But I confess I also don’t know whether or not Marduk defeated the chaos dragon Tiamat, as described in the Enuma Elish.
You are familiar with these arguments presumably? This is a strawman. — Punshhh

I studied comparative religion for a time, but my point is salient: the world is full of claims about which we have inadequate or no knowledge. All we can do is believe or not to believe: whether it's the existence of Bigfoot or Muhammad splitting the moon in two. :wink:

I’m toward the deistic agnosticism end of the spectrum. — Punshhh

That's interesting. Why deism?

These days (to the chagrin of some traditionalists) the category is usually described as agnostic atheist. I don’t believe in God (that’s the belief part). Do I know there’s no God? Of course not (knowledge). But I confess I also don’t know whether or not Marduk defeated the chaos dragon Tiamat, as described in the Enuma Elish.

So, you're not asserting God or something definite, but something indefinite, as a metaphysical justification? — Astorre

I think the placehodler 'God' does many different conceptual jobs for people depending on their orientation and values. It’s such a slippery notion it’s virtually unintelligible. Which is why I tend to prefer the apophatic approach. Negative theology. Say nothing. :wink:

My current position is that people don’t have access to a capital T Truth or to reality in itself (a God surrogate). I think some of our beliefs work subject to certain conditions and some don't. I suppose I'm a simple minded pragmatist, the justification for a belief lies in its practical consequences, in how well it helps us navigate experience, solve problems, and maintain community coherence. Neither atheism nor god is necessary for this.

But beyond this, almost no one here has any real expertise in theoretical physics or philosophy to answer the big questions. Hubris seems to be the lubricant of choice.

There are any number of middle-aged, male monomaniacs in philosophy circles with no real expertise, but an unshakable belief that they’re uncovering reality and answering questions no one else can. Misunderstood geniuses. This must be a common type of human being, which is how George Eliot so magnificently satirised that style of person in her character Mr Casaubon in Middlemarch.

Ask questions of whom?
And yes, they are insolent: because being of lower status, one isn't supposed to ask questions, at all. — baker

No.

1) Lower-status people = unemployed, homeless, First Nations, gig workers — ask tough questions of their bosses, or of police, or other authorities, local government workers, welfare workers, etc.

Insolent = rude — e.g., “Hey, you fuckin' pig, why don’t you do some real work instead of bothering us? You're a fuckin' dog!” (Food delivery guy on a bicycle to policeman.)

There you go: they harass. — baker

I’m not sure why you write “there you go" as if you believe that you are indirectly 'proving soemthing. Say what you mean.

Where's the atheistic narrative detailing the possibility of human consciousness knowing empirically first hand true randomness. Perception and analysis assume a very highly ordered ecology wherein the question of the possibility of instantiating true randomness is unanswered.

Atheism, to preclude cosmic consciousness, must embrace cosmic randomness. Can it uncouple itself from order? How could it do so and maintain its purpose to learn the truth? — ucarr

Perhaps I misunderstand you, I'm interested in your idea of atheism; does it need tweaking? Apologies if I have you wrong. Some of what you write indicates you are only talking about rationalist forms of atheism.

I am an atheist. All atheism means is to have no belief in gods. Theism simply hasn't captured my imagination. There’s no need for alternative cosmologies, I’m not seeking to replace one source of meaning with another. I'm not interested in trying to adapt Thomistic rationalism to 'demonstrate' a state of godlessness. More of that later.

There are atheists who believe in the supernatural; ghosts, clairvoyance, etc. Some may be idealists. Some others (the ones best known because they’re the loudest) might be the Dawkins-style scientistic thinkers. But the only thing they have in common is the lack of belief in gods.

I’ve often said that theism is a bit like a sexual preference, for some it's possibly innate and separate from reasoning. We can’t help what we’re attracted to. And of course, culture and upbringing add a strong incentive to the beliefs we chose. We then use reasoning as a post hoc justification to try to demonstrate the superiority of our “lifestyle choice.”

I don't think humans have access to reality as it is in itself, the best we do is generate provisional narratives that, to a greater or lesser extent, help us to make interventions in the world. These stories tend to be subject to revision and never arrive at absolute truth. I also hold that my experience of the world does not have need for most metanarratives; I am a fan of uncertainty. I am also a fan of minimalism and think that people overcook things and want certainty and dominion where knowledge is absent and where they have no expertise.

