Not your mom's common sense, or yours

Okay, finally, I get to Groucho. Mind you, he still has a tantalizing good question on another thread, but I'll get to that in due course. For now, let's address what he had to say more recently on my original feminism thread.

Here's the relevant portion of my comment, as quoted by Groucho:

Inhabiting a body with features that enable one to perform certain biological functions says nothing about that body's ability to assist another body in the performance of such biological functions held in common. Having a body that is adept at circulating blood throughout the organs and tissues of that body says nothing about the knowledge, skills, or abilities that body might bring to the task of vascular surgery upon a second body, or even CPR. Common, sense isn't.

To which Groucho's response began:

W/ respect, that's a terrible analogy. A body doesn't "assist" another body - a person does.

WHOSE BODY IS IT?

Yes, very true. A person, however, inhabits a body. I use this language to get away from the nonsense about "mind" that dominates the humanities. Cartesian dualism is a trap best left for others. (Some may think I'm just replacing mind with person but talking about the same object. We can discuss that if anyone is interested.)

I raise the issue of body here, further, because you introduce the capabilities of the bodyinhabited by a person (without using the words "body" or "person", those are my terms to achieve clarity in our analysis) as somehow qualifying them for a particular career related to the capabilities of someone else's body.

FIREFIGHTERS, DOULAS, AND AGGREGATES, OH MY!

I want to be clear about just which body we're talking about. If we're going to make biological arguments (and the citing to the capability of giving birth is a biological argument), then let's be clear about the relationship between individual persons and individual bodies. (Of course, even if you didn't choose to make a biological argument, I'd still find a way to bring it round to biology. This really confuses my peers in the humanities.)

A firefighter has to have a certain amount of strength because their job involves lifting and carrying heavy, often unwieldy, objects. This is about how the capabilities of the body of the person having a career of firefighter relates to the tasks of the career of firefighter.

A doula, on the other hand, does not have to have to have a body that has the ability to give birth. This capability or noncapability of their body does not bear on the tasks of the career of doula. It is not they who perform the task of giving birth as part of their job.

So, to recap. Firefighters need to inhabit bodies capable of lifting heavy objects, because that is a career in which firefighters inhabiting such bodies do indeed lift heavy objects. Doulas do not need to inhabit bodies capable of giving birth, because that is not a career in which doulas inhabiting such bodies do indeed give birth.

Thus, your belief (and you do identify it as what you believe) that women (in aggregate, or otherwise) make better doulas because they are capable of giving birth does not stand logical inspection. You may believe it, but that's all it is, a belief.

PERSONS VS. AGGREGATES

Picking up where we left off:

The question of firefighter vs doula pay is a separate question, and clearly a cultural matter. But the idea that in the aggregate women are better suited to doing that work seems commonsensical to me,

Yes, you've said both those things before. To which I responded, first, women in the aggregate aren't better suited to do anything, because women the category (whether the category carries with it through an attempt at syllogism the additional term of in the aggregate or not) is not a person. Only individual persons are better or worse suited to do any particular thing.

(Further, any given particular person who happens to be woman is not better suited to doing the work of a doula, for the reasons I've just outlined, not simply on account of being of the category woman. Any given individual, irrespective of gender, might be better qualified to be a doula, but that is because of the knowledge, skills, and abilities they bring to the actual tasks of the job, not the capabilities their own body may or may not have that they will not be called on to exercise in their performance of the job.)

And, second, common, sense isn't. That it seems commonsensical to you tells us what you see as commonsensical, not what is actually discernible from any logical argument. It's common sense isn't a logical argument, it's an appeal to the wisdom of custom.

Interestingly, my date last night has several times raised the importance of "the idea", citing to Mao of all people. That's coming from someone in the humanities. Guess what, I think ideas are interesting phenomena, but not as powerful as people often make them out to be, which brings us to the question of "common sense".

HOW TERRIBLY COMMON

Look, I love Thomas Paine. Really, I do. But he really could have chosen a better metaphor from which to hang his arguments.

I can cite all sorts of examples of what was common sense once and isn't common sense now, or what is common sense in a foreign country today but isn't common sense here in our land. I won't because that would just be a distraction. Common sense is merely what we believe reasonable people to believe.

Worse, common sense has a way, if we follow it's reasoning to a logical conclusion, to some truly horrific places. Anyone familiar with Jonathan Swift has an understanding of this.

Moreover, insofar as common sense might happen to be common, then it runs the risk of being common in the same sense as we might speak of something being second-rate. I don't mean that you intend it that way, but that is a meaning of common.

We, of course, could rescue this and say that common sense is the sense of the commons, the sense of the public at large, sense as known by a community, as shared in common with other individuals, as familiar, and best known and most frequently seen.

However, this again exposes the logical fallacy of argumentum ad antiquitatem. That this is the way a public or a community commonly see the question, that this is sense that is familiar or most frequently seen, tells us nothing more than that this is the way a public or a community commonly see a question, that this is a sense that is familiar or most frequently seen. To draw from that an assertion that this sense is therefore reflective of truth is to engage in false induction.

