsense to discuss and figure out how male and female overlap, without discussing and figuring out how male and female cannot overlap first. — Fire Ologist

Exactly. We need non-contradictory definitions for once - the lack of which is evidence that those that accept what trans-people are claiming simply don't understand what they are claiming. We also need to understand that being a man or woman also being a human and we need to distinguish between what are actual male and female traits and which are just part of the wide range of human behaviors and actually have nothing to do with one's sex. This is what it means to be sexist - to confuse human attributes with sexual attributes - as if wearing a dress (both men and women can wear dresses - there is nothing about them physically that would prevent both from wearing a dress) is what defines you as being a woman as opposed to having a vagina.

Ideas are often considered abstract objects. — NOS4A2

Yet we can talk about particular ideas. It always seems to me that the best answers lie somewhere in the middle of two extremes - realism and nominalism, rationalism and empiricism, direct and indirect realism, political left and right, etc.

It seems to me that both can be true depending on what goal one has at the moment. What we focus on (the particulars or the universal) at any moment is dependent upon what goal we are trying to accomplish.

Universals are particulars of larger categories of universals.

Are similarity and difference particulars or universals?

It's not clear to me what delusion you believe they have. We've already established that trans men don't believe that they were born with a penis or XY chromosomes, so it can't be that.

And neither the DSM nor the ICD classify gender dysphoria/incongruence as a type of psychosis, and unless you're a qualified psychiatrist you're in no position to question the professionals – or at the very least I have no good reason to believe you over them. — Michael

They believe they are man when they are a woman. That is the delusion.

Pleading to authority is a logical fallacy.

I asked what makes sex so special in that someone can identify as the opposite sex, but if someone identifies as a cat or an alien, then that qualifies as a type of delusional disorder but the former does not. This goes back to my argument of inconsistency where you are accepting some extraordinary claim without extraordinary evidence yet reject other extraordinary claims with no evidence. You are cherry-picking the validity of extraordinary claims for political purposes.

Also, science and medicine can be influenced by politics. Receiving grants is dependent upon your studies aligning with the current government. Plastic surgeons are happy to support trans-gender surgery for obvious reasons. The way I see it is that the plastic surgeons are taking over the jobs of the psychologists in this area.

There is the case where a tax-payer funded study on the effects of puberty blockers that went unpublished for fear it might be "weaponized" by their political opponents. What else is being hidden? This is why it is imperative that political parties be abolished.

This argument stems from a misunderstanding of what science is in that scientific knowledge in not written in stone and is meant to be challenged with logical alternatives and arguments.

Never understood where the leap came for gender to describe societal differences between the sexes to people wanting society to validate their right to pick a gender. Very dismissive of women and their status in society. Women fought long and hard to get the rights and respect they now have. — Malcolm Parry

I'd be willing to bet a year's salary that if men started advocating for shared public bathrooms 30-40 years ago, before all this trans-gender ideology started, the left would be screaming and yelling about protecting women's rights and safe spaces.

Harry Hindu celebrates this. . . and then he adds nothing to replace it or advocate for an improvement of it's material. Perhaps I'm wrong but he hasn't been rather vocal on this topic matter and seems to just burn all bridges thinking its better we just swim. — substantivalism

You don't know shit about what I think because you don't actually read my posts. I already told you that I have talked about long-term solutions for society in other recent political threads on this forum and then provided an immediate solution, which you ignored, so stop trying to link my name to shit I haven't said or implied.

The first update is that someone long ago pointed out that there can be orientations and bearings ("gender" in the psychological sense, as in the OP) regarding sex and gender (in the sociological sense) separately, so there's not just sex (biological), gender (sociological), orientation and bearing (both psychological), there's sex, sexual orientation, sexual bearing, gender, gender orientation, and gender bearing -- six different things that may correlate but can come apart from each other, for each of which you can have a position on a two-dimensional spectrum of masculinity X femininity. — Pfhorrest

Masculinity and femininity are different across different cultures, so not necessarily based in the biology of the sexes. If gender is a social construct, then gender would be different in each culture. If a trans-person travel internationally, does their gender change?

A social construct is a concept, idea, or category that is created and maintained by a society or group through shared beliefs and practices, rather than being inherent or naturally occurring. A social construct as something created and maintained by society would be the antithesis of a personal feeling. To change gender, we would have to change society, not an individual's body parts or clothing.

The social construct was created as a means of distinguishing between the sexes in a society that covers their bodies with clothing. Clothing evolved as a way of flaunting one's sex and resources, the same way peacocks use their tails. So wearing a dress does not make one a woman. It is meant to display the fact that one is already a woman and the dress is means of representing that fact when the dress covers up the fact.

I’m focused on actual people trying to live their actual lives. Trans people aren’t just some philosophical hypothetical. They exist and they often need to use public bathrooms. The studies show that it is safer to let trans men use men’s bathrooms and trans women use women’s bathrooms, so any law that tries to prevent this ought not be passed.

If you don’t understand trans people then fine. You don’t need to. Them going to the toilet has nothing to do with you - or anyone else. — Michael

You are focused on affirming the delusions of delusional people. I never said trans-people don't exist. I said that their beliefs are delusions, just as anorexic people exist but they have a distorted view of their body. You are the one denying that delusional disorders and mass delusions exist

You don't understand trans-people either which is evident by your inability to define "gender" and "woman". If you can't define either term without contradicting yourself then you effectively don't understand them either.

Those studies do not show that it is safer to let trans people use which ever bathroom they choose. It simply shows that trans people are at risk regardless of which bathroom they choose because they can still be assaulted in any bathroom.

Sure, I have seen women go into the men's bathroom because the line to the women's bathroom was too long. I have seen a man enter the women's bathroom with his elderly mother to assist her. The difference is that they did not enter the bathroom on the premise that they are a man or woman and entering either bathroom doesn't make them, or affirm they are a man or woman. Sure, they can enter whichever bathroom they choose, but it won't be because they are an actual man or woman. The problem isn't which bathroom they use. The problem is using bathrooms as a way of affirming the delusions of a delusional person, which would be like prescribing diet pills to an anorexic person.

Is it ethical to play along with a person's delusions?

You obviously haven't read a word I wrote. I'm not focused on their genitals. I am focused on their psychology. You are the one focused on sex as you are making a special case for people that identify as the opposite sex as opposed to identifying as other types of entities -as if you have some kind of sexual fetish.

It is you that is focused on the bathroom issue when I have shown that is a symptom and not the cause. It is illogical to even discuss bathrooms when you haven't ironed out the psychological issue first.

Try applying this logic to other questions. Does Iraq really have or not have WMD, or does it depend on what is useful to us? Are there truly substances, things, or does the existence of any thing at all (even the human person) merely depend on our goals? How can we have goals if our existence is itself a question of usefulness? — Count Timothy von Icarus

The problem though, is that the old issue of the One and the Many rears its head here. If everything is a process, in virtue of what is anything also a discrete thing? How is anything any thing at all? Process metaphysics tends towards a singular universal monoprocess. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What I mean is are the boundaries between things real or dependent upon our goals? When is it useful to imagine a boundary between living and non-living and when is it useful to merge them into one category? If some scientists do not see a distinction between living and non-living they must have a reason to do so, right? And when we ask the scientists that view a distinction between living and non-living they have a reason to do so. My point is that they have different goals and if they were to change goals they would end up agreeing. If we were to explore their reasons I think we would find that their ideas are not contradictory, just different views based on different goals. Sometimes it is useful to think of living and non-living as separate and sometimes it is useful to think of them in the same category.

The distinctions seems to be what level of reality they are focused on - reality at the atomic level where non-living and living look the same, or at the macro-level where living and non-living are more distinct. Both views do not contradict each other. They are just different levels of reality that we are focusing our attention on. Does reality have attention, or intention? I doubt it. So are the levels of reality real or products/projections of our limited views of reality?

Here is the problem with trying to ground epistemology in "usefulness:" either there are facts about what is useful or there aren't. If nothing is "truly useful," but instead is "useful because we feel it is so," then we have relativism. For the fundamentalist, it is useful to deny evolution for instance. In 1984, it is useful for both citizens and the Party to live by "whatever Big Brother says is true is true." — Count Timothy von Icarus

What I'm saying is that just because we might find some knowledge useful for certain things does not necessarily mean that knowledge contradicts or does not complement other knowledge about other parts of reality. Does genetics contradict biology? Does atomic theory contradict astrophysics? No. They are just descriptions of different levels of reality depending on what it is we are focused on at the moment. Our minds do not have an infinite amount of memory and our senses can only access certain levels of reality (there is a level or reality where lightwaves are to big compared to the objects at the atomic level so the waves never reflect off the objects for us to see them so we use devices like electron microscopes to view the atomic level of reality.)

