But notice that bodily issues might go away with transition while the social problems won't go away. — Dawnstorm

They might or they might not go away. Again, I think the situation could be considered analogous to that for gay people. Although the problems are not gone, social acceptance has improved.

There have been many times when I wondered if I was the only one who retained any kind of institutional memory here. — Paine

I try to remember where people are coming from, not always successfully. I appreciate that you did.

Yes, James is on your wavelength, judging from your previous posts. — Paine

I didn’t know anyone was paying attention.

I often argue the real value of a religion is the internal experience of it's followers, not it's consistency with what we see externally. I've started listening to William James "The Varieties of Religious Experience" on LibraVox. It hit me immediately I should have read this long ago.

Not long ago homosexuality was considered a mental health issue. It no longer is.
— T Clark

This is... a difficult comparison to make. "Gender Dysphoria" and "being trans" are not one and same. — Dawnstorm

You’re right. Just keep in mind what my post was in response to. Other posters were using the fact that gender dysphoria is considered a mental illness to undermine claims to their rights. Just claiming some characteristic is a mental illness does not justify discrimination.

It's perfectly possible to enjoy being homosexual; to enjoy gender dysphoria is... difficult at best.

— Dawnstorm

In the past, enjoying being a homosexual was probably also “ difficult at best.” How much of the difficulty associated with being transgender comes from how these people are treated in our society? I don’t know enough about this to have a strong opinion, although I don’t really think it’s relevant to the question at hand.

There are two things at issue here: a trans person's relationship to their own body, and a trans person's relationship to their social environment. There are various "reference groups" that matter to a trans person, and they might have incompatible demands. That includes local activists. You're navigating a difficult area: you "know" you're in the wrong body, but there are things that don't bother you. However, if you send incongruent images to your social environment, you're going to increase social discomfort. What's worse is that, even if your social environment is mostly supportive and you're fine with sending incongruent signals (i.e. a transwoman with a beard), you might experience pressure from activists to conform to the gender-expectations of your target gender. I've heard about trans people being pressured into voice lessons. The activist justification was, at least on one occasion, that a transwoman who talks like a man "makes their job harder". — Dawnstorm

What does any of this have to do with whether
transgender people deserve human and civil rights?

This site achieves it in the fallowing ways:

1. The way that "philosophy" is defined is not at all strict, discussions on politics are allowed, discussions on raw logic puzzles are allowed, discussions on religion are allowed...pretty much everything is allowed. This is super rare for any message board.

2. There's no pressure to understand any particular body of thought as it relates to philosophy. We are all coming from radically different directions in understanding.

3. the rules are so flexible that it allows the moderators to use discretion in cases where people members are consistently being a PITA, and they're clear enough they give you a good idea of what flies and what doesn't. — ProtagoranSocratist

You left out one— this is the most active philosophy site I’ve ever seen.

Relax guys; you're in a safe posada. :smile:

If you behave, there will not be any problem. — javi2541997

Yes, I think that’s the motto of the justice department and ICE here in the United States.

Yes please, thank you. If you're going to be obnoxious, you gotta have some class. — unenlightened

Yes. I do my best to make my obnoxiousness high-quality.

You have no actual basis to make your claim — AmadeusD

I have justification for my claim, admittedly, weak, but something. You have nothing.

but it stands to reason that most people in the world have no concept of transness and don't have an opinion on it. — AmadeusD

That’s fine, we can back off from the “in the world” standard. I still think your number is wrong, but we can leave it there. We’re not going to get any closer to agreement.

pretending there's some coterie of armed militias around the US and UK looking for trans people to harass — AmadeusD

I didn’t say that and you know that’s not what I’m talking about. We’ve had the same kind of discussion in the past with you claiming that there is no longer significant discrimination against Black people here. This is just more of the same. Again, we’re not going to do any better than this, so let’s leave it.

As I say, fair. But I also then responded? Odd reply. — AmadeusD

Not odd. I thought you might think I was using this to undermine your argument. Apparently not.