A QUASI-RELIGION IN COMMON

Continuing with your comments:

and the kind of common sense that gets washed away by quasi-religious proclamations

The whole project of the Enlightenment was one of washing away quasi-religious proclamations, in particular, the then quasi-religious proclamations of what was then contemporary common sense (the term used at the time was "superstition"). It's actually a game of cleaning house that was engaged in by the established church for many centuries before that. Washing away the quasi-religious proclamations of those we disagree with is a tried and true practice.

Now, I take issue with much of the Enlightenment project, yet it nonetheless seems to me that to profess that "I believe" and "it's commonsensical" sounds like taking a quali-religious position. Of course, I have no problem with taking a quasi-religious position, and do not take that as an accusation I need to defend myself against, I am quite confident that I have done so, but I don't see it as only happening where I'm standing. Nor would I expect it to be.

You acknowledge them as beliefs, and yet still hold them as true. Plenty of religious folk who would make the same move. "I believe in a God that..." "Well, sorry honey, but there is no God." "I don't care what you say, I believe in God, so there!"

It's true because I believe it to be true and it is commonly held to be true by the community that I identify with (not your community of quasi-religious practictioners, my community of people who know common sense when they, ehm, sense it): well, that's just an appeal to beliefs held in common, which is really just what any community, religious, quasi-religious, or non-religious, tends to do. Thus, I expect nothing else.

SPEAKING OF COMMON SENSE

It is certainly what is done in the humanities. I had a conversation on my date last night where I cited to biological studies, and her very quick reply, cutting me off mid-sentence, was that all those studies have been discredited because... No, I responded, cutting her off, they haven't been discredited; they've been dismissed.

See, this is the common sense held, in common, by people in the humanities. To talk about biology is regressive thinking, it harkens back to social Darwinism and measuring people's skulls to identify racial characteristics. It's the sort of things Nazi's do, not people who think for themselves. (Yay for Godwin's law!)

Whenever you see a study that claims to have found a biological difference between people, you don't even need to read it, you already know it was so-called "research" done by someone who refuses to accept the common sense notion that biology is strictly a cultural construction. It's sad really, because we keep telling them they're wrong, but they won't listen.

No matter, they've been discredited, so don't waste your time reading what they have to say. (That it has been discredited also being common sense.) It's sociobiology, or evolutionary psychology, or something equally commonsensically regressive, and we should give it no further consideration. (See "Yet Another Aside On Relating to Categories", in another long-winded post of mine for more on this.)

This is common sense in the humanities. Few question it, because it is how the liberal public (the only public that matters--the rest of you aren't the *real* public, no way) and academic community commonly sees the question, it is the sense that is familiar and most frequently seen by those who hold it to be common sense.

It is also argumentum ad antiquitatem, that is, false induction.

THINKING DOESN'T MAKE IT SO

that nature has no shape and is only shaped by cultural tropes. Again, thinking doesn't make it so; far more likely that nature exerts some shaping force, and then culture is a (heavy) overlay.

Again, I'm leaving the territory of nature alone, because I don't find that to be a useful argument from either side, although I'm open to discussing it, if there's any evidence that we've made progress in better understanding one another on some of the points already on the table. I have the argument often enough with people in the humanities who try to dismiss what I'm saying as regressive notions about the reality of nature.

You've very much correct. Thinking doesn't make it so. I agree wholeheartedly. Thinking that women in the aggregate are better suited to be doulas doesn't make it so either. I don't care if everyone on the planet but me thinks that, it still doesn't make it so. It just makes it common sense, which is not anything more or less than a sense that is all too common.

Likewise, I agree with you that there are shaping forces that determine the structures of culture. Harpy has raised the issue of institutional structures, which I intend to address in more depth on that thread, but in short (as I said on my date last night, in fact), I don't give truck to the top-down arguments that culture makes people. People make people. Persons inhabiting bodies. And people make culture. Again, persons inhabiting bodies.

I'm very much interested in structures. My interest is in the embodied structures that open onto the possibilities of institutional structures. This is why I look so very carefully at how arguments are put together, at how logic is or is not employed. Because I'm trying to get a deeper understanding of how distinctly opposed ideological stances can take hold, in bodies that otherwise have an awful lot in common. Common senses (in the plural) are fascinating to me, because they are only possible in bodies that with features that grant the capacity to hold a sense in common with other bodies.

CITING AGAIN TO REN'S FAV COMMENT

Crow made a terrific point i/t/r: "Even before they were exposed to too great an amount of societal pressure it was obvious that the girls *liked* pink and playing with dolls whereas my boy's favourite activities are running around and shouting." No one responded to that point - b/c there is no response.

Actually, I did respond to the comment by Ineke that I believe may have prompted Crow's comment. Ineke commented:

Boys still get engineering toys, girls get humanity toys. Boys are still taught to be competitive, girls are taught to be kind.

To which I replied:

Ineke, this is where Groucho gets up in arms about the whole "strictly cultural" claim that many in the humanities put forward, marshaling just these sorts of examples.

Yes, boys and girls are given differently culturally sanctioned toys, and are encouraged to behave in certain culturally expected ways, but like everything else, it's more complex than that. For children exhibit choice in how to play with the toys that they have, and that choice isn't necessarily informed by the attitudes of modern doctorates in area studies, but rