Evolution: Is sexual selection sexist?

[Zinjanthropos]

I love a good cat fight. 

I used to drink when I was a young guy and no matter how blitzed I became back then, I can still remember the bar room fights I saw between women. Most of them about some guy, like we're worth the trouble. 

Sorry for the interruption....please continue

[Syne]

Ah, but the right doesn't foster the pretense that they hew especially close to science. We all expect religious people to be forwarding ideological views, but the left pretends they are forwarding science, while twisting it ideologically, as illustrated by the link in the OP. You trying to equate the two seems biased or naive. Sure, if the right claimed to be just as objective and science-based as the left, you might have a point. But since they don't, the left is clearly busy obfuscating their ideological motives, even if primarily from themselves.

Unfortunately,  this is veering from the main topic, and a rather verbose explanation, but this is exactly where I’m stuck. On this word…ideology.

It is often used as a pejorative, but Marx used the term "ideology" in two ways. Broadly, it meant the entire "superstructure," such as ideas, beliefs, institutions, laws, and social systems, built upon the economic "base." Marx also used the term to denote legal, social, political, religious, philosophical, and cultural ideas and thought.  Ideology is "the imaginary relation to the real conditions of existence".

...

Here is where I find myself trapped, and faced with a conundrum, an inescapable rabbit hole, as I see it.  At the very moment you try to pick yourself up, and brush of the nihilistic dust, you’re immediately kicked in the gut.  You’re a hypocrite straightaway, knowing full well that you are one of them.  One in need of a system of measure to judge one’s self.  Like Nietzsche said, in trying to impose order on life, you run the risk of losing touch with reality, and replacing it with your own concoction, but to love life you have to eat the fruit, but in doing so, it’s almost as if you have to have a willing suspension of disbelief.  

Syne leans towards panentheism.  Leigha (wegs) leans towards fairy stories.  Tolkien, too, suggested fairy stories. He defends fairy stories as a means of escape from the human condition.  He thought Christianity served this purpose by creating a mythological nature of the cosmos.  Nietzsche, on the other hand, suggested Amor Fati (love of fate).

You're right. "Ideology" has been made a derogatory term, primarily by the left. So now that the left has become engrossed in their own ideology, they are open to the same criticism they've lobbed at others. But an ideology is just a consistent worldview. It is what informs and sometime motivates our choices. The only hypocrisy lies in dishonesty and inconsistency. The right is largely honest about its worldview and motives, while the left is largely (these are generalities, mind you) dishonest (like insisting they don't ever want to ban guns, or that abortions should be rare, etc.). Now, I believe the left is mostly dishonest with themselves, and are not intentionally dishonest with others. They actually just don't seem to be aware of their own motives (or they just don't care to form a consistent worldview because they've berated ideology for so long). And this unawareness of their own motives naturally leads to inconsistency.

Sorry, this isn't meant to be the partisan diatribe I'm sure it sounds like. The right has its own problems, but dismissing natural sexual selection and ideological dishonesty or inconsistency (except where Trump is concerned) are just not a large portion of them.

But there's an art to honest people making their ideology consistent with facts. You learn where you must give ground to facts, where to keep silent because your ideological opposition will dishonestly take a mile when given an inch, what really amounts to fact and knowledge, and where to restrain what claims you make. It takes discipline and self-awareness.

Many people just choose what comforts them, without regard to facts at all.

[C C]

Ah, but the right doesn't foster the pretense that they hew especially close to science. We all expect religious people to be forwarding ideological views, but the left pretends they are forwarding science, while twisting it ideologically, as illustrated by the link in the OP. You trying to equate the two seems biased or naive. Sure, if the right claimed to be just as objective and science-based as the left, you might have a point. But since they don't, the left is clearly busy obfuscating their ideological motives, even if primarily from themselves.

Unfortunately,  this is veering from the main topic, and a rather verbose explanation, but this is exactly where I’m stuck. On this word…ideology.

It is often used as a pejorative, but Marx used the term "ideology" in two ways. Broadly, it meant the entire "superstructure," such as ideas, beliefs, institutions, laws, and social systems, built upon the economic "base." Marx also used the term to denote legal, social, political, religious, philosophical, and cultural ideas and thought.  Ideology is "the imaginary relation to the real conditions of existence".