I didn't claim I had any?? Perhaps read a little closer my man; — AmadeusD

That’s disingenuous. You’re being cute, my man. You said:

You wouldn't be convinced by overwhelming evidence that being trans is an aberration likely to lead to criminal behaviour. — AmadeusD

Assuming I’m doing my math correctly, which is by no means certain, this comes to fewer than 800 incarcerations a year in the US out of a total of about 60,000.

This link indicates that the federal incarceration rate for all crimes for transgender people is about the same as their prevalence in society.

https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Trans-Incarceration-Violence-Oct-2016.pdf

In the UK Trans identified males are fully four times more likely to incarcerated for a sex crime. — AmadeusD

For the purposes of my calculations above, I assumed this was correct, although I’m skeptical. That information is not available for the US. Can you provide the documentation for the UK?

Ignoring that the fundamental determinant of these sex abuse statistics is sex is absurd, anti-reason and manipulative. — AmadeusD

I wrote:

It is undeniable that the primary threat of crime and violence to women comes from straight, cisgender men. — T Clark

This is literally, obviously, and unarguably true.

The title of the thread is intended to be a humorous illustration of what the thread is about - trolling.

In providing a title that turns out to have been nothing but clickbait, I was trying to directly link the title with the substance of the OP - and make a joke at the same time. — Colo Millz

I understand what you’re doing. That doesn’t change my comment. We can leave it at that.

The op distinguishes between lying and bullshit. The thread is about bullshitting, the title is about lying. — Metaphysician Undercover

From the guidelines—“…a decent title that accurately and concisely describes the content of your OP.”

Tell someone cares. — DingoJones

I did

Inappropriately misleading thread title.

You're behaving like a bigot TClark. Ignorant, unintelligent, off topic remarks with a bent towards slander towards me instead of open discussion. Look in the mirror before accusing others of what you're full of yourself. — Philosophim

Oh, my.

if I'm to keep viewing you in good faith. — Philosophim

Make that paranoid, full of shit, and creepily obsessed with transgender people.

No. I really wish you would stop implying that I have this excessively negative view of trans people. — Philosophim

What did you actually mean then? If it wasn’t that, I don’t understand how what you wrote has anything to do with what I wrote in my response to AmadeusD.

if I'm to keep viewing you in good faith. — Philosophim

I agree. Let’s give up on that. You can think I’m arguing in bad faith and I’ll think you’re paranoid and full of shit.

Here you go TClark. — Philosophim

Is this intended as “overwhelming evidence that being trans is an aberration likely to lead to criminal behaviour?”

Any resources you can recommend? — Oppida

For a good overview, I like "Tao--The Watercourse Way" by Alan Watts. Next, the Tao Te Ching, the founding document of Taoism. Here's a link to many translations:

https://terebess.hu/english/tao/_index.html

I like Stephen Mitchell's translation. It was my first and it's the most western. Many people hate it because they say it's inauthentic. If that bothers you, try Gia-Fu Feng or Lin Yutang.

the universe is half human.
— T Clark
I think the human is half universe. Where did this idea come to you? — Oppida

Almost all of my metaphysics and epistemology comes from my interest in science and my career as a civil and environmental engineer. Dealing with large amounts of data and using it to create a conceptual model of the sites I worked on taught me about using such information to decide what actions to take. I think it was a quick jump from there to an interest in metaphysics. Metaphysics is a human construction and the one you choose will have a big effect on how you think and what you can know--how you understand reality. For me, Taoism recognizes this better than any other philosophy I've encountered.

Also, the way you presented the idea of the Tao seems incredibily similar and yet inverse to that of the old western "substance". — Oppida

If you look, you'll find that most western philosophies have ideas that are analogous to those found in Taoism. The idea that, in the beginning, the universe is all one thing that then separates into the multiplicity of phenomena we experience through human conceptualization is a common theme. Kant's idea of noumena is one example.

On another note, what do you think of this:
This is what i mean: why would you do something you dont have to do? why do something that is explicitly useless? And if the answer is "because it gives us meaning", then why?
— Oppida — Oppida

I'm retired. There's not a lot I really have to do anymore, e.g. I was supposed to rake the leaves today but here I am writing on the Philosophy Forum. Is that useful? I don't really care. Most of the things I do I don't necessarily have to do. It's wonderful. I strongly recommend retiring.

