... is a sequence of random words generated from this website. Now give me a PhD.
Last night, despite a DDOS attack on the Daily Wire website by people who wanted to suppress the movie, I watched Matt Walsh's new documentary, What Is A Woman? It was fabulous. I recommend a Daily Wire subscription just to support their outstanding work, but I'd recommend it again for their premium content.
What Is A Woman? is a film built around Matt trying to get a non-circular definition of that term from trans activists and the professionals that support them as well as from what few rational people still remain in our intellectual class. There are a ton of insights to be pulled from the movie, but today, I wanted to focus on the one exemplified in this clip.
This is brilliant. With simple, dispassionate questions, @MattWalshBlog reveals that mere curiosity about the truth is enough to offend people who've built their careers and lifestyles on the back of its suppression.
— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) June 2, 2022
pic.twitter.com/yIpbqazv4O
This is a professor from the University of Tennessee. He's not some green-haired, mental patient on TikTok. The guy is a social scientist who specializes in sex and gender issues. Matt is asking him to define a term that is central to his field of study, the word "woman." He can't do it without circular logic. A woman is anyone who identifies as a woman is the gist of his answer.
Without objective definitions of terms, communicating through speech or the written word is impossible. We might as well be barking at each other. One of the most fascinating angles of the movie is to watch the intellectuals struggle with this concept. You can't tell if they've never thought of it before or if they're simply charlatans and poltroons. In all sincerity, I really can't tell which it is.
If they've come up in an intellectual bubble, which campuses seem to be these days, it might be natural for them to be surprised by simple questions like this. On the other hand, if they've lived in a work environment where WrongThink is punished by termination, which campuses seem to be these days, poltroonery would be a requirement for employment.
In either case, the film is a terrific window into the utter corruption and degeneracy of the intellectual class. A caste whose entire raison d'être is to describe the world through the use of words has lost the ability to define those words. They're worse than hollow, they're destructive parasites.
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| This is the head of our gender studies department. |
"Without objective definitions of terms, communicating through speech or the written word is impossible." Truer words were never typed. But it is no longer limited to simply refusing to believe that there is no objective reality behind the words "women" and "men". No, not at all. The brilliant jurists of the state of California have ruled that 'bees' (whatever those are) can be classified as 'fish' (again, whatever those are) - see: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/great-day-for-bumblebees-as-californian-court-rules-that-they-are-fish/ .
ReplyDeleteIf you think that perhaps we losing our minds (and ability to clearly communicate) this has been planned... see https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/25.
Also, for a general treatise on the topic of changing the meaning of words, requiring people to accept the 'current' definition without dispute, and the social consequences, see 1984 by George Orwell.
I saw that thing about bees are fish, but I didn't have time to read the ruling. I just took it for granted that it was as insane as it looked.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about demanding that someone "define" something, is that it can be surprisingly difficult to come up with an unambiguous definition.
ReplyDeleteJust to pick something at random, consider defining "flowerpot". Can you define it in such a way that every object you encounter can be clearly and unarguably classified as either "a flowerpot" or "not a flowerpot", without using any undefined terms or circular descriptions?
Sure, you could start with "a flowerpot is a pot that contains flowers", but what is a "pot"? What are "flowers"? What do you mean by "contain"? Assuming we can eventually agree on definitions of those, let's say we have a pot that contains flowers, but remove the flowers. Does it cease being a flowerpot, even if the purpose for which it was created was to hold flowers? But if it doesn't have to have flowers in it at the moment to be a flowerpot, does this mean that anything vaguely pot-like that conceivably could contain flowers is a flowerpot, even if no one ever does put flowers in it? People sometimes plant flowers in toilet bowls, does that mean that all toilet bowls are by extension flowerpots?
I think you can see how, particularly if you are talking with someone who wants to argue, demanding "a definition" can quickly get out of hand. Remember a while back when people were bickering online about whether a hot-dog in a bun was a sandwich or not?
It looks like the whole "bees are fish" ruling comes about because the original authors of the endangered species regulations were sloppy about their definitions. They apparently lumped invertebrates together with actual fish in their definition of "fish".
ReplyDeleteI think a fair reading of the decision was not that they classified bumblebees as "fish", but rather they decided that the legislature had been using "fish" as a poorly-thought-out blanket term that included invertebrates.
Without a definition, how do you write a paper or perform analysis? If basic nouns are circularly defined, then your end product is worthless.
ReplyDeleteTim, you have hit on the problem. We have a lot of very badly written laws from incompetent people in the legislatures.
ReplyDeleteOxford seems to be able to define it pretty well. At least for those that believe in science.
Woman:
an adult female human being.
Female:
of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes.