The Trouble with Pascal's Wager

As has been pointed out by many others, a difficulty with Pascal’s Wager is that it has no real way of dealing with multiple exclusive beliefs, each threatening hell for failure to adhere to those beliefs. Since each belief is threatening an equivalent amount, the Wager results in a stalemate.

What I haven’t seen pointed out before is that this works even within the context of the sects of a religion, and how the existence of these sects creates a kind of nesting system with strange implications for the Wager. Take the Westboro Baptist Church, or one of the innumerable tiny denominations that are scattered throughout the world that have similar enough beliefs. Since the Westboro Baptist Church preaches the typical Protestant Christian soteriological schema (forgiveness of sins through faith in Christ crucified and resurrected) most Protestants would believe that members of the WBC will enter into paradise when they die (even if they belief them to be horribly incorrect in many others ways). At the same time, members of the WBC would say that nearly every other Protestant will enter into perdition when they die. Given this, the Wager would suggest that nearly every Protestant should join the WBC in order to hedge their bets. Which I would expect to be wholly unpalatable to nearly every Protestant (or at least I really hope this would be the case), and so they must reject the Wager as a sensible way to make decisions.

Indeed, the basic premise of the Wager seems odd when you spell it out explicitly: whoever is threatening the worst afterlife should be who you join up with, and then within that group whomever makes the most exclusive claim (what happens when two sects are equally but mutually exclusive?) The implication seems to be that if ever a religion cropped up with a more horrific afterlife than hell as part of its beliefs then Christians should jump ship. You might protest that hell is already, by definition, the worst possible afterlife (since that’s usually how it's defined). But suppose a religion crops up called the Heartbonders, who believe in a similar paradise/perdition schema, and that adherence to the beliefs of the Heartbonders is necessary to avoid perdition, but with a twist. The Heartbonders believe that every human has a soul twin, and the only way to enter into paradise is for both soul twins to enter into paradise. Which is to say that if your soul twin is a member of the Heartbonders they will still enter into perdition should you fail to join up. So not only will you condemn yourself to hell for failing to join, you condemn another. The Wager seems to suggest that Christians should join up with the Heartbonders, since their afterlife beliefs are more threatening (not to you mind you, but if we consider harm to others to be sufficient for a “worse” afterlife then it all works out).

So I don’t think Pascal’s Wager is a sensible way to make decisions for yourself.

Quantiverse

I’m going to the Quantiverse.

It’s all numbers there. Everything else isn’t.

I’m here. I land, alighting on 1. It’s the only thing I can see at first anyway. Gotta start somewhere. The source of the rest of it at first glance.

As soon as I touch down, 2 lights up, and oh, actually there’s the rest of them anyway. At least in this direction. 3 and 5 and 395832583529 x 10^3434367112 and so forth.

0 is behind me. Not gonna look at it yet. It’s upsetting. Except it isn’t behind me because it isn’t anywhere. Or I guess really it’s everywhere something isn’t, which maybe is most of it. I glance around. What percentage of this place exists? Is there more nothing than something?

That’s a bit too much to take in. I look over at 2 to ground myself.

I decide to take a step from 1 to 2. +1 they call it.

Ah. Ok, easy. Forward we go. 2 to 3. 3 to 10. 10 to 150. Woah, big one.

Wonder how big I a step I can take?

From 150 to a 1,000,000. Easy. 1,000,000 to 1,000,000,000. Just as easy. Ok, from 1,000,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 ^ 1,000,000,000. Yup, still easy, here at least.

I think there isn’t a biggest step I can take.

Can I go back? I think so.

I retrace my steps. Subtraction they call it. Same idea I think, just in the other direction.

How small a step can I take? 1,000. 10.

Can I go smaller?

I glance around to make sure no one is looking. Hope I don’t get in trouble.

I tentatively reach out to reach 9 but I pull short. Is there anything there to put my foot on? Hope so. Dunno what happens if there isn’t.

I hit 9.5. Oh, look at me. There was something there.

Holy shit the gaps are filled in.

Actually, hold the phone… (I’m borrowing this imagery a bit from Berlinksi’s A Tour of the Calculus now.)

There aren’t gaps. Weird. No matter how closely I look.

It’s weird. There’s no gaps, so it’s continuous like, no parts. Except it’s all parts? I mean 3.43 is just what it is, not 3.431. Perfectly discrete, but with no gaps. Wild. It splits forever.

I take a .01 step. I take a .001 step. I take a 5 x 10^-33859667 step.

So there isn’t a smallest step I can take either.

I keep walking. Ah, seems I’m about to reach 0.

My Brain is a Strange Drug Dealer

So I want certain emotions, happiness and such yeah? Gotta get the right neurons firing, the right hormones flowing, etc. Less cortisol, more dopamine or whatever (I’m not a neuroscientist if you can’t tell). Mr. Brain controls all that, decides when to make with the good feelings and such.

The brain doles out happiness. Little packets of joy, sometimes big deep hits of peace or tranquility, sharp short hits of excitement and pleasure.

The metaphor isn’t perfect. Unlike most plugs, the brain doesn’t accept cash. Imagine if the local weed guy (does that age me now in the age of legal? Not yet I guess. How quickly that guy feels like the past though) made you run a few miles before he gave you an eighth? Consider unhinged Wall Street guys who could only acquire coke if they first proved to their dealer they were in therapy. Picture a world where the price of a bottle of vodka was adequate vitamin D levels.

The metaphor falls apart further: dealers usually can’t willy nilly decide to inject you with bad time chemicals either, whereas the lump of miracle behind my eyes gets to do as it pleases. The dick.

It’s an odd relationship, you and your brain. Cuz it’s also sorta you. I guess it’s not exactly original to suggest that people have complicated relationships with themselves. Strange to be your own drug dealer.

Conspiracy Theories as Selective Radical Skepticism

I tend to think about conspiracy theories in the context of epistemology. How do we know anything? How do I know the Titanic sank? Or that Finland exists? Or that germ theory is true? Or that the Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776? What sources of information are reliable? How would I know?

Most conspiracy theories require that many trusted sources of information are compromised. Flat Earth conspiracy entails that NASA, and indeed every space agency everywhere, is lying to you. Vaccine conspiracy theorists require that the CDC and the WHO and every health agency in every nation on earth (many of whom are antagonistic to each other) are lying to you.

Now, there are very good reasons for believing that large-scale long-term conspiracies can’t happen, but that’s not critical to my argument here.

Instead, my point here is that if we decide that these institutions are being manipulated by some shadowy entity that coerces or manipulates them into deceiving us, then there is simply no good reason to trust any information from anyone who claims to tell us the truth on these matters.

Which is to say: I can have a degree of understanding for someone who says “I don’t know if Earth is round”, but I cannot at all understand how someone would say “I know Earth is flat.”

I can see, with some charity, how someone might believe “I don’t know if vaccines are safe.” But if that same person proclaims with confidence “Vaccines aren’t safe”, I am bewildered.

Any entity, the Illuminati or whatever, that has the power and resources to control NASA would absolutely have the power and resources to control Jimbo’s Flat Earth Truther channel on YouTube. We have no reasons to think that Jimbo would have a greater degree of moral heroism than the thousands of people who work at NASA. We have no reason to think he would be less susceptible to being bought off. Fundamentally, we have no reason to trust Jimbo over NASA, at a minimum.