Does the atheist, on principle, always shun the leap of faith? (If not, then rationalist atheism has no discrete separation from theism.) — ucarr

Isn’t this a commonly offered conclusion about atheism (often expressed by the better American fundamentalists)?

Trust is one of those words with multiple meanings shaped by different contexts. Trusting a plane to fly safely is different from trusting a relative with your life savings, which in turn differs from trusting the promise of a prisoner sharing your cell. In the end, we might reduce the concept to something like predictability and confidence based upon a set of odds.

Good point and maybe my quesion was the problem. I guess I was asking it they believe that morality has a transcendent source.

Again, a well written thoughtful account.

When I harm another, I don’t merely break a social convention; I diminish the field of meaning that connects us. The “realness” of ethics lies in that experiential invariance: wherever sentient beings coexist, the possibilities of care and harm appear as objectively distinct modalities of relation. — Truth Seeker

I see the attraction of this, but aren't there some presuppositions at work?

Some hypotheticals.

If you harm someone, the field of meaning that connects us may also be affected and enlarged, though perhaps not in the way you are advocating. Why do you privilege one and not the other? What makes it less intrinsically useful or 'better' to be loved as opposed to feared?

Not to mention that giving people what they want or crave may be harmful, even if the granting of it is experienced as positive. In this relational approach, how do we determine when our behaviour towards others is good, since the reaction, even an enhanced relationship with the other, may not provide the correct answer?

It may also frequently be the case that doing good for others, caring for them (as in parenting and making choices for children or aging parents), is experienced as mistrust or as a violation of personal autonomy. So, caring does not necessarily lead to a harmonious connection or a positive interactions and may be viewed as 'evil' by the person being cared for.

We discover it the way we discover gravity - by noticing what happens when we ignore it. — Truth Seeker

So I remain skeptical that we discover it this way since gravity is predictable and behaviour is not.

Small steps, not grand schemes — Banno

Yes, I think that’s the way ahead in so many avenues. We still have to live and get on, even in imperfect circumstances.

I’m acutely weary of theory and theorists - seems to me it’s a great place to hide. But at some point useful ideas do become elongated strategic programs and it’s easy to get caught up.

Fair enough. Thanks for the chat, I appreciate your rigorous approach.

That’s not my understanding of pragmatism. Pragmatism doesn’t imply that moral concern must stop at the boundaries of one’s immediate community; it grounds moral solidarity in the capacity to extend sympathy and imagination beyond our familiar circles. In fact, some pragmatists like Rorty (a neopragmatist and an eccentric thinker, sure) would say that the task is to steadily expand our notion of solidarity.

The problem I have here is that no one actually believes such a thing. No one says, "Oh they are butchering babies and raping women over in Xylonia, but that's not a problem at all because harm isn't really evil." — Leontiskos

Sure, but people do use emotive language to describe atrocities, that’s true. And it is not intrinsic to pragmatism to describe actions like this as 'not a problem at all'. Rather, we can say about such acts that people are expressing a deep-seated human reaction to horror and a commitment to moral solidarity. Such acts are precisely what we do not want to see in the kind of society we hope to inhabit. The rubric 'evil' need not be employed.

A democratic, lowest-common denominator approach does not favor human rights, especially insofar as human rights would be extended to minorities. — Leontiskos

Interesting. Certainly seems an accurate refection of populism.

The problem with these sorts of arguments is that they amount to the following: <If we cannot know the truth with certainty, then we should try to know the truth in a less certain way. Therefore we don't need the concept of truth at all>. The "therefore" is non sequitur. Just because one wants to approximate X rather than perfectly identify X, it in no way follows that one can do away with the notion of X altogether. Approximating X requires a notion of X.

This so-called "pragmatic approach to morality" is just a variant of that form of reasoning. In this case the point can be seen by recognizing that forms of negative utilitarianism (such as the reduction of harm) are no less committed to moral truths than any other theory. One who wishes to reduce harm is committed to the truth that harm is morally evil, and this is true regardless of what they end up meaning by 'harm'. — Leontiskos

Yes, I think this reasoning has some merit, although I find terms like 'morally evil' too close to a classical religious language I don’t use, I’d probably prefer cruelty or unjustifiable harm. I guess my response your point would be that in my understanding when a pragmatist tries to reduce harm, they're not appealing to an objective fact that harm is 'evil', they're expressing a shared sense that cruelty and suffering are things society wants to avoid. So moral claims, for a pragmatist, come from our communal values and practices, not from some deeper metaphysical truth.

