Debating The "Aqua" Professor Vaush Made Crazy Arguments Against

The reason why the logic is starting to break down now has nothing to do with the actual logical statement. It has to do with, like, our kind of the external baggage that we're bringing in. Like, somebody might say, "Like, um, one plus one equals three." And you're like, "What do you mean by one plus one equals three? That doesn't make any sense." Like, "Oh, well, because when two sheep come together, three can leave because they had a child." It's like, "Okay, oh well, I guess. But that doesn't have anything to do with one plus one equals three." Uh, I feel like I'm getting kind of lost now, too. But good. Um, hold on. Wait. I just had a Jimmy Neutron. Okay, okay. Maybe, maybe I'm coming along a little bit more. I kind of understand what you're saying. So if I say that in order to be a thing, "Oh my god, my brain just expanded three sizes." This is like the classic kind of turf argument. It sounds like you're saying there's, um, there's been a kind of chilling effect in the universities, or it feels that way.

Yeah, people are self-censoring and self-silencing. Oh, yeah. I can, can confirm 100%. That's exactly what's happening. Yeah. Water was just an element. Nevertheless, it was H2O. I'm sorry, this isn't true. Water has not always been H2O. Yeah. All you have to do is cross the Mexican border, and over there, it's aqua. That's H2O, not water. Aqua means water. Aqua is water. It's a different nature, actually. Oh, no. This guy has to be like, "What the [ __ ] did I agree to?" Oh, [ __ ] dude, it's too much.

I listened to, uh, I listened to a conversation you had with one of my esteemed colleagues about gender and sex. And I'm talking about Bosch. Yeah. Um, yeah, I know. I, I've gathered you guys have a kind of history. Um, I don't, I don't totally understand all of it, but, um, I guess there's been a falling out or something. Is that right? Um, yeah, you could say that. Um, yeah, I'm not here to like get, get all into that. Um, there's a lot I could say about that, especially regards to this conversation, but, um, yeah, I think that's better. Yeah. Yeah. No, yeah, it's good.

Um, I was gonna say, I mean, I'm, I'm happy that he agreed to do the debate. And I felt like he was very civil and professional. I mean, when I first got the invitation, I watched some of his videos. I was like, "Oh, I don't think I want to talk to this guy because he can be like pretty aggressive and abrasive." Um, and so in reply to the invitation, I was just like, "If we could agree that it's going to be civil and professional, then..." Actually, it was this conversation with Deborah Soh that like made me think, "Oh, okay, maybe, maybe we can do this." Because I thought he was very polite, but I mean, still defending his points and advancing his perspective. But I think we're professional, somewhat similar in that we tend to match energy a little bit. So if you come in screaming, I'm going to be screaming. And I think he's kind of similar on that, um, in that as long as you're willing to have like an okay conversation, I think he'll generally be on board with that. He's not going to like go crazy. I don't know her. Usually, unless he's talking to me. Yeah.

Um, [Music] I didn't want to, I, I didn't want to retread too much. I read, um, you can, I just ask you really quick. He's streaming right now. Is that? Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. I shouldn't need this. We are streaming. I always assume that when I call somebody, I need to. Oh, yeah. I got all of your secrets backstage or something. No, my bad. Um, you haven't said anything too disruptive. Don't worry. But sorry, yes, I am streaming. Don't, no personal information, anything crazy like that. Okay.

Um, what was I gonna say? Um, I read you had one paper where I think you go through six different arguments, um, about separating sex and gender. Are you familiar with the one, um, the evaluating arguments for the sex-gender disease? Yeah, you go through, but I think five of them I thought were pretty convincing. There was one that I didn't like too much, but, um, I agree that a lot of the, a lot of the, um, coming together on figuring this out on a lot of these things, um, seems to be more rooted in like some kind of social good rather than actually getting to the truth of the matter and anything, which is kind of a weird way to investigate these issues. Um, I think that's something you point out in that paper a few times. It's something that I notice as well, where if you ask somebody, you know, "Why, why should we draw a distinction between these two things?" The answer will usually sometimes lie in some like moral claim that, "Well, it would be better to do it because it makes people happy or something." Right.

Um, I'm sorry, can you repeat that? I was just a little distracted because I was thinking back to what I had said while I thought we weren't streaming a year ago. Um, I, you're good. Uh, sorry, I was just, I was a little distracted. Um, can you say it again? Yeah, you're totally fine. Do you need a minute to collect yourself? Um, I think it was okay. Yeah. I mean, I, I think I think I said to you what I wanted to say. If you had brought up that debate, namely, I'm, I'm happy that, um, Bosh had agreed to do it, and I think it went well, and I think he was, you know, professional and civil. Yeah. I don't really have anything bad to say about the guy. No, I don't think he's anything. So you're good. Yeah.

I mean, I did notice that, I've given what I've watched of his videos and, um, what I learned in our conversation, I think we disagree about virtually everything. But I mean, I think it's nice that there are these forums online where people are still willing to have conversations even with people who they disagree very, very deeply with. Um, okay, so yeah, I guess that's all I wanted to say about that. But now you wanted to ask about this paper that I wrote. Um, yeah, or I guess actually before we, um, actually before we dive into that, well, actually, let's, let's formally start. I'm curious. I just woke up like 20 minutes ago, too, so sorry. Um, what, um, how did you even find out about like the online debate sphere? Where did this come from? Was your, like, first introduction to it?

Um, well, I've done some like podcasts with on some YouTube channels, um, to talk about philosophy, and usually Christian philosophy in particular. Um, and then I think somebody had watched one of these things I did about gender stuff and, um, recommended to the Modern Day Debate team that I do debate. And shout out to this, this person. I wish I could shout this person out by name, but I don't, I don't know the person's name. Um, but yeah, somebody like made the connection, and then I got an invitation from James. Um, yeah, and then I wasn't exactly sure what it was and whether I wanted to do that sort of thing. So yeah, like I said, I watched some videos of Bosch, and and I watched that Deborah Soh video, and that convinced me, "Okay, I think we could probably have a civil conversation." And I noticed that, um, some philosophers had been on this Modern Day Debate channel, and that made me feel a little bit better about it. Um, you know, Michael Hummer has done it, so yeah, then I decided to just, uh, give it a go and see how it went. And I think it went pretty well.

Is that something you think you want to? Well, actually, I was going to say, do you want to do more of that in the future? But I guess you're kind of here now, so. Well, I think my understanding is this is this is kind of a different setting and this isn't a debate so much as a. No, that's just what I say. That's what I say to pull him in. Okay. I got all my my Thunderlord debate lord notes right. Number pyrotechnics. Yeah. Yeah. I actually have some old Facebook pictures that you posted, um, 12 years ago. I wanted to ask you about. I'm just kidding myself. Wow.

Um, but okay, I got the impression, I don't know if this is right, but it sounded to me like you were a kind of pioneer in this space of online debating, especially in the Twitch sphere. Yeah, I wouldn't say kind of, I would say absolutely. But, um, yeah, I, I acknowledge and accept. Yeah. I don't think you have referred to yourself as a debate bro or part of this debate bro, or maybe the debate bro, um, the, uh, prototypical. I think I used to be more so, but I'm trying, I have like different, uh, approaches now to where I'm not trying to, um, yeah, I'm not trying to do the ultimate, I'm trying to be more empathetic than I'm here to [ __ ] in your throat and destroy you or whatever kind of thing because I find that the empathetic thing tends to work better. Yeah. That is the impression I had gotten. Um, and so, yeah, that's why I was looking forward to talking with you about this. Gotcha.

Um, I don't have super strong feelings about, um, philosophically about a lot of the trans stuff, um, in terms of especially when you start talking about anything related to metaphysics, especially because I don't even know what metaphysics is. Every time I try to read about it, um, it seems like nobody knows what metaphysics is or if it's even possible to do so. So I'm going to be totally honest with you. My philosophy is very rusty. I'm not the best at this. And, um, yeah, just as, just because I know you have a formal background, so if I misuse any terms, if I say anything that doesn't make sense, um, it's probably not you being confused about something that I know that you don't. It's probably me just using a word completely incorrectly. So feel free to provide clarification or something, uh, for some thought that I have. Yeah, no problem.

Um, just before we, before we dive into the conversation too much, um, I'm curious on what would it, what do you, what do you think about this? Isn't, I'm not attacking anything else. What is your perspective on the conversation you had about aqua? Yeah. So, um, I've thought about that a lot. And I think what was going on there, I think a lot of people when they watched that exchange about water, a lot of people were frustrated because they thought this wasn't really to the point and this is taking too long. And I mean, when I read the perspective of Bosch fans, I know that they were frustrated with me. And they feel like I'm just not understanding. Uh, whenever, when I read perspectives on the other side, they feel the same way about Bosch. But I think what was happening, if you sort of have eyes to see what was happening in that bit of the debate, was it was it was a clash or a conflict between two very old views of the world, two very old views of the relationship between our minds and the world. And, um, I think there are, I mean, something I tell my students, this is this is kind of a crude lens you can use, but I think it's pretty useful to understand the history of philosophy. There's it's really just a conflict between like three views of the world, three ways of thinking about the relationship between our minds and the world. Um, one of them, the one that I hold, is I would call supernaturalism. And on that view, ultimately everything is explained in terms of, um, a divine mind, the mind of God. So ultimately all explanations bottom out with explanations in terms of the mind of God. That's supernaturalism. And it has a very old pedigree. I would put Plato and Aristotle in that category. Um, it was dominant. It probably reached its zenith in like the Middle Ages, and it's been in decline since then. The stock has been in decline since then.

Another view of the world is, um, naturalism, according to which, um, ultimately everything is explained in terms of fundamental physical particles and the laws that govern them. So at rock bottom, like everything that's true is made true by that physical stuff, um, and the laws that govern it. So that's naturalism. And then just the last one, and this is the one I think, um, Bosch would be placed in, is, um, what you might call postmodernism. But I know that word is used in many different ways by many different people, and sometimes used as like a pejorative. But, um, and I don't think that's the best word for it because it makes it sound very new, like not only is it modern, it's postmodern. But this is actually a very old view. And it goes at least back to Protagoras, who said, "Man is the measure of all things." Of what is, that it is, and of what is not, that it is not. Like humans are somehow, we, we are responsible for making what's true true, and we make what's false false, and so on. This view, everything ultimately is explained in terms of us, our creative activities, our thought, and our language. Um, and so I think you could, we could call this postmodernism or creative anti-realism. It's anti-realism because these people, when you ask them, like, "Well, what is the world like independent of our minds?" They say things that sometimes sound like they think there is no such thing. There is no world independent of our minds. There is no world outside language. Or if there is a world out there, it's literally indescribable. It is, it's ineffable. As soon as you start describing it, you are imposing concepts on it that the world doesn't really answer to. And so I think that's why folks in this camp use words like arbitrary. They think that the concept, the conceptual scheme that we operate in and that we use was made by us, so it really was created by our wills, um, and it doesn't correspond to reality. It can't be like true or false. It can't be made true or false by reality.

Gotcha. They have a conception of truth and falsity, but it's not correspondence to reality. Um, so anyway, I think what was happening in that portion of the debate was, um, I, a supernaturalist who believes in mind-independent truth, was saying things like, "You know, there are these facts out there in the world, like water's H2O, and it was true before we got here. We didn't make it true." And then Bosch, speaking up for the creative anti-realist view, was, uh, resisting that idea. Gotcha.

Okay. I've never actually heard any of these three terms. My, I have heard naturalism, um, well, I think I've heard it in other contexts than this in particular. Um, based on your description of the three, I guess I sound like I would probably be, um, this like creative anti-realist or postmodernist, although, yes, well, I have a very limited, um, understanding of your history and your views. But the sense I've gotten, maybe, is it sounded like at one time in the past, you were much more squarely in the creative anti-realist camp, but maybe you find yourself migrating towards naturalism. Uh, possibly. So I guess the way, are you familiar with the term ultimate skeptic? I have heard you say it, but I don't totally know. I think I heard you talking with somebody named Rem about it. Okay. Gotcha.

So like all ultimate skepticism is going to be the guy who is like an epistemic anti-realist and a metaphysical anti-realist. And he's going to ask "why" a million times to every single question that you ever pose to prove that you can't ground anything out in anything. And he'll use it to derail every conversation about philosophy to prove that ultimately you can't be the arbiter of any completely true or factual statement. Um, and it's just kind of like the, it's like the ultimate online debate bro to question everything. Um, and I think I, I guess I don't know if it's like every, uh, beginning philosophy adventure falls down that hole. But until like a few years ago, um, I was probably more in that camp. And then I've kind of moved from being like, I think deep down, I'm probably ultimately skeptical. So if you tell me, for instance, that you can convey or have some sort of like actual true knowledge of the world independent of your mind, and you could know those things, I would say, "I don't know about that." But, um, I'm willing to like build off of some assumptions and then move from there. Because to be ultimately skeptical is to ultimately be completely absurd. And there's not really any productive conversation you can have originating from that point if you want to like adhere strictly to it, you know?

Yeah. Now, we definitely have skeptics like this in philosophy. And it's not just in first-year philosophy. Like, some of them really stick with it. Sure. Um, and I guess that's because, uh, something you learn pretty quickly about knowledge, like once you start studying epistemology, is it's pretty hard to come by and it's easy to lose. And all you need to do to like make someone lose knowledge is, um, bring up a possibility that they can't rule out. Yeah. So if I asked you, for example, like, "Do you know where your car is right now?" You might say, "Of course." Yeah, I parked it in my garage or on the street or whatever. I know where my car is. All I have to do is point out, like, "Well, you know, it could have been stolen in the last five minutes. Can you rule that out?" "Oh, no, I guess I can't rule that out. Maybe it got stolen in five minutes. So do you really know where your car is?" "Oh, I guess I don't." Now, you know. Um, so knowledge is elusive, as philosophers say. And all you got to do is bring up these, um, these possibilities that can't be ruled out. And I think people discover that pretty quickly when they start talking with other people, especially when they get in the arguments. It's very easy to, um, sort of cast out on a view, to deprive people of knowledge, to raise skeptical concerns. That's pretty easy to do. Sure.

