Arbitrary Marks

Rule-following and conventional truth
[Continued from Part 1]
Terms like “white paper” are useful in every day life. It’s the rare moment when I stop to consider whether the property of whiteness obtains in paper because of Platonic forms, universals, etc. Switch contexts, however, to a species which sees color differently than we do, or which does [...]

Instead of overtaking a thread which I think has run its course, I’m going to use these comments as a jumping-off point to talk about something which I think is important, and which continues to come up on this blog. What does it mean to say that a given entity has no “essence” but is [...]

I have a substantial post that I’m drafting at present, motivated by, but separate from, the earlier discussion about race / sexual orientation. Basically, I’m working through what a conception of “emptiness” means for concepts that we use regularly (such as race). Taking a cue from Wittgenstein’s “family resemblance” theory, I’m trying to determine how to steer between the Scylla and Charybdis of nihilism and essentialism while not falling into idealism.

So in this upcoming post, I want to do three things. First, I want to clarify what I mean when I say “social construction” or “without essence.” Second, I want to clarify how I think folk concepts can be useful, with reference to the idea of conventional truth in Buddhism. Third, I want to return to the application–where this all started–of race, sexual orientation and human rights.

While I’m working and you’re waiting with baited breath, check out Philosophy Bites on Wittgenstein with Barry Smith.

Since my last post got quite a few of you coming out of the woodwork, I have a question. What topics in philosophy do you think would be most helpful for laypersons to get some introduction to? That is, what baffles you about philosophy jargon, or what ideas do you wish you had more of a framework for?

In addition to being useful for my teaching of intro classes, your responses can shape some writing I plan to do on this blog and elsewhere.

No time for a more substantial post tonight, but here’s a link to some comments I made over at Lo-Fi Tribe on the topic of marriage. The original question was whether (in the context of the California gay marriage ruling), race and sexual orientation ought to be equated. So we started talking a bit about that, and Shawn made this comment: “And yes, many heterosexual couples read [legalizing gay marriage] as a reduction of their bond to the banal.” Um, ouch.

After I published (then re-published) my earlier post on gender and reduction, I had a few thoughts. So, here they are, in no particular order:

Zucker’s reduction of gender to biology also requires another step, which is that certain behaviors are appropriate to biological givens–i.e. GI Joes to boys and Barbie Dolls to girls. That, or [...]

I just upgraded to WP 2.5, which went well, I thought. I emailed myself a backup of the databases first, just to be sure.

As usual, some ugly characters appeared so I installed a plugin which claimed to take care of that.

Except that it ate my posts.

If you haven’t listened to the NPR story about two boys who feel like girls and whose parents are responding in divergent ways, go do it now. Forget Thomas Beatie and the hype over a pregnant man and instead consider the choices families must make when their child ask to play with ther opposite-sex sibling’s [...]

As I write this, an article on Buddhism, atheism and neuroscience is the top emailed article on the NY Times website.
In it, he makes a couple of interesting claims about the so-called “New Atheism” debates and where they’re probably headed. First, he thinks that “The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith [...]

The Center for Buddhist Studies at Columbia University has posted a podcast by Mark Blum that should be interesting for Unitarian Universalists and Buddhist practitioners (and especially those who consider themselves in both camps).
I’m about three-quarters through the lecture, which I listened to during my delay at the Austin airport yesterday. Blum’s main thesis is that [...]