I’m constantly seeing videos on TikTok or YouTube where the content creator has some lines to the effect of “This is what they don’t want you to know.” I am constantly being asked to believe that random channels on the internet are somehow poking their fingers into the eyes of the most evil and powerful people on the planet.

Well why aren’t they being black bagged? Why hasn’t Russel Brand fallen down some stairs yet? If the goddamn Illuminati can control the fucking WHO they sure as hell can control some crystal mommy healer on TikTok.

The effect reminds me of someone who began Descartes’s project of radical skepticism but stopped halfway. If you are unfamiliar, here’s the short version. Dude wanted the truth and thought that the best way to start would be engage in a thought experiment where he discarded every belief that he could be wrong about. He thought he was eating some cheese but he realized he could be dreaming or hallucinating (in modern terms we might say something about being a brain in a vat), so he could be wrong about the belief he was eating cheese so, for the purposes of the thought experiment he would assume that he was wrong about that belief he was eating cheese. And it got worse! To really strengthen the thought experiment he would assume that an incredibly powerful magical entity was deliberately trying to deceive him and manipulate him.

Now, that last bit parallels, in a more mild sense, the shadow organization that is manipulating the big organizations (you need that shadowy organization or entity because otherwise it wouldn’t make sense that every space agency in the world is on the same page about Earth being round.). It’s the powerful, albeit not quite magical (eh? I mean according to some conspiracy theorists….) entity dedicated to deceiving you.

AND YET, they selectively carve out cases where they assume said shadowy entity is somehow ignoring certain sources of information. Somehow RFK JR is immune to the Satanic Council. Somehow Joe goddamn Rogan is safe from the talons of the Blood Sorcerers of the Third Realm.

And so I have to conclude that conspiracy theorists are largely being inconsistent with their radical skepticism. They are overwhelmingly confident in certain beliefs that are derived from sources that they have no reason to think are more trustworthy than other sources of information they deride.

And many of their other beliefs are grounded in sources that would be just as suspect if they were consistent.

Does Finland exist, people of the US? Have you been there? Have you even met a Finnish person? If you did, how did you know they aren’t an actor? After all, if every astronaut is an actor, why couldn’t that person? Have you seen footage of Finland? Well, if the footage of the round Earth can be fake, so could that footage. I submit that if you don’t know that Earth is round, you don’t know that Finland exists. Even if you flew there, how would you know where your airplane landed? (Sorry Finnish folk for dragging you into this.)

Was the Declaration of Independence adopted in 1776? Is is 2024? Did the Titanic sank? And are the sources of information you use to determine that any more trustworthy than the sources that tell us that Earth is round? And are they any less trustworthy than Chakra Lady Sybil with her singing bowls that tells you that gout is caused by not drinking enough raw milk?

Why would anyone bother to lie about Finland being real? I dunno, why would anyone go the trouble of lying about Earth being being round? I’ve seen some folks try and claim that it’s some sort of anti-Christian plot to convince people the Bible is wrong or to try and trick humans into thinking they’re insignificant or something, but that makes no sense. Humans have known Earth is round since the Greek city-states. Christianity flourished and spread in the context of a world that knew Earth was round. Earth being round was never an inhibitor on the popularity of Christianity, and it would be ridiculous to expend the colossal resources necessary to pull of this con just to fuck with Christianity.

If you’re going to be some kind of Pyrrhic radical skeptic that doubts the CDC and NASA then all I ask is you be consistent and apply an equal level of doubt to literally every other source of information.

Bullets that Cannot be Bitten: A Dilemma in Christian Soteriology

I will start this off in a rather strange way for a piece of philosophy, but my scruples are bothering me: Parents, I beg of you not to harm your children. If you are considering this, I promise you that it will not help, that it will not in any way benefit them whatsoever. If you are tempted to hurt your children, please seek help from a mental health professional.

Having said that…

The common Christian belief of some kind of Age of Accountability invites a number of difficult philosophical issues, although perhaps not so much as the denial of it.


If someone is guaranteed to go to Heaven, and avoid Hell, if they die before a certain age, it only makes sense for those who love to them to hope they die before that age. If going to Heaven is the best thing that can happen to someone, and going to Hell is the worst thing, then the sensible approach is for expectant parents to pray for miscarriage. It suddenly becomes sensible for the parents of toddlers to plead with God to take the lives of their children. The deaths of children become something to celebrate profusely, and each passing birthday becomes increasingly dangerous.

The first difficulty is simply that it seems repugnant to hope for the early deaths of children, despite that being quite sensible from this point of view. If you hold to some kind of Age of Accountability then you ought to hope children die young, and you should find it ultimately pleasing when it does happen.

Moreover, abortion, particularly early abortion, becomes quite appealing from the point of view of the unborn. Presumably if one is aborted is early enough, before brain activity has even started, then it is as if one simply opens their eyes in heaven. Such a person would never consciously experience this life, the entirety of their memories will be of paradise. Hardly a bad deal.

But it gets worse, because this circumstance would mean that conscious experience of this life is entirely unnecessary in order to enter into Heaven, which invites the question of what the point of this life is at all. If one needn’t live through all of the suffering and pain of this life in order to go to Heaven, what are we doing here?

And even more of an issue: this would mean that choice is unnecessary to go to heaven, since we can presume embryos make no choices. Which again invites the question of what the point of all this (gestures broadly) is. I suppose Calvinists would find this less of an issue.

On the other hand, shall we say that Hell is full of toddlers and babies and five-year-olds?

There is an escape hatch that allows us to turn the dilemma into a trilemma, but this requires us to speculate and go beyond what Christian Scripture would itself indicate: we could speculate that perhaps those who die very young are offered some kind of post-death choice at some point and in some way.

A Tension in Contemporary Masculinity

I will be discussing heterosexual men and women.

To what degree men have had to be likable to women to get romantic or sexual partners has fluctuated throughout time, but to my knowledge right now that degree is higher than it's ever been before. Yadda yadda context, yadda yadda outliers. You get my drift.

And that’s fantastic. That’s a healthy development. Be deeply suspicious of anyone trying to affect society so as to make it easier for unlikable men to get sex or partnership. There’s a reason why things like the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 74 matter: prior to this banks could refuse to allow women to open bank accounts. If women are reliant on men for economic stability, for housing and medicine and access to financial systems, then their ability to be selective in their partners is substantially reduced. Consent becomes constrained if legal or social factors require them to prioritize things other than their preference when it comes to choosing partners.

Not that long ago, men could rely on their ability to provide economically (and other social factors) to make up for their lack in other areas: morals and hygiene and humor and looks and charm and intelligence.

Now women can have their own bank accounts and pay their own rent. So now women, to a greater degree than ever before (at least in the West broadly), can choose their partners based on preference.

The degree to which men have cheerfully adapted to this change varies. I would say most men, not having what you might call sociological insight, didn’t think about so much as accept it as the way things are. The wise among them are glad for the change. The weak chafe against it.

But there is a tension here, and it's one that can be present even for the kindest among men.

Men also want to be likable to men: and what makes one likable to men can be in opposition to what makes one likable to women.

Being overly concerned with one’s hygiene can get men mocked by men. At the same time, I have seen it happen numerous times that a girlfriend or wife plead with their partners to shower more often, or to wash their hands after using the restroom, or to brush their teeth more regularly.

A failure to be aggressive can get men mocked by men. But women frequently prefer men who are not aggressive in their day to day manner. I will say, however, that women do frequently desire a man who is theoretically capable of violence on their behalf even as they are not demonstratively aggressive on the regular.