Or even more fundamental, I think, um, is it Descartes' demon? The idea that somebody could be presenting a false, it's like the historic version of brain in a vat, you know? Um, and I find that, I find that those are, if I'm being truly honest, or pretty inescapable. But then, like I said, it's a little absurd to enter to force those into every conversation. And it's like, "Okay, well, if you know Descartes' demon is true, have you ever considered throwing yourself out the window?" It's like, "Well, no, of course that I don't want to die." Or it's like, "Okay, you don't know where your car is. Like, where do you walk every single day to find it?" "Well, I guess I assume it's outside." You know, it's kind of silly to, for the purpose of the debate, play the ultimate skeptic. But in every other role in your life, you're operating on a ton of assumptions all the time. Um, so that's why I think that's right. Yeah.

Maybe the best, the best example of somebody who, I mean, Descartes did that little evil demon thought experiment, but he tried to control the skepticism. He tried to put it back in the bottle when he was done. Um, he, he wanted to destroy his structure of beliefs so that he could rebuild it from the ground up, try to do philosophy afresh. And he wanted to end up with absolute certainty. And he thought he did. But, um, somebody who never put the genie back in the bottle was David Hume. Who was skeptical of virtually everything. He was skeptical that there was such a thing as causation. He was skeptical that we could know anything about the future, that we could know things by induction. He was skeptical that God existed. He was skeptical that he himself existed. He was like the ultimate skeptic. But then what people pointed out is, "Can't live this way, right?" And he, he acknowledged that. He said, "Yeah, you know, in the study, when I'm doing philosophy, I can't help but be overcome by these doubts. But then when I leave my study and I go play," I think he said, "billiards." He wouldn't play. He would go play games with his friends. Um, and he acknowledged, like, "Yeah, I don't, I'm not skeptical of things when I'm when I'm out there navigating the real world." So, um, even an ultimate skeptic like David Hume acknowledged that it is hard to live consistently with these skeptical principles. Yeah.

Um, yeah, yeah, I think I feel pretty similar. Um, I hear Hume referenced a lot. I bought one of his books, but I'm going to be totally honest with you. I don't believe that philosophy is hard to read because the concepts are difficult to engage with. I think a lot of writers are just very dog [ __ ] in philosophy. And anytime I've got a sentence with eight commas in it, I'm starting to wonder what in the hell is going on. But, um, someday I will finish that. I think it was a treatise on. It's one of, it's like really popular. Yeah. I think I made the same mistake when I was an undergraduate. Um, I, it was brought to my attention that there's this thing called philosophy, and that's what I've been talking about. And so maybe I should go read some philosophy. Sure. Yeah. And I just went to the bookstore and I went to the campus bookstore and I went to the philosophy section and I was like, um, "Oh, Immanuel Kant. I've heard of him." And I pulled out *Critique of Pure Reason*. And I thought, "This will help me know whether philosophy is for me." And there you are with a PhD, somehow, huh? Yeah, well, that was stuck with it. Yeah, that could have ruined things for me because I kept like trying to read it, and I would get like 12 pages in, and I was like, "I have no idea what's happening in here." And I think if you asked a lot of philosophers, "What's the worst book you could give to somebody who's brand new to philosophy?" It's probably that one. And even Kant acknowledged that he was a bad writer and that was that was a poor piece of writing. And if you try to read David Hume, you might have a similar experience, if only because the the language is so archaic and hard to understand. But if you wanted, I'd be happy to send you some contemporary philosophy where people are actually striving for clarity, um, and it would be much easier to understand.

Oh, I've already done that. I've read every book by Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson on philosophy, so I'm very well-equipped. And I'm just kidding. Okay. I think you might be joking. Um, yeah, but I was actually going to mention this little landscape that I put out there with like supernaturalism, naturalism, and postmodernism. It's kind of handy because you can locate people on that map. People like Sam Harris and, well, actually Jordan Peterson is not a great example because I don't know where to put him. He's he's kind of all over the place. But Sam Harris is like pretty squarely in the naturalist camp, although given some of the stuff he says about meditation, that's a little spooky and maybe maybe not not so natural as friendly. But he's definitely in the naturalist camp. And I think something interesting that's happening, and then I'll, I'll drop this little landscape stuff if you want, but, um, [Music] something that's interesting to watch if you look at the history of ideas in the history of philosophy is the fortunes of these three views have risen and fallen throughout time. And when one of the views is like in ascendancy or enjoying dominance, the other two views kind of ally with each other and form alliances. And so I think right now, the spirit of the age is very much this postmodern view that that's sort of the dominant view in the academy and in the popular culture. And what you see is a surprising alliance between like naturalists and supernaturalists, who otherwise wouldn't have very much in common and wouldn't really hang out together. They sort of, yeah, they form these alliances against, um, against postmodernism. So I found that in the gender debates, like I find myself allied with, um, like radical feminists and gender-critical feminists and just hardcore naturalists. Yeah. And on any other topic, we wouldn't, wouldn't really have much in common. But in this regard, like we all at least agree that there are truths independent of our minds, truths that we didn't create. And so we're sort of, um, outlying around that principle. Gotcha. Interesting.

Um, I will, one thing I would disagree with is, um, I, I think it's admirable that you think that the disagreement ran, um, this fundamental. It might have, there there might have been a point to where you could have gotten that. I felt like, um, I felt like it was a little more, um, a little more basic. And I feel like I run into this problem with a lot of people. Um, have you ever heard of something called like, uh, the triangle of reference, the semiotic triangle? Okay. Okay. Maybe not, but I'm sure you're familiar with the concept. It's, it's this idea basically that you have like, you have three different things that sometimes seem like the same thing. With that, so you have like a particular, you'll have a particular thing, like, like a thing in and of itself. Um, you'll have a symbol for the thing, and then you'll have like a reference to the symbol. So I might say something like, um, like here is a word. The word might be water. Right. I think so. That might be like, um, the the symbol. Um, and then the symbol might stand for like a thought or a reference, and then that would be referring to the thing itself, like the referent. So water, in this case, um, sometimes I feel like there are disagreements over fact of the matters that people try to cash out on, but they're actually just disagreements over like a reference to a thing. So I think when you were talking to, um, when you were talking to Bosch, I think you were trying to get across this idea that you, you were saying H2O, not to give another symbol, but I think you were trying to get at the idea that there is an underlying fact of the matter, that there is a molecule that does exist, that is H2O, and it's existed throughout all of human history. But I think when you uttered that phrase, H2O, Bosch thought that you were referring to that symbol and not the thing itself. Because he said, "Well, actually, not everybody agrees that that thing itself exists." But he wasn't talking about things, he was talking about the symbol. And then he posited they referred to it as aqua down in Mexico. So he gave a different symbol. And I think you guys, I think you were operating at different levels where you were assuming that he had this like very fundamentally different view of the world where it's like, "Well, maybe he doesn't believe water's always existed because this is like a concept created by humans and and and, you know, that's where it comes from. And without humans, maybe it would exist." When in reality, I think that he was proposing an alternative symbol to your alternative symbol and then trying to say that that meant something different, um, about the fact of the matter, the thing itself. Does that make sense what I'm saying there?

Yeah. So I would have described it this way. I think that, um, there are words, and and like the, we got an English word, water. And I'm not totally sure what you meant by reference to the symbol, but I think it would be what, um, analytic philosophers tend to call a concept. Sure. And so words express concepts. Um, that's like what the word means, you might think, yeah. And so that we, we posit these concepts to make sense of the fact that in different languages, there seem to be synonyms. And so what do they have in common? Well, it seems to be the concept that they're expressing. And concepts have reference to things out there in the world, hopefully. I mean, some of them are empty, like the concept of Harry Potter, the concept of Pegasus. They don't actually refer to anything. I mean, I wouldn't say that. I don't think you'd say that, right? They refer to something, but maybe not like a fact of the matter of the real world, but they refer to the work itself, right? I don't think so. Oh, no. I think they're literally empty names. There is no Harry Potter, strictly speaking. There is no Harry Potter. Well, wait. What do we mean? Yeah. What do we mean by that? I'm curious because we obviously, when you say it, you're evoking a thought in my mind, and we're both evoking the same thought. Right. What are we, what are we thinking about if not Harry Potter?

Yeah. So this is a, this is a deep puzzle in in the philosophy of language. Like, what, how do empty names work? Because obviously they, they seem to have a meaning. And it's one thing to talk about Zeus, and it's another thing to talk about, um, Poseidon or whatever. And we recognize that, like, it would be natural to say we're talking about different things when we talk about Zeus and when we talk about Poseidon. Could I, if I could, I like, amen, or go ahead and. Yeah. But if you think about it, we're in each case, we're not talking about anything because there is no Zeus and there is no Poseidon. So there's the, there's the puzzle. There's the paradox. It seems like we're talking about something, but there's nothing that we're talking about. So there's the paradox. And people spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to resolve this paradox. It could, it could it just be that we're using like, uh, like a language shorthand for something a little bit more complicated, but if we expand fully on what we're saying, then it makes sense. So for instance, when you say Harry Potter, and I hear Harry Potter, I would argue, "Well, of course Harry Potter's." I think we're both thinking of it. You'd say, "Well, what, you know, is Harry Potter real?" I go, "Well, no, it's a real story." Could I not say that Harry Potter is actually shorthand for the fictional account of Harry Potter? So when you say Harry Potter, it's actually shorthand for the fictional account of Harry Potter. And I think, "Do we both agree that that exists?" I guess so. Maybe Harry Potter's not the best example because sometimes people use that, um, name Harry Potter to refer to the book series, like the Harry Potter series. Um, even with Zeus or Poseidon, we could say like, like, "Oh, well, when I say Zeus or President, am I referring to everything?" Well, we're referring to the fictional account of Zeus, herbicide, and we're referring to that to a concept that, yeah, might not necessarily refer to a real thing in the world, but it does refer to a set of stories, which I guess, I mean, I would argue that's always what it's referring to because nobody's ever seen a Zeus or Poseidon unless you're into that.

But well, here's, yeah, here's the problem, I guess. Um, we're not referring to a concept. I mean, we're using the concept when we think about, um, when we think these thoughts, okay? Um, so we're not referring to a concept. And another way to see that is Harry Potter is the kind of thing that could wear glasses and ride on a broom. But concepts cannot do that. Concepts are mental representations. They can't wear glasses. Um, so no, Harry Potter is not a concept. And also, like, I don't think we're referring to like an actual bit of a book or a bit of a story because it's the story that uses the word Harry Potter. And we're wondering like, when the story says Harry Potter, when it uses that name, what is it talking about? What is it saying? What does it refer to? And it looks like it doesn't refer to anything. Um, so yeah, that's, that's the puzzle. We can't just say, "Well, you know, I'm talking about the story." Well, yeah, you know, you're talking about the part of the story that refers to Harry Potter. And that's what we're wondering about. Like, what is this thing that we're referring to? And it looks like there's nothing there.

I feel like I would, I feel like I would just always mentally cash it out as a shorthand. So, so let me, I guess I throw a different example at you. Um, I'm telling you right now, I have a wife. Her name is Melina. She has blonde hair and she's Swedish. Right? You got those three parts. If you would ever, if somebody were to ask you in the future, "Does Steven Bonnell have a wife?" And then you go, "Oh, yeah, he has a wife. Her name is Melina. She's Swedish. She has blonde hair." Is Melina, in that sense, an empty word or an empty name in the same way that Harry Potter is an empty name? Because even though Melina might refer to a real person, isn't it still just a concept to you? In the same way that Harry Potter is? You don't really know if she's real or not. You have no idea until you've really seen her yourself, I would imagine. Um, is it, what's, what can you tell me the difference between somebody presenting you the account of a real person versus a fictional person? Um, yeah, how do you, how do you deal with that? How do you address that in your mind?

Yeah. So it would be hard to tell from my perspective now whether Melina, that name, is empty or not. I'm going to take your word for it. And but it's not, it's not really up to me whether the name is empty or not. The name either refers or it doesn't. And if it does, then it's not an empty name. And if it doesn't, then it's an empty name. But, um, I thought what you were going to suggest was, isn't the name Melina just shorthand for this description: wife of Steven, blonde, Swedish, etc.? Isn't that just what the name means? And so, um, I would say no. And something that, um, maybe some of your viewers are familiar, maybe you're familiar with, um, the work of Saul Kripke. Um, but something he did, he's still alive, he's a philosopher, still alive. Something he did that made him pretty famous was argue very convincingly that, um, proper names are not just, uh, abbreviated descriptions. And, um, one quick argument for that is, whatever description you associate with this name, in this case, Melina, there are, um, hypothetical situations, possible worlds, ways things could have been, in which Melina exists, but she's not your wife, she's not blonde, she's not Swedish. So she doesn't, she doesn't match that description at all. And yet we still use the name to refer to her in that situation. But if the name were just equivalent to the description, then if the description doesn't fit her, the name wouldn't fit her either. But so this proves they're different because the name applies to her, the name refers to her, even though the description doesn't describe her in that situation. I guess the names aren't equivalent to abbreviated descriptions. And so Zeus can't just mean "the god who lives on Mount Olympus and is married to Hera and whatever." Gotcha.

So the, um, [Music] uh, some, I'll restate what you're saying, just make sure I'm following. Basically, um, when it comes to the name of a particular person, um, the, the name here isn't shorthand or some abbreviated thing. It's an, it's an actual name that is created for a particular thing in the world that exists in the world. Whereas when we give like a fictional name, um, we can't find that that reference, that thing doesn't actually exist in the world. So there's a fundamentally different thing between like the name of a real person versus the name of a fictional person, right? Yeah. Okay. And that's the idea. And the thought is, when we utter sentences, um, involving names, um, that include names, the thought that is expressed by this sentence, what philosophers call propositions, the proposition that's expressed by the sentence, um, what the name contributes to the proposition is, on a certain view, and this is a little controversial, but what a, what a name contributes to the proposition is the referent. Um, and so, yeah, here's a puzzle: what about empty names? Um, they don't have anything to contribute to the proposition, and yet, um, there is still a proposition there. There is still a thought. So, yeah, that is the puzzle of empty names.

Um, but if, maybe, maybe we could just circle back to the Bosch thing. I think you had said you weren't so sure that there was this like deep disagreement about the relationship between mind and world. But, um, I think there was, because on this, this view that I was calling postmodernism or creative anti-realism, the view is, um, I think if you ask them, like, "What's happening with words?" A consistent postmodernist, somebody, a consistent postmodernist would say, "Words don't refer to objects out there in the world. Words refer to other words. They get their meaning by their difference relations to other words." And so, for example, and I've seen this in some of the responses to the debate, some people say, like, "Well, you know, when you look up a word in a dictionary, and the dictionary tells you the meaning of the word, it just gives you other words." And so really, language is this self-contained sort of raft of words standing in relations to other words. And never do we leave the raft, never do we get out of this system of language to the real world itself. Um, yeah. So words don't actually refer to objects out there in the world. They get their meaning from other words. Um, and I think that's the consistent postmodern view. And so that's why I thought, like, when I asked, "Set aside the words, think about the things, you know, think about water, think about H2O, think about the stuff out there in the world." Somebody who's in the grip of this, um, in the grip of this view, is going to have a hard time understanding what I'm even asking them to do. Because all they're going to hear is talk of words, and they're going to say, "You just keep talking about the word 'water' and the word 'H2O'. There's nothing outside of that. I don't know what you're talking about." And so I think that's that was the source of some of the difficulty at that point in the conversation. Interesting. Gotcha.

So, um, uh, so I don't know what, what campus puts me in. Um, I guess, just so we're on the same page, if we run into this again, um, I feel like words are in and of themselves meaningless. I think they, like, I don't think you can build words on other words. I guess when I think of words, um, I think of, um, we all have, you know, the term qualia, right? We have like, um, experiences of things in the world that we can't ever truly communicate from one person to another. But we might use a word to stand for a certain experience. And then when we say that word, we're hoping that we're evoking the same experience in the other person's mind. And I feel like that's where our language is built off of that. It requires some shared, uh, experience of things in the world. So say, for instance, if I touch a thing that feels like nothing I've ever felt before, I'm never going to be able to communicate that to another person because they don't have that experience to to map onto that. But if I touch something that's like something else, I can kind of get there as long as they have other experiences to build off of. So say, for instance, I touch a very, very, very, very, very soft blanket, the softest blanket ever. And I say, "Oh my goodness, I've touched the softest blanket in the world." A question that the other person might say is, "Well, what is it like?" And you might say, "Well, it's like a newborn kitten." And because they have that experience, now they can map that on to, "Okay, so it's the softest blanket in the world is like a newborn kid." And if I've touched that kitten, I can build off of that shared experience. I think that's kind of how I view language, that we're uttering things in the hopes of evoking some quality that you've already experienced. But if you haven't experienced it, the words in and of themselves are are completely empty and meaningless. Um, a more formal way of cashing this out, I guess, would be, you've heard of Mary's red room, I'm assuming, right? Yeah, very familiar. And I would, I hope, I think you would say that upon seeing the color red, she is gaining some new piece of information, right? Did you say Mary's red room or it's just just Mary's room or my Mary's room? I'm sorry. Um, yeah, I think it's supposed to be a black and white room. Yeah, it's a memory. Okay. But sorry, what were you going to say? When when Mary sees the color red after studying it for her whole life, something new is experienced, right? She's gaining. Yeah. And I would say that, um, I would use that as an example of like, you can never explain color to a colorblind person. You can't explain sound to a deaf person without the actual experience. There is no way to communicate. Like words can't do that. I think words are stand-ins for trying to evoke experiences we've already had. It's kind of how I feel. I don't know if that's a coherent view at all, or but yeah, go ahead.

No, I think, um, we certainly use words to try to, um, convey our thoughts to other people and to get them to think the same thoughts we're thinking. Um, that's that seems to be what we're using words for, to communicate thoughts. I mean, if we had telepathy, we wouldn't need, we wouldn't need words. We could just like send our thoughts directly to each other. Um, but absent that, the best we can do is represent our thoughts in the form of sounds or symbols on a page. We represent our thoughts and then hope that when somebody else hears that or sees that, they can have the same thought we were having. Of course, we can never be quite sure that they're thinking the same thought we're having, but that's the hope. Um, but I guess if the proposal was, all of our words are actually naming qualities that we're experiencing, um, so that is a view that has been proposed and defended in the history of philosophy, and it's called phenomenalism. And those folks thought that in order for a word to have meaning, it's got to be cashed out or expressible in terms of patterns of experience. There's got to be some sort of pattern of experience that, um, that the word refers to. And this was actually, I think, for at least the time, maybe his whole career, not quite sure, but David Hume had this view. Because he didn't think that we had any sort of access to mind-independent objects. He thought the only thing that we really had access to were our impressions, our experiences. And so he thought, "Well, then when we're talking about like trees and rocks and so on, we must be talking about patterns of experiences." And an example I use in my classes is it's sort of like, um, when we talk about video games, um, there, I haven't played video games lately, so it's gonna be an old-school reference, but like in Super Mario Brothers, there are coins, and you can collect coins, and that's a big part of the game, collect the coins. Um, but what is a coin in Super Mario Brothers? There is no literal coin there. There's, there's no precious metal there. What's a coin in the Super Mario Brothers game? It's a certain pattern of images, right? It's like this sort of rotating sort of image. That's what a coin is. And so David Hume thought we're in the same position. Um, we're basically stuck behind this veil of experiences. And so if our words have any meaning, they must be just expressing patterns of images, patterns of impressions. So, um, I don't think that's right. And I think that some of our words do describe sensations, like, you know, as you said, soft and warm, and, you know, we've got like expressions like the taste of banana. And here we're trying to just express sensations. But we've got other words for things that, um, we don't actually directly experience, like, you know, words for external objects, like the Grand Canyon. I guess there's one. And proper names, I guess, are supposed to refer to people, not sensations that we have of people. And we've got all sorts of, you know, names for numbers that we never directly experience. So no, I don't think that all words just refer to, um, qualities of experience. Gotcha.

Um, I guess I would, there's probably like

Um, there's probably like relational words or some things there that you could find that I would agree with you. Like, for instance, like what? Like is a whole of thing that exists, or as a whole, by definition, a thing that isn't right? Uh, talking about whole, h-o-l-e, like, yeah, yeah. Like if I say, like, "Oh, well, there is a hole," and it's like, "What is a hole?" Well, like, is that a substance, or is that like a relationship between a thing? Right? Because, because technically, a whole, by definition, is the thing that isn't right. Like a donut hole. Well, unless we're actually talking... Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Um, yeah, so I would agree there's like, there's a whole literature and philosophy devoted to absences. Sure. Yeah. I never really got into it because I didn't find it interesting, but it exists. Um, yeah, so I agree there are going to be relational things. Or like, when I say the word "family," "family" is not a qualia, um, and it doesn't stand for any qualia, right? It represents a relationship between other things. Um, yeah, there's probably things like that. Um, okay, I don't know how deep we don't necessarily need to go into this. I'm just making sure at least, at least I understand where you're coming from. Um, yeah.

Well, maybe I could bring back to that triangle you mentioned. Um, so it sounds like, though, I mean, I come from a different tradition than I suspect that, well, that system comes from. Um, I think in analytic philosophy, we'd say we've got words, which are, you know, sounds or inscriptions, um, symbols. They express concepts. Like I said, you can have words in different languages that express the same concept. You can have words in the same language that express the same concept. We've got genuine synonyms in English. We actually have a lot of synonyms in English. Um, my understanding is more than the typical language because of the history of English. But anyway, so, yeah, words are expressing concepts, and then concepts, um, purport to refer to things, and sometimes they do. Uh, like the name "Molina" refers to something. Uh, sometimes they don't, like the name "Harry Potter." But they at least aim to refer to something out there in the world. That's the way I think of things, anyway. Sure.

Um, so, yeah, so then, um, I mean, if I had to ask somebody to consider the thought that water is H2O, I'm not asking them to think about words. I'm asking you right now to think about symbols or synonyms. You're asking about the fact of the matter. Yeah. And I, I think I did that at one point in the debate. I was like, "Here's a sentence: 'Water is H2O.' Think about the thought expressed by that sentence." That's what philosophers call a proposition. Um, I was trying to, trying to get, um, Vosh to think about the thought and leave the symbols behind, as it were, to, like, you know, use the ladder to get onto the roof and then kick the ladder away. Use the sentence to glom onto this proposition that I'm thinking about, and now evaluate the proposition. You don't need the sentence anymore. But, yeah.

Um, again, on this sort of postmodern view of the world, they don't think that that's the way sentences work. Sentences don't, um, express any sort of extra-linguistic thing. Sentences get their meaning from other words, their relations to other bits of the language. We never leave the language. We're sort of stuck in this prison of language. Um, if your viewers wanted to read somebody who's pretty clear, I mean, don't, I wouldn't recommend Derrida. Derrida is difficult to understand. I was about to say I wouldn't recommend reading it, but give it a try. Let's see how it goes. But it's extremely difficult to understand, possibly intentionally. But if you wanted to read, uh, somebody who's actually pretty clear and holds this view, I would recommend Richard Rorty. Who I would place kind of in the analytic tradition, but he definitely holds this view. And he puts it this way: He says that sentences are the only things that can be true or false, um, because the world itself does not carve itself up into sentence-shaped chunks called facts. The world itself is just silent. It doesn't, it doesn't speak in a way that could correspond to our sentences. So if I say, like, "There are mountains in the distance," the world doesn't also say that. So that doesn't match my sentence. The world doesn't scream, "Mountains in the distance!" So there's no literal match there. There's no correspondence. The world is silent. And so if sentences are going to be true or false, they're made true in some other way. In his view, Richard Rorty's view was famously, or infamously, he said, "Truth is what my peers will let me get away with saying." That's what he said. "Truth is what my peers will let me get away with saying." So it's a sort of pragmatic theory of truth. Truth is made true by us. We're the ones who make what's true, true, and what's false, false. And so, you know, once upon a time, we might have made it true that there are two genders. But it's within our power to change that. If we just stop letting people get away with saying that there are two genders, then we will literally have made it false.

Okay, gotcha. I think that's, that's the view. This would be under that, very much so, the creative anti-realist viewpoint. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, gotcha. Um, okay, one other question because you've referenced it a couple times. I want to open a whole can of worms. Um, do you believe that you can 100 percent gather knowledge that is external of your mind, or you have some way of accessing that? Can you talk me through how you feel that's true or how you get there, or is this like a, "we need a lot more time to do that"? No, that's fine.

Um, I think it just depends on what you mean. You said, um, "your view is you can 100 percent gather their knowledge of the mind-independent world." So if you meant, "Can I know things about the mind-independent world?" then I'm inclined to say yes. But if by "100 percent" you meant, "Can you be certain about things in the mind-independent world?" Well, what is knowledge, unfortunately? Now, what's that? What is knowledge if not certainty? No, otherwise. Well, that's a big, that's a big question. Um, if knowledge does require certainty, then since we can't be certain of the external world, it'll turn out we don't have knowledge of the external world. Gotcha. So, yeah, that's a real puzzle, and that's sort of the core of epistemology. Like, on the one hand, we seem to think that we know at least some things about the world, the world outside my mind. I know what my name is. I know that I own a car. I know where I am right now. I know that we're talking. Um, so ordinarily, we're very happy to say things like that. I know the capital of California. I know all sorts of things. But on the other hand, we are also tempted to say that knowledge requires certainty. So that if there's, you know, even, uh, a shred of a possibility that is inconsistent with what you're claiming, and you can't rule it out, then you don't really know that what you're claiming is true. Sure.

Can I, if I can just propose just one quick alternate thing and then you can keep going? Um, I'm not necessarily talking about like, um, like, "Could your car move to something like something like that?" Um, but more so that, um, uh, so if I look at a table, right? My senses, I'm gathering some sense data related to the table. I believe I'm perceiving a color, a shape, a place in space. Um, what I'm asking is that, like, are those, am I like, I think some people would say, um, "I don't even, this might be content, I don't know, but you can't actually have knowledge of any of those things." That, you know, the way that your brain interprets things and builds that concept is going to be something that might be completely untrue for a variety of reasons, or it might not refer to, like, a real thing. There might be some other thing going on. Um, but then I, but I've heard some other people, it sounds like you think that, like, "Well, no, you can probably look at something and gather, like, real or true information about that." Or is that a distinction that doesn't matter to you? Um, does that make any sense what I'm saying there?

I think, yeah, I think I understand. Um, so, yeah, here's basically the central worry of epistemology. When it comes to knowledge of the external world, the things that we're relying on when we form beliefs about the external world are the sorts of things that could be present even in hallucination, even if we were in the Matrix, even if we were dreaming. And you called them sense data, but they go by other names. Content. Subjective. Well, just let's just say experiences, impressions. Yeah, the sorts of things that can be present even in dreams, and they're present in hallucination, and they're present in the Matrix. And so the worry is, like, well, that's the only thing that I can be certain of. Um, yeah. Here's how H. Price wrote a famous book about perception, which is called *Perception*. And I think the first line was, "When I view a tomato, there is much that I can doubt." Sure. I couldn't. Which is one of the best opening lines. He said he could doubt that it's really there. He can doubt, uh, it might just be an illusion or a hallucination or something like that. But he said there's one thing he can know for sure: that, um, there's a red, bulgy sort of image before his mind. And that's the sense, that's the sense datum. So those are the only things that we have direct access to, our our experiences. That's what we can be certain about. And then if you think knowledge requires certainty, then you'll worry that I could never actually know that there's a chair in front of me, or there's a cup in my hand, or I'm in my car driving on the freeway right now. I can't really know that any of this is happening if you think that knowledge requires certainty.

