PeonForHer
Posts: 19612
Joined: 9/27/2008
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Inferior,
I'm trying to move you into the realms of philosophy - because I think you urgently need to move that way - but we don't seem to get even as far as first base.
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ORIGINAL: XYisInferior
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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
No, it isn't. It's a logically-based argument.
Who's logic?
It's the logic of philosophers, in general, ever since David Hume and the earliest days of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century.
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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
For me, your female-supremacist views are based on the same sort of fallacious assumptions that make it apparently acceptable to open, for instance, the following debate.
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Consider your disclaimer of "for me". Before we proceed any further into your text below, you are openly acknowledging—and rightly so—that your logic is not universal, that is it personalized. Yet you persist in asserting previously that my arguments must be invalid via ad populum.
'For me' has more to do with humility in expression than anything else. Logic is hardly ever universal anyway. I don't know what you mean by 'my arguments must be invalid via ad populum': I'm not sure how this phrase is even relevant. 'Ad populum' is only relevant if I were saying that a) your argument is must be wrong because so few people agree with it or b) it must be right because so many people agree with it. I've not said the former and I sure in hell haven't said the latter.
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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
"Which is the superior animal - the gorilla or the orang-utan? Answer using only objective facts."
Do you not see? It's intuitively a stupid question and isn't, in any case, answerable within those parameters.
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Probably as your above reasoning appears to be a hybrid of red herring and straw man fallacy: an irrelevant or invented topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original argument to a misrepresented version of that position.
No, it is not irrelevant. If it were, why would I keep trying to use it with you? It's meant to show you a point - in the simplest way I can think of - that you seem resistant at getting: that you can't come to a conclusion about A being superior to B without making your own judgements as to what constitutes superior and inferior. It isn't something that can be done with mere 'facts'.
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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
First: If (big 'if')
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Why this suggestion? Domestic violence, rape and crime statistics have no bearing on proving inherent aggression? It takes greater wishful thinking to believe these studies do not rather than do, and (I know you hate me asking for this) but I'd like to see a credible source that refutes the data I have presented to support that argument.
I'd prefer you to quote the whole sentence where this affects the meaning. I actually said, with emphasis, too:
"First: If (big 'if') it could be shown that females are so much less warlike then males that they'll be less likely to be belligerent as leaders in society" I was specifically thinking of national leaders - like Elizabeth I, who took England to war more than any other of our national leaders before or since.
As I think you're accepting now, society brings its own forces to bear. We live in a violent society. I'm sure you know that the incidence of violent crimes amongst women is increasing. Why is this so? (Surely, if women are having more say in society - their power to get their way is increasing - then violent crime would be decreasing - per their neurological/genetic/olfactory/whatever -biologically-based greater natural empathy? Just a question that's popped into my head . . .)
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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
(if) it could be shown that females are so much less warlike then males that they'll be less likely to be belligerent as leaders in society, then we will, at least, have moved some way beyond biological determinism. But that still doesn't get us anywhere useful. We'd still be left with having to show that the value of non-aggressiveness is always and everywhere 'better'. As you implied with Elizabeth I, that might not always be the case.
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Then I would expect a logical argument to show me how empathetic reasoning, especially in light of today's trends in research about leadership, is not validly positive.
It is validly positive in lots of areas. But not all. It isn't validly positive when, as you remarked earlier with regard to Elizabeth I, a country needs to defend itself. (If, indeed, she was acting defensively, per your apology for her belligerence.)
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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
Second: the matter of empathy. This is a value that was once felt to be of much less importance to humanity as a whole. In fact, it was once seen as a major disadvantage.
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The key word here is "once". The past and present is not the same place, of course. History has its use, but to imply my reasoning is exactly the same as another's in the past is tough to prove, considering the past—its contexts and the people in it—are no more.
My point is that if it changed once in history, it could change again. Your reasoning would, however, be exactly the same as many of those in the past (and present) if you were to assume that history always 'moves forward'. It doesn't. Or, at least, it didn't appear to move forward, to many people, when Stalin unleashed his terror nor when the 3rd Reich grew up in the 1930's.
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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
Jean Jacques Rousseau, a founder of liberal political philosophy and one of the chief thinkers of the French Revolution, believed that women should never be involved in the running of society because they would always put family before society - such was the level of their love for - and empathy with - their near kin. We've learned to elevate the quality of empathy since those days - but that's just the point: will we always see it as so desirable? What's more, is it always so desirable, in all situations, even today? Unless you can say 'yes' to such questions, you cannot begin to talk about 'superiority' . . . .
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To define empathy, first: the ability to understand and share the feelings and experiences of others. Curiously, I'd like to know where empathy may not be desirable in handling social situations of today or the future, for that matter. Systemic reasoning—and that's putting it mildly—is dubious.