Spending time on one’s appearance, one’s wardrobe and grooming, can get men mocked by men. But women frequently want a man who spends some effort on his appearance.

Being open with one’s emotions, being vulnerable, can get a man mocked by men. But women frequently prefer a man who is open with his emotions, who can be vulnerable (again, variation, heavens knows there are plenty of women who mock openly emotional men).

Let’s be honest: the guy at the gym with muscles the size of boulders is, if they’re doing it to be impressive to anyone, doing it to be impressive to other men.

And so we have tension. How shall we resolve it?

The foolish will attempt to change society back. Kindness by itself would, I hope, be enough for men to seek to improve the lives of women. Knowing humans, however, I will also mention that the current state of affairs is, despite what some might think, also much better for me. The benefits of feminism for men is an enormous topic, and beyond the scope of this piece.

So what else will we do?

I am hardly the first to point this out, but I would suggest that an embrace of healthier models for masculinity is a potential strategy. In the long term I would like to see a world where we no longer shackle ourselves to these categories, but in the meantime I think this is the trick.

Men who can be boisterous without being boorish.

Men who can get their hands dirty and also write poetry.

Men who can be protectors without being masters.

Look I dunno, just be like Brennan Lee Mulligan or the Green brothers or fucking Hasan Piker, I don’t fucking know. Don’t make me do all the work here.

On Pain

You could take everything I'll say here and mirror it to be “on happiness” but I'm in a mood so you'll have to do that work yourself.

Pain is fascinating.

Because we have preferences about it. Which is FUCKING INSANE.

Look you might not have done a bunch of reading on consciousness, but if I can highlight a point about it it's that it’s unexpected. So far there's basically zero reason we have to predict that it would have existed in our reality (consciousness that is, and pain is downstream of that).

We can easily imagine a reality without it. A world of rocks and volcanoes and waterfalls and no mind. No “what it is to be like x”.

I mean there's no reason evolution would have prioritized it. Or even how it could explain it. My brain and rocks are both made of quarks. Why my brain should, in the words of Tom Nagel, have some property of “there being something like what it is to be my brain”, is shocking at least and bewildering at most.

And even more specifically pain. You could imagine consciousness without pain. And neverthess pain is.

And I immediately hit a wall. What else is there to say of pain? It sucks? Why? We seek to avoid it? Why?

Maybe just because we do. Dreadfully simple, but perhaps all explanations end up either simple or silly or both.

Pain and happiness (oh, I guess maybe I'll bring up both myself, seems to be working out that way ).

Presumably magnets don't suffer when you press North Pole to North Pole, even as the physics resist it. (Fuck I hope not).

But we suffer. And we feel happiness. Does it stop at preference or are there more layers down? Do we dislike pain because of reasons beyond that dislike, or does it stop at the brute fact We Dislike Pain ?

And that quality is so unlike everything else. Things are red or fast or intelligent or spicy or unlikely or solid or transparent or numerous or antiquated or…..

Painful or pleasurable. And how different that is!

Welcome to the Game

“Welcome to the game.”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Call me -unpronounceable- , I’m here to introduce you to The Game.”
”Who am I?”

“You’re going to be named Isaac.”
”I don’t get to choose?”
”No.”

“What kind of game is it?”

“Are you asking what genre reality is?”
”I guess?”

“I guess you might say it’s open world. But not because invisible walls prevent you from entering places so much as people will feel negatively about you being in certain places and they might physically remove you. There are combat mechanics, vehicle mechanics, romance mechanics, it’s basically all roleplaying, there are skills…. honestly even calling it a game is a bit of interpretation, albeit the subject of this current thought experiment.”

“What was that last bit?”
”Nevermind that.”
”Oooookkayyy…how do I unlock more areas?”
”Complicated. Money helps. You can buy access to a lot of places. If you’re fast you can evade people who might try and remove you. Or if you’re good at fighting. Or you can sneak in.”
”There are stealth components?”
”Very complicated ones.”
”Is there a manual?”
”Of sorts. All manuals are found in game. They come in many forms. Books. Lectures. Conversations. A lot of what you’ll learn will have to be through trial and error, experience.”
”How long is it?
”You won’t have time to read it all during your playthrough.”
”Because it’s that much to read or because the playthrough will be short?”
”Depends on your perspective.”
”How long would it take to get through it all?”
”Thousands of years.”
”And how low will the playthrough be?”
”Depends on a lot. Average for your server and your starting build is 70 - 80.”
”How am I expected to play a game where I could never even understand 1 percent of its mechanics?”
”Sorry.”
”Are you?”
”Sure.”
”Are there survival mechanics?”
”Extremely complicated ones. Not just hunger and thirst, but a specific diet. You’ll need to access medical attention regularly no matter how well you play. Different kinds of medical professional. And you’ll have to pay for it all. And you’ll be in pain and die if you neglect your medical care and bodily needs.”
”Pain?”
”You’ll hate it, trust me. Thirst and hunger too. No meters, no HUD. Sensation instead. You’ll like some of it, some of it you’ll be neutral towards, some of it you’ll do anything to avoid.”
”So I don’t have flawless control over the avatar?”
”No, you have a thing called willpower that’s an expendable resource. Honestly I’m simplifying, it’s actually really complicated. But there are factors that can cause your controls to begin to fail. Your inputs will be responded to late, or won’t be responded to at all.”
”You mentioned paying for medical care. There’s an economic system?”
”A really-”
”-complicated one, right. Will I be playing with other people, or will it all be npcs?”
”You don’t get to know.”
”You’re fucking with me.”
”Nope. I mean, like, they’re gonna behave mostly like you. So like probably? But I’m not actually allowed to tell you.”
”Are there admins keeping an eye on things?”
”You don’t get to know.”
”This this might not be being monitored?”
"I’m not telling.”
”Cooooool. Can I make complaints? Raise concerns? Give suggestions?”
”Sure. You can put any concerns you want into this bin over here.”
”Does someone go through them and read them?”
”You don’t get to know.”

“How many times do I get to play?”
”You don’t get to know.”
”So this might be my only time through? Is there some kinda post-game?”
”You don’t get to know.”

“Am I allowed to try and answer these questions?”
”Someone might try and stop you, or the answers might be impossible to find. But other than that, you can try all you like.”

“Anything else I should know?”
”I’m not allowed to suggest questions.”
”I guess it’s time to get started.”
”For what it’s worth, have a Good Game.”

Act I: Birth….

On Moral Luck

I have the sense the society I live in doesn’t take moral luck as seriously as perhaps would be sensible.

I’ve seen the term “moral luck” used in two distinct but related senses.

The first is the sense where someone does something, a particular action, and it comes down to luck how harmful that behavior turns out, with all the following consequences. Two people drive drunk, identical circumstances, one makes it home with no problems, the other hits someone and kills them. It would be strange to say that one is guiltier than the other, whatever that might mean. Clearly there’s more social animosity thrown on one than the other (have you ever driven on bad sleep? Or after being prescribed a new med that made you drowsy?).

The second sense is where how decent someone ends up being (whatever that means), or how good someone ends up being (whatever that means), isn’t up to them, at least to some degree. The idea is that who ends up a good or bad person, or virtuous or vicious, or whatever, is outside of the control of that person, or at least that that control is circumscribed or limited in some fashion.