Reality sits squarely with the fact that there are not billions of people who even care about this matter. Far less that care to do anything about it, and even less who care to harm trans people. The ridiculousness is patent on that side of things. — AmadeusD

Here's what I was responding to:

There is an extremely small, unhinged group that exist on Earth and probably number below 10m who want Trans people to stop being trans (or, alternately, existing). — AmadeusD

There are 8 billion people in the world. If 10% of them hold the kind of antipathy to transgender people I claim, that makes almost a billion right there. And that does not take into account the fact that North American and European attitudes are likely to be more tolerant than elsewhere. There are many more conservative and traditional cultures where non-standard sexuality is punished harshly. Ugandan law, for example, along with that in some other countries, calls for the death penalty.

Besides females, this is never the case. There have been small pockets of historical time and place where groups were targeted. Currently, in the West, there are none other than females who have been targeted forever. Males do not suffer opinions. And almost no one in existence has an issue with trans men (bearing in mind, barely anyone has an issue tout court - its the expectation other's have to participate). — AmadeusD

This is an example of the vast difference between your understanding of world and national social conditions and mine. No sense in arguing that again here. I'll let others decide if they agree with me that your understanding is fundamentally wrong.

I’ve wondered how much of that has to do with the fact you’re from New Zealand and I am from the USA
— T Clark

Fair, but almost nothing hinges on this. I am capable of understanding geography and how to transcend it (i am also highly interested (in the proper sense, not just 'its interesting) in UK politics as I am a citizen and hope to return at some stage with my wife who is also British). — AmadeusD

I wasn't trying to say this difference undermines your argument. It's just something I've been wondering about.

You wouldn't be convinced by overwhelming evidence that being trans is an aberration likely to lead to criminal behaviour. So, it's hard to know why you'd say this? Protecting females is more important than children... — AmadeusD

Please provide this "overwhelming evidence." As I understand it, transgender people make up about 0.3% of the population. Explain how this many people can have the catastrophic results you seem to predict. It is undeniable that the primary threat of crime and violence to women comes from straight, cisgender men.

I really do not care what you position on this specific part of hte issue is — AmadeusD

Then why bring it up?

Like, why didn't the atoms in my body end up becoming part of a mountain instead, or part of a star a billion light years away? Why are they exactly as they are, forming my physical body? (etc.) — Outlander

Sorry, this slipped through the cracks and I didn’t respond.

The OP and I had a fruitless discussion of this issue in a previous thread. That’s why I didn’t carry the subject any further.

i was referring to a chuang tzu passage in my first comment in this thread, only to discover you literally just posted the while story i was referring to.... — ProtagoranSocratist

As they say—great minds. I just happened to have an electronic copy of the Chuang Tzu on Kindle.

I think I am in full agreement — Tom Storm

If I were to make a list of the people here on the forum I consider pragmatists, you would be near the top of the list, whether or not you think of yourself that way.

Also, you can see that the tree is, in fact, useful to the people who are sitting under it, and also to those who — Oppida

True, but it would still be there whether or not those people found it useful. It’s current usefulness is irrelevant to it’s existence.

what are your takes on art? is it useful? — Oppida

I don’t think art is useful. But then I never said that only useful things have value.

One could consider them both the same thing but, obviusly, it depends on the ontology that whoever considers any of this may have. — Oppida

I don’t think this is right. As I understand it, nature is what happens all by itself, without goal, purpose, meaning, or use. All of these characteristics are nailed on later by humans.

I partially believe in what i said before about the artificial/natural being more or less two faces of the same coin (a sort of reality coin). — Oppida

Maybe this will seem like I’m contradicting what I just said, but I agree with this, although I’m not sure I mean it the same way you do. I’m an engineer. I came from an interest in science and started out as a materialist. In past decades, I have become interested in Taoism. I think that comes from a recognition on my part that the universe is half human. As Lao Tzu wrote—The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao. It is naming, something humans do, that brings reality into existence—something that can be expressed in words and handled as an object.