This one has almost become a standard or cliché for the dyslogistic context:

Eric Voegelin: The restriction of vocabulary and meanings: an ideological language has the purpose of interrupting the contact with reality, and on the other hand to admit as "reality" in quotation marks only the phantasy of the ideology. This restriction now pertains not only to words and meanings, but to whole bodies of propositions in philosophy or to facts of history that could interfere with the ideological "truth" by showing it to be a falsehood [...] If one translates the Orwellian issue into more adequate terminology, one would have to speak of the "obsessive language" of ideologues -- which has the double purpose of repetitious, mechanical iteration of the phantasy [e.g., "Taxation is theft!"] and of killing off, at the same time, any conflicting reality. [...] "Statists use violence to force their morality on others."

But the slow brain and its communication limitations has too little time and memory resources to deal with civilization and the world in terms of their countless particulars or individual elements. Thus our synoptic compartmentalizations (which concepts like "ideology" facilitate) are among the generalized tools necessary for the mind to discern, apprehend and verbally manipulate labyrinth complexes and systems in practical fashion. Although some political philosophers like Eric Voegelin (above) took a pessimistic and narrow view on the function of "ideology", the pejorative aspect (IMO) would be best applied to when an "ideologue" is abusing her/his school of thought (someone so strictly guided by doctrine[s] that they have become a robot or desire others to behave robotically). Or too bad "ideologue-ism" is not a universally valid word.

There are surely combining forms that could invent new nouns / adjectives specifically designating "sacred politics" (sacro__, hiero__) or "political rectitude" in ways that capture the fervor / zealotry often myopically only recognized in or attributed to religion. "Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --George Orwell

Going from detour to topic...

Sex can still refer to biological characteristics / differences. But "gender" was appropriated or kidnapped (personal choice of either) by WHO and other organizations to refer to "social constructed roles". Which are now a spectrum exhibiting distinctions like non-binary, pangender, polygender, agender, demiboy, demigirl, neutrois, aporagender, lunagender, quantumgender, etc. (Whatever other alien-diverse labels sci-fi youth of the future can dream up.) There are extremists who supposedly go a step further and contend that "sex" doesn't actually subsume / reference natural sub-categories (the potency or authority of all the nomenclature is also artificial, grammatical).

There's almost a sense of John Varley like expectations occasionally in these movements, where -- thanks to predicted rapid physiological engineering and interchangeable parts -- humans / transhumans will someday be routinely switching from one gender identity and species hybrid to another in terms of somatic properties (not just today's superficial experimentation of trying on various non-surgical psychological and cosmetic stances).

[Secular Sanity]

Going from detour to topic...

Sex can still refer to biological characteristics / differences. But "gender" was appropriated or kidnapped (personal choice of either) by WHO and other organizations to refer to "social constructed roles". Which are now a spectrum exhibiting distinctions like non-binary, pangender, polygender, agender, demiboy, demigirl, neutrois, aporagender, lunagender, quantumgender, etc. (Whatever other alien-diverse labels sci-fi youth of the future can dream up.) There are extremists who supposedly go a step further and contend that "sex" doesn't actually subsume / reference natural sub-categories (the potency or authority of all the nomenclature is also artificial, grammatical).

There's almost a sense of John Varley like expectations occasionally in these movements, where -- thanks to predicted rapid physiological engineering and interchangeable parts -- humans / transhumans will someday be routinely switching from one gender identity and species hybrid to another in terms of somatic properties (not just today's superficial experimentation of trying on various non-surgical psychological and cosmetic stances).

Well said, C C.  You have a way of explaining things, which makes reality a little less frightening.  I appreciate that.

Your last paragraph touches on the topic of transgenders. Syne and I were discussing this in another thread, and speaking of ideologies, I did stumble onto an article yesterday that contained an interesting question.  Maybe you could answer it.

The Tyranny of Transgender Ideology

Why is it acceptable to surgically alter a child’s body to match his sense of self but bigoted to try to change his sense of self to match his body? If it is wrong to attempt to change a child’s gender identity (because it is fixed and meddling with it is harmful), then why is it morally acceptable to alter something as fixed as the reproductive anatomy of a minor?