Part of the issue of this discussion is that the language describing choice and free will is hopelessly complicated, potentially wrongheaded. Nearly everyone agrees that some choices are harder than others, I imagine most will grant that the same choice - to the degree that makes sense - might be more or less difficult for different people. Is this difficulty asymptotic? Can a choice get more and more difficult to make while never becoming impossible? Or does that difficulty cross a threshold where it might be reasonable to say that it wasn’t really a choice at all?

Consider alternate timelines, either as somehow real or as hypothetical could-have-beens. For any person, you could imagine a powerful being watching over them from the moment of their birth. This being could influence their lives in any number of ways. Pick them up and place them with any number of potential parents. Pick out the color of their nursery. Their name. The menu of the cafeteria of their college of choice. A traffic light turns green or red a quarter second earlier or later.

Do you think this being couldn’t engineer any number of situations for this person? Given sufficient intelligence and power, I imagine this powerful overlord could take a baby and make them a sinner or saint, murderer or hero, poor or rich, smart or stupid, bad or good, etc.


It’s worth remembering at this point that childhood lead exposure is strongly correlated with criminality.

Indeed, think about what it would mean to say otherwise. You think for any particular person, this was the only way they were going to end up? That no matter what possible presets were altered, they would end up in the same place every possible way? That the monsters are monsters in every possible version of the world? That the heroes are heroic in every possible universe?

And so, to those who end up good or bad, even if their choices played a part in who and what they are, can we say that they are good or bad in every timeline? If yes, then we’re engaging in some strangely confident essentialism I would say.

Consider: imagine as perfect a society as could be (whatever that means). Imagine a society absolutely maximized for producing good individuals. Are there more good people in that society than in our own? If yes, then its perhaps worth thinking about whomst among us would-be-good-if-not-for-X. If no, then it seems we think the fundamental Being of humans is the same across all possibilities, which would plausibly take the wind out of any effort for improving the rate at which society produces good people. If we think the effort to improve society’s ability to produce morally good humans is worthwhile we must accept that the lack of success of such efforts would result in fewer good humans.

For any of us, if we are good, would we be good absent the efforts of others?

I recommend graciousness. Not passive acceptance of harmful behavior, but rather an enlightened perspective that separates a person from their behavior.

Broken Men in a Small Town

They filed into the Wendy’s, one or two graciously holding the door for the others.

Sun browned, smashed fingers, torn joints, well fed but malnourished.

Happy enough. But, maybe it’s just my imagination, holding onto something so very hard. Hope? Or this moment? Or just happiness itself? The moment of shade and sitting down?

Some of them will make it out ok I imagine. Others will be chewed up by the System, their broken bodies left by the wayside, their value extracted, their worth - from the bosses perspective - expended. Maybe they’ll get disability.

Lied to I have to guess. “Sufficient effort guarantees you’ll be ‘ok’”. Or maybe they know the game and they’re playing it as best they can, I dunno.

So many people who put the work in, still left behind, still hungry and sick and poor.

Mind you, I’m not one for saying you need to earn your happiness or your safety or your medicine or your food.

Not just the men of course, though these five or six are what inspired this piece. Humans. Giving it their all, their bodies, their lives. And maybe to bosses who also did something similar in turn, to some degree, for some time. And maybe those bosses are forking cash over to people who did the same?

Would it be more or less comforting to know those at the top of the pyramid are suffering like the rest of us? Would I get some schadenfreude or be driven mad to know the presidents and the CEOs are as miserable as everyone else?

Bit of both perhaps.

Being Human

To speak of life. Life as a human. Being human. 

So tremendously difficult. Language. Words to talk about the World. Like trying to throw a lasso around a hurricane. 

Too big. Too deep. Too varied. 

To speak of being human. 

Genocides and ice cream.

Transcendent love and hemorrhoids. 

Final goodbyes and tax documents.

Up and down and all around. 

Is it beautiful? Is it madness? Is it Truth? Is it necessary? Is it cruel? Is it a joke? Can we overcome it? Would we even like the outcome if we did? 

None of us chose to be here. 

Good and evil. Useless I think. An opportunity to puff ourselves up. 

Impulse. Drive. Direction. Chaos and order. 

And I must - must I? - maintain the humility to say that perhaps I know nothing about anything. How could I? 33 years amongst the millennia of us? 

Sensation. Qualia. To feel. To experience. What, if anything, would exist without it? Nothing we’d know of certainly. Nothing we’d care about. 

The two halves of our universe: the feeling and the unfeeling. The experiential and everything else. 

I’m running out of steam to write. The premature ejaculation of the creative. I thought I had so much to say. 


What is a Request?

I find it difficult to express what, precisely, most people are getting at when they use the word “request”. I am tempted to say that a request is simply the making known of a desire, perhaps specifically making it known to one who could fulfill that desire. However, the sentence “I wanted to let you know I want X, but this isn’t me asking for it” seems to make a kind of sense to me.

There is a general, subtle, expectation of certain behaviors towards others within our social circles. How much is expected, and of who, is extraordinarily complicated, and far beyond the scope of this essay. Nevertheless, suffice it to say that your friends will get upset with you if you refuse to grant a certain baseline level of requests, within limits. Correspondingly, your friends will get upset with you if you ask of them too much, or too frequently. The closest analogy I can think of is a term like “social debt”. This is, admittedly, a poor analogy, and one that is likely tainted by my cultural inculcation in the cult of capitalism. Nevertheless, with the acknowledgement that it is a deeply imperfect turn of phrase, we’ll run with it.

So, it seems to me that, within the context of the English language, and I cannot speak for anything more than that, most usages of the term “request” seem to be indicating a kind of linguistic ritual whereby the speaker 1. makes known a desire to someone who, theoretically, can fulfill that desire, and 2. cashes in some amount of social debt, or takes upon themselves some degree of social debt.

Being Less Wrong Requires a Certain Kind of Courage

I will be a little loose with my language here.

I sometimes wonder if any philosopher has had a wise thought yet.

Regardless of ones religious inclinations, atheist or Christian or Buddhist or what have you, it seems that we have to conclude that at least one religion is false. Imagine an old man, a cleric of that religion, who has dedicated his life to his faith. He had spent countless years in service, made innumerable sacrifices, and all for nought. If he is to be less wrong he must be willing to admit the terrible truth that he has wasted his life. He has to be brave enough to face the fact that his life has been dedicated to foolishness. I suppose we could make similar analogies when we consider scientists who spent their lives trying to prove false ideas.

What if that's us? What if that's our species? What if we haven't even begun to learn? What we're philosophical toddlers?

And I'm not saying we are. I don't have any good reasons to think one way or another. But if we are too frightened to consider the possibility, we'll never know. Perhaps wisdom requires us to entertain the possibility.

And if you fear you have wasted your life, don't sweat it. Maybe we all have, or none of us have, or there's no such thing. I certainly don't think less of you.

The Vertigo of Realizing Your Life is Your Life

There's a sensation that sometimes suddenly seizes me, although I think I can manufacture it to some degree, when I am struck by the reality of “Oh yeah, this is my life. I live here. In this body. My parents are so and so. My spouse is this person. I look like this and I breathe and I was born and I will die.” And the sensation can be disorienting, can cause a kind of inward sense of unbalance.