What im trying to say is that, looking at us humans from a god's POV would be a lot of fun, because we are not only part of an already incredibly complex natural system, but we've created an ever-more-so complex artificial system. — Oppida

I think maybe that from a God‘s point of view, the world is incredibly simple—probably just one thing—whether or not there are people in it. That one thing is what Taoists call the Tao.

I have the present example of switchboard operators. Did they like it? Did any of them consider that meaningful and, thus, "useful" to their existance? — Oppida

Don’t discount the value of work, whether intrinsically fulfilling or not, as a source of livelihood. Being able to take care of yourself and those you care about is a fundamental need.

if we keep developing it, will the switchboard operator problem happen again? — Oppida

It has happened many times in the past and will happen many times in the future unless, I guess, we finally establish our permanent uselessness.

people around me are all addicted to feeling good; hell, im addicted to a great degree too. — Oppida

As an alternative to feeling good, there is feeling at peace

I am a snotty troll occasionally. — Jamal

I did say “amusing”

What are your takes on usefulness and uselessness? — Oppida

Here’s something else. It’s from. Ziporyn’s translation of the Chuang Tzu:

Carpenter Stoney was traveling in Qi when he came upon the tree of the shrine at the Qu Yuan bend. It was over a hundred arm spans around, so large that thousands of oxen could shade themselves beneath it. It overstretched the surrounding hills, its lowest branches hundreds of feet from the ground, at least a dozen of {41} which could have been hollowed out to make into ships. It was surrounded by marveling sightseers, but the carpenter walked past it without a second look.

When his apprentice finally got tired of admiring it, he caught up with Carpenter Stoney and said, “Since taking up my axe to follow you, Master, I have never seen a tree of such fine material18 as this! And yet you don’t even deign to look twice at it or pause beneath it. Why?” Carpenter Stoney said, “Stop! Say no more! This is worthless lumber! As a ship it would soon sink, as a coffin it would soon rot, as a tool it would soon break, as a door it would leak sap, as a pillar it would bring infestation. This is a talentless, worthless tree. It is precisely because it is so useless that it has lived so long.”

Back home that night, the tree appeared to Carpenter Stoney in a dream. It said to him, “What do you want to compare me to, one of those cultivated trees? The hawthorn, the pear, the orange, the rest of those fructiferous trees and shrubs—when their fruit is ripe they get plucked, and that is an insult. Their large branches are bent, their small branches are pruned. Thus do their abilities embitter their lives. That is why they die young, failing to fully live out their Heaven-given lifespans. They batter themselves with the vulgar conventions of the world, as do all the other things of the world. As for me, I’ve been working on being useless for a long time. It almost killed me, but I’ve finally managed it—and it is of great use to me! If I were useful, do you think I could have grown to be so great?

Welcome to the forum. This is a good OP (original post).

What are your takes on usefulness and uselessness? — Oppida

I consider myself a pragmatist. Usefulness is the primary standard by which I judge knowledge, truth, beliefs, and actions. I see the primary question that philosophy has to answer as not what is true, but what do I do next? What do I do now?

i can give you a choice to make the world as efficient in any and/or every area, wether it is artificial (man-made) or natural doesnt matter, — Oppida

I think it does matter. Usefulness and efficiency are fundamentally human values. To talk about the efficiency of natural processes is meaningless except, maybe, in the context of human actions. The goal is to make human action in the face of organic nature more effective.

What the hell would we be doing? there has to bea certain limit for our current brains to break trough, otherwise we'd get bored — Oppida

I think that’s exactly right. Some religious traditions specify that God or the gods created humanity specifically because they got bored.

humans have been working thowards an "easier" life for the past [insert year in which we began to fiddle with tools] years, when should we stop? should we stop? — Oppida

I don’t think the proper question is should we stop, or when should we stop. I think it’s can we stop. I’m not certain that we can intentionally do so. Somewhere along the line, somethings going to make us stop—either nature or our own foolishness.

I am unconvinced that there is a “meaning crisis.” — Tom Storm

Yes. I was thinking the same thing. My family and the people I care about are pretty much enough meaning for me.