I wanted to go back to this exchange:

In the scientific context, the term substance refers to pure matter alone, consisting of only one type of atom or one type of molecule.
— Harry Hindu

That's the point of the OP - that using the term 'substance' mistakenly equates 'being' with 'stuff'. And in the current scientific context, there is no real material ultimate in the sense of a material atom. Atoms are nowadays understood as excitations in fields, the primitive idea of the atom as 'indivisible particle' (that's what the word means, 'not divisible') is long dead, in the age of wave-particle duality.
— Wayfarer
Where in the scientific explanation was the word, "stuff" used, or what makes you believe that "stuff" was implied when "substance" is used? It seems you are projecting a strawman into the description that isn't there.

You solve your own problem by incorporating other scientific knowledge that there is no real material ultimate in the sense of the material atom. If science also says that atoms are excitations in fields then it is not saying that substance is stuff. So your explanation only works if you compartmentalize scientific knowledge, like you just did. But as I said before, the conclusion in one domain of knowledge (or one field of science) should not contradict the conclusions reached in another. All knowledge must be integrated. — Harry Hindu

It appears that it is a common way of thinking of "substance" as being something fundamental. According to the above descriptions, substance would not be fundamental but would simply be what we call a thing that consists of only type of atom or molecule, and atoms are not stuff but are excitations in fields. We abandoned this view of atoms being little billiard balls bouncing around in favor of quantum mechanics that talks about wave functions and superposition. So it appears that science at least has abandoned the idea that substance is something fundamental, in favor of a view that process appears to be fundamental and substances are just a type of process, or relation between certain types of atoms.

I addressed the relevant issue. Trans people are at a greater risk when they use the bathroom according to their biological sex and cis women are not at a greater risk when trans women are allowed to use the women’s bathroom.

So if your concern is people’s safety then trans men ought use men’s bathrooms and trans women ought use women’s bathrooms. — Michael

Wrong. You are avoiding the relevant issue. You are also focused on symptoms and not the cause.

Asking which bathrooms trans-people used before this became an issue is an entirely relevant issue. You want to avoid answering it because you are intelligent enough to realize that you've caught yourself in a logical trap.

1. If trans-people had been using bathrooms that aligned with their sex before this became an issue, then why did this become an issue? Where are the actual statistics of trans-people being attacked because they used the wrong bathroom instead of being attacked for being trans?

2. If trans-people had been using bathrooms aligned with their gender then how can there be any evidence of trans-people being attacked because they were using the bathroom associated with their gender and not their sex?

3. How is letting trans-people use the bathroom that aligns with their gender going to make them safer when they can still be attacked in whichever bathroom they choose?

All the other questions I asked are relevant because they address how realistic your claims are. You just want to keep repeating the claim.

The most relevant issue that you are avoiding is how do we determine when someone is telling the truth when they say they are a man or a woman? What makes one a man or a woman? What makes sex so special that one can identify as the opposite sex but if one were to identify as a cat, Elvis Presley or a Dark Sith Lord, well that is just crazy? You are making extraordinary claims without supporting evidence that their claims are true.

You can't even make a sensible distinction between sex and gender.

Whether or not it "makes sense" to you is irrelevant. Your intuition – or whatever it is – is wrong. — Michael

You can make it make more sense by not trying to avoid the relevant questions that you should be asking yourself. But you won't because it's politics/religion to you.

At times, theoretical work needs to take a more philosophical look at what is mean by change and motion, and so "process." — Count Timothy von Icarus

It would seem to me that any change or motion would be a type of process. Is there any type of change or motion that would not count as a process?

The soul is just the form by which living things are the sort of self-organizing, self-determining, self-generating proper wholes that they are. Some (philosophical) conceptions of science do away with any real distinction between living and non-living things (e.g. "everything is just collocations of atoms"), but most do not. "Soul" is broadly consistent with those that do not, and include some sort of principle of life. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Doesn't it depend on what the current goal is? Is it useful to think of all living and non-living things as part of one group? If so, when is that the case? Is it useful to think of living things as separate from non-living things? If so, when is that the case?

It doesn't appear to me that the universe cares whether living things are categorized with non-living things or not. The universe just is a certain way and it is our present goal that makes certain distinctions more useful than others, not that the universe is contradictory or ill-defined.