It's as if, in the process of living my life, I get so immersed in the minute by minute of living that I lose the summed perspective of being-who/what-I-am. And when it strikes me it sometimes feels foreign. As if I had forgotten who I was and somehow I was expecting something else. I wonder if my brain knows it's a brain?

Is Determinism Weirder than the Alternative?

If determinism is the case, than everything that has happened since the universe began was inexorably set in motion the moment the universe began to exist. Or perhaps, if we want to zoom out, everything that has ever happened are the only things that could have happened. Reality is what it is, and was always going to be, and always will be. A entity with the right qualities could observe the big bang and, based on that snapshot of the first moment of the universe, infer correctly every winning lottery number ever.

What often gets glossed over is this implies that the Taco Bell Doritos Locos Taco is an inevitable aspect of reality. Physics plus the presets of the big bang initiated a domino chain that, billions of years later, was always going to lead to the Taco Bell Doritos Locos Taco. If the presets of the big bang also could not have been other than what they were, then our universe is -by its nature - the kind of universe has Taco Bell Doritos Locos Tacos in it.

Of course, if things could have been other than what they are, then Taco Bell Doritos Locos didn't have to exist, but we happened to end up in the reality were they do. Of all possible iterations of the world I could live in, the one I in fact find myself in has Taco Bell Doritos Locos Tacos.

Both of these seem very strange in different ways.

The Internet and the Jury of the Mind

I hope you'll forgive some loose language and a certain amount of literary flourish here.

I was reflecting today on the psychological differences between my contemporary self and my younger selves. One factor that drew my attention was that, for some time now, I often don't feel entirely in one place. When I was younger my mind was settled inside the room I was in, or the general vicinity. I recall how much easier it was to forget that someone was mad at me, or upset with me, or that I had done something embarrassing, because once I got away from them physically it became much easier to distance myself mentally. Out of sight, out of mind was much more automatic back then.

But for quite some time now, beginning I don't know when, and plausibly shifting in nature and intensity over time, I have had a jury in my head. Sometimes it feels like the whole human species is in there, all who have ever been and ever will be, moment by moment judging my thoughts and behaviors and inclinations.

I suspect that a contributing factor to this, although likely not the only one, is the rise of the internet broadly and social media specifically. I often liken social media sites to cities, with our profiles being the apartments. Or one could liken the whole of the internet to a massive city, some of it glittering and bright and some of it covered in a foot of the most rancid, putrescent slime you can imagine. It baffles me how casual people are about letting children wander aimlessly about this city without an adult accompanying them, but that's a different post. The point is, and I am hardly the first to make this observation, that we sort of all live in these cities. We live here and there. In the real world other people are separated by distance. We can't always see each other or talk to each other. But the internet allows us to, digitally, always be close to each other. I can talk to anyone at any time on social media. My phone is a window into a massive apartment block where none of us ever really leave our apartments and the walls are thin enough that we hear a lot of what's going on with each other.

This lack of distance creates, in me at least, a kind of sense of the immediacy of the presence of other people. The connectedness is wonderful, in some senses, but it always sort of means that I'm spread out. I'm here and there. I'm in Canada watching the wildfires, I'm in Congress watching bills be voted on, I'm at the houses of innumerable people on Twitter (sorry X) all arguing with them, I'm at the Sistine Chapel and Stonehenge and Machu Picchu, I'm at school with John and Hank Green, I'm at a sketch comedy show with the cast of Dropout. I'm in so many places I'm barely in my living room at all. It is an amazing power to be in all these places and witness all these things. However, the consistency of it, day in and day out, makes me feel like Bilbo, “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”

I'm doing it right now too. I'm imagining talking to all of you. I'm imagine sitting in a room with you saying all these things. But you’re not here.

Obviously “disconnect from internet sometimes” is hardly groundbreaking as an idea, but I'm having more clarity on exactly why that might be a good idea.

Epicurus Trilemma: Electric Boogaloo

If an omnipotent being attempts to make a creature or entity happy and safe, is it possible that that attempt could fail? 

In the event an omnipotent being did everything it could to make a creature or entity happy and safe, is it possible that that creature or entity ends up not safe and/or not happy? 

If an an entity or creature is not happy or is not safe, can we assume that an omnipotent being is not trying to make that creature happy or safe? 

Potential objection: creatures can choose to not be happy, and an omnipotent being might allow for creatures to choose to be unhappy, even if that entity is doing everything possible other than overriding their free will in order to make that creature or entity happy.

Counter: this leaves the safety aspect untouched. Why should a child ever be in danger of a tornado if an omnipotent being who is trying to keep them safe exists?

Counter: why should any particular action necessarily lead to unhappiness? There seems to be no necessary causal reaction between, say, engaging in same sex sexual activity, and unhappiness. One could imagine a world where this was not the case, and so for it to be the case in any universe would seem deliberate. Why would a being trying to optimize happiness make a universe where so many things lead to unhappiness?

Unless: you don't think same sex sexual activity causes unhappiness in a natural way, built into our reality’s physics, but rather that God deliberate and supernaturally inflicts suffering on those who participate in such behavior? But then, it would seem hard to maintain the idea then that God is always acting to maintain our happiness or safety.

Conclusion: I can think of no reason why there should be danger and unhappiness for humans if an omnipotent being is trying to keep us safe and happy. Unless somehow you think a greater good (good for who?) is preserved by the possibility of danger and unhappiness. But I have heard no argument to suggest that children dying from tornadoes is necessary for a greater good, or why we would live in a universe where so much leads to unhappiness. Even if we wanted to maintain a universe where deliberately standing in fire causes suffering, this doesn't go far to explain most of the Christian religion’s insistence on suffering as the consequences for many behaviors.

Note: there are some who seem to suggest that ungodliness or spiritually rejecting God necessarily results in unhappiness or pain. However it seems trivially true to say that anyone, no matter how much they reject God, who does heroin is happy for at least as long as the high lasts, so we have established that it is not logically impossible for someone to reject God and be happy for at least a time. So, if an atheist suffers strictly due to their atheism that would seem to be a quality of reality that God decided on.

End of the day: the world has a lot of suffering in it. If God is trying to prevent or alleviate suffering, then the Christian has to somehow argue that this is the best an omnipotent being could do (unlikely) OR that God's efforts to alleviate any more suffering than he already is would somehow cost us something we wouldn't be willing to give up OR that God has motivations other than our happiness and well-being that he is prioritizing.

Theodicy, the Bare Bones

Theodicy. We want to know why suffering exists, why it persists.

Classically this issue has been phrased as something like "If God is all good and all powerful, why does suffering exist?". The so-called Epicurus Trilemma is:

1. If God is unable to prevent evil, then he is not all-powerful.

2. If God is not willing to prevent evil, then he is not all-good.

3. If God is both willing and able to prevent evil, then why does evil exist?

I will rework this slightly as "If God is all loving and all powerful, why is there suffering?".

To properly engage with this we will need to ask, what is love? Or, more helpfully, within the context of Abrahamic theology and holy text, how is the term "love" used? Except of course, that's an English word, so when these texts use words like ἀγάπη (1 John 4:8), what function is that term serving? Is this term being used in any sense close to how we might use the term "love"?

I think it might be useful to ask a very specific question:

Does God ever do anything that is contrary to what is best for anyone (maximizes their happiness)? Or, does God ever do anything where it is the case that it would have been better for someone, in the long run, if God had not done that thing?