Can we point to a time before modernity when the worldview was coherent and therefore life was better for most human beings? — Tom Storm

Yes. With an emphasis on “for most human beings.” I wonder how much of this is the inevitable result of more or less universal literacy even before supercharging by today’s communication technologies.

environmental destruction and many of the ills of modernity, how much of this can be more accurately attributed to the form of capitalism and corporate control under which we live — Tom Storm

I think this is right, but I’m not certain that corporate capitalism itself isn’t a specific, perhaps inevitable, result of the modernity the OP talks about.

When has the world not appeared to be in some kind of crisis? That's the point, surely. You are talking about a Meaning Crisis and I've asked a few questions about this, that's all. — Tom Storm

I must admit, I do worry that the crises we are dealing with today are somehow more existential than they have been in the past. I joke that my solution to the problems is to die soon. I do worry about my children though.

Isn’t this simply a factor of population growth and the successes and failures of technology and capitalism? We were always flawed; it’s just that our present technology and population size makes those flaws more dangerous. — Tom Storm

I think this is exactly right. In the past, we always had someplace else we could go when we fucked up the place we live and made it unlivable.

Or do we need to use the freedoms of Western culture to find better ways of living, grounded in more pragmatic approaches to survival? — Tom Storm

I’m not usually a hell in a handbasket type, but I guess I’m not sure we have the wherewithal to do this. In a sense I guess we need the kind of gumption that comes with commitment to a coherent cultural vision which may no longer be available to us. I think we’re perfectly capable of driving this bus off the cliff.

A bunch of good posts.

in spite of @Jamal’s snotty, if amusing, dismissal, I think this is a good summary.

Try to nail the definitions down as soon as possible. — Philosophim

In my experience, failure to agree on definitions at the beginning is the primary reason for the failure of discussions here on the forum.

Do not ever elevate the work because of the author. — Philosophim

I don’t actually disagree with this, but I sometimes find it useful to bring in the words of well-known philosophers as a way of showing that a particular idea is not that far out of the mainstream.

Understand that some philosophy is historical, but has been completely invalidated by modern day understanding. — Philosophim

I’m not sure exactly how to take this. Seems to me we’re still arguing about the same things Aristotle and Confucius did.

To make the question more direct and concrete, what philosophy writing will make your writing survive better through the ages, what philosophy writing will receive little in the way of fame, praise, or hostility? — ProtagoranSocratist

I’ll talk about the quality of writing, not necessarily the quality of the ideas, although I guess it’s not easy to separate them. There’s a quote I read somewhere that I can’t find again. I’ll paraphrase it—Clarity is so important and so unusual, it is often mistaken for truth. Here’s another— Clarity means expressing what you mean in a way that makes it obvious you’re wrong.

So… clarity. I’m pretty smart. I should be able to figure out what you’re trying to say and whether I agree with it. Reality is not all that complicated. If you can’t describe it so a reasonably intelligent adult can understand it, I question the value of what you have to say.

I’ll think about it and see if I can come up with anything else.

I say:

This strikes me as complete baloney. — T Clark

And you say:

This is just utterly ridiculous. — AmadeusD

So at least we agree on something. And I’ll stand behind the statistics I provided. I think they tell the story.

When you convince people the world is out to get them, you're cruel. — AmadeusD

Except, of course, when the world is out to get them. You and I have come up against our differences in understanding how the social and political world works before. I’ve wondered how much of that has to do with the fact you’re from New Zealand and I am from the USA.

If so, there is nothing here that has anything specific to do with trans people. There has been nothing raised in this thread that makes anything here 'trans rights'. — AmadeusD

Which is my entire point. These should not be controversial, because they should apply to everyone.

There is also nothing raised in this thread which can make sense of defending 'trans' as a civil rights category ( — AmadeusD

Be that as it may, as I noted, in the US, gender status is considered a protected class. I wouldn’t be surprised if the courts change that. As to whether or not it should be protected, I think that’s an appropriate subject for discussion, although I have no particular interest in doing that here.

Keep in mind my entire participation in this thread has been a response to my judgment that the OP misrepresented what transgender rights are or might be.

cruel, harmful narrative that those of us who can see the forest for the trees want to prevent reaching our vulnerable children. — AmadeusD

You might be surprised at what my substantive opinions about gender rights are, but as I noted, that is not what I’ve addressed in my posts on this thread.