Um, but here's another way to look at things. Um, knowledge doesn't require certainty. Thank goodness, because look at all these things I know that I recognize. I could be wrong about. I could be wrong about my own name. I feel like I know where I was born, but I'm sort of relying on my parents' testimony there. Um, I feel like I know that I'm sitting in my living room right now, but I could be dreaming or in the Matrix. So knowledge doesn't require certainty. Thank goodness, otherwise we wouldn't have much of it. And, um, here's another thing. Um, although we are relying on reports from our eyes when we survey the world around us, we're relying on these reports that we get in the form of experiences. In other cases, we're pretty okay with relying on reports. Um, so, for example, if you're watching, like, a sports game on TV, you feel like you can know what's happening on the sports game in the game. Like, "I see that my team is winning," or "I see that my team's losing." But, like, that is very much a case of indirect perception. We're just seeing images on a screen. But the hope is, like, if those images are an accurate representation of reality, then I am in a position to know what reality is like. Well, even on this view of perception that we've been considering, it's, it's sort of like just being stuck behind a monitor, stuck behind a screen, stuck behind a TV screen. Um, and as long as our experiences are accurately representing reality, then we can know what reality is like. Unfortunately, you know, we kind of have to do this all with fingers crossed. Like, we just kind of have to hope that our experiences are accurately representing reality. But if they are, then we can have knowledge of what reality is like, just like we can know what's happening in the game by watching it on TV. Gotcha.

So, yeah, that's, that's supposed to be some optimism for you, that, um, you can get knowledge about the world, what the world's like. The only caveat is, it's not going to be certain. Um, you might just have to, you might have to give up the, you might have to give up your commitment to the view that knowledge requires certainty. Okay.

Do you have, like, um, do people still believe in, like, justified true belief? Or are there like more exotic, like, theories of truth and everything now when people try to figure out, like, what is? Yeah.

Um, well, that was, that was a theory of knowledge. And, um, I mean, the reason that a lot of people have heard of that is, um, Edmund Gettier wrote a paper, I think in 1963, where he famously gave counterexamples to that, um, definition of knowledge. The definition on which knowledge is justified true belief. And the story is, like, he just, he was applying for tenure and he had to publish something, so he just sent this out real quick. Gotcha. He was really good at generating counterexamples. So he's like, "I hear some counterexamples," didn't think much of it. But then it, like, totally changed the field of epistemology. Um, because he tried to think of cases where you have a justified true belief, but it isn't knowledge. And just a simple case is, if your clock stopped, an otherwise reliable clock ran out of batteries and it stopped. But you happen to look at it at just the right time. You know, a stopped clock is right twice a day. You happen to look at it at just the right time, so that you get a true belief. Sure. And it looks like it's a justified true belief because, as far as you know, this is a reliable clock that's never let you down. So you have some good reason to trust the clock. Yeah.

I think in the paper, the example is like, if, um, Plato is running next to you, but you believe it to be Socrates. So you think that Socrates is running, when in reality it was Plato. But Socrates is actually running somewhere. So you seem to have met the qualifications to have, like, the justified true belief that Socrates is running, but you don't actually know that it's based off of, like, a bad or whatever is the way. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think that was in the original paper, but that is a, that is what we would call a Gettier case. Okay. Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. Maybe this is a reference. Okay. That's okay. It sounds like maybe somebody, somebody came up with another case like that. There are, once you realize the formula, the recipe, you can generate in a lot of Gettier cases. And I mean, it often happens that people get "Gettiered." People find themselves in Gettier cases where they have a justified true belief, but it turns out that they were right by accident or right by luck.

So the original question was, do people still accept this? Um, no, I think people have been basically convinced by Gettier. There might be a couple holdouts, some some edgelords, some contrarians who maybe want to defend the view. But the majority view, virtually a consensus, is that Gettier was right and knowledge has not justified true belief. And so, like, the last 50 years or so of epistemology has been trying to figure out what's missing. What is it that makes the difference between true belief and knowledge? And, yeah, I do, I do have a view on that. Um, yeah, and I think it's right. But it's tough to, tough to say that with confidence because there are so many rivals. Sure. But, yeah, I do, I do have a view on what knowledge is. Um, and it's just believing something because it's true. So the truth of your belief needs to figure into the explanation of why you hold the belief. So, like, in the case of an accurate clock, when the clock reads, um, 11:55, because it is 11:55, then you end up believing that it's 11:55, ultimately because it's true that it's 11:55. But when you look at a stopped clock that stopped at 11:55 last night or whatever, [Music] then what's happening is you believe it's 11:55 because you looked at your clock, which reads 11:55. But your clock reads 11:55 not because it is 11:55, but because it was 11:55 last night when it stopped. And so your belief is not connected to the truth in the right sort of way to be knowledge. So that's what I think knowledge is. And, um, the upshot is, to bring this back to what we were talking about, is you can have that in the case of visual perception, as long as the world's cooperating with your experiences. As long as, so like, I believe that I'm holding a cup right now because I'm having a certain kind of experience, visual experience and tactile experience. Hopefully, fingers crossed, the reason I'm having that experience is because I really am holding a cup. And in that case, the truth of my belief figures into the explanation of why I hold it. In the bad case, I would be believing there's a cup because I have this experience, but I'm having the experience because I'm being messed with by Mark Zuckerberg and I'm in a metaverse somewhere in a pod, um, and he's messing with me. That would be the bad case. And in that case, I wouldn't really know that there's a cup in my hand. Gotcha.

Okay. But, yeah, just notice this theory of knowledge doesn't require certainty. It just requires the right sort of connection to the truth. Gotcha. I feel like the difficult part is that last part. There's a lot of difficulty that's kind of smuggled in on the, "as long as it's really connected." Because that, I imagine, it's probably where a lot of people would fight, because how do you even know that? Right? Or could there be a mass delusion or some other thing? But, but, okay, gotcha. I think I roughly understand. Um, okay, just making sure we're, I'm, I'm having some level of understanding here so I can follow this conversation. Gender and, uh, sex. Um, if you don't agree that they're different, you're transphobic. Okay, obviously. No, I'm not gonna get into that with you. So, yeah. Um, let's see if I can try to not stumble into any of the pitfalls you go through in your paper. [Music] I would say that, um, here, okay, let me ask one other question and then we get into this. Um, do you think that there can be a difference between, like, a thing and like the function of a thing? And then here's like an example that I'll give you. Let's say that I, um, let's say that I place next to my door, I have like a long steel thing with like a sharp blade and like a handle. Okay. I place it next to the door. I could pick this up and swing it around, in which case we might call it a sword. Or I could, uh, maybe slide this in between like two metal beams and maybe we could call it some kind of like industrial nail or something, right? And then if you're not, if you haven't figured it out, right, I'm trying to map this on to like sex and gender, where there is an underlying fact of the matter about the thing. We can talk about the construction of the materials, the dimensions of it, steel pole. But the way that we would use it, that performance of that thing might be a little bit different, based on how it's wielded. It could be a nail, or it could be a sword. Do you agree that there is any kind of distinction there, or would you say that's like a meaningless distinction? It doesn't matter. Whatever. How would you deal with that? Now, I guess.

Yeah, I'm walking this time. This example was, you've got like an actual physical object that could be used in different ways. And so there's a difference between the object and what it is being used for. Sure. There's a difference between the thing and how the thing functions. Yeah. So that's certainly a difference. Um, but maybe I should just clarify my view. Because although, like, I, the title of the paper was "Evaluating Arguments for the Sex-Gender Distinction," and then I look at arguments for the sex-gender distinction. Unfortunately, in retrospect, I think that was misleading because that makes it sound like I think there's just one. Although in the introduction, I do think I like clarify what I mean. Um, and I try to say, like, I'm arguing against what Mari Mikola calls this the standard formulation of the sex-gender distinction, the garbage arguments. I would say maybe you would say that. But yeah, go ahead.

Well, it's just, um, the issue is just this: the word "gender" is used in many different ways. And so if you're, if the question is, "Is there a difference between sex and gender?" we would have to be clear on which sense of the word "gender" we're using, which concept of "gender" is being expressed by the word in this case. Um, because sometimes "gender" is just used as a synonym for sex. True. Um, recently, I, I, I was checking into what's going on with the biological sex of starfish because I wanted to maybe use that as an example. And the article I found talked about the "gender" of starfish. And like, that's obviously it's a, that's a weird use of the word "gender," but it's just using it as synonymous with biological sex. It's like a polite way of talking about biological sex. You don't have to say the word "sex," which some people find shocking. Sure. Or, if we've never been to the hospital, for a lot of the times, at least on old intake forms, sex and gender were kind of used, um, interchangeably. Exactly. Yeah. It was sort of a polite way of asking, "What's your sex?" Yeah. And you didn't have to use the word "sex" because this is a dirty word. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so sometimes "gender" just means biological sex. And then if the question is, "Is there a sex-gender distinction?" well, obviously not, because there, we're using "gender" to just mean biological sex. So no distinction. But I think more typically, um, what people have in mind when they use the word "gender" is they, they're, they're using it in a way that it refers either to femininity and masculinity, like the sort of expectations that are associated with the sexes. And in that Vosh debate, like a couple times, he, I think he was expressing this sort of, this sort of view. He said, "What it is to be a woman is to, um, subscribe to the archetype." And then when you ask about the archetype, you get this list of ways females are. So, yeah, sometimes we just mean femininity and masculinity. And then if the question is, "Is there a difference between femininity and being female, and masculinity and being male?" Yeah, in both cases, there's obviously a difference. It's one thing to be male, it's another thing to be masculine. It's possible to be a male and not masculine. Possible to be a female and not feminine. You could be a male and be feminine. You could be a female and be masculine. So if that's what we mean by "gender," then yeah, there is a sex-gender distinction, obviously. Um, so those first two senses of the word "gender," it's not really controversial to say there is a sex-gender distinction. What's a little more controversial, and what I wrote the paper about, was another use of the word "gender," where it's sort of the genus of these two words, "man" and "woman," and maybe also "boy" and "girl." And we're told what these words have in common is they're all gender terms. These are genders. And maybe there are more, but there are at least this many. And so the claim then, when, if you were to say there's a sex-gender distinction, and by "gender" I am talking about men and women, then what you're claiming typically is, "Man is not defined in terms of being male." There's no necessary connection between being a man and being male, and there's no necessary connection between being a woman and being female. That's what's being claimed in that case. And that's, uh, that's the view I was, um, challenging in that paper. I was, I was wondering why, why would people think this? What are the arguments in favor of this? And I tried to respond to all the arguments. Gotcha.

Okay. Well, this is pretty boring then. I should have looked for your positive positions other than, I guess, for your ch. So then, insofar as like, um, uh, insofar as it like gender is, um, well, wait, is it boring? I mean, well, it depends on what you think, uh, um, or what I meant boring. I mean, I wouldn't, I'm sorry, I shouldn't say boring. That's great. When I say boring, it sounds like then we might probably largely agree with each other. Well, that's what I was wondering. It depends on, um, what you think the word "man" refers to. What is the true definition of man? What's the analysis? What, yeah? And that, that's what the debate is about, I guess. And similarly with the word "woman." Yeah. Then I, I feel like when I think of those arguments, then I would also call those boring because I feel like, um, I feel like that field is going to be wrought with normativity and not, not any intelligent conversation. Um, so, for instance, like when we say, like, "Well, what does man or woman refer to?" Um, my go-to would be is probably going to be contextual, right? Like, if I say that, like, "My father is a man," or "My mother is a woman," I'm probably not using like a rigid, hardcore scientific, "I've tested the chromosomes, I've seen the genitals, I know this to be 100 percent right." It's probably going to be more of a contemporary layman reference to matter. Or if I go into a room full of people and I'm thinking, like, "That's a man," that's going to be different than, like, on a doctor's form or on some 23andMe test, maybe. But then I know a lot of people, um, have very big, like, moral attachments to how these words are used. Such that the conversation has moved so far that people would even say that, um, "a trans woman is a biological female because she identifies as such." And like, I might agree with that, but only if we've worked really hard to build out, like, "Well, what do you mean when you say biological? What do you mean when you say female? What do you mean when you say this?" Because at the end of the day, I feel like all of these are going to be semantic fights, rather than more interesting fights over the concepts themselves, if that makes any sense.

Yeah, I think I understand. Um, just going to write that down real quick. So, um, you said two things and, yeah, go for it. You don't mind if I respond really quick. One thing was, um, you said, "Well, maybe the word 'man' is contextual." If you ask me what the word 'man' means, it's going to depend on the context because, you know, in most contexts, if I walk into a room and say, "That's a man," "That's a woman," you said something like, um, "I'm not testing people's chromosomes, I'm not testing the hormones or something." So I probably don't have in mind a biological definition. So, um, this is something that came up in the debate with Vosh as well. And I think actually, um, this is a very, it's a very common thought. And I saw it recently expressed by this, I don't know if you know this guy. I think he used to be at Vox, but then there was some falling out. Matthew Iglesias, I think is his name. Oh, yeah. We'll see him on Twitter a lot. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, he, he posted something like this, like, "Well, obviously 'man' or 'woman' can't mean an adult human female because, you know, we hardly ever..." I don't want to misquote him. He deleted the tweet because of all the blowback he got. But what he said was something like, "Well, obviously 'man' or 'woman' can't mean anything biological because we never test people's chromosomes and stuff." And then, um, this was big in the philosophy world because, um, this is just like a classic example from Kripke again. It is possible that a word refers to something even though, like, when we use the word, we don't have, it's gonna, this word is gonna trigger people, we don't have its nature in mind. We don't have its, its essence in mind. And that's, that's actually the reason why I started bringing up the water H2O example with Vosh because he had said something like this in his criticism of the biological definition. He said, like, "Obviously we don't test people's chromosomes and whatnot." I was trying to bring up water to point out that like, people used the word "water" long before they had any idea of chemistry. And the whole time, unbeknownst to them, it referred to H2O, even though they weren't like getting out their chemistry equipment and testing the CI. Yes, there is indeed hydrogen and oxygen here. Nevertheless, the word "water" referred to H2O, and that's what water always was. And so this, the way that philosophers sometimes point put this is they say, "Meaning ain't in the head." Meaning ain't in the head. You might have something in your mind when you deploy a word that fixes the reference of the word. It reflects your understanding of what the word refers to, but your conception of what the word refers to may be totally mistaken. And that's why I brought up Aristotle. He used a word like "water" that referred to H2O, but in his mind, he had a mistaken conception. He thought it was an element, not a molecule. Um, something similar happens with gold. You know, people have long referred to gold and long talked about gold way before we knew about protons, way before we knew what gold was essentially. We talked about gold. So something similar might be happening with words like "woman," "man," "male," and "female." Those words may be referring to something that is kind of obscure to us. And I said, "kind of," but it could be totally obscure to us. We're not even sure what this thing is. Um, nevertheless, the word refers to that type of thing. Um, and only through scientific investigation will we figure out what, what we've been referring to. I'll just say one more thing really quick and then I'll, yeah. Um, I think this is happening when physicists talk about dark matter, right? Or like dark energy. They've introduced a term, a name for something that they don't, they don't know what it is. They kind of know what it does, and they have reason to think it exists, but they don't know what it is. But nevertheless, like this phrase "dark matter" and "dark energy" is referring to something we don't know yet. And our conception of it is very crude and possibly mistaken. And only through further scientific investigation when we figure out what this stuff really is. So anyway, that's, that could be the way. I mean, that's a, that's a pretty far-out example at like the boundaries of physics. And it sounds silly to compare that to the word like "man" and "woman," but that is just the way words ordinarily function. They, they have reference, and what they refer to, um, could vary wildly from the conception we have in our head. Gotcha.