Which is where yoru criticism below might come in; does this lead to a banal morality? It's a fair criticism, but I'm not sure the inference is accurate.

What is at stake in (classically) liberal thinking is not a special "pragmatism" or an abandonment of moral realism, but rather a democratic, lowest-common denominator approach to morality and politics. The principle is not that moral truth is abandoned, but rather that only the moral truths that the vast majority of the population agrees with are to be enshrined publicly. — Leontiskos

Interesting. What is the substantive difference between a lowest-common denominator approach to morality and a legitimate approach; can you provide an example to give me a better notion of what you have in mind? Would the 10 commandments be an example of lowest common denominator approach (an accessible framework for the masses)?

I and my quasi-Marxian critical theory buddies will question the diagnosis, saying that depression is a rational response to conditions of alienation and atomisation, made to seem normal by ideologies like the work ethic, the performance society, and so on---and then link all that back to social and economic relations. — Jamal

I’d probably agree with this too. Of course, given that we can’t change society short of a revolution (and then there’s the question of what to do the morning after, as Žižek might ask), you're right that we probably can’t do much more than offer people pills and talk therapy: the pragmatic responses (but not solutions) to being stuck in a traumatic world we can’t alter. I guess it's a harm reduction approach. Perhaps theism is just the other side of the pills and talk therapy coin.

If only Peterson really strove to re-enchant the world. — Pierre-Normand

Who knows what he's been trying to do? I think he might be a misunderstood atheist with a poor capcity to explain himself.

While Rorty's idea of replacing ideals of truth and objectivity with ideals of solidarity didn't lack merit — Pierre-Normand

I quite like it.

(Rorty had a good rejoinder against charges of relativism, though.) — Pierre-Normand

Indeed and it's easy to get him wrong, I suspect. As I understand him, Rorty argued that he was never sayign that “anything goes.” He accepts that we lack absolute, universal foundations, but he insisted we can still distinguish better from worse beliefs within our communities and conversations.

My position right now is maybe something like a negatively teleological virtue ethics. I'm here to criticize ideas that seek to frustrate the telos of human flourishing, as I believe Bob's do, even if I don't have my own settled conception of what that human flourishing is. — Jamal

This would seem to be a tricky place to occupy, and I sympathise.

And settling on a conception of human flourishing is something I suspect is impossible in what I regard as a broken and chaotic human world. — Jamal

:fire:

And one might argue that they matter all the more in broken and chaotic circumstances. How else do we wrest some control or peace?

MacIntyre is right that modernity has produced people who, when they talk about ethics, don't know what they're talking about---and since I don't exclude myself from that, I have to be careful---and Adorno is right that while we might be able to see the sources of our norms and values, we cannot in our present circumstances find rational justification for them, such is the lack of access to a coherent socially embedded tradition. — Jamal

Interesting. Does anyone know how to talk about ethics? Might not a redeemable form of post-modernism be the answer? I often think we are in a transition period. In our thinking, we seem done with modernity. There are powerful nostalgia projects everywhere, seeking to get us back to a golden era before things went astray. It’s why we now have folk as diverse as Jordan Peterson and John Vervaeke flogging retro solutions to our problems, generally talking about the need to re-enchant the world. And every second new philosopher seems to be a Thomist.

The need to give voice to suffering is the condition of all truth. — Jamal

I watched an Australian interview with Nick Cave yesterday; he said that to be human is to suffer. Not an original take, sure, but one can't disagree (or help qualifying with "some suffer much more than others". Antinatalism lacks ambition. The most obvious antidote to this would be to blow up the world, destroy all life, and prevent all future suffering. Why is this not postulated as a heroic solution to all our problems?

In lieu of this, might it not be that we need a pragmatic approach to morality, given we are unable to get to truth or even agree upon axioms? Why let the perfect be the enemy of the good? I would take it as a given that anything human is going to be limited, imperfect, tentative, regardless of the era. Could we not build an ethical system acknowledging this, and put aside notions of perfection and flawless reasoning, focusing instead on what works to reduce harm? Just don't ask me how. :wink:

Anyhow, if seeing gender dysphoria as a pathology amounts to "denying someone's identity," wouldn't this mean that sex actually is deeply essential to identity in precisely the way essentialist claim? I suppose this would go along with the sentiment that even if a treatment for gender dysphoria existed it would not be desirable, or that it should be removed from the DSM. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not a gender theorist. Here’s my formulation (and I’ll let you have the last word, since this isn’t a productive conversation, much as I’ve enjoyed it). Trans people exist and seem to have existed across cultures and throughout history. Empirical evidence consistently shows that their mental health deteriorates when they are forced to live contrary to their gender identity. And they are more likely to thrive if they are able to transition. The most ethical and pragmatic response, then, is to accept people as they identify. In most cases doing so doesn't undermine society and it greatly improves individual wellbeing and social inclusion.