You’re playing of the “protect the children” card is unconvincing.

I understand there is essentially no civil conversation to be had about that last part. — AmadeusD

Although some of my posts have been somewhat harsh, and there were some misunderstandings, I think my participation in this threat has been civil.

I wrote:

By whatever definition of belief, truth, or knowledge you apply, it is generally recognized that a belief has to be justified in order to be valid or usable. — T Clark

You responded:

I pretty much never go for argumentum ad populum. I generally assume that whatever is generally recognized in a world such as ours is must be incorrect. — Millard J Melnyk

Are you saying that a belief doesn’t have to be justified in order to be valid or useable? Or are you saying that a justified belief is not valid or usable?

I'm assuming you're thinking along lines of justified true belief. That pertains to knowledge. I'm not talking about knowledge, but the difference between thought and belief. — Millard J Melnyk

I didn’t say anything about justified true belief.

In other words, what justifies/gives warrant to characterize "It's raining" as a belief as distinct from a thought? — Millard J Melnyk

What difference does it make? The issue on the table, as I understand it, is whether or not all belief is irrational. As I indicated, adequately justified belief is not irrational.

Premises:
[1] Epistemically, belief and thought are identical.
[2] Preexisting attachment to an idea motivates a rhetorical shift from “I think” to “I believe,” implying a degree of veracity the idea lacks.
[3] This implication produces unwarranted confidence.
[4] Insisting on an idea’s truth beyond the limits of its epistemic warrant is irrational.

Conclusion ∴ All belief is irrational. — Millard J Melnyk

By whatever definition of belief, truth, or knowledge you apply, it is generally recognized that a belief has to be justified in order to be valid or usable. Adequate justification, along with a recognition of uncertainty, addresses any questions about rationality.

we have all existed for billions of years as nothing more than commonplace matter. The statement "I became human" makes perfect sense. You existed as commonplace matter, then you became human, then eventually you will return to commonplace matter. Don't act like I'm missing something obvious here that yo — Dogbert

By what standard are human beings not also commonplace matter?

If I win the lottery, I'm lucky. If I become a human being, I'm lucky. Thats how I see it. — Dogbert

This sounds like a discussion we’ve had before. Probably no good reason to rehash it.

Any naturalistic justification for existence must presuppose some element of what it seeks to explain. Thus, to avoid circularity, it is necessary to posit a transcendent ground of being. — Dogbert

I don’t understand. How is my presupposition any different from your positing of a transcendent ground of being?

sapience is such a rare and significant privilege that personally acquiring it defies coincidence. To make sense of my circumstances, then, I must invoke the MWI — Dogbert

This shows a lack of understanding of what probability means and how it works.

From this, it can be concluded that most Germans derived sadistic pleasure from carrying out the Holocaust, and this sadism became a need for them. — Linkey

First point— this has nothing to do with psychoanalysis.

Second point— the only thing that can be concluded from what you’ve written is that the Holocaust was a very bad thing and that the Germans are responsible for what they did.

Re intuition: We sometimes do consciously choose what to trust and what not to trust. We, however, don’t ever consciously choose what intuitions to have. — javra

I agree. Maybe it would be better to say intuition is a mechanism by which trust and faith often work.

The term “faith” has definitions, and meanings, which range quite a bit. — javra

This is true, and the things you’ve said about it are also correct. My particular take on faith comes from a specific direction. Faith gets a lot of contempt here on the forum as a synonym for unjustified belief. I’ve taken it upon myself to try to rehabilitate it as a valid epistemological method.

Trust' would be good for what has been seen before, such as that night will fall, whereas 'faith' finds good use for what has never been seen. — PoeticUniverse

Perhaps. But I think what @javra was describing could be called faith—or maybe intuition—as well as trust. As I understand it, all three are based significantly on past experience, as well as other factors.

Also, this being a philosophy forum: that trust is not entirely an aspect of the conscious being: we as humans acquire much trust in our lives with experience, most of which remains non-consciously held at most times — javra

I agree with this, although I will pull the old switcheroo and use that hated word “faith.” I think the two words are very close to synonymous.