To, okay, I'll make an analogy. Listen to me, if I understand what you're saying. So, um, what you're kind of saying is that, like, um, so my initial formulation was, "Well, if I identify that person as a man or a woman, I'm not actually testing their chromosomes or checking for genitals." And you're saying, "Sure, that might be true, but that doesn't mean that your concept of 'man' or 'woman,' the way that you identify them, doesn't ultimately hopefully refer to that, just because you're not testing it." Much the same way that if I see a mountain and I go, "Oh, look, that's a mountain," it would be silly to correct me and say, "Well, hold on, that's like just the image of the mountain. You haven't gone there and checked it, right? It could be a giant board that is using a trick to think, right? You don't know that." That's like, "Okay, well, maybe. But I mean, I still think it's a mountain that's made of rock and everything, right?" You're kind of saying that. Yeah. And then maybe a better example is gold, because like when we identify gold, rarely do we actually do like a chemical analysis. We just look for shiny, lustrous, soft, yellow metal. Those are the, those are the typical appearances of gold that we use. And we realize, like, this is fallible because there's fool's gold. Sometimes we might make mistakes. So we're just using sort of typical appearances that we think are good indicators of the presence of real gold, recognizing we may be wrong. So, similarly, when we classify people as men and women, or as males and females, we rely on characteristic appearances or typical appearances, realizing full well that, you know, we may occasionally make mistakes. But that's not to say that the word "man" just means these appearances. The word "woman" just means these appearances. No, just like in the Molina case, like you might have a conception of Molina in your mind, wife, blonde, Swedish, but that's not what the name means. The name actually means it refers to that person, although you rely on sort of typical appearances in order to use the name. That's not what the name actually means. Yeah.

The second thing you had said was, um, and this one I think is more pertinent. You said, "Well, in this area where people are having debates about what the meaning of the word 'woman' is and so on, it seems like there are a lot of moral considerations, and it's just a semantic fight." You said, and I think that's right. So, um, this one paper of mine that you read about "Evaluating Arguments for the Sex-Gender Distinction," that was devoted to a certain kind of person who's engaged in a particular kind of project. And I tried to make it clear in the paper, it was for people who think that the dictionary has always been wrong. Women, that word "woman" never actually referred to adult human females. It's always referred to something else, like a social role or something else. And they give arguments for that conclusion. And so I was looking at those arguments in that paper. But I wrote a second paper, um, called "Some Internal Problems for Revisionary Gender Concepts." And there I had in mind the people who self-consciously admit they're aware of the fact that the word "woman" as typically used in dominant mainstream contexts expresses a concept that refers to adult human females. So they admit that's, that's how things have been going. But they think this is a problem and it should be rectified, should be remedied, should be ameliorated, as we talked about in that debate. And so they're very aware and intentional about the fact that they want to use the old word "woman," but they want to express a new concept. Or the way they might put it is, they want to engineer the old concept and change it so that it no longer refers to adult human females, but it refers to something else. So there's an open question: Are they changing the old concept so it has a new referent, or are they just introducing a new concept? It doesn't really matter for our purposes. But they are aware of the fact that some engineering is going on here, some revision is going on here. And they're explicit that they're doing it for moral reasons, because they think this will advance the cause of social justice, this will advance the cause of feminism. And so, as I said in the Q&A of the debate with Vosh, I think that, um, Vosh is engaged in this sort of thing, or at least when made aware of this distinction, I think Vosh would agree. Like, "Yes," and I think that's what he means when he says, like, "All definitions are prescriptive." Yeah. I think one of the things is that basically we should just make all the words mean the things that we want to make ourselves feel the best as we can have. Have you ever, do you know who C.S. Lewis is?

Do I know who C.S. Lewis is? I'm very familiar with. Have you read *Mere Christianity*? Yes. It reminds me a lot of, um, in the beginning when he talks about the, the word "gentleman." How the definition, don't remember a conversation of gentlemen, but okay. So that has changed. Yeah. Basically, that "gentleman" used to refer to a man with land and, I think, a coat of arms. And eventually, through time, "gentlemen" came to refer to a nice man. And I think he talks about how this is like, it's bad to destroy terms like this because eventually, what language does is words just convey an author's feeling about a thing, and it doesn't actually convey any more meaning in and of itself. Such that now when people say "gentlemen," we don't gain any new information, but instead, we've destroyed the word "gentleman" and now we've just used that word to mean "I like this person." And that, when you walk forward with this, it seems like people want to do this sometimes with a lot of language. To wear, not to give anything about my views of trans people, but people say like, "Well, we should refer to them as women or man." I was like, "Well, why?" It's like, "Well, because we don't hate trans people." It's like, "Well, okay, but like, do we have to change all the definitions of all the words to show that we don't hate a group of people?" Like, is that, that seems like kind of a strange way to go about constructing language, I guess. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, so that's interesting. I want to go back and read that little passage of Lewis, but, um, just to make clear my own view. But it sounds like what Lewis was saying was, in this case, we have a change in language that cost us something. We sort of, yes, something. Language has gotten worse in a certain respect. We've lost some expressive power that we used to have. And that definitely happened. Yeah. I was gonna say that. Right. I was gonna say that English has been, at least the grammar of English was vastly simplified. My understanding is largely by the Vikings, who were like learning it as a second language, and they just brutally tore it down to its bare essentials. And we, we lost a lot of cases and we lost some expressive power, but it became much simpler. But there might be cases like that where language has changed and lost something valuable. But I think that there are other ways in which our language has changed that have been improvements, for sure. Like, how could anyone argue with that? Um, we've introduced new terms, we've introduced new distinctions, we've borrowed words from other languages that have been very useful. And so, um, I don't, yeah, I don't want anyone to think my position is just like anti-change in language because that's not the case. I'm totally open to the idea that certain changes in language are beneficial. And I, I found myself doing this. Um, when my daughter was young, we would read stories, like children's books, and some of them were from a long time ago. And, um, one book I was reading with her just often used words like "fireman" and "policeman." This is just a small example, but, um, although like I wouldn't consider myself woke by any means, um, I, I found myself changing the word when I read it to her because I realized that if she just hears "fireman," "policeman," she will be internalizing the excusable. Yeah, she's going to get the message like, "This is a profession just for men." Even though I don't think that's literally entailed, but that's certainly suggested. And so I would change it to "firefighter" and "police officer." And I think that that's a kind of change in language that I think has been beneficial and good. So my objection to revisionary gender concepts isn't that they're revisionary. I think it's okay to borrow old words, express new concepts, and this could be a genuine improvement. My worry was just all of these proposals for what the word should mean now, for what concept should be expressed by these words, it looks like they're failing to live up to the standards of these philosophers themselves because the primary standard was, "Whatever definition we come up with, better respect everybody's self-identification." So if you're, if you identify as a woman, so we're coming up with a new revisionary definition of "woman," it's not going to be "adult human female," it's going to be something else. And a constraint on the project was, it better turn out that if somebody identifies as a woman, they meet this definition. Yeah. And anybody who meets this definition better identify as a woman. We don't want like trans men to meet the definition. We don't want non-binary individuals to meet the definition because they don't identify as women. So that was like a constraint on the project. It needs to map onto everybody's self-ID. And, um, I guess the, the drum I keep beating in my papers is, this is impossible. We gotta stop doing this because there's no property that you could describe, there's no definition you could come up with that's gonna pick out a property that somebody's gonna have if and only if she identifies as having it. That's impossible. There's no property like that. Um, the circularity is kind of absurd. You're not, at some point, you're no longer expressing anything. I would say it's like a destructive change in language. If you are what you identify as, then you could literally identify as anything. But the identification as such, since it has no other requirements besides the identification of it, then it means nothing. Yeah.

Well, well, here's something I've discovered, and I'll try to convey it, but it's a little bit, it's difficult for me to express because it's still kind of new to me. But, um, here's something I discovered working in this area. Like, I've had to think more about what's wrong with circular definitions than I ever had had to think about it before in my life. Like, you used to be in philosophy, you'd just say, "That definition's circular," and everyone would agree, "Ah, yes, that is bad. Let us fix it." But in this literature, people are kind of like resisting it. They're like, "Well, what's so, what's wrong with that?" "Oh, tell me what's wrong with a circular definition." Most irritating. They give the definition of, like, "Well, you can have any name you want, can't you?" I hate that. But, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. We can. Yeah, I was going to propose that we think of like potential counterexamples in a second. But, um, here's the distinction I was going to make. Um, so this is certainly a problem if you try to communicate to me this revisionary definition. You say, "Hey, I came up with a new concept to be expressed by the word 'woman.' I think we should pick out a different set of properties, not being adults, being human, and being female. I want to pick out a different set of properties with the word 'woman.'" And I say, "Okay, what properties are these?" "Oh, it's the property of identifying as a woman in the very same sense that I came up with." So now you were trying to tell me the sense that you came up with, but you used the word that, like, I didn't understand yet in your description of what these properties were. So definitely, that's not going to help me understand what this property is because of the circularity. So as a certain kind of performance, it's going to fail. The performance was, "I will communicate to you the meaning of this word." That failed because of circularity. But I think the issue's a little more complicated than that because.

It is possible for a word to get a meaning in another way. So, I mean, most of the words when most of the words we have, when we learn them, we weren't given a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for their application. That's actually pretty rare.

Most of the words, when we learn them, we learn them by pointing. You know, our mother, our father, our siblings would say, like, uh, wall, chair, cup, and so on. And so we were never given a list of necessary and sufficient conditions. But somehow we acquired the concept, and we, we came to grasp it, and we competently use it. Okay.

Um, so here's the, here's the little wrinkle in this conversation. It could be that somehow a woman has a meaning in these trans-inclusive and queer communities. It doesn't mean adult human female. It means something else. When we ask what it means, we don't learn because of the circulate. We can't be told because of the circularity. But maybe it means something nonetheless. Okay.

So that's the difficult part. That's kind of hard to understand. A word can have a meaning that cannot be conveyed to you, at least through necessary and sufficient conditions. And maybe, uh, maybe a good example is one you brought up earlier with, like, colors. Trying to communicate what a color is to a colorblind person. You can't do that. You can't convey it in words. But nevertheless, like, our color words do have a meaning, and we know what they mean. But we can't convey it to somebody who hasn't already seen the colors. Okay.

So, similarly, in these trans-inclusive and queer communities, the word woman may have a meaning. And it may just be that they're having a hard time communicating it to people who aren't already initiated in this name-using practice. Okay.

But now, here's a further claim. Okay. Uh, someone's a woman in these communities if and only if she identifies as a woman. We don't know, or at least I am not sure, what woman means in this sentence. "Someone is a woman if and only if she identifies as a woman." I'm not sure what woman means. But I think I'm still in a position to know this can't be true. Whatever woman means, um, there's just, there's no feature you could have. There's no property you could have if and only if you identify as having it. Because, like, it's possible to have a property and miss it, miss that you have it, not notice it. Possible to think you have a property in life. Well, unless the property is just the identification itself, right? Which seems to be the argument. Buckle up.

Um, so the proposal was, um, maybe I should write it down. S is a woman if and only if S identifies as a woman. I don't know if you can see this, but, um, we're told there's this property, being a woman. You see that? Okay. I've written down that as you'd like to, but yeah, I see it. I see what you're saying. "As a woman if and only if." So, iff is "if and only if." Um, S identifies as a woman. And then, um, we're told, well, here's what it is to be a woman. It's to identify as a woman. That's what you should really put in there. So, set aside the circularity where we're still not sure what that means. Sure. Then what this if and only if claim is saying is, "S is someone who identifies as a woman if and only if S identifies as someone who identifies as a woman." So we would have this little iteration here. Does that make sense? So, and that would still be false. That would still be false.

So even if you tell me, "Oh, that would be, oh, hold on now. You're, you're stretching my little bit of prop logic." I know. I'm sorry. Okay. Yeah. So you're using some sort of logical transformation over that. I'm assuming is going to hold true in every other prop logic case. What you're saying here, it seems to break the example. Can you walk me through that? Here's, here's a simple example. So, like, um, I think I use this in the debate. Being tall. Yes. So think about that feature. Is it true that someone is tall if and only if she identifies as being tall? Okay. Obviously not. You can be tall and not identify as being tall. You can identify as being tall and not be tall. Sure. So, so that's the simple case.

Now, this is, this is going to be a bit of a mind-cracker. But suppose somebody says, "What about this, um, feature? Could be identifying as a woman. But let's use a simpler case. Identifying as a Packers fan or something like that. Just some way you might identify. Okay. Identifying as Californian. Let's do that. Identifying as Californian. So that's a feature that I have. I identify as Californian. So now, what we're wondering is, is it possible to identify as Californian without, um, having this feature, identifying as identifying as Californian? So that's why it's difficult to evaluate.