Running alongside side this we might reasonably also ask: is there ever some action that God could take that that would be of benefit to someone (maximizes their happiness)- without harming another - that God does not do? Or is there ever some harm God could prevent to someone that God does not prevent?

When I say that my parents love me, I am communicating, among other factors, that they strive to act in ways that benefit me and strive to avoid acting in ways that harm me (strive to enhance my happiness and decrease my suffering). If someone has no consideration with respect to avoiding behaviors harmful to me, and if they care not about benefiting me, I am not likely to say that this person loves me. And I think this is a very common limiter that most people would place on their usage of the term "love".

So, does God love me, or you, or anyone? You could object that this is not what is meant by love in Christian scripture, or what is meant by ἀγάπη. But it is worth mentioning that, if this is the case, I would call if fair then to say that God does not love humans in any sense even remotely similar to our common usage of the term. I would go so far as to say that in English it would make sense to abandon the phrasing "God loves us" and form some new term to get the job done.

If you wish to maintain that God loves us, and that this is reasonably close to our common usage of the word, then you run into what I think is the central issue of theodicy: it appears to be straightforwardly the case that an omnipotent God could prevent most, if not all, of the harm we humans suffer. Correspondingly, there appears to be much benefit such a God could provide that we do not enjoy. To simplify things, we can ignore examples of humans harming each other (even though I think these are still huge problems that simple appeals to free will don't solve), and just focus on a single example, such as bone cancer, a favorite example of Stephen Fry.

Let's do a little proof.

Premise 1. Bone cancer exists.

Premise 2. God could cure all existing cases of bone cancer and prevent any new cases.

Premise 3. It would reduce harm in humans for God to cure bone cancer and prevent it.

Premise 4. God acts at all times to minimize harm in humans.

Therefore

Conclusion: God has cured all bone cancer and prevents all future cases.

BUT, bone cancer exists and new cases continue to form.

So, if the premises follow through to the conclusion, we have a problem. Premise 1 feels pretty unassailable. Premise 2 seems to be in line with typical Christian theology, although there might be some folks who would go after that one. Premise 4 can't be done away with without trying to insist that God's love for humans is very unlike our typical usage of the term (as discussed above). It seems that the only remaining option would be to go after 3, unless you want to bite the bullet of going after 4.

If one wants to go after 3 you have to somehow argue that bone cancer is good for humans, or at least that God curing and preventing it would be bad for us. You would have to argue that, somehow in the long run, our happiness would be reduced if God were to cure and prevent bone cancer. Someone might also want to discuss the possibility of God selecting among humans: possibly God acts to enhance the happiness of some at the cost of the happiness of others.

Notably, it seems as though some Christians already dismiss 4. It would seem very hard for 5 point Calvinists to maintain that God does everything that could be done to minimize harm to all humans or that He does everything that could be done to maximize the happiness of all humans. To some degree I believe this is why Thomas Talbott ended up embracing universal reconciliation: if the Calvinists believe that a human's final destiny is entirely up to God's decision, without human activity or decisions having any effect, AND God wants to maximize human happiness, THEN God would send everybody to heaven.

At any rate, I suppose one might attempt a response with something to the effect that there are motivations God has that overpower His love, or take priority above it: righteousness or some other factor. If “all loving” were to mean that every act of love that can be taken is taken, and “all righteous” were to mean that every act of righteousness that can be taken is taken and that there are some situations where the loving thing and the righteous thing are mutually exclusive then it could be the case that one could not be all loving and all righteous. Which would be an interesting take.

I think that's everything I have to say.

Transgender Issues, an Analytic Philosophical Perspective

I would like to make an attempt at a philosophical discussion of transgender issues from an analytic perspective. I can’t pretend that I’m overwhelmingly familiar with Butler, but she seems to be coming at this from a continental perspective, so perhaps it will be helpful to someone to get an analytic take. 

I have to wonder how much of this actually is a logical issue, rather than a social or religious one. I have some suspicions that many folk who would consider themselves broadly “anti-trans”, or what have you, actually understand conceptually where trans people are coming from, but have objections to the moral or social ramifications of what trans acceptance would suggest. Nevertheless, I am confident some anti-trans sentiment comes from an honest misunderstanding of trans issues. I believe that some folk, few though they may be, genuinely believe that transgender people pose some kind of threat to reason itself or something. Perhaps I can assuage your fears?

To begin with, I should mention that trans folk, almost universally, use the words “man” and “woman” in a very different way than conservative Christians might. Think of file names for word documents: you can attach any label you like to a word document and it doesn’t affect the document. You could imagine different documents with the same name, or two identical documents with different names. It’s not hard to imagine the same sound or glyph having very different meanings in different languages. In fact, it’s easy to manufacture: behold my new language where the glyphs “dog” mean what English speakers recognize as “spoon”, so that I would use a dog to eat cereal.

You might object that this is semantics, and I would agree: trans people in fact are differing in their semantics, that’s the point.

I suppose there may be a trans woman who might use the term “woman” to indicate something like “person who can become pregnant”, and I suppose it would be fair to tell this person that their own usage of “woman” would exclude themselves, but this seems like a kind of strawman, since I’ve never heard of this happening.

===============
And now I will digress into a larger discussion of how language works. Feel free to skip this bit, but please don’t. 

I think Wittgenstein was right when he wrote in Philosophical Investigations, " For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word "meaning" it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language." In this sense we might prefer function or usage over meaning.

Which is to say: for any pattern of ink or gesture of hands or acoustic vibrations, we can use that however we want within our language. The nuances and complexities of all this are beyond the scope of this paper, but mentioning this in brief is essential. Ask yourself, what is the meaning of the word “damn” in the context of someone shouting that word after hitting their thumb with a hammer? Does it have anything to do with perdition in a direct sense? Or consider the idea of someone saying “shit” after discovering their car has been broken into. Consider the differences between saying “I apologize” and “I am sorry” (performativists have interesting things to say here.) Anyway, onwards. 

Matt Walsh has famously asked: “What is a woman?” I won’t pretend to have seen his documentary, but I wonder if he really appreciates the complexity of the question he’s asked. The question “what is a woman?” is part of a larger set of questions, the set of questions that ask, “What is X?” So we might ask “what is a cat?”, “what is God?”, “what is the best restaurant in town?”, “what is life?”. These questions touch on issues of ontology and epistemology and linguistics and probably many more disciplines and subjects that I’m forgetting to mention. To properly understand these questions, and how to answer them, we have to establish some background first.

Addendum 1, 4/27/23:

As a brief opener I might point out that questions of the type “What is X?” are plausibly a kind of elliptical sentence as Wittgenstein would use the phrase. Consider that, presumably, questions are asked of someone. Except, sometimes not so much it might appear. Consider speaking with a scientist who might utter phrases like “What is dark matter?” or “Science seeks to answer the question: how did life begin on earth?” Who are these questions asked of? On the other hand, if one asks of a coworker “Where is the stapler?”, this definitely seems to be directed at someone in particular. I think it’s possible that even though all these utterances have the grammatical structure of a question, they are quite different in function. The former questions are a kind of way of saying “We’re all trying to figure out what dark matter is.” or perhaps “We would like to know how life began on earth.” (so the question would really be a kind of statement perhaps), whereas the latter example is interrogatory. It’s not entirely clear to me in which sense Walsh is asking “What is a woman?”, but if it is a question meant to be asked of someone than what he’s really getting at is “How do you use the term “woman”?” It’s somewhat like as if I would ask of a Spanish speaker “¿Qué es un gato?” (God I hope Google translated that right) and they pointed at what I tend to call a cat. “Gato” is performing the same function in their language as “Cat” does in mine.

