A time lag
How bizarre.
Of what now?
Human sexual dimorphism.
It’s a thing.
Men can’t get pregnant. Women can’t swim faster than “Lia” Thomas.
Tip Jar
How bizarre.
Of what now?
Human sexual dimorphism.
It’s a thing.
Men can’t get pregnant. Women can’t swim faster than “Lia” Thomas.
This guy allegedly studied Russell. Russell believed that a good understanding of science was necessary for philosophy. Biology is the science here, and this guy doen’t seem to know much about it. He may identify as a philosopher, but that doesn’t mean he’s any good at it.
This is utter rubbish. Gymnastics? Tennis? Etc. Etc.
It’s just a pompous pseudo-academic version of ‘men competing against women? Women just need to try harder.’
Stephen Mumford is, of course, idiotically wrong on this and Ophelia is rightfully dismissive.
But if we were discussing, say, chess, rather than sport, would you then argue that performance gaps were indeed “because of the patriarchy”? Or are we ok with sexual dimorphism affecting the brain as well as the body?
After all, a couple of decades ago, before all the trans stuff came along, Professor Mumford’s thesis would have been cutting-edge feminism.
Good point, Coel. Here’s the thing, I think there have been patriarchal influences in chess, but we can only make estimates based on the portion of the population who have actually played chess, or were encouraged to. There’s untapped potential. As far as athletic performance though, there are biological limitations between the sexes across the board. It can be measured reliably and predicted accurately. Biological realities can’t be influenced by culture on an evolutionary scale, except at an extremely marginal rate (unless you’re talking eugenics). I don’t think feminism says much about these kinds of what ifs. Sure, if human evolution had rendered females equivalent to males in physical prowess and athletic potential, then fine. But it didn’t.
Even for a thought experiment it’s pretty flimsy.
twiliter, very good points. There’s also the very real issue that we wouldn’t have women’s sports today if classic feminism hadn’t recognized the very real difference in strength and power between men and women. They weren’t set up to give women a chance to get up to the level of men; they were set up to protect women from having to play against men while still being able to participate in sport. While there have always been a handful of noisy feminists who refused to acknowledge ANY difference between the sexes, the bulk of feminism has worked to make the world equitable in spite of those differences, and to some degree, because of them.
The issues of brain based games we have always perceived as a result of the patriarchy, and they continue to be. As women continue to demonstrate they can excel in math and science, many men are still coming around with false hypotheticals to try to misstate what feminism actually says and has said.
(By the way, I responded to you because I refuse to respond to Coel, but as a biologist and a feminist, I felt the need to say something. I told him I wouldn’t engage with him again, and I won’t. Thanks for taking on the task.)
Mumford is an excellent example of how if philosophers just tried a bit harder, they’d be better philosophers.
Also, this is what happens when you ignore specific scientific knowledge and treat everything as a thought experiment.
Thanks, ikn. Another thing that’s relevant, is how intelligence is measured. If we go with the idea that there are different kinds of intelligence, then who’s weighing the different kinds of intelligence in regards to general intelligence? How important is general intelligence at all? Isn’t it mostly situational anyway? I think a lot of it is subjective and arbitrary, which isn’t to say we can’t tell stupid people from clever ones, because that’s kind of obvious most of the time.
Rob @6, I would say people who identify as philosophers could become actual philosophers, but I agree. Straying too far from common sense results in some spectacular silliness.
When I was in my doctoral program, I had to take two graduate level courses in Environmental Philosophy. I always respected philosophy and philosophers, but I could have no respect for that bunch. They dismissed science, snorted if anyone tried to inject science into the discussion, and pontificated, using big words and throwing Kant and Hegel around all the time. They had the silliest ideas about environmentalism (and they were all, to a man/woman, anti-vax). They insisted that scientists taught their students that humans weren’t animals. When I asked what science teacher taught them that, they acted like I had insulted them. “I never took a science course!” Well, there’s your problem.
There was finally one thing that got them to question one of their heroes: when he visited our class, and he insisted that a goose feels shame when it has sex. Apparently that was a bridge too far even for them.
The philosophers who pontificate on the trans issue have furthered the erosion of my respect for philosophy. Unfortunately, that’s extended to some of the scientists, too. I won’t mention any names, but his initials are P.Z.
Consider a spherical philosopher….
I cannot help but suspect that his entire thesis is based on the fact that the performance of top female athletes today is on a par with that of the top male athletes of 40-50 years ago, while carefully ignoring the equally relevant fact that the performance gap between the sexes today is not noticeably different from that of 40-50 years ago.
I’m fine with philosophers probing assumptions, but sometimes the things we take for granted in science are taken for granted because they were tested and shown to be true or false so long ago and so conclusively we forget that the original probing took place at all.
The philosopher’s proposal has been considered. The theory of inheritance of acquired traits is better known as Lamarckism, and was discarded over a century ago upon the rediscovery of Mendelian genetics. It is not untested, it is not unevidenced; it is simply wrong.
YNNB #10
Most philosophers’ portraits seem to be of rather lean people: Kierkegaard, Kant, Hobbes, Wittgenstein, et al — and it doesn’t really surprise me: would one take a corpulent philosopher seriously? In the very little research I have done, David Hume is the about the only one who seems, shall we say, well-fed and jolly (and about the only one to have had a sense of humour) — at least in his later years; but (judging from his portraits) he doesn’t seem to have approached the spherical. Aquinas appears to have been engagingly plump – monastery fare, perhaps, as opposed to the fare available outside monasteries? Perhaps a study could be done of the relative corpulence or leanness of philosophers, and the relationship of corpulence or leanness to the ideas they argue for?
Also: thank you, twiliter & iknklast, at 4 & 5. You dealt with matters very well – far better than I could manage, being lean and hot-tempered, like Cassius. I particularly liked the incidental but searching and unanswered question about eugenics.