‘Soul’ was one term used to translate the Greek ‘psuche’ which lives on as ‘psyche’. ‘Spirit’ originally comes from ‘pneuma’, meaning ‘breath’, or ‘animating principle’. Those terms belong to an earlier world of discourse, but the realities they denote are still real enough. Again, the point of the original post is that through Descartes ‘res cogitans’, ‘mind’ comes to be represented as ‘thinking thing’ or ‘thinking substance’ which I say is an incoherent concept. — Wayfarer

Well, yeah. The mind is a process. Atoms are processes, organisms are processes, galaxies are processes. No "substance", which is an antiquated term no matter which flavor you choose.

Again, Descartes is a product of his time. Maybe we should focus more on what we actually know now rather than how some ancient, long-dead philosophers thought when they would not think the same things if they were alive to day.

How about trans-men? Is it OK for trans-men to use the men's bathroom or must they use the women's bathroom? — EricH

Is it ok to affirm a delusional person's delusions? Is it ok to prescribe an anorexic person diet pills to affirm their distorted view of their body? Should we put boxes of cat litter in public restrooms in case someone identifies as a cat?

Is it ok to reject some extraordinary claims with no evidence but accept other extraordinary claims with no evidence?

“However, research shows that transgender people are the ones who face harm from others in these spaces,

You didn't answer my question about which bathrooms trans-people have been using before this became an issue.

Nor did you respond to how trans-people will be more at risk from the people that are saying they should use the bathroom corresponding to their sex.

It seems to me that what you're saying is that trans-people are threatened no matter where they are. What is to keep a man from entering a women's bathroom and assaulting a trans-person? How is allowing them to go into the bathroom of their choice going to be more safe if their safety is threatened no matter where they are? You seem to be saying it will make them feel better that their delusions are being affirmed.

Bathrooms, pronouns and sports are divided by sex. So in demanding rights to things that are divided by sex just proves that gender and sex are one and the same and that we are talking about sex and not gender.

And aren't public restrooms public places with several people occupying the space? Why would someone assault someone else with several witnesses around? Let's say that a man hides out in a woman's bathroom to wait for a trans-person to enter. How long will they have to wait?

If trans-people's safety are threatened in bathrooms, then what makes you think a trans-man will be safe entering a men's bathroom? When you actually dig deep and think beyond the statistics you are providing, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, or is realistic.

So trans women ought to suffer using men's bathrooms, risking being abused, because cis men might pretend to be trans women to use women's bathrooms? That seems unfair. — Michael

This is like saying that a delusional person ought not to suffer the knowledge that they are deluding themselves.

This is also saying that the same people that are arguing for people to use the bathroom corresponding to their sex would then assault people that are actually doing that.

Where are the statistics that show that trans-people are disproportionately assaulted in bathrooms as opposed to other places? Where did trans-people go the bathroom before we started having these types of discussions? We were not discussing who uses which bathroom 10-20 years ago, so where were trans-people going to the bathroom 10-20 years ago?

presume that philosofical talk has not much to do with details, but everything with the big picture. — Jan

What is the "big picture" if not "all the details", or integrating all details into a consistent whole (big picture)?

When you don't integrate all the details you end up with an inconsistent big picture.

Any ontology that includes terms like "souls" and "spirits" to define different levels of "substance" does not map onto the world as we understand it scientifically. How do you map souls and spirits with what we understand scientifically?

That is not the solution. The solution is for you to start being more logically consistent, intellectually honest and take your own advice to ignore delusional claims.

These terms definitely still get used in the philosophy of physics, philosophy of biology, complexity studies, etc., but they are often used confusedly in different senses, with all the baggage they have accumulated — Count Timothy von Icarus

Do we have the same problem with the term, "process"?

In the scientific context, the term substance refers to pure matter alone, consisting of only one type of atom or one type of molecule.
— Harry Hindu

That's the point of the OP - that using the term 'substance' mistakenly equates 'being' with 'stuff'. And in the current scientific context, there is no real material ultimate in the sense of a material atom. Atoms are nowadays understood as excitations in fields, the primitive idea of the atom as 'indivisible particle' (that's what the word means, 'not divisible') is long dead, in the age of wave-particle duality. — Wayfarer

Where in the scientific explanation was the word, "stuff" used, or what makes you believe that "stuff" was implied when "substance" is used? It seems you are projecting a strawman into the description that isn't there.

You solve your own problem by incorporating other scientific knowledge that there is no real material ultimate in the sense of the material atom. If science also says that atoms are excitations in fields then it is not saying that substance is stuff. So your explanation only works if you compartmentalize scientific knowledge, like you just did. But as I said before, the conclusion in one domain of knowledge (or one field of science) should not contradict the conclusions reached in another. All knowledge must be integrated.

Yes, people spoke up, opposed, etc. but it was exactly that which became easy for Hitler and the Nazis to oppose by using free speech absolutism as a rhetoric. "See they want to silence us". — Christoffer

But was the opposition really silencing them? If the citizens heard them both and the rhetoric from alternative views was not calling to silence anyone else, then the claims of the Nazis was not true and plain for everyone to see. Wasn't it more that the prior government was corrupt and the economic hardships from the depression that made them look for alternatives like the Nazis?

You have whole libraries of material to read about the psychology of the German population from the 20s into the 40s. I suggest you go into the details because it will explain why some becomes spellbound and others not. — Christoffer

But why couldn't you just post the answer here as to why some people are incited by speech and others are not? That is the critical question and you seem to be avoiding it. If you wrote all this other stuff but ignored the key question then it seems you are trying to play the same game Hitler was.

What I'm saying in this thread is that the absolute state of freedom of speech is an utopian delusion either by those who don't understand Poppers tolerance paradox, or those with a very simplistic understanding of society and social psychology, or who are simply using it like the extremists, to champion an ideal in which they can say whatever extreme views they have without consequences. — Christoffer

It is your view that is simplistic if you cannot answer how some people are incited by speech and others are not. Popper's paradox is solved by using logic to determine which arguments each side is making are valid or not. Abolishing political parties (group-think and group-hate) and making critical thinking a required course in school would go a long way in preventing things like fascism and communism from taking hold again. Limiting free speech (as the capacity to question and criticize authority) is not the problem. It is the solution.

Good. Ignore it then. — frank

I can't when people like yourself do not ignore it and assume their claims are true and then start threads like this to have a debate about bathrooms when it isn't necessary if you would take your own advice and ignore them.

Sheesh. It's just full-circle hypocrisy with you, but else would one expect of one that sees the world through the prism of politics/religion.

As you can see in that speech, Hitler positioned himself and his party as being suppressed and as championing free speech to allow them to spread their propaganda which eventually eroded the public into a radicalized state. The power of that rhetoric is that he gained power by putting himself in the position of standing up for free speech, not suppression. — Christoffer

But if Hitler was really standing up for free speech then alternative views would have an equal amount of play-time on the radio waves. There must have been something that kept citizens from hearing alternative views, or that made alternative views to fascism less desirable. What was that? Would you be enthralled by Hitler's words to commit genocide? There were some that opposed Hitler and hid Jews at their own risk. What makes some people become spellbound by fascism and others not even though they hear the same rhetoric?

This is an extremely entitled view. Why do YOU need all the information, are you that special? Are you going to riot if you don't have all the information? I have already outlined why the initial information wasn't released to the public, should we change the law in place that protects minors because racist people will riot if they are not immediately told EVERYTHING. — Samlw

Wasn't it your argument that they rioted BECAUSE they didn't know the race of the person? You can't have your cake and eat it too.

When you see minors out in public, is their sex and race private information or is that public information for anyone with eyes?

this is where absolutism falls apart in my opinion, — Samlw

Absolute speech is not free speech. Absolute speech is what authoritarians practice. Free speech is the capacity to question authoritarians, thereby placing limits on their absolute speech. This has been the main point I have been making all along.

Exactly. The person that is disseminating propaganda is not exercising their right to free speech. The ones that possess the capacity to question authority - what is being said - are the ones exercising their rights. The one disseminating propaganda is actually infringing upon the rights of others free speech precisely because they are suppressing other information that would allow listeners to make up their own mind instead of being incited. So again, you are simply describing an instance of totalitarianism - where only one view is propagated while all others are suppressed, not free speech.
— Harry Hindu

Another straw man, I have not once disagreed with this — Samlw

Perfect. Then we agree on my main point as stated above.

Obviously, there are vast differences between ancient and modern, and we know an enormous amount more than did they, in a scientific sense. That is not at issue. The motivation for the original post, though, was a specific confusion arising from a misunderstanding of a key idea, which is still relevant despite all of that. That anyway is the argument spelled out in the OP. — Wayfarer

What I'm asking is how does either notion of substance compliment what we currently know scientifically and vice versa. The conclusions we reach in all domains of knowledge (philosophy and science) should not contradict each other. Is there a difference between the way we describe a substance philosophically and how we might describe it scientifically?