You don't think parents who see gender dysphoria as a mental illness as being capable of truly or fully loving their children? Would this apply to something like autism too? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, many of them do. Maybe I could tweak my wording.

But the proposition was that a stranger like Bob Ross would deny the identity of people he’s never met on the basis that they have a 'perversion' he doesn't understand. That's not parenting and I don’t think that counts as loving.

Note also that abuse is frequently perpetrated by people who say things like, “I’m doing this because I love you.” Having worked in the area of domestic violence I've heard this many times.

So I see Compassionism not as an ungrounded belief but as the minimal metaphysical condition for an intelligible world: if meaning is possible, some form of care must already be operative. The Ouroboros image you mention captures this beautifully - yes, suffering and healing seem entwined, but the loop only closes through response, not indifference. Without compassion, the circle breaks into chaos. — Truth Seeker

Thanks for your thoughtful response. Food for thought. I’ve generally held that my response to life is more of an aesthetic, emotivist one. I avoid systems and diligent rationality. The problem with this is that you mostly remove yourself from the discourse. What I have is how I feel about things; intuition and hardly a robust basis with which to convince others.

Despite this I find myself arguing with other members who seem to think they have an objective basis for their beliefs. Do you see yourself as a moral realist of a sort?

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.
He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell.
You must make your choice.
Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. — Colo Millz

My response to Lewis was always that he missed the 4th option: myth.

But I appreciate your response. Maybe we can talk about other things some time.

Really? This seems to me one of hte most potent and obvious oddities of humanity. There are plenty of people whos lifestyles I think are damaging (to themselves/those around them or society at large) and I think it s perverse that they defend their life style (funnily enough, plenty of gender theory types run along these lines - I don't suggest that being interested in gender causes one to be immoral, but I do think immoral people tend to be drawn to the more liberal communities abouts). That says absolutely nothing, whatsoever, about how i feel about them as a human. — AmadeusD

I can kind of see your point. But I guess I would hold that if someone is gay, this is a more significant part of their identity, and of a quite differnt nature, than the drug consumption of someone who uses. And I would consider neither of them a perversion. I don't think I would compare the two things. Denying someone’s drug use doesn’t seem to me to be the same thing as denying their homosexuality. Is homosexuality damaging to themselves or society at large? I wouldn't have thought so. Drug use? Not always, but often.

Interesting response, thanks. But I'm still not sure why Christianity was convincing to you.

To attempt a more sophisticated answer to your original question about "Christian context", I think where I live (in the US) right now what we seem to be witnessing is the elimination of classical liberalism as a viable politics any more, and so what we are left with is the battleground between the two other ideologies, conservatism and leftism. Biden, for example, governed from the left. — Colo Millz

I'm not sure “left” and “right” have much meaning these days in politics. Isn’t what we’re living in really corporatism, with huge companies and their owners siphoning up the wealth of the land? I thought Biden was a centrist. Trump isn’t a conservative; he may be an authoritarian, right-wing statist, but he doesn’t seem interested in conserving many traditions. Australia, where I am, is still a liberal and generally progressive country, although we currently have a Labor government that’s somewhat to the right. I don’t think most voters have much understanding or interest in liberalism or of left–right politics; it’s seems to be driven by emotion and how they belvie a party or candidate will affect them financially.

Wow, you cover a lot of eclectic views there.

The trans thing I am much less clear about - I am not particularly a fan of trans women playing rugby with the girls, for example, I don't think that's fair. — Colo Millz

I don’t support all trans activist demands. But I think the issues of sports, prisons, and toilets are relatively minor and are matters we can negotiate and develop procedural responses to.

I have some fairly strong conservative leanings. For me the story of the Bible and the kerygma of the "Christ event" is one of the most extraordinary, unexpected, exciting things to ever exist in history. — Colo Millz

Why do you choose to believe this story over Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism's extraordinary stories?