[Syne]

Why is it acceptable to surgically alter a child’s body to match his sense of self but bigoted to try to change his sense of self to match his body? If it is wrong to attempt to change a child’s gender identity (because it is fixed and meddling with it is harmful), then why is it morally acceptable to alter something as fixed as the reproductive anatomy of a minor?

No idea. Somehow some people have managed to foster the notion that mental characteristics are more permanent that physical ones. Is this just a symptom of narcissism? Laziness to any idea of self-discipline? Gastric-bypass surgery instead of the willpower to exercise?

[RainbowUnicorn]

Well said, C C.  You have a way of explaining things, which makes reality a little less frightening.  I appreciate that.

Your last paragraph touches on the topic of transgenders. Syne and I were discussing this in another thread, and speaking of ideologies, I did stumble onto an article yesterday that contained an interesting question.  Maybe you could answer it.

The Tyranny of Transgender Ideology

Why is it acceptable to surgically alter a child’s body to match his sense of self but bigoted to try to change his sense of self to match his body? If it is wrong to attempt to change a child’s gender identity (because it is fixed and meddling with it is harmful), then why is it morally acceptable to alter something as fixed as the reproductive anatomy of a minor?

why is it acceptable to brainwash a child & remove free will & call it religion ?
why is it acceptable to give a 12yo girl to an adult male as a domestic & sex slave and call it Child marriage ?
why is it acceptable to brainwash a child and turn them into a child soldier ?

why is it acceptable  to surgically & chemicaly alter a childs brain & body ?

because those in authority(& a large proportion of society's) do not wish children to have independant human rights.
that is why.

[C C]

Your last paragraph touches on the topic of transgenders. Syne and I were discussing this in another thread, and speaking of ideologies, I did stumble onto an article yesterday that contained an interesting question.  Maybe you could answer it.

The Tyranny of Transgender Ideology

Why is it acceptable to surgically alter a child’s body to match his sense of self but bigoted to try to change his sense of self to match his body? If it is wrong to attempt to change a child’s gender identity (because it is fixed and meddling with it is harmful), then why is it morally acceptable to alter something as fixed as the reproductive anatomy of a minor?

Probably a blend of multiple factors behind a double standard. Some of the possibilities may have already been suggested. But just for the sake of speculative entertainment...

The lingering effects of dualism might contribute: "Who I am is the mind, not the body -- don't tamper with the former". Even in regard to Ben Libet's famous experiment, the scientists themselves were ironically basing their conclusion that "we don't have free will" on the older tradition that the usually hidden or non-conscious processes of the body / brain doesn't count as "I" -- it's the conscious or phenomenal level of decision-making or intellect which does. As Susan Blackmore once pointed out, many materialist scientists and intellectuals could be "in the closet" dualists, in terms of their occasional thinking.[#2]

Add to that the usual, difficult-to-overcome momentum of our habits, addictions, personal interests, etc. That is, any attempt to divert / change / save us from them (whether false / paternally misguided or well-founded), could illicit this manner of response from us: "These preferences and objectives constitute who I am. My identity would be severely compromised or destroyed if I lost them or gave them up." AFAIK, classic liberal Walter Williams may still smoke and would counter any notion that he should quit with a variety of rhetoric / arguments. Among which these might or might not qualify or be recruited: Economics & smoking, Nazi Tactics, Compensating Differences, etc.

In "A Clockwork Orange", there's an underlying suggestion that the Ludovico Technique (behavior-modification treatment) foisted upon Alex is just as monstrous or more so than the violent anti-hero himself. The ancestry of this antipathy toward therapeutic intervention in the form of mental conditioning goes back long before that. For example, the historical popularization of forced indoctrination ("brainwashing") in military and religious settings as threatening possibilities (both fictional and factual accounts). Or the reflexive terrors of any "snake pit" alterations of who one currently is. (In "Total Recall", Douglas Quaid didn't even want to return to his "old self" after the memory implants changed him).