I'm not sure where to start with this. Would you want a defensive military general who is so sharing of the feelings of his 'family' - the soldiers serving under him - that he'll refuse ever to send them into battle? Against a Hitler, for instance? When your car has broken down, would you ring someone who will share your tears with you, or will you get someone who'll fix it? Should a paramedic, a nurse or a doctor feel your pain, or is she better off not feeling it? Would you want jurors who share their friends' hatred of 'perverts' so much that they'll convict a kinkster for something he didn't do - and 'dry detective reasoning be damned'? And to go back to JJ Rousseau: would you want a president who'll sacrifice the nation for his own family?
Now, I haven't come to firm conclusions on any of these (or a million other questions) yet, regarding this 'empathy' - but therein lies the difficulty. Specifically, 'empathy' is a soft and woolly sort of word, thus far. It hasn't been interrogated nearly so much, over so many centuries, as has - for instance - the words 'reason' and 'logic'. How does empathy work? Are there different kinds of empathy? What are the limits of the uses of empathy?
To give one example: there's an argument raging, amongst a certain little group of people - environmental philosophers - about what habit of mind, exactly, is needed to defend the Earth's future. One group vaunts empathy: if we feel what the animal feels, we'll defend it, they say. Another group says 'No. Forget empathy - it only works with those humans or animals to which we feel warm. That is: other humans, or animals that look and act the most 'human'. Empathy isn't reliable for a 'thing' that can't easily be anthropomorphised - like an entire ecosystem. That you have to see as a complex, delicate machine. The problem is actually too much empathy - with people of today, the surroundings that feel close in distance and time.
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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
Finally, even if we could show that women as a whole are less belligerent and more empathic than men as a whole, and that these are objectively desirable qualities, true for all people, all times and all places . . . we're still left with the problem that, so far, we've been talking in terms of aggregates.
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Well of course. Aggregates between two examples are being used, as outliers are present in nearly any model. I admit that men and Women vary considerably, though I have found the more positive qualities discussed in this thread to be the realm of the Female, overall.
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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
We'd never be in a position to say that woman A just must be better than man B at this or that leadership role simply because she's a woman.
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Actually, business and psychoanylitical studies are starting to say essentially that empathetic reasoning appears more productive, and that such reasoning is overall more Female-oriented. From my own personal experiences in private and professional life, I have naturally come to that conclusion, too.
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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
That really would be akin to saying that this white person must be better than that black person at leadership role simply because of his/her whiteness.
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I can see the emotional reasons why you'd say that, but in evidence of statistical and scientific research into the differences between male and Female brains and thought/decision making analysis, comparing my argument to racist propaganda is bad company logic. These differences I speak of are reflected in male and Female, despite ethnicity.
You're not grasping my point here. I'm not talking about women versus men, as groups. It's talking about black people versus white people as groups that is the beginning-fault of racism. Likewise it's talking about men versus women as groups that is the central problem with female supremacy.
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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
It's a very basic offence to our sense of ethics.
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Your argument, from my point of view, would be better served speaking on an individual basis, as in how you opened your response. It is fallacious to speak for all, and is again an example of an ad populum flaw in your logic, which you inferred originally as critically sound of all fallacies, I might add.
Presumably, you think it's fine to build a social system on the basis of one group being superior to another group - in all cases? If you had a Dalai Lama and a Margaret Thatcher in front of you, applying for a job that demanded a lot of empathy, you'd pick Margaret Thatcher because she was a woman - ergo, she's bound to be more empathic? If these propositions strike you as ludicrous, then I'd suggest that you, too, share the conception of individualistic ethics. On the other hand, if you don't, you might well find yourself in the same company as Mr Hitler - who always 'knew' that in any given role (except, perhaps, slavery, singing and boxing) whites do better than blacks.
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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
All I know for certain is that biological evidence is almost certainly going to be utterly inadequate to the task. It would need philosophy - and a blindingly new and brilliant kind of philosophy, at that.
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I agree. Your call to an insightful and equally palatable philosophic treatise on the matter is bold, but the idea has its merit. While you will not be seeing any such exhaustive literary effort coming from me in this thread, it stands to reason that facts will inevitably be used to support the basis for a philosophy. Drawing together the facts previously discussed (and others not touched upon in this thread), one may perhaps see the constellation points of the work, or a hint toward realizing a skeleton for it. Or not. My presence in this thread is to help explain basic beliefs I and others may have and incorporate into their personal lives.
Perhaps I'm unconsciously thrown by your nickname. "XYisInferior" looks like a propaganda statement to me.
Still, fair enough, and I'll take you at your word. Mind you, I wouldn't need to focus upon objective facts to support my feelings of 'her superior, me inferior' in a relationship. This is not least because I know damned well such a reaction in me will have far more to do with utterly inane things like the shape of her nose - and a bunch of feelings in me whose provenance of which I have only the haziest understanding.
One last thing for me on this subject and this thread, though: there were reasons, to do with power and control, why the idea of 'objective facts' became so popular so quickly, amongst men almost exclusively, all those centuries ago. These reasons are worth investigating. Best to be wary about using the devil's tools, I think.
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http://www.domme-chronicles.com
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RE: female Supremecy - 
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