In the scientific context, the term substance refers to pure matter alone, consisting of only one type of atom or one type of molecule.

You mean like out on a street corner? — frank

:roll: Are Christians trying to bring God back into public schools from a street corner?

Both Christians and atheists are protected by the first amendment. People can be as deluded as they want to be. It's none of your business. — frank

I don't want it to be my business but they try to make my beliefs their business so that they can cancel or ban me if they do not align with their views. That is my point.

Those laws protect trans people from discrimination based on their trans status. It's illegal to refuse employment or housing to trans people. Does that cause your head to explode? — frank

Like I said, we already have laws that made discrimination illegal. The reason why we still have the laws is because people still discriminate. That is what the laws are for. We don't need more of the same laws. We need to enforce the ones we already have. If there is discrimination happening, then point it out specifically, so that we may fight it together. But using these vague, nebulous accusations of discrimination isn't helping anyone.

Both Christians and atheists are protected by the first amendment. People can be as deluded as they want to be. It's none of your business. — frank

Straw man. I'm not talking about the people that are deluded and keeping their delusion to themselves. If I identified as the reincarnated spirit of Elvis Presley and petitioned government to force people to refer to me as, "The King", to upgrade bathrooms toilets to thrones for the King, or that children must pray to the spirit of the King in school, would I be keeping my delusion to myself?

For the most part, the support the LGBTQ community is getting is about capitalism. Companies want to virtue signal. And there's nothing anybody can do to stop them. Have you not received diversity education from your employer? — frank

No, I haven't. Although, I have worked for myself for a significant portion of my life. Companies are abandoning DEI initiatives. To even implement them in the first place is implying that you weren't treating people fair and equal before your company implemented them. Again, they are assuming the premise that systemic racism exists. We already have laws in the books for discrimination and treating people equally. DEI was a push to give special treatment to certain groups.

Ok. I think you're going a little too far, though. There's room on the planet for people who become trans. There's no reason to squash them. Just let them be. The woke bullshit will stabilize itself over time. — frank

I never said there isn't room on the planet for anyone, nor am I trying to squash anyone. My whole point when it comes to politics - if you've read any posts of mine recently in political discussions - is live and let live. The problem is that the trans-movement is not letting others live by petitioning the government to affirm their delusions. Have you been consistent in informing atheists that there is room on the planet for Christians and the atheists should not squash the Christians? I'm not a Christian. I'm an atheist. The difference is that I'm consistent in my rejection of all delusions and those that want government to affirm their delusions.

There’s an important distinction that often gets glossed over in discussions of philosophy, especially when dealing with early modern or classical sources. That is, the difference between substance in the philosophical sense, and substance in everyday usage. — Wayfarer

Is there a difference between process in the philosophical sense and process in the everyday sense?

In the long run, 'substantia' became the English 'substance', but again, has a different meaning to 'a material with uniform properties'.

The use of 'process' as in 'process philosophy' is a much later arrival, associated with the philosopher Whitehead, in the early 20th century. However, 'process' doesn't really map easily against either 'ousia' or 'substantia'. — Wayfarer

Sounds to me like our understanding has evolved since the Greeks, and some terms are no longer relevant. Does either 'ousia' or 'substantia' map easily against reality as we now understand it (with relativity, QM, etc.), as opposed to how the Greeks understood reality?

If you read the OP, the point is that the meaning of substance in philosophy is not 'an unchanging material', but that is how it has come to be (mis)interpreted. — Wayfarer

And my point is why use the term, "substance" when there is a better term to use - "process"? If what you really mean is "process" when using the term, "substance" then just use "process".

Maybe, but there's nothing you can do about it. — frank

What I'm doing about it is exposing the hypocrisy and motivations of the extreme left for open minds to see. It was only a few years ago that even questioning trans-genderism would get you banned or canceled. I was one of the few going against the grain here on this forum. Now you have many Democrats calling out the trans-movement as hurting the party. The needle is moving.

…. substance is the permanence of the real in time…. — Mww

The only permanent thing is change. There is no substance - only process or relations. Things only appear to persist in time because of our limited perception of time. We cannot perceive change happening over millions or billions of years but it is happening. The universe is expanding last time I checked. What is it that is expanding? Is space a substance?