I come from a fairly progressive country and the Christian tradition I grew up in here is inclusive and welcoming to gay and trans people - right wing anti-modernist Christianity is less familiar to me. I am not sure if Caputo has written on gay or trans rights, but his history suggests an identification with marginalized oppressed groups.

What is your position on homosexuality and how do you see it in a Christian context?

Nicely written response.

I am reminded of David Bentley Hart's quip on his blog:

among the fundamentalists I include not just the white evangelical fundamentalists, I mean a lot of the Thomists I know. They might not be six day creationists, but they read the Bible as a set of propositional algorithms for constructing social reality. They don’t read it as the inspired occasion of reading that requires interpretation, tact, speculative daring, and the sense that there is the law of love, and the law of the spirit, without which the text slays.

Of course, conservative Christians are often critical of Hart because they disagree with his understanding of the Gospels as a call to inclusion and diversity, not that they would frame it this way... .

What we might need in these discussions are philosophically adroit theists who are not aligned with reactionary, anti-enlightenment projects. Ultimately these debates usually end up as tedious theism-versus-atheism worldview arguments.

:up:

MacIntyre argues that all modern moral philosophies that drop teleology have ended up here, without always knowing it. And the problem is that emotivism cannot provide any rational justification for moral claims, expressing only preferences. It is not open to abuse because it makes no substantive claims that can be abused. — Jamal

I guess @Banno would probably point to something like Nussbaum’s capability framework as a more useful approach.

I was an emotivist for some time. And I tended to view the art of rational justification as a kind of game; something we do within certain conversational contexts. The source of most of our beliefs is emotional or affective, with reasoning supplied post hoc to make them appear coherent or justified or part of theism's plan. I think emotivism may be returning. Perhaps it would be beneficial if people stopped debating right and wrong and instead understood themselves as having an aesthetic, affective relationship to the world. :wink:

The solution, arguably, is not to discard neo-Aristotelian ideas of essence, but to show how it can be used well, setting out a more humane, and more inclusive teleology—like one that shows how the telos of a human being is fulfilled in relationships of love and mutual flourishing, which can take many forms. I want to say that abandoning the concept of human nature and purpose because it's open to misuse is to surrender the very ground on which we can build a progressive vision of the good life. — Jamal

So, does this make you a foundationalist? Do you think, for instance, Rorty’s neopragmatic view of morality is limited because it doesn’t rely on objective moral truths or universal principles? If all things are socially constructed, contingent conversations, then why do anything in particular?

You can be loving and kind to people while also recognizing that they have an illness that, if you truly love them, you would make reasonable efforts to cure. — Bob Ross

I don’t believe one can be appropriately loving to someone whose identity one denies and considers perversion. I don’t think there’s anyway we can resolve this one. The gap comes before your use of Aristotle - it’s between your version of theism and my version of atheism. All we can do ultimately to attempt to settle this is vote in a way that best supports our views.

I disagree with this. I think what the Christian conservative use of neo-Aristotelian ideas of essence shows is that teleological frameworks are powerful and thus open to abuse. It's what makes them philosophically substantive, in contrast to the emotivism criticized by MacIntyre. — Jamal

Fair enough. I've had a similar conversation with some Thomists sover the years.

Me, I'm definitely not on the fence. I'll make a post about it, maybe. — Jamal

Please do.

Which leads me to ask - what questions of an urgent / topical nature today can be best addressed, or perhaps just effectively addressed, with philosophy? Are there discussions on subjects now that will seem just as urgent in 15 years as discussions of AI have proven to be? I would love to hear some predictions, or be pointed towards urgent current topics in philosophy. — Jeremy Murray

I don’t think any question requires philosophy, and certainly not if it’s to be settled by an educative political process. Seems to me all matters are settled by the ongoing conversations societies have with each other. These are, of course, based on philosophically derived notions, but not in a systematic or deliberate way. And our values will change as the older folk die off and the younger, more progressive types dominate (they in turn will be the conservative fogies of tomorrow).

I have to confess to not caring about AI. There’s a lot of alarmist verbiage written about it. My view is that any reading or tentative understandings of the matter will do nothing to manage or deal with any changes coming.

Canadian philosopher Joseph Heath noted on his substack that many of his colleagues seem to be 'sitting out' many fraught contemporary subjects — Jeremy Murray

I'm a big fan of sitting out controversies and pseudo problems. Many either go away or are integrated into culture as the old folk and their values die out.

Isn’t this the point where many theists refer to the Fall, human imperfection, and, if they’re particularly ardent, Satan? Which gets me wondering: Is evil unnatural? Is Satan the god of the unnatural?