Combine the above aversion to treatment with the guilt of traditional conformists about the history[#1] of their predecessors' reactions to gender nonconformists (as well as the "reverse-outcast" consequences in play now)... And it becomes a double-dose of automatic horror reaction.

- - - - - - - -

[#1] Prior to DSM revisions, etc.

[#2] Sue Blackmore: In a way the whole furore is bizarre. Most scientists claim to be materialists. That is, they don’t believe that mind is separate from body, and firmly reject Cartesian dualism. This means they should not be in the least surprised by the results [of Libet's decades old experiment]. Of course the brain must start the action off, of course the conscious feeling of having made it happen must be illusory. Yet the results created uproar. I can only think that their materialism is only skin deep, and that even avowed materialists still can’t quite accept the consequences of being a biological machine.

[Ben] Libet, unlike so many others, was wonderfully open about this. He really did believe that mind can affect body, that consciousness is some kind of power of the “non-physical subjective mind” or “conscious mental field“, and even that we might consciously survive death. Indeed, this was what inspired his experiments in the first place.

What I so much enjoyed and admired, on that walk all those years ago, was his willingness to bring his science right into his everyday life, and his life into his science. As we walked along the street he explained how important free will was to him, that without it our lives would be meaningless and there would be no point in being good, because we would have no true freedom to choose between good and evil. He pointed towards a little girl up ahead of us on the pavement. His results, he said, showed that we cannot be held responsible for thinking of murdering, raping or stealing from people because initiating such actions begins in the unconscious brain, but we can and must be held responsible for stopping ourselves from doing those things. In this way his own results made moral sense.

I disagree fundamentally with him. I think, and thought then, that free will is entirely illusory. So our discussion was lively and exciting and full of the most wonderful mixture of science, philosophy and the anguish of everyday life. I would have loved to have interviewed him for Conversations on Consciousness. One of the themes I tried to bring out in those interviews was how consciousness researchers fit their work into their ordinary lives, and he was one of those rare scientists whose life and work were completely intertwined. --Mind Over Matter? ... The Guardian ... Aug 28, 2007... Medical Research ... Opinions

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/monkeymind/...libet.html

[Secular Sanity]

Dualism… why didn’t I think of that?  Ah, C C, you’re a goddamn genius.
 
It’s the experience vs. the physical properties, i.e., subjective vs. objective, right?
 
Is it akin to Nagel’s "What is it like to be a bat?"?
 
If we had to describe what it’s like to be a man or a woman to an intelligent alien life form, what would we say?

[C C]

It’s the experience vs. the physical properties, i.e., subjective vs. objective, right? Is it akin to Nagel’s "What is it like to be a bat?"? If we had to describe what it’s like to be a man or a woman to an intelligent alien life form, what would we say?

Well, again, it's probably a mishmash of converging factors, like lingering duality and concerns about maintaining basic aspects of one's identity (all speculative / hypothetical on my part).

Like the materialists she is lightly casting imposter or "skin-deep" suspicions upon, in that quote Susan Blackmore herself goes right back to dissonantly dismissing autonomy on the grounds that the hidden processes do not count as a "me" -- as if the body is some kind of foreign agency or outside puppetmaster making the decisions and providing the "will" for a person (heteronomy instead of autonomy). It's difficult to accurately portray what's transpiring in her case and that of others because of the perversity of it. She's arguably an eliminativist or phenomenal nihilist who believes experience is an illusion (who doesn't believe there is anything but the physiological structure / dynamics); and yet she either conflictingly or unknowningly isn't accepting the body as who / what one is autonomy-wise in the context of what should be falling out of that very Point of View.

"I disagree fundamentally with him [Ben Libet]. I think, and thought then, that free will is entirely illusory."