End addendum.

Philosophy and linguistics are inextricably linked. One might fairly suggest that philosophy is about ideas. But if an idea is to be communicated – possibly if it’s to be meaningful at all – it has to be expressed in language. This is part of why defining our terms is so important when we do philosophy: subtle differences in meaning in our premises can result in quite different conclusions. Awareness of language, of what’s really going on under the hood of language, is necessary to do philosophy. 

It's important to recognize what level of strictness, as it were, we’re operating on when we do philosophy. At some level of strictness we talk of nominalist and realist approaches. Briefly, and I’m leaving out a lot, these are approaches to universals, or, perhaps one could say, approaches to categorization, and whether those categories exist in the world or only in the mind or in language. I am a nominalist. The basic idea of being a nominalist is that I deny the existence of true universals. I do in fact think almost all categories exist in the mind and in the language, but not in the world-without-us. In the strict sense I don’t think men or women exist, but I also don’t think cats or tables or musicians exist either. Indeed, recall that a cat evolved from a non-cat: where exactly did the switchover happen? It’s arbitrary. Math related categories might be an exception to this: cubes might meaningfully exist for example. Although I have a physicist friend who points out that atoms don't technically have a strict boundary edge, so whether or not a cube could actually exist in the world isn't clear to me. I saw a video once where Hank Green said electrons are a true category, and he would know better than me. For the most part, however, definitions fall apart when you look close enough. Some fall apart almost immediately and some are a bit more durable until you really zoom in. 


Of course, this level of strictness isn’t necessary, or helpful, for most day-to-day conversation. The level of tolerable ambiguity in language varies greatly depending on context. Suppose there is a box with a sphere, a pyramid, and an almost-perfect-cube. But the cube-like-object has a small nick in it, which technically means it’s not a cube (hence “cube-like”). Nevertheless, if I say to someone “hand me the cube from that box” they will likely do-the-thing-I-wanted-them-to-do.  We can examine a statement in the context of its effects.. I say, “Hand me the cube”, and you in fact do the thing I wanted you to do. The fact that it really isn’t a cube hardly matters. A robot might come back and protest “there is no cube.” Sometimes fuzziness in language is helpful. Contextually, just the opposite might be the case: when a surgeon gives orders to their assistants I imagine a large degree of precision in language is really quite important.

It will be helpful at this point for us to examine the mechanics of a particular instance of “This entity is X”. Let’s take a look at what happens when someone says, “I am a weightlifter.” Now, as with most self-descriptors it allows for a generous degree of vagueness. How many times must one lift weights to be a weightlifter? How much do you need to bench? Etc etc. But we use terms like "weightlifter" as a shorthand in conversation in order to convey a condensed amount of generalized information. Consider the mechanics of what happens when someone says to you "I am a weightlifter". Suppose you're on a date with someone and they say to you "I am a weightlifter". What happens next? Well, my brain would engage in a bunch of background processing, heavily weighted by context and life experience, and then generate a number of impressions and probabilistic beliefs. I might have the impression that "It's quite likely this person has lifted weights in the last week", "It's nearly certain this person has lifted weights in the last month", "This person likely owns protein powder", "This person likely has a gym membership." Now of course my date could spell all that out using hyper specific language "I have lifted weights six times in the last week", "I own protein powder", etc, but that would be tedious. So we rely on semi-vague descriptors to allow for efficient conversation. We use terms, with varying levels of vagueness, to front load a lot of information for conversation purposes. As the conversation continues, or as more conversations occur, increasingly specific information may be shared.

==================

Returning more specifically to philosophically examining being transgender…

As a brief aside, I will be using the terms “self-describe” and “self-descriptor” rather than the terms “identify” or “identity” for clarity’s sake. Many attempts I’ve seen to establish what one means by “identity” or “identify” are so nebulous that I feel using these terms detracts from my ability to communicate these ideas (as stated above, a certain degree of nebulousness isn’t always a problem, but in this case I think it might). When I think of the term “identify” it brings into my mind the notion of a botanist identifying plant samples. They would assess these samples for the presence or absence of certain traits and then, based on that, categorize these samples. Some usages for “identify”, in the sense of “I identify as X” follow that usage, but some do not. Therefore, I feel that using the terms “self-describe” and “self-descriptors” will be more helpful.

Now that we have that out of the way, we can turn our attention more specifically to the question: “What is a woman?” We will answer this question from three different lenses of analysis: 1. When is it rational for a person to declare that someone or something is X?, 2. What usage of a word grants the most utility from a social perspective?, and 3. Within a sample population, what does the typical usage for a word look like?


Starting with the first question: when is someone being rational in asserting that someone or something is X (where X is any category: woman, doctor, nocturnal, liquid)? And I answer: so long as the speaker’s usage of that word actually applies to the entity, they are being rational (whether or not their usage is useful or helpful). If someone says, “Dogs are cats”, and what they mean by cat is what I would mean by “mammal”, they are being rational in that usage. If someone asserts that they are a woman, they are being rational so long as their usage for the word “woman” actually applies to them. There may be, somewhere in the wide world, a trans woman whose usage of the word woman means “someone who can get pregnant”, and, barring interesting edge cases, you would be fair to pointing out to this person that their own usage of the word “woman” would exclude themselves. But I have never heard of this happening. There may be a variety of usages for the word “woman” among trans women, but this is fine: there is considerable variety in usages for many words: artist, athlete, hero, beautiful, good, etc.

Moving onto the second question: what usage of a word grants the most utility from a social perspective? Just because an individual is being rational in their usage of a word, that doesn’t mean that there is benefit to the widespread usage of the word in that way. The utility gained from using a word a particular way will vary greatly depending on context, both on the individual level and the society level. Someone might be rational in asserting “a dog is a carburetor”, if by carburetor they mean what I mean by “mammal”, but we get quite a lot of social benefit in collectively using the term carburetor in a specific sense. This is particularly true for the population of people called mechanics. (As a brief defensive aside, if someone objects with something like “If we had highly non-standardized usages for all words then language would fall apart”, I agree, but if someone just pierces their ears and lip they’ll be ok, while if they pierce every available inch of skin they’ll be in trouble.) In some cases we want to employ limiting factors: what should exclude an entity from being described with a word. How strict our limiters are depends on the utility we get out of those limiters. I think society gains an enormous amount of utility from using very strict limiters in the case of who we call a “surgeon.” One limiter, not the only one I’m sure, is that if you haven’t finished medical school I think it entirely fair to not refer to you as a surgeon, despite any protests you might have to the contrary. In other cases, more gentle limiters make sense. I would only call someone a skydiver if they had in fact jumped out of a plane at some point, but I’m not terribly interested in insisting on a certain number of jumps. In other cases, only the loosest of limiters make sense to employ. Much gatekeeping occurs around the concept of fandom, and this seems unhealthy and unproductive to me. If one were to say that they were a fan of Stranger Things, I would likely only grant that descriptor if they had seen at least one episode of Stranger Things (my apologies Vaush).. Anything past that is unproductive gatekeeping.