Um, maybe I should write it. What? So you're saying that it's, if you identify as a Californian, is that just, give me the, give me the raw logic, I guess, instead of? Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm doing. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Maybe I don't know if you can see this, but, okay. So here's the general form of the principle that we're trying to consider. Okay. So in the brackets, you just put whatever feature you want. Okay. And we're wondering, is there anything I could put in these brackets that would make this biconditional true? Um, if and only if statement. So the if and only if means, if this, if the left side is true, the right side is true. Also, if the right side is true, the left side is true. That's what if and only if means. It's like an equal sign. Okay. Is this like the, is this the formalized prop logic version of the principle of explosion? Is that where we're? No, no. This isn't. Okay. Gotcha. All right. Keep going.

Everything. This is just like a proposal. We're told, um, there's a feature that would make this sentence true. Okay. There's some property or characteristic you could put in this bracket such that somebody has the feature if and only if the person identifies as having it. Okay. Okay. So we did it. The simple case was like being tall. Okay. What if I put "tall" in there? Then the sentence is, "S is tall if and only if S identifies as tall." And we're like, "Oh, wait. That's false." No, it's not true that you're tall if and only if you identify as being tall. Okay. And then people propose other examples, like, um, "Well, maybe we should, well, isn't that because, hold on, I'm just trying to, um, because I'm worrying that the reason why these are breaking down have nothing to do with the logic, but more to do with what we're putting in the brackets. So like, the tall thing doesn't work because where we escape the equation and we appeal to some like, like external prop logic thing. Whereas if we're being strictly logical, like if we say that woman is by definition somebody that only only identifies as a woman, if you plug that in there, and that is the definition, why doesn't that work? Or why would that not work? Yeah.

All right. So I don't think the problem is, um, the feature that we put in there. The problem is that just what's going on on the left side is different from what's going on on the right side. It's one thing to be a certain way. It's another thing to identify as that way. Well, but isn't that just what if, what if being the certain way was identifying as a certain way? Yeah, yeah. So put it in here. Okay. Put "identifies as a woman" in here. Okay. And then what the sentence is saying is, could it be the case? Well, let's not do "identifies as a woman." Can we just do "identifies as tall" really quick? Sure. And then maybe we'll work our way up to "identifies as a woman." Okay. The only reason I don't like "tall" is because "tall" has properties that are clearly like, oh, like a tall, like a six-foot-five person, that person is tall. Whereas the woman thing is obviously, that's the, what is the contention here, right? Not between you and me, but what the contention would be between other people. Say, "Well, how about just, I just, I just want to use a word that, like, we're all clear on what it means." And if you don't like "tall," maybe you're, but you're looking for something that's more like, as people say, an identifier or something like that. Um, a gamer. How about a gamer? How about a gamer? Can we do that? Okay. Being gamer. Being a gamer. Being a gamer. Being a Californian. Being feminine. Let's do "being a gamer." Um, can you just tell me really quick, so I make sure I understand, what is a gamer? That's somebody who identifies as a gamer. Is it? Is it though? Well, it kind of is because some people say, "I play my cell phone." Well, because now my worry is, when you ask that, you're the reason why the logic is starting to break down now has nothing to do with the actual logical statement. It has to do with like our kind of the external baggage that we're bringing in to to the statement. Like somebody might say like, oh, like, um, one plus one equals three. And you're like, "Well, what do you mean by one plus one equals three? That doesn't make any sense." Oh, well, because when two sheep come together, three can leave because they had a child. It's like, "Okay, oh, well, I guess." But that doesn't really do with one plus one equals three. That has to do with like external content being brought in. Much the same way that like somebody's saying that they identify as being tall, um, but we can see that doesn't work because just because somebody identifies as being tall doesn't mean that they necessarily are. Well, yeah, kinda. But the problem here is we're talking about a definition that is literally circular. Right? Like the tall thing doesn't seem to be a circular definition. The identifying as a woman thing does seem to be circular, which changes. I, I, it feels like to me, changes how the logic would work because of the external content of the definition, not because of the logic itself breaking down. But I could be wrong on that. Yeah.

Well, um, we can go with the gamer one if you want to. Sure. Go, go for it. I just, I mean, people have proposed this, okay, before. I think maybe even Vash has proposed this as an example of a term that's defined in terms of self-identification. But I don't think that's right. If you just, let's start with this. I know this isn't the example you wanted. But what if we put "a gamer" in there? Just as "a gamer." Is it really true that someone's a gamer if and only if he identifies as a gamer or she identifies as a gamer? Couldn't somebody identify as a gamer, even sincerely, but just misunderstand what it is to be a gamer? And couldn't there be someone who's a gamer but is so, um, immersed in the game and so obsessed with the games that he or she has never taken the time to reflect on the fact that he's a gamer, that she's a gamer, and doesn't identify as a gamer? Yeah.

I mean, I would say that's true. But that, but, but I think that's the issue. This is the subject of the debate when it comes to women or man. Like the content has been completely removed, and it's just, if you ID as such. Because, because I've explored these conversations even more formally with some of these people, and they will literally tell you, and this is why the recursiveness of the circularity is silly, they'll say, like, "You can never be wrong. Whatever you identify as, you always are." And there are no incorrect statements insofar as your identification goes, and there's no external way to validate or invalidate it. So anybody can literally identify as, some people will say, as anything. But we'll say, anybody can identify as man or woman, and just by them having the thought, they're automatically correct about it. But that's because man or woman, all of the content has been removed from what those are, and it's been reduced only to a self-ID thing, I think, is the issue. Yeah.

Well, I think what we're talking about now is very relevant to that. Because what I'm trying to prove is that can't possibly be right unless what they mean is, well, when I'm identifying as a woman, what I'm doing is like attributing a certain English word to myself. Um, but that, but it seems to be the case. You say that, like, that's unsatisfying, and I would agree with you. But the problem is, the problem is, I think if you push anybody on that, I think they'll say it because if you, because when you, this is kind of, this, this is actually the drama right now with the whole, "What is a woman?" Because nobody wants to give any content to that word at all. They don't want to give any qualifiers or anything. Even, even whether you're talking about sex or gender. Vosh used that term a few times, "hormone wash" or whatever, where you were saying, "Well, even biologically, a woman can be anything. It's all arbitrary." Or other people will say, "In terms of the gender performances, a woman or man could do anything." So it does feel like people really truly do want it to be just a word. Which I think goes back to the thing that I originally said was, I feel like circularity is bad, um, because it becomes meaningless. If something is circular by definition, then you've, it, it doesn't convey a thought, right? It almost becomes like a private word of sort. Like, "Oh, like, I'm a gazuba." And it's like, "What is a gazuba?" "Well, you know, it's like, we gazuba. That's just what we do." And it's like, "Okay, well, this means absolutely [ __ ] nothing to me because you've given me nothing. It's circular. It doesn't mean anything. You might as well not have the word." It's the issue that I kind of, yeah.

Okay. Well, let me just wrap one thing up with this. Yeah. Go for it. Again, we can talk about, um, what if we define self-identification in terms of attributing a word to yourself? Um, so, yeah, do you want to come back to that really quick? But yeah, go ahead and just to put a little bow on this one. So I think we agree that being a gamer isn't just a matter of self-identification because a gamer may fail to identify as a gamer, and somebody may misidentify as a gamer. But let's put now in this bracket, "identifies as a gamer." Okay. I'll just write this, "ids as a gamer." Then the sentence we're evaluating is, "Is it the case that someone identifies as a gamer if and only if the person, the person identifies as?" And now what we have to put in this bracket is the same thing we put in here. And so we need to wonder, is it possible to identify as someone who identifies as a gamer? And what is the, what's the problem? What's the logical problem with that statement? Yeah.

Well, I wouldn't describe it as a logical problem. I would just say it's, it's broadly logically impossible because, um, it's, and this is, this is the part that's kind of hard to think through because we're like two levels into this now. But we'd have to ask, could someone identify as someone who identifies as a gamer without actually identifying as a gamer? Or in the other direction, could someone identify as a gamer without identifying as someone who identifies as a gamer? And I think there, it's, that's probably the clearest counter. Would you not do that? Even if you don't form, even if you don't like, verbalize it or do it like casually, um, would, would the argument not be that you're logically committed to the infinite regressive or recursive identifications by by uttering one? Or no, that like, even if you don't say it, you're kind of logically committed to it? Maybe. But I mean, what we have going on here on the right side is like an actual, like, mental act. You need to actually do something in order to satisfy this right side of the biconditional. You need to identify in a certain way, form a certain belief. Um, yeah. And so couldn't you meet someone who, you ask them, "Are you a gamer?" They say, "Yes." And you're like, "Okay, so they ID as a gamer." And now you ask them, "Have you ever identified as someone who identifies as a gamer? I know you identify as a gamer, but have you identified as someone who identifies as a gamer?" And wouldn't, wouldn't it be totally possible for someone to say, "Like, no, I guess I've never done that because that's like an insane thing to do." I mean, like, they could, they could say that. But then I feel like you could come in and say, "Well, you, in a way, like, you, you're logically committed to that." No. Like, um, if somebody's really committed to it, like if somebody says, like, um, like, "Do you think that you've ever been to, um, do you exist in California?" And somebody's like, "Yeah, I exist in California." And it's like, "Okay, well, um, do you, [ __ ] how could I, [ __ ] hold on, I suck at this. Um, like somebody could, you could theoretically say, like, "Well, in order to exist in California, you also have to exist on planet Earth. And have you thought about existing on Earth before existing in California?" And it's like, "If you haven't, can you say you exist in California?" Like, it feels like that, that statement of like, "I identify as a gamer," logically would entail identifying as somebody who identifies as a gamer. It feels like that's, it's logically entailed in it, which would then, and like that. But I could, I guess I could just be wrong. But it feels like you're kind of committed. Maybe we should just go back to the simpler case real quick and maybe we agree that like being Californian doesn't logically entail that you identify as being Californian. You maybe should, if you're rational and you and you're omniscient. Um, but there are, there are ways that I am that, like, I don't identify as being because there are many ways that I am that I just don't know that I am. Now, like, maybe it's possible. This is, I don't know why this came to mind. This is kind of dark. But I might have a tumor growing in me right now, right? Like that's the way cancer works. And so maybe I'm the kind of person who has a cancer, but I don't identify that way because I'm just not aware of it. Um, yeah, that's kind of a dark example. Sorry to dampen the mood. Um, but maybe there are other other examples of ways you are. I guess, like the, that statement. I don't know if we're getting lost in levels and I might be, but, um, the, um, so like you're saying they're like, "Well, maybe if they're rational." I mean, like, I'm evaluating logical statements. I'm always assuming that like everything plugged into the statement is perfect, right? Perfectly rational. Um, so it, like, it feels like it. Yeah, I, I guess I feel like you're, you're logically committed to it. I don't think, I don't know if I get out of that mentally. I might be. That might be my prison. That somebody that identifies as a gamer necessarily is somebody who identifies as somebody that identifies as a gamer, even if you don't have that thought or think it, you're just kind of logically committed to the position by the first position you've taken. You might be personally irrational or you might not conceive of that, but you have performed that like logical action, um, by virtue of the first thing you've done. Seems to be the case. So yeah, I don't think there is that entailment. It's no matter what property you have, there's no guarantee that you're going to identify as having that property. If only because there are properties you have that you just don't know about. Um, but I don't even think that having a property entails that, um, you should identify as having it. But, um, or I guess what you said was, if you identify as a gamer, then what's entailed is you are someone who identifies as someone who identifies as a gamer. Is that what she said? Yeah. I'm, I feel like I'm getting kind of lost now too. But, um, is is the reason why this biconditional breaks is because the thing we're putting in the box is "you identify as"? Or would we, if we put anything in this box, does it break the biconditional? That can't be the case, right? Because I think it breaks not because of what goes in the box, and not because there's any logical impossibility here. It's just because over here on the left side, we just have a claim about how you are. Okay. S is just standing for any subject. I hope that was clear. Okay. S is for any subject. So here we're just talking about how you are. Okay. And here we talk about how you identify. And those are just two different things. It's one thing to be a certain way. It's another thing to identify as being that way. Identifying is like an extra step. It requires noticing that you're that way, maybe believing that you're that way.

Oh, hold on. Wait. I just had a [ __ ] Jimmy Neutron. Okay. Okay. Okay. Maybe, maybe I'm coming along a little bit more. I kind of understand what you're saying. Um, I'm gonna try to rephrase this. So if I say that in order to be a thing, oh my god, my brain just expanded three sizes. If I said that in order to be a thing, I must identify as the thing, and the problem is that in order to be that thing, I must identify as the thing, and in order to be that thing, I'm expanding the brackets, I have to identify as that thing. You're basically, the condition that you've created is that, well, if you want to say that in order to be X, you have to identify as being X, that means that in order to be that person that identifies as X, you have to identify as the person that I've done. And these are things that it doesn't seem like we're ever actually doing. Nobody's actually doing this. So the biconditional breaks. The first statement is that kind of right? Or, um, yeah, that's the way I think you were thinking about it. And that might be right. It might be launching you on like a super task. It might be requiring that you have infinitely many identifications, and you could never actually do that, and nobody really does that. But I was just pointing out that, um, even if it doesn't launch that kind of infinite regress and require you to complete a super task, require you to complete an infinite number of tasks, again, if you just think about like the ordinary case, it's, well, just let's switch from identification to maybe some other kind of mental state you could have. Desiring. Imagine somebody proposed that there's a property you can have if and only if you desire as you desire to have that property. Okay. And there, I think, well, I don't think there is any property like that. Um, it's one thing to be tall. It's another thing to desire to be tall. It's one thing to be Californian. It's another thing to desire to be Californian. Um, so I think the same thing happens no matter what mental state we put in there. Identification, believing, desiring, intending. It's just the fact is, it's one thing to have a property, and then it's just a different thing to perform this mental action. Okay.

Okay. I think I understand more too. So I think my issue earlier might have been as well that I was trying to cash out identifying as like a subconscious thing that you do, and it just is, that's what I meant when I said logically entail, whereas you're saying that identification is kind of an extra step that we don't seem to do all the time. And that's what maybe the difference was. Yeah.

