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Notes -
https://unherd.com/2023/04/is-trans-the-new-anorexia/
I’m not sure exactly how culture war-like this idea is, but I’ve never actually heard anyone else compare Anorexia with trans people before. I can see the social contagion factor in both especially for women who are much more conforming than men tend to, and because women have higher neuroticism than men. What I’m not sure about is some of the other ideas, that being trans is about self-negation and a sort of renouncing of their body.
Interesting article! Thanks for linking.
I've heard these comparisons, and as I've mentioned before I'm extremely bullish on the social contagion hypothesis for the majority of mental illness cases. It's an especially pernicious problem because once an illness becomes too 'saturated' like anorexia has been, the cultural cachet of the diagnoses plummets and the fad moves on. All that's left is hordes of people with broken lives and nothing to show for it.
I'm convinced that the modern world's turn away from religion is the main culprit here. That being said, I've been an agnostic for most of my life, so I don't think anyone is necessarily to blame when it comes to turning our backs on old religions. Unfortunately it's just extremely difficult to reconcile modern scientific knowledge with old religious worldviews. I think what many religious people, especially on this forum, miss is that for many agnostics or athiests it's not that they don't want to believe, rather that they find it practically impossible to believe in a religion which demands they lay down the rules of science and empiricism.
Only because of an implicit scientism that is pervasive in our society, which is particularly popular among liberal atheistic/agnostic types. I can't speak for every religion but the Catholic Church believes that there is no conflict between (Catholic Christian) religion and science, a belief I share.
The issue with this scientism is really quite obvious when you ask a straight-forward question: is all knowledge (or all truths) discernable via science or the scientific method? The answer to this question to me is clearly no, and that some truths (e.g. moral truths) cannot be discerned through science, and this enters the realm of philosophy and ultimately religion or faith. Many a philosopher has attempted derive moral truths through scientific/materialist means (including atheist star Sam Harris, if we want to call him a philosopher), but these projects inevitably end up as failures trying to square the circle. The alternative is moral nihilism and a completely materialist outlook, but very few atheists seem to actually want to bite that bullet.
Many philosophers have identified religion has giving rise to science in the first place. Because at the most basic, fundamental level, believe in natural science assumes a priori that that reality is ordered and knowable, a proposition one must take on faith.
I’m an atheist and consider myself a moral relativist, which is to me is quite distinct from being a moral nihilist. Morality, to me, is a subjective human construct but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist; it exists in that same sphere as concepts, ideas and beliefs. It’s based on axioms which are essentially arbitrary; the only thing you can do is point out logical contradictions ensuing from them. In that manner, it’s quite similar to maths, which also don’t materially exist but certainly can be studied.
I find the very concept that morality could ever be objective to be logically incoherent; whatever moral “truth” you come up with, I can immediately just invent another worldview that contradicts it due to having different axioms. Even if God existed, I don’t see why I couldn’t disagree with his morality. The fact that he created me or the universe doesn’t grant him any philosophical authority any more than my parents, and being omnipotent just makes him a cosmic dictator with the power to punish me if I stray from his own personal beliefs.
I think the idea of objective morality might be coherent. There may not be such a thing in practice, or it may not meaningfully distinguish human moral systems, but if it were revealed somehow that there exist logically watertight rules by which our object-level beliefs can correctly unfold into preferences, having something to do with what a preference means, then there'd be a way to say that some preferences are objectively wrong, in the sense that a person could not have legitimately arrived at them and is just spouting confused nonsense that conflicts with his own ultimate priorities (which would presumably be shared between agents, because there is only one objective reality to have beliefs about). As you say, a given moral system can be logically incoherent; this just takes it to another level.
Source: getting high
Right. Did you change your mind about this?
This isn’t a gotcha, let’s not squabble.
No. There is no contradiction. «Objective morality» might be a logically coherent idea/concept (I actually think it is, but that can plausibly be due to my lacking intelligence). I still believe it's not a thing that factually exists in our Universe; and even if it does, it could not be satisfactorily established.
OK. But then when people talk of objective morality, you should treat it as that attempt at coherence. Because in practice, denial of objective morality is used to dismiss every morality out of hand as equally worthless as any other moral system. Much like the denial of objective reality dismisses every epistemology (‘ways of knowing’) as equally worthless.
«Logically coherent» is still a rather weak ontological status. People may try whatever, I just don't think they can succeed, and they certainly cannot positively convince each other (me included) that they have.
Denial of objective morality is objectively correct and a prerequisite for any non-deluded attempt at negotiating social norms. It is exactly because there is a single shared objective reality (presumably) that we can discuss our distinct interests in common terms, instead of immediately concluding that the only solution to disagreement is brainwashing or genocide.
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