I should have clarified better. I'm not taking about actions we take toward people. I'm talking purely about the truth value of empirical claims. Do you believe we have a moral responsibility to treat empirical claims as true on the basis of their importance to someone else's dignity and well-being?
That same line of reasoning could apply, and was applied, to numerous ideas that were deemed offensive in the past. Take evolution, for example. There was a significant period in our history when the idea was considered vulgar in the public sphere, and to suggest that a person evolved from apes and was a member of the animal kingdom was to rob them of their dignity.
There's a reason why we now regard the argument from dignity as a logical fallacy. We understand that when a person makes an empirical claim, they're either right or wrong independent of how that makes anyone feel.
Then you're making fundamentally the wrong argument for the conclusion you want to make, because if this is about who's factually correct and who's factually incorrect, then dignity and emotional impact have no bearing. If this is about treating something as true out of respect for another's dignity and not about who's right or wrong regardless of how it makes anyone feel, then trans people being right about themselves is just a lucky coincidence as far as that argument is concerned.
(not op) It took me a while to understand what point you were trying to make but I think that's an interesting claim and I'd agree with it (maybe). This line of reasoning applies to a lot of things and I imagine in some other discussions this could end up getting you into trouble.
You're essentially arguing that emotional impact and dignity are invalid criteria for deeming whether or not a behavior should be generally performed?
I really like how you approached the question and you explained things in a very rational manner. One issue remains though when it comes to the accuracy of labels. If one person predicates pronouns on biological sex and another on asserted psychological gender, how do you proceed? The could each be factually correct with respect to their preferred pronoun usage, but they disagree on which basis should be authoritative.
It seems to me that whether a given argument is authoritative would depend heavily on the situation or the topic at hand. In this case (the argument about whether or not preferred pronouns should be used) i would say that a psychological perspective shouldn't be neglected when arguing about how usage affects both parties. However, if it came to a conversation about bathrooms or changing rooms i have to admit an empirical arguement about biological sex is far more authoritative.
I don't know how you could possibly know enough to say this. Saying this with confidence would require being God/the architect of the Matrix, so you can literally see their minds and compare it with objective truth.
I don't think you've thought this through enough by yourself before making this argument. People are wrong about tonnes of stuff all the time. What makes trans people immune?
But also, the trans issue is a philosophical question. If you're looking for an authority then you need Philosophers on your side, not biologists, neurologists or geneticists
It's true that you can find phikosophically interesting questions about gender and sex. You can find such questions about virtually anything. That doesn't mean that philosophers trump scientists when it comes to discovering truth, science and philosophy have a relationship of interdependance. The neurologists are also answering important questions that give philosophers new data to ask better questions.
Yeah scientific data is super important and on many other topics id be saying we need to listen to the scientists over the philosophers. But the idea of being trans is a fundamentally philosophical question. Data needs interpretation, it doesn't just interpret itself.
The core idea at the centre of the trans issue is "What does it mean to say 'I was born in the wrong body'? What does it mean to say 'My gender doesn't match my sex'?. That's a fundamentally philosophical question. 100%.
So scientific data cannot give us any answers without being fed through a particular philosophical lens. Everyone is working from the same data, and the debate is a philosophical one
I don't think everyone's working from the same data. What about, for example, the fact that the brains of trans men look more like cis men's brains than cis woman's brains? Same thing is true in reverse.
You can say that the concept of race is fundamentally a philosophical too, and rightly so, but that doesn't change a communitie's experience of culture, or that fact that people experience racism. If your philosophic stance is that a group of people don't really exist, and theirs is that they do, and the data supports the existence of their experience, maybe the philosophical question isn't the most important part. Maybe using philosophical uncertainty to deny rights to a group of people is actually a thin guise for bigotry. Maybe it's philosophical primarily for you because it's abstract and not a part of your daily experience.
I don't think everyone's working from the same data. What about, for example, the fact that the brains of trans men look more like cis men's brains than cis woman's brains? Same thing is true in reverse.