So I think if it is a subconscious thing, we might launch this infinite regress, and then pretty soon people's brains are just going to run out of space, and they can't identify as infinitely many things. But maybe another way to see the problem, um, I mean, here's how I originally saw it. Um, I just noticed that all the revisionary definitions that were being proposed by trans-inclusive philosophers, they, they all had a flaw. They, um, they all excluded some trans women and or included some trans men or included some non-binary individuals. Just no matter what definition these philosophers came up with, they couldn't draw the boundaries just right. So an example that I used in the debate was that social role view, according to which to be a woman is to occupy a certain position in society. Maybe, yeah, crude example, I don't know. You, you wear dresses or something like that. Or a more sophistic, more sophisticated example is, you are oppressed along some dimension because you are observed or imagined to be female. That was Sally Haslinger's view. Now, what kept happening is people pointed out counter-examples. Like, couldn't somebody be a trans woman, identify as a woman, but be assigned male at birth? Couldn't somebody be a trans woman and yet not occupy this position? This is like the classic kind of turf argument. That they would argue that trans women in some ways are trying to reap some of the benefits of identifying as a woman, but they hadn't experienced the prior oppression that would give them. That's like a, no, I'm sorry. When I said "turf," I don't mean to make it bad. That's like, but that would be one of the arguments that they get for why it's a little bit unfair for a trans woman to identify as such without that shared history of oppression. It's like one argument. Well, you know, I hear what you're saying, but I think that's a different definition. I was just surprised when you said "turf argument" because actually the sort of objection that I just gave to that social worldview has been given by other trans-inclusive philosophers, and it's kind of an objection from the more progressive position. Like, this revisionary definition is not progressive enough, okay, because it excludes some trans women. Um, but I agree, there's like another definition that is kind of similar that I think, for example, Eleanor Burkett famously or infamously proposed, at least at one time in a New York Times editorial, not not so many years ago. And the definition was, to be a woman, you have to have had certain sorts of life experiences. You have to have suffered certain indignities and relished certain courtesies. And what she had in mind was like being catcalled. That's one of the indignities. One of the courtesies is maybe having doors open for you. But the idea was, being a woman is a matter of having certain experiences. And then her conclusion was, um, trans women have at least not all of them, um, have had the right sort of experiences in order to be women. Um, but Eleanor Burkett was willing to like accept that implication. Um, so yeah, I guess when you said a "turfy kind of argument," you had that in mind. But just going back to the "oppressed on sex-marked grounds" one, that's a very old definition. I think Gail Rubin proposed it. Sally Hesslinger proposed it. But just recently, it has been pointed out that this is going to exclude some trans women. Um, and I think it's, I mean, what I came to find out is, we're just kind of doing this thing again. We're pointing out that somebody could identify as a woman without meeting this proposed definition of woman. You could identify as a woman without occupying the right position in society, without being oppressed on sex-marked grounds. And actually, I mean, Sally Hesslinger gave up her view because of this sort of objection. A similar kind of thing happened to Judith Butler. Judith Butler is famous for saying like, gender is a certain kind of performativity. You regularly and for the most part present in a certain way, perform in a certain way. So people have pointed out that, you know, not all trans women do that. And there may be some, you know, trans fem non-binary people who present in a feminine way regularly and for the most part, but don't identify as women. And so Judith Butler, won't your definition from the '90s exclude some trans women, include some non-binary individuals? And my understanding is Judith Butler has conceded that and abandoned this definition that made her famous, um, in favor of like respecting everybody's self-ID. But again, I think what's happening here is we, we've just, we've realized through trial and error that whatever definition we put in there isn't going to co-vary with identifying as a woman. Um, so that's what we keep noticing. And so, yeah, my most recent paper, "Why the Trans Inclusion Problem Cannot Be Solved," that this is why it cannot be solved. It's because there's this constraint placed on any definition of woman. It's going to need to respect everybody's self-identification. But that's impossible. Inevitably, there will be counter-examples. Yeah.

And so far as you've said that like, it's sufficient to only identify as a woman to be a woman, you're always going to break. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, importantly, I mean, that is the sort of standard definition of a trans woman. Somebody with a female gender identity, somebody who identifies as a woman, yet was assigned male at birth. Um, I saw like online in the wake of this debate, some people seem to have in their minds that the definition of a trans woman is just a woman who was assigned male at birth. But just for what it's worth, like that's not, I don't think that's the standard definition. That's not the way the American Psychological Association defines it. That's not the way the Human Rights Campaign defines it.

Well, but maybe that's the next step. That might be the next step in the potentialization. I would be careful on the psychological grounds. That, uh, earlier you challenged me when I said, when we evaluate if a person is a man or a woman, we don't do a chromosome or a genital check. And you might say, "Sure, that might be true, but you are doing the only check you essentially can, and you're assuming that it's connected to that underlying concept of like, you know, the fact of the matter of like chromosomes or genitals, right?" It could be the case that somebody could use self-ID not because they think that self-ID is what makes them a man or woman, but psychologically because that's the only way they can access the information of if they are a man or a woman internally or something, right? That could be the case. Like in a similar sense. Yeah. It might be like a reliable but infallible indicator of whether you're a man or, like, for all mental health, for instance, like we might say for like depression or anxiety. If we exclude external behaviors, we're trying to get to mental states that can't be measured. So we shortcut it with questions. We wouldn't say that you are depressed because you identify as being depressed. But the identification of those thoughts are the only way we can figure out if you are depressed. So in a way, we're kind of saying it, but not really, right? Yeah.

Um, so I think, I mean, my sense of what's happening in the, in the debate, in this cultural debate we're having, is it seems like some people are willing to entertain the possibility, and they're starting to explore a certain bit of territory according to which self-ID is not infallible. It is fallible. Oh, okay. So that seems like a scary position that not many people are willing to explore anymore. But, well, I thought you maybe were just floating it out there because you were saying, perhaps gender identity, you're how you identify internally, how you feel internally, is a reliable but fallible indicator of what, what what gender you are, whether you're a man. And what that would mean is, if it's fallible, somebody might identify as a woman and be wrong. And be wrong. I mean, I agree with that 100%. But I believe there is an underlying fact of the matter relating to it. I think that a lot of the people that have moved on to the self-ID thing, I think that they don't believe there's an underlying fact of the matter anymore. Um, they, like, maybe we can try to, like, logically analyze statements like, "Well, if you are, you are." But I, I believe that the, the gender thing is morphed more into kind of like, um, like an aesthetic thing or an expression thing. Um, and an expression to some extent can, I guess, just be what you want it to be. And there is no longer an underlying fact of the matter, which is why it's impossible. Because if you would ask a lot of these people, I think a good indication is like, "Could somebody be wrong if they self-ID as a man or a woman?" And I think the vast majority of people say, "No, you can never be wrong." And it's like, "Well, if you can never ever be wrong about a particular thing, then it kind of feels like you don't believe there's a fact of the matter about the thing." Which means it's something completely different at that point. That's what it feels like to me, I guess. Yeah.

Yeah. So then my worry is like, um, if somebody held that view, and I agree people do hold that view, then the reasons I gave earlier, I'm, I'm not sure that the phrase "is a woman" or "is a man" in their mouths means taking out any property. I don't think it refers to any property. Yeah, because there is no, there is no property like that. And so then the worry is, yeah, what, what do we say about sentences then like, "I'm a woman" or "I'm a man"? And that was kind of my issue earlier when I say like, feels like there's some more content in the word man or woman. Is it? You've kind of done that. Yeah. So then that's the way like, I'm not sure what's being said. Um, but again, like, I think some people are willing to consider the possibility that self-ID might be a reliable, um, but infallible guide to whether someone's a man or woman. Um, did I say infallible? I meant reliable but fallible. Um, and I remember I presented this paper at a conference, uh, maybe one year ago, a year and a half ago. And I guess, I don't know, I don't want to like name any names. Maybe the person didn't want this shared publicly. But, and I've heard it other places too, online, like some trans individuals will say, um, "as someone who's egg cracked." Is that the phrase? Like somebody who's, oh, no, actually, later in life. Yeah, that's what they say. It's the idea that like, if you are like a tomboy or a feminine man, that truly you're really just trans, and somebody needs to wake you up to that idea, basically. I think it's kind of a toxic way to engage with gender stuff. But yeah.

Oh, I didn't know that. I thought it was just an expression for like, when I had the realization. It could be that too. I, I've seen it play out in different ways. Uh, online. It's kind of weird. I, I could be harmless, actually. I should say, I shouldn't assume the worst. I'm so sorry. Um, but I gotta be, I gotta be careful using. Yeah, I've seen it used online where people say like that, like, "We need to crack the egg," you know, where you've got like a tomboy or a feminine man, and we need to make them realize that they're trans. We're cracking the egg or something, basically. Yeah. Oh, I see. But it might not always be that way. Sorry.

Setting aside that phrase, I think what was being said was, I think some trans individuals would describe their experience this way. Like, I, a trans woman might say, "I used to think I was a man. I used to identify as a man, but I wasn't. I was a woman the whole time." And if that's true, then what they're saying is like, "Well, you can misidentify. You can identify as a man when you're actually not." Okay. I would agree with that statement that you could have always been. Yeah, because there is some underlying fact of the matter there, seems to be. I would hope. Yeah. So I've heard some trans individuals say that. And, um, yeah, so I think that might be like the way the direction is heading. Like, maybe, maybe there will be a concession or a modest kind of retreat away from the thought that self-identification is absolutely infallible, can never be wrong, to just something a little more modest. Like, "Should be deferred to." It's sort of, um, authoritative in the way that, like, when you ask me how I'm feeling, like I have a kind of privileged access to that that you don't have. So you should defer to my judgment, even recognizing that I could be wrong or mistaken. Um, so maybe they'll just defer to, they'll retreat to something like that. Something a little more plausible and modest. Um, yeah. I think it'll be interesting to see how, how things develop in this cultural conversation we're having, because it does look like maybe self-ID is cracking. Well, I'm using "cracking" again. Yeah, but I understand that in that sense, it's less popular than once was. People are less dogmatically committed to it. I think I, I've heard that ContraPoints, is that right? What's called ContraPoints? Mm-hmm. Recommended, like, instead of using the slogan "trans women are women" or "women," switch to like "trans liberation now." Um, so that might be a kind of like re-trenching or concession. And I'm seeing something similar in the philosophical literature. Like a move away from trying to actually come up with revisionary definitions that will include everybody who should be included and exclude everybody who should be excluded. They seem to be moving away from that towards just a project of like, "Well, let's just try to make life as good as we can for everybody and free people from oppression and fight sexism and racism and misogyny, and we'll set these definitional questions aside." My sense is that that's happening in the philosophical literature too. So I'm not much of a prognosticator, but that seems to be the direction things are heading.

Gotcha. Okay. Well, that'd be cool. Be good if that was the direction, I guess. But, um, well, it'll take some adjusting and some, I don't know. There's some philosophers in print on the record saying, like, "If you deny anybody's self-identification, you are transphobic." Or "Horrible." Yeah. You're a terrible person. Um, and so I guess we'll have to pretend that that didn't happen or something. Yeah. Hopefully.

It feels like, um, it's hard to tell outside of the academic world because you hear things and you see things, and it's obviously easy to select certain writings or select certain authors or you just peer into certain areas and get an impression. But, um, sometimes the impression given, especially outside of like the more rigorous, like math or finance or econ fields, is that it's kind of running away in a certain direction, and it can be hard to give pushback. Either because of actual consequences or sometimes just fear of career consequences to providing certain positions, which if true, I mean, in a field like philosophy, that would be pretty sad. When you guys used to kill yourselves all the time over your philosophical disagreements, to go from that to, um, being scared to publish a paper questioning a definition is kind of a little bit, yeah.

So it sounds like you're saying there's, um, there's been a kind of chilling effect in the universities, or it feels that way. Yeah. People are self-censoring and self-silencing. Oh, yeah. I can, can confirm 100%. That's exactly what's happening. And it's sad. Yeah. Because, um, especially in philosophy, I think philosophy is one of the last bastions, one of the last holdouts, because it tends to attract people who are contrarians and freethinkers. Like, that's why they get into philosophy. And so, um, there's a disproportionate number of those sorts of people in philosophy. And so, um, I think that's why, like, when you look at anthropology and sociology and gender studies and those sorts of fields, um, there is a dominance of certain kind of ideology, and there's no, there's no dissent or very little dissent. But in philosophy, I mean, yes, progressive philosophers were kind of lamenting this, that, um, philosophy is so, as they'd say, conservative or, um, regressive. But I think it's just a sign that philosophy attracts a lot of contrarians and freethinkers. And I, myself, in the same way, I think that's why I got into philosophy. Um, I find like if I'm in a room and everybody's agreeing on something, it doesn't even matter what it is, even if it's something I believe, like I start getting nervous and uncomfortable, and I start raising objections. You know, like, "We can't all, we can't all agree on this. There's got to be some problem. We got to find a problem." Um, so I think there's a lot of philosophers like that. And in a healthy university environment, that would be happening more than it currently is. Yeah.

Yeah, because it seems like from, from the outside world, it feels like there's a lot of headhunting that goes on sometimes, depending on who says what about what, which is sad. So, yeah. I think a big part of the problem is like colleges and universities. You might have hoped that they would have stuck up for free speech and academic freedom. But my sense is, they feel like they have to comply with federal regulations, especially like Title IX. Sort of, how is Title IX being interpreted in this administration? It was interpreted one way by, um, by certain, I don't know what it's called, like a memo or an executive order that just tells institutes of higher education how to interpret Title IX. It was one way under Obama. It was a very different way under Trump. We just got some new guidance from Biden. And so under every administration, like colleges have to react to the legal landscape. And I think what they're most afraid of is lawsuits and making money.

Can I, can I like, so I need to grab somebody for like five seconds. Okay. Can you give me one second? Okay. Hold on one second. Quick shout out to the chat. I imagine there's a chat happening right now, but I can't see it, but I know it. I'm pretty sure it's happening. Okay. Um, Title Nine interpretations. Biden gave new interpretations. All right. Go for it. Yeah.

So again, I was just saying like, um, that's why, um, you might have been surprised to learn that universities, which are supposed to be, you know, guardians of free speech and academic freedom, have so quickly and, um, catastrophically caved to social pressure. And they'll fire tenured professors and they'll, yeah, and people feel, um, people with tenure feel like they can't write on certain topics or speak about certain topics. And it's because universities are clamping down on certain things. And I think it's because fear. Fear of lawsuit.