I usually keep my bullshit to myself. — frank

That wasn't the question. And you didn't keep your bullshit to yourself until I exposed your hypocrisy. Now you, and everyone else that drank the trans-Kool-Aid, is silent. Will you all bring the same tiring arguments back up the next time a Trans thread appears on the forum? Of course you will because it's not about what the truth is to you. It's about acquiring political power in the form of using people with mental disorders as political clubs against your political opponents.

Jumping in very late, here. I do not know what trans means, or what a trans person is. But it does seem plain easy to prove that no trans-man is or can be a man, nor any trans-woman a woman, for the extremely simple reason that a trans-man, If a man, is already a man, and a trans-woman, if a woman, is already a woman. That leaves the alternatives of a trans-man being a woman or neither a man nor a woman, and a trans-woman being a man or neither man nor woman. — tim wood

Confusing, I know. But Frank seems to think that everyone should know what a trans-woman is and what it means for a man to live as a woman, but when pressed on what that means... silence.

All this talk about who can enter which bathroom is irrelevant because if you really have spoken to a trans person then they will tell you that a woman is simply someone that believes they are a woman. So that person with a penis entering the women's bathroom IS a woman and there are no men entering women's bathrooms - ever.

This is what happens when you don't bother asking the right questions when someone makes extraordinary claims because all you are really concerned about is using people as political pawns. They don't care about what trans-gender really means, or else their definitions and explanations would be consistent.

All this talk about pronouns when the same people advocating for calling people by their preferred pronouns as a sign of respect have themselves called people names (bigot, racists, idiot, moron, etc.) that they did not identify as. The hypocrisy is so easy to point out precisely because they are simply repeating the same bullshit they've heard without questioning it themselves. They don't reflect on what is being said because it reinforces what they already believe (the arguments from the left (or right) are always right). This is what happens when you see the world through the prism of politics.

When someone uses such a phase, I think the onus should be on the asserter as what would the world look like “as is” vs “not as is”. They need to set up the contrast. Descartes demon may be able to perfectly duplicate a world, but runs into the problem of distinguishing between the two. Better yet why not say that we have more of the same world in that case. — Richard B

Where would this duplicate world be relative to the original? It appears to me that the duplicate would be part of the greater reality that includes the original and duplicate, just as heaven and hell, along with the universe is all part of one reality as the events in one can affect the events in others.

If the duplicate mirrors the original, then it would be a world as well.

The problem appears to be a misuse of language more than anything else.

The issue isn't that our senses are wrong. An original table will look just like a duplicate table, even for the demon. The difference is our knowledge of another world - the original that we have yet to observe - that is lacking, not that our senses are lying to us.

Ok then. We've both spoken to trans-people. The difference is that you simply accepted their claims without question. Do you do that with other extraordinary claims that are made?

You mean you haven't and yet you're speaking for them?

I think you're pretending not to understand what a trans woman is. — frank

And I think you have drunk the Kool-Aid without questioning.

It's a guy who is living as a woman, — frank

How does one live as a woman if one is a guy?

A man can transition to being a trans woman. — frank

What does that even mean? What is a trans-woman and how does it differ from a man or woman? Man and woman are biological entities so to be a trans-woman appears to mean that you are intersex but have more female parts than male parts.

It's not a matter of rights. If the public owns the toilet. Access to it is up to the public. — frank

It's not even that because the trans-movement claims that one is a woman simply by claiming it. A man is no longer a man once they enter a woman's bathroom, so the discussion about men entering women's bathroom is irrelevant and we should instead focus on the trans claim that someone is a woman or man by simply claiming it, or by wearing a dress or entering a women's bathroom.

So you're abandoning your whole "everybody has a right to be safe" thing? You're leaving me to pee in front of dwarves even though I don't feel safe? — frank

Propagating a delusion as if it were real, creating mass delusion, is what makes everyone less safe.

If a man cannot be a woman then why have a debate about bathrooms? Should we abandon arguments that are red herrings?

Irrelevant. What needs to be proven here is if a man can be a woman.

There are probably more men assaulting women. What are the statistics on men assaulting women in bathrooms? — frank

I'm not sure as men have mostly been kept out of women's bathrooms so it would logically follow that most assaults on women occurred outside of the bathroom. By allowing men into women's safe spaces, the assaults in bathrooms undoubtedly will go up.

But none of this actually addresses the actual issue in that some in this thread are advocating that men should be able to enter a woman's bathroom or locker room based on the fallacious and incoherent idea that men can be women. Can men be women and vice versa?