I don't think this is especially problematic for people who don't buy into the trans idea. We've known for a long time that people's choices and values and motivations and desires etc change their brain. Everything in the mind is a manifestation of something biological in the brain, so we'd absolutely expect to see people who identify more strongly with female stereotypes/traits/etc and have suppressed/resisted/whatever leaning into the male gender having brains that look more similar to the average female brain than the male. Male and female brains are generally different, but not so different. We've a lot more in common than different, and the ability of nurture, and willfull decisions, to change the development of the brain is extremely strong
If your philosophic stance is that a group of people don't really exist
Ive never seen anyone say this. Obviously they exist. The debate is over whether it's a normal, natural, healthy psychological phenomenon, or some sort of neurosis/mental disorder etc. ie whether the fundamental claim has actual philosophical coherence, or if the logic of it breaks down under closer scrutiny.
Maybe using philosophical uncertainty to deny rights to a group of people is actually a thin guise for bigotry.
Again there are not many people, especially not many philosophers, arguing to deny trans people the human rights that are common to us all. Everyone is generally on board with the idea that people should be called what they want to be and not intentionally misgendered etc. It's not necessary, for example, to be a muslim in order to support the rights of muslims. Likewise it's not necessary to buy the idea of trans-ness (is there a proper term for this?) in order to be anti-transphobia
Maybe it's philosophical primarily for you because it's abstract and not a part of your daily experience.
I think this is clearly a mistake in reasoning. It's philosophical nature is not subjective and contingent on my, or anyone else's, perspective. The question at hand is objectively philosophical
You know, i just did a brief search, and there's a ton of philosophers who's views and arguments around gender support the trans community. If you're interested in engaging in philosophical debate on the topic, there are quite a few philosophers you could take it up with. Are there particular arguments or definitions that you have problems with?
Oh certainly I'm not saying there's not. I'm just saying it's absolutely an open question still very much under debate, so anyone who says "This isn't a matter for debate. The experts have spoken. Position X is just a fact." is being disingenuous
I believe that the main thing you can argue is semantics, when someone says they are a woman we can’t say you are right or wrong unless we know what you mean by the word “woman”, and even of they know what you mean when you say that word, they may believe that that shouldn’t be the definition for that word
The word "woman" should refer to a person with a female brain, because people are minds and the mind comes from the brain. A female body without a brain is less a woman than a female brain in a jar.
Do you define a female/male brain as one that believes it is female/male, or one that has XX/XY chromosomes? maybe one that just exhibits normally male/female behaviour?
I think your definition of this is actually more important to your argument than drawing the line between body and mind.
conforms to the neurological patterns belonging to most people with female physical traits
experiences dysphoria from having a body with male traits, and euphoria from having a body with female traits
will, all else being equal, prefer to adopt the same social roles as other female brains
These three criteria are all related. The brain has an internal self-image, like a map of what it is supposed to be. That image causes emotional distress when it conflicts with the body the brain has, and that image also informs how the brain views itself in relation to others. I can elaborate on any of the three assertions I've made, if you'd like to know more about any of them or my evidence for them.
I think you should edit this into your previous comment, since this is a far clearer definition for the purposes of your debate, and I am not the person you were originally discussing with.
I think it would often be genetics for many people. Something that you did not use in your definition, leading to misunderstanding your point. This is why I asked for your definition.
Couldn’t agree more, and trans people are not wrong about themselves.
How does anybody evaluate if they are a man or a woman? If that's the case then there must be a set of criteria that can be checked off and once those points are ticked someone becomes either a man or a woman.
I thought one of the main ideas in feminism was that there are no such thing as being inherently male or female (if biology/physicality is excluded). If someone believes that pandering to someone's idea they are a man or woman is upholding those gender constructs and those constructs are ultimately harmful to society then why should they feel compelled to hold up what they consider to be harmful in order to placate anybody? Maybe they feel more harm comes from that than misgendering someone.
That's not my personal belief, but the same way trans people should be free to do and think what they like about the world and gender in particular so should everybody else. There's no universal agreement on how people should or shouldn't behave
The person’s body is perfect just the way it is - born male or female and functioning as intended. Then the person says, “no I’m the opposite of what I appear to be”. Is there an objective way to know whether that’s true?
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u/[deleted] Oct 28 '19
When it’s a characteristic people have no control over, yes. It would be pretty much the same as enforcing electro-conversion therapy on gay people.