I, as somebody that doesn't know anything compared to you, and how it actually goes, I, I feel like I disagree. Um, I, the impression that I get, obviously, you know this way better than me. This is just something I've gotten from all the things I've read from the people that have been fired from the statements of Minnesota. Maybe at one point Title IX was a fear, but it feels like there is a culture, a very, very, very left-shifted culture in not even in all of the school, but namely and specifically with school administration. That's something that I feel like pops up more and more. Maybe it's not the case like the most, like social liberal arts department, but there's like this kind of like rift between school administration and like professors to where it actually feels like generally, I feel like professors, I'm being very general here, feels like professors still generally want to have like, kind of like the open dialogue, the open discourse. Some of them are honorary or stubborn or whatever. Um, but that school college administration is very much in a different direction. And that it's not as much like a Title IX or lawsuit fear anymore, but it's very much like a culture thing that's very pervasive among a lot of school administration. That's the feeling that I get looking at from the outside. Yeah.

Well, I've certainly thought about, um, the change in, uh, political leanings and political affiliations of faculty over the decades. And there's definitely been a large shift to the left. I haven't thought so much, and there's explanations of why that is. And there seems to be a kind of like self-selection bias. Like, as we've, we've long ago reached a tipping point in the, in the political leanings of faculty. And this will affect hiring. It will affect the sort of climate that students find themselves in. And they'll make judgments about whether they fit in in a certain field based on like who they see in the faculty and how they feel their views are treated. So anyway, we've long ago reached.

A tipping point, and now you've got people who are very left-leaning in charge of hiring and firing and studying the coursework. Um, so that certainly happened at the faculty, and it looks like it's probably not coming back. Yeah.

And the problem is, at that point, like you said with hiring, that's going to start to bleed over then into the actual like professors, the staff, and everything. And then, yeah, so I don't know if what sort of pressures have been on administrators and whether there's been a similar movement towards the left end of the political spectrum among administrators, or why that would have been. Um, but maybe, maybe that has happened as well.

Well, I guess the feeling would be from the outside is that, um, like, I am not to attack anybody working as a school administrator, but I, I would imagine that I would hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I would hope that if you're going far enough to become a professor, if you've reached that area in your studies, that ideally you have been forced to critically evaluate a large number of beliefs, including your own, at multiple stages in your educational attainment. I would, I would hope that's the case for anybody that's completed a master's or defended a thesis for a PhD, that you've had to undergo some level of critical thought. So I would hope that that process will, if not weed out certain individuals, at least kind of temper the thoughts, the very like ideologically hardcore thoughts of some.

But if you're a school administrator, you don't really go through that same process. So if you enter school, I imagine there's a lot of people that enter school very ideologically driven and will reach the end of their studies. And by the end, I would hope, I don't know if it's the case, I know it's the case for me. I don't have a PhD, of course, but like, I would think that like, man, when I was 18, I was [ __ ] crazy. There was a lot of extreme ideas I believed. And I would hope that a lot of people at the end of their PhDs would hopefully have similar reflections, like, I remember when I used to think that, or that I was way too hardcore with this, but I understand this better. Um, and that that's a natural part of the educational process.

But in terms of becoming a school administrator, you don't necessarily have to do that. You might get your undergrad in whatever, and then you might go on to be like, this is my ideological charge, I'm going to drive in this direction, and I'm going to be the school minister, I'm going to do that. And there's not like the same requirements for critical thought or self-reflection or introspection aren't necessarily there on that journey, I would, I would imagine.

Yeah, that might be right. I mean, it used to be that, um, administrators typically came from the faculty. You sort of like worked your way up into associate dean positions, and then dean, and then maybe provost, and then maybe eventually president. But, um, it might be the case that over the last couple decades, there's a move into the professionalization of the administrators, where a lot of them have no background as faculty members. They just went straight into the bureaucracy, straight into the administration, without without working as a faculty member, without having any sort of specialty in some academic field. I think that that probably is the case.

And yeah, if you were, if you were asking me, is that a positive development or a negative development? Of course, naturally, as a faculty member, I'm going to say negative. It should be faculty all the time. We're the best. Um, but on the other hand, I don't know, just to play devil's advocate, because I can't stand when everyone agrees about something, maybe it's okay to have specialists and specialized bureaucrats who are trained for the sort of jobs that they take, rather than having amateurs step up and try to do the work of professionals. So I don't really know.

Um, all I know is, yeah, there's certainly been a large-scale chilling effect and a lot of self-censorship. Not just among faculty, but I've seen a lot of surveys lately just asking students, like, do you feel comfortable expressing your views in classes in college? And it's the numbers of people, numbers of students saying no, I don't feel comfortable, has been going up for many years now. Yeah, and I don't think that's healthy. No.

Yeah, I think the, um, the two, um, we don't know if it's too much because I, I, I'm kind of so I actually hate circle jerks. I don't like to just, uh, it gets boring very quickly. I understand that. Um, I'm only, I'm picking your brain though, because you're a PhD philosophy guy on campus. So I'm kind of curious. Um, do you, um, it, it, it feels like my impression is that college is cool because it should be the last place we can get mine [ __ ] in the healthiest way possible, right? Like you don't want to be ultra challenged at the workplace about your concept of civil rights, probably not appropriate. Um, but in college, it's like the last place where people can like truly rock your world, and you've got like a really good place to sit back and consider your thoughts and have guidance on it with professors and stuff. And, um, yeah, it feels like the evolution of college campuses is like universal safe spaces. Um, it bothers me for the two big reasons are, one is because it stifles, um, conservative thought, I guess, or other thought-challenging thought. Um, which in a roundabout way bothers me for the second reason is because I feel like it weakens the thought of people that I, I would want to agree with.

One of the big problems I have, I'm sure you've seen like the Matt Walsh stuff, listening to that professor talk to him about the gender stuff and not be able to provide what I would consider to be adequate answers. And it's like, man, this is your job. Like, you are the academy. You're supposed to be like the final boss of gender [ __ ] so that if some [ __ ] like Matt Walsh comes up to you, you're ready to be like, patient. You should be excited. Like, you get to talk on TV about the [ __ ] you studied at school. It's like every, like academic person's dream. Um, and to become so standoffish and to sound almost like a college freshman is like so disappointing. And I don't know, why is it because the challenges have disappeared to your beliefs? It's because you don't feel that you need to defend them anymore? And yeah, that that general train of thought, that line of thinking is like really bothered me for for those two big reasons, stifling of multiple types of thought, and then the weakening of schools of thought that I would hope to agree with.

No, I think you're right. I think that is the, the dream of the university, or the ideal of the university, as a place where you go to be sharpened. You know, as iron sharpens iron, and you want to have your beliefs tested, you want to revise your beliefs, maybe you change your beliefs. Um, but that does require like quite a bit of discomfort, and it's a very stressful sort of process. I know because it happened to me, you know, especially in grad school, especially because I hold views that aren't very popular among academics. And so I just found myself like constantly being challenged, constantly having to argue for my views. And so it was very uncomfortable and difficult. But if you survive and you're not just crushed by the trauma, I think it does make you a better person. And in my case, I think it made me a better philosopher because I learned like, if I ever, if I'm going to stand any chance in any conversation with a professional philosopher, I'm going to have to be as clear as possible, lay out my argument step by step, defend every premise. And I had to do that like every day in grad school because I didn't have the sort of views that people would just let slide, you know, they wouldn't just agree and say, well, of course, that's obviously true. So I had to fight for like every, every belief I had. So yeah, I think that was good for me. And I, I, I am grateful that it happened. And I agree that we would want that to happen in the university. Um, but unfortunately, no, due to a lack of ideological diversity, it's not, not happening. And even if there is ideological diversity, there's this chilling effect, there's self-censorship. And so people aren't sharing their views. And yeah, I mean, I find myself doing it in my own classroom. I, I realize like, this would be a great opportunity to bring up such and such, but I don't want the hassle, you know, they're not, you know, and so unfortunately, I think like, I realize I'm depriving my students of like a learning experience, but I know that there might be like one or two students in there who are gonna send the dean an email or something like that, and then I'll have to go talk to the dean for a while. And it's just those little sort of nudges that lead to self-censorship and lead to silencing.

Um, I guess I should just clarify that like the things I'm going to bring up, the things that I'm thinking about bringing up in class aren't like horrible stuff. Like it's just like anything that's like kind of heterodox or anything that would be kind of contrarian or just challenging a little bit. Um, I don't have like despicable, horrible private views, the utilitarian infinite child rape machine analogy or some crazy. You're not. Yeah. No.

Um, well, I mean, we do bring up cases kind of like that when we argue against utilitarianism. Um, and that's that's fair game, although I would try to tone it down. Sure. Yeah, infinite child rape case, but yeah, stuff like that. Um, so I think that is, um, depriving students of valuable learning experiences and, um, unfortunately, like making scholarship worse, because you really, you need enemies, you know, you should, well, maybe not enemies, but you need adversaries. You need adversaries. Yeah, friendly rivals, rivals. Yeah, that's how Pokemon worked. Ash wouldn't have been anything if it wasn't for, uh, Gary or whatever, right? You need the, yeah, I mean, the reason that we go to conferences as philosophers isn't because it like makes us famous or loved. Well, the reason I go is to get objections. Like you go there to present your work, and then you want devastating objections from the audience, because you can make your paper better. And if you don't get the devastating objections, then you publish the paper. Well, the objections are then going to be in print, you know, permanent. So you want to like test rough drafts and get it thrashed and shredded and demolished so that you can try to make it better. And if we create a climate where there are no objections and there is no shredding going on, then the scholarship's going to suffer. And that's, that's not good for anybody.

Yeah, I agree. I think we're probably largely agree on this. Um, the, uh, just to, um, finish up on the gender sex thing, so I'm sorry we didn't actually ever clarify this. I'm curious then, if one were to say that gender is like a type of performance, and that's what we mean colloquially when we talk about like woman or man, but we also understand that woman or man could be a synonym for male or female depending on the context. Um, would you agree then that like the performance of something is probably a little bit different than like the underlying biological property itself?

Yeah, yeah. Okay. I mean, the sort of expectations and stereotypes we have of males and females is largely, very largely due to socialization. Um, I wouldn't go so far as to say it's all socialization. I think there's some biological influence on the kinds of dispositions and inclinations for sure. Males and females tend to have. I think anybody who's worked with animals can see that. Anybody who's worked with small children can see that. But for sure, um, feminists have been correct to point out that there's a large part of it is socialization. Um, but yeah, if the proposal was, well, maybe the word woman is just ambiguous, and you know, sometimes it expresses the concept that the dictionary describes, but other times it expresses some different concept, maybe the Judith Butler kind of concept, or the Gail Rubin, Sally Haslinger kind of social role concept. Um, so I'm open to that. Yeah, words can be ambiguous, and you can definitely introduce ambiguity very easily.

Mm-hmm. For sure. We do it with names all the time. Um, but I guess I would just repeat that what Sally Haslinger and Judith Butler learned the hard way is, um, any clear statement of like, what, what it means to be a woman, um, is not going to respect everybody's self-identification. Yeah, because you can have, yeah, you can have some trans women who don't owe you femininity, as they say, they don't adhere to expectations associated with females. And you can have, as I said, I think, I think the term is trans-fem non-binary individuals who identify with femininity, express themselves in a feminine way, and so would meet the Judith Butler definition of performativity, but don't identify as women, don't consider themselves women. And so there too, the performativity definition would fail to respect everybody's self-id. So yeah, I'm not opposed to ambiguity in language. It happens all the time. I'm not opposed to changing language. I guess all that I've been pointing out in my work is, we've got a serious problem here with the idea that any acceptable definition of womanhood and manhood is going to respect everybody's self-identification. Yeah, that in the attempt to kind of like ameliorate some social problem, all of a sudden we're taking like epistemology hostage to try to like do crazy work to change how we define and understand everything. It's probably not a good thing to do.

Yeah, and I guess I'll just quickly add, like, I understand that the intentions are good, and, um, people are pointing to, you know, very real positive consequences that come from affirming people's self-conceptions. Um, so I recognize that. Um, I guess I should also add that what gender-critical feminists seem to be saying is there are also consequences of changing our language in this way, and they're losing the ability to legally, um, define and defend female-only spaces. Um, what they used to call women's only spaces, but now they call female-only spaces, like prisons and sports and locker rooms and so on. So I guess I'll just say, um, although I recognize the benefits of, you know, affirming a sort of affirmative approach to this project, I just wanted to quickly add that it's not so simple, and we should also be honest that there are some costs, sure, associated with this change. Um, and that's what we're seeing now, maybe in the United States with like the swimming stuff, the Lia Thomas stuff, and everything. We're starting to see the, the downstream of stuff of being careless, I guess, with our definitions. Um, and then the blowback unfortunately from that can be catastrophic too, such that you're not even serving your moral lens anymore by what you were trying to do before.

I am. Yes. Yeah, I think you, I think that's a good way to put it. Yes.

Okay. Well, hey, is there any, um, anything else you want to go over, or do you want to plug, like, a social media? Where can people find you? Or, yeah, if somebody wanted to read my papers, if you just Google my name, typically the first result is a little Google site with all my papers on it that are freely accessible and not behind paywalls. So if you wanted to check some of that stuff out, you could. Um, and I'm also on Twitter, and if you just search my name, you'll find me on Twitter. Um, oh, yeah, that's all. I just, I guess I also wanted to say, um, thanks. Thanks for having me on. It was really nice talking with you. Um, yeah, it's been nice learning about this, this part of the internet. I've been happy to see what's going on in here, and, uh, recognize that you're a major part of that. And so, good, good work. What I'm saying, well, I'm not proud of anything that exists here, and it was a mistake, and all of those cancers, horrible trash. But I hope you enjoy your time here before somebody tries to doc swat and kill you. So, good luck. Thanks for, um, yeah, thanks for the conversation. Um, I appreciate it. Uh, hopefully we talk in the future. All right. Bye.