With this lens I believe the real issue comes into focus. I mentioned earlier that I think many folks actually understand trans people  just fine, they just object to the consequences of trans acceptance. This might stem from a belief that strict gender roles are necessary for human flourishing, or beliefs about the ontological or metaphysical nature of sex/gender. A full assessment of the question “what limiters, if any, are helpful for the terms ‘man’ and ‘woman?” would require an entire other paper. We could also ask “when should we grant the self-descriptor ‘man’ or ‘woman’”? My own take is simply that gender roles are destructive and should be done away with, and that we should grant these self-descriptors to anyone who wishes to use them. I trust trans men and trans women to be rational in calling themselves men and women because I trust their own usages of those terms apply to themselves. I would also say that these self-descriptors should be respected when it comes to social categorization and organization: that society is better if trans folk can use which bathrooms they wish, etc. But a full utilitarian breakdown of all these issues would be extensive, so that will have to be another paper..

Note that I am not necessarily saying it is the case that “A woman is someone who self-describes as a woman” in the causative sense. For some trans women, I have no idea the numbers, their personal usage of the word “woman” won’t be “A woman is someone who self-describes as a woman”. It might be that, and I have no objection to it, but it isn’t necessary in order to respect their self-descriptors. We are discussing “when will we, as a society, apply the term” and my answer is “Whenever anybody would like to have the term applied to them.”. If we extend our discussion of terms “male” and “female” things get even more complicated, more complicated than I can discuss here. 

Finally, we might ask: within the population of trans women and trans men what are some commonalities with respect to their usage of the words “woman” and “man”? Well, as mentioned before, there is a huge variety of usages, but frequent with overlap. This isn’t a problem in the slightest, of course. Think of the enormous variety of experience in what is meant by self-describing as an "athlete". Or consider the debates that could erupt if one asks what is a “sport” or “art” or “Christian”?  We perhaps could form some generalized indicator of what is meant, on average, by athlete, but failing to adhere to that generalized concept doesn't necessarily mean one isn't an athlete (although, as I said before, I suspect it’s most accurate to say there are no athletes in the strictest sense).

So, can we say anything at all? I suspect we can. I don’t want to speak for trans people, and I am willing to be corrected, but I have a sense that there are few phrasings that would be generally acceptable to a decent chunk of the trans population.

For some their usage of “man” and “woman” seems to be something like: “With respect to the cultural and social concept of “man” and “woman”, consisting of a loosely defined and shifting assemblage of factors, including but not limited too, aesthetics, behavior, pronouns, how one holds oneself, how one addresses others, social roles, etc, it is the case that when I call myself a “man” or “woman” what I am indicating by that is that I prefer, or feel most comfortable or happy, living mostly in accordance with the established social category of “man” or “woman””.

Or perhaps. consider the example of the weightlifter.  The terms “man” and “woman” are sometimes used in that sense. It would be tedious for someone to spell out "I like wearing dresses and I like knitting and I also like monster trucks and I like hunting and here are another thousand facts about me and I'm masculine in these ways and feminine in these ways". If gender (gender roles, social expectations of experience, social expectations of behavior) is a spectrum (or perhaps it’s what Wittgenstein would call a cluster concept, consider the idea of what a “game” is), it implies that, at some level of strictness, that there are no men or women so much as there are people who are - with respect to any number of traits - more or less masculine or feminine. But saying "I am a man" or "I am a woman" front loads a lot of that and provides a kind of a general "here is how to think of me on an immediate level but while allowing a lot of nuance and variability." Notably, it isn’t a problem if this isn’t how any particular person uses the terms “man” or “woman”, as mentioned above I advocate for no limiters on the terms. But it can be helpful to say what someone might often mean by those terms within a population. I could imagine for some trans men they would say that what they mean when they self describe as a man is “With respect to the loose collection of factors that comprise the Western concept of “man” I am closer to that than the Western concept of “man”, or something like this.

If this seems at all strange, recall the frequency with which we see phrasings of the kind “You’re not a man unless you can change a tire” or “You’re not a real man unless you can do x, y, z.”, none of which have anything to do with physiology. If you interrogated the folks who say such things they would likely protest that what they were getting at was how men are supposed to behave, rather than how they inevitably do, but such phrasings are part and parcel of the cultural archetype of man that some trans men may be responding to. As much as folks might protest and try and emphasize simple factors like “penis or vagina” or “XX or XY”, it’s undeniable that, culturally, we have larger symbolic and thematic ideas of what it means to be a “man’ or ‘woman” beyond physiology. 


We might be running into some degree of “beetle in a box” type issues (thanks again Wittgenstein). Some trans folk may be experiencing some kind of qualia I simply have no access to. I might just not be able to understand exactly what a trans man is getting at when he insists “I am a man”. It might be a little like trying to describe color to someone born blind. But I think it’s safe to trust trans people when they are relating their inner worlds to us. At a minimum, it’s simply undeniably that there appears to be percentage of the human population that necessarily - for their own happiness and wellbeing - must differ in some factors (perhaps many) from the cultural script assigned to them on account of what kind of genitals they were born with. Trans people have existed across time and and cultures, and many cultures have developed some kind of third (fourth, fifth, etc) gender scripts for them. I could mention muxe in Mexico, bakla in the Philippines, hijra in the Indian Subcontinent, femminiello in Neapolitan culture (Western!), or two-spirit people in indigenous American cultures (which itself is an umbrella term). The idea that trans people are some kind of contemporary Western invention is deeply ahistorical.

At this point it feels pertinent to bring up the concept of sexual dysphoria, humans who feel distress, often considerable, as a result of the kind of body they have, particularly with respect to sexual characteristics. Among such individuals, medical intervention, such as puberty blockers and HRT, seems to be the only reliable way to provide psychological relief. I’m sure this is wildly inaccurate in a strict sense, but the notion of “the brain expecting a different kind of body” might be helpful as a starting point to understand this. Many trans people will not experience this, but many will, and sexual dysphoria (sexual because it strictly is referring to sexed characteristics rather than gender roles or expectations) is necessary to discuss to fully elaborate on a philosophical take on trans issues. For many trans people their own usage of “man” or “woman” as it applies to themselves may conceptually involve the kind of body they feel most psychologically comfortable with. In the context of a society without gender roles, there would arguably be no trans people with respect to gender (because there would be no gender in the sociological sense, gender being arguably just an amalgamation of gender roles), but there plausibly would still be individuals who, for whatever reason, experience psychological distress as a result of their sexed characteristics. 

This may sound somewhat nebulous, but in fairness, all definitions (or almost all at a minimum) fall apart at closest examination. Hence, nominalism. Some folk use the term “woman” to reference something like “adult female human”, but that also falls apart at closest examination. We have to ask “what’s a female”? And this might seem relatively straightforward at first, but precisely what do we mean by “female”? We can’t mean “the ability to become pregnant”, unless people born infertile are excluded from being women. This could also exclude post menopausal women from being women.  We can’t mean “people who are shorter and less hairy than men” , because some men are short and quite hairless, while some women are tall and more hirsute. We could mean “those who produce the gametes called ovum”, but this could exclude folks who have been through menopause or those who weren’t born with functional reproductive organs. You could go with “those who lack a Y chromosome”, but then you have individuals with androgen insensitivity syndrome, who can be born with a vulva while having XY chromosomes, so then you have to bite the bullet and accept that some men are born with vulvas. Indeed, intersex conditions conceptually provide a number of issues for the attempt to equate “woman” with “adult human female” or “man” with “adult human male”. 

I’m not sure I know how to end this. I feel that I’ve said what needs to be said.