[Syne]

The lingering effects of dualism might contribute: "Who I am is the mind, not the body -- don't tamper with the former". Even in regard to Ben Libet's famous experiment, the scientists themselves were ironically basing their conclusion that "we don't have free will" on the older tradition that the usually hidden or non-conscious processes of the body / brain doesn't count as "I" -- it's the conscious or phenomenal level of decision-making or intellect which does. As Susan Blackmore once pointed out, many materialist scientists and intellectuals could be "in the closet" dualists, in terms of their occasional thinking.[#2]
...
[#2] Sue Blackmore: In a way the whole furore is bizarre. Most scientists claim to be materialists. That is, they don’t believe that mind is separate from body, and firmly reject Cartesian dualism. This means they should not be in the least surprised by the results [of Libet's decades old experiment]. Of course the brain must start the action off, of course the conscious feeling of having made it happen must be illusory. Yet the results created uproar. I can only think that their materialism is only skin deep, and that even avowed materialists still can’t quite accept the consequences of being a biological machine.

[Ben] Libet, unlike so many others, was wonderfully open about this. He really did believe that mind can affect body, that consciousness is some kind of power of the “non-physical subjective mind” or “conscious mental field“, and even that we might consciously survive death. Indeed, this was what inspired his experiments in the first place.

What I so much enjoyed and admired, on that walk all those years ago, was his willingness to bring his science right into his everyday life, and his life into his science. As we walked along the street he explained how important free will was to him, that without it our lives would be meaningless and there would be no point in being good, because we would have no true freedom to choose between good and evil. He pointed towards a little girl up ahead of us on the pavement. His results, he said, showed that we cannot be held responsible for thinking of murdering, raping or stealing from people because initiating such actions begins in the unconscious brain, but we can and must be held responsible for stopping ourselves from doing those things. In this way his own results made moral sense.

I disagree fundamentally with him. I think, and thought then, that free will is entirely illusory. So our discussion was lively and exciting and full of the most wonderful mixture of science, philosophy and the anguish of everyday life. I would have loved to have interviewed him for Conversations on Consciousness. One of the themes I tried to bring out in those interviews was how consciousness researchers fit their work into their ordinary lives, and he was one of those rare scientists whose life and work were completely intertwined. --Mind Over Matter? ... The Guardian ... Aug 28, 2007... Medical Research ... Opinions

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/monkeymind/...libet.html

Libet's results were not what most people make them out to be, e.g. contradiction to dualism.

"Some interpret this research as showing that consciousness is merely an observer of the output of non-conscious mechanisms. Extending the paradigm developed by Benjamin Libet, John-Dylan Haynes and his collaborators used fMRI research to find patterns of neural activity in people’s brains that correlated with their decision to press either a right or left button up to seven seconds before they were aware of deciding which button to press. Haynes concludes: “How can I call a will ‘mine’ if I don’t even know when it occurred and what it has decided to do?”

However, the existing evidence does not support the conclusion that free will is an illusion. First of all, it does not show that a decision has been made before people are aware of having made it. It simply finds discernible patterns of neural activity that precede decisions. If we assume that conscious decisions have neural correlates, then we should expect to find early signs of those correlates “ramping up” to the moment of consciousness. It would be miraculous if the brain did nothing at all until the moment when people became aware of a decision to move. These experiments all involve quick, repetitive decisions, and people are told not to plan their decisions but just to wait for an urge to come upon them. The early neural activity measured in the experiments likely represents these urges or other preparations for movement that precede conscious awareness.

This is what we should expect with simple decisions. Indeed, we are lucky that conscious thinking plays little or no role in quick or habitual decisions and actions." - http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/201...free-will/

Mentalism often takes advantage of a person's propensity to cast into their subconscious when making random choices, so the mentalist can guess the choice based on intentional priming cues in the subject's environment. So if the person is making a random decision, as in the Libet experiment, we would fully expect them to consult their subconscious and only arrive at a feeling of decision after some brain activity. I've never seen this sort of experiment replicated for non-random choices, so it doesn't even address dualism, free will, or anything people purport.

---

Dualism… why didn’t I think of that? Ah, C C, you’re a goddamn genius.

Dualism has little to do with the left's belief in the primacy of subjective identity over biological sex. It's the beliefs fostered by the misunderstood results of Libet's experiment that lead people to think that their identity is wholly determine and cannot be changed...while their body can. Many experiments have shown that belief in free will makes people more capable of change, especially in overcoming mental disorders. Whether of not it actually is the case, belief that all our choices are truly determined, by factors beyond our control or awareness, is what makes people not only unable to change but also defensive to any suggestion they could.