I agree that the record of our species reveals both tendencies in abundance: tenderness and atrocity, rescue and massacre. — Truth Seeker

I often think this is like an Ouroboros....without atrocity we wouldn't discover self-sacrifice and healing. Can it be that both are necessary? (Personally I don't think so but it scans superficially).

I'm going to ask some tougher questions and I'm not intending to sound rude. :pray:

So when I say compassion is the more natural relational core, I don’t mean it is the statistically dominant behaviour, but that it reveals the more fundamental truth of coexistence. — Truth Seeker

But how do you demonstrate this? Isn't this just a statement of your belief rather than an evidence based claim?

In this light, Compassionism isn’t the claim that humans are compassionate, but that compassion names the deepest possibility of what it means to be. The conqueror and the caregiver are both human, but only the latter manifests what humanity is capable of when it fully hears its own ontological vocation. — Truth Seeker

But that only holds if you've already decided that compassion is better than conquest. That sounds more like a statement rooted in a nominal Christian value system. So how can you actually demonstrate that compassion is better? What makes it superior, philosophically or practically?

To me, you can reach your conclusion if you begin with the axiom that human wellbeing should be our goal and build from there. But that’s a choice you have to consciously make. I don’t think it’s self-evident.

Can we agree on this (notwithstanding the semantic disputes)??? — Bob Ross

I'm not an essentialist, and I tend to see notions of 'male' and 'female' as evolving and changing over time. As I’ve said, I'm not a gender theorist. What matters most is recognising that trans people are here to stay. We need to learn how to live with this reality, not suppress it or label it deviant, just as much of the world has come to accept homosexuality as part of the spectrum of normal human experience.

Sex is a creative act, it’s not limited to procreation. It can be a flight of fancy, a search for pleasure, a quest for meaning, a release of tension, intimacy, a form of recreation, a duty, even a way of avoiding responsibility. I'm not going to put a fence around it.

I don’t mean that ethics emerges as a factual property within Being, but that in the event of encounter - when another’s vulnerability impinges on me - — Truth Seeker

Thanks for the clarification.

To put it less abstractly: when we encounter pain - human or non-human - we do not first deduce an ethical rule; we are already moved. That movement of concern is the disclosure of Being’s relational core. — Truth Seeker

Certainly, this seems true in the cultures I know. But what about cultures that appear deaf to the suffering of tribes not their own, those who cheerfully kill children? That too seems an authentic expression of human behaviour across millennia. Is it possible to determine which is the more natural relational core: the urge to conquer, maim, and vanquish, or the call for empathy? I’ve always assumed that with humans, it could go either way.

Isn't all human discourse a contingent product of cultural and linguistic practices? Everything exists within layers of constructs and frameworks. Human rights remain a meaningful and useful frame until some other construct supersedes them.

:up: Food for thought.

I am getting the feeling that most people on this board have very little understanding or familiarity with trans gender viewpoints, culture, and activism. I've been studying them for the last two years, so I admit my awareness of the subject is painted by that. It appears I am unlikely to have a good conversation on these boards as people appear very in the dark or have a very limited take on the issue. That's ok, philosophy has not been in sync with the culture for some time now, and its not surprising that a modern day philosophical issue like this is not being properly tackled here. — Philosophim

My view of this issue is untheorized and based on my experience knowing and working with numerous trans people, both men and women. I support most trans rights on the grounds of solidarity and the need to minimize harm and stigma. I’m not aligned with or aware of every activist claim, and I also recognize that trans people vary in their thinking. I’ve known some who reject gender theory entirely. Most of the trans people I’ve known come to their identity through personal experience rather than gender politics. Some are later influenced or radicalized by that politics, but it would be a mistake to assume activism shapes all trans identities. And I know you haven’t said that.

I broadly support all five rights you mentioned, except where specific circumstances make their application genuinely problematic. My main reservation concerns medical treatment for minors; I believe age, maturity, and clinical judgment must guide decisions, so point four would need qualifications around safeguarding and informed consent.

My position comes from both personal experience and ethical reasoning. Having worked with and known trans people, I’ve seen the distress caused by denying recognition or access to care. That distress may be “subjective,” but it is real and morally relevant, I woudl hold that reducing it is part of our responsibility to respect human dignity and autonomy.

I view being transgender not as a mental illness (as some do) but as a mode of human identity. Comparing it to schizophrenia or other delusional conditions misunderstands the nature of gender identity: it is not a pathology to be suppressed but a lived reality to be supported. I also find it interesting how some who do not support treatment of mental illness do support it for trans, probably because transphobia informs their view.

If we accept that gender identity is how people experince their selfhood, as something fundamental to a person’s being, then society shoudl facilitate and provide the means for trans people to live authentically and safely. That includes access to accurate identity documents, social recognition, protection from harm, and healthcare aligned with their needs.

Gender theory isn't relevant to my take on trans. My view is pragmatic. People have always identified and alwasy will identity as a gender different to mainstream expectation (I'm avoiding gender discourse here). We don’t need a metaphysical theory of gender to defend trans rights. What matters is whether our practices reduce suffering and allow people to live freely and without humiliation. Trans rights stand on the basic moral ground that they lessen cruelty and create space for self-determination. Moral progress depends on empathy and persuasion, not on appeals to absolute truth. I'd take the view that a decent society lets people define themselves without fear and measures dignity by the freedom to live honestly, not by an obedience to inherited categories.

Now, before anyone says, “But what if someone wants to identify as an air-conditioning manifold?” I would simply respond that such an identity lacks the historical depth and pragmatic grounding that give meaning to categories like gender. There’s no shared social context, language, or lived experience to make that identification useful.

Thank you very much for your excellent question. Levinas’s meontological move in Totality and Infinity is precisely what I had in mind when I spoke of the ethical and the ontological as “two inflections of the same opening.” For Levinas, ethics is first philosophy because it arises not within Being but before it - me ontos, beyond-Being. The face of the Other interrupts ontology’s self-enclosure; it calls me from a height I did not posit, demanding responsibility prior to any theoretical stance. In that sense, Levinas radicalizes Heidegger’s Geworfenheit (thrownness): I am not only thrown into Being but summoned beyond it.

Where I diverge slightly is in emphasis. Levinas’s meontology can sound like a complete rupture - an absolute outside to Being. I read it, rather, as the self-transcendence of Being itself, its capacity to exceed its own totalization through the ethical relation. In other words, the ethical call is not alien to ontology but its deepest disclosure: Being showing itself as vulnerable and relational. The “firstness” of ethics is not chronological or hierarchical but modal: the primordial tone of existence as care, exposure, and obligation. — Truth Seeker

Does this include non-human animals? Forgive me a few quesions as I find this difficult to follow - and I am unclear how ethics can arise in this way. Doesn't a capacity to describe ethics presuppose an account of what is?

What you have written also sounds highly abstract and metaphorical. How can one demonstrate that ethics is the “deepest disclosure” of Being?

Like I said before, you are presupposing that it is true that homosexual acts are not ‘morally corrupt’; and then based off of that saying it is not degenerate. I understand from your view that makes sense, but in mine it doesn’t because it is immoral (viz., ‘morally corrupt’). What we would need to discuss is why. — Bob Ross

Yes, I think this is the nub of it.

Would you say that homosexuality falls into this category because, in your view, God is against it? And does your reasoning come post hoc, have you used reason to shore up a religious view you already held?

The problem with reason, for me, is that although it's difficult to escape its use, rationality can be used to justify anything. In the end, it often comes down to whether one is convinced or not and that may be informed more by our affective judgements and intuition than reasoning.

Would it be fair to say that you have an almost Thomist veneration of reason?

Calling people degenerate is bigotry.

Even if it really is degenerate? This is the basic, colloquial definition of bigotry:

“obstinate or unreasonable attachment to a belief, opinion, or faction, in particular prejudice against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.” — Bob Ross

As I said, I was going to leave you with the last word on this, but I wanted to correct something. You are right. I misspoke - my sentence above is wrong. One can presumably use “degenerate” to accurately describe some people’s activities.

Of course, I would not include gay people or most sexual acts, like fellatio, as you do. Calling gay people and their preferences morally corrupt or less than human, which “degeneracy” implies, would qualify as bigotry.

Do you think engaging in BDSM, e.g., is not sexually degenerate? If not, then what would count as sexually degenerate under your view and would any concession of the possibility of sexual degeneracy be considered bigotry on your view? — Bob Ross

I’m not someone who reaches for “degenerate” as a descriptive term in most serious discussions. What consenting adults do is not my business. One might be able to apply the term upon the actions and lives of Trump or Epstein.

I'd like to start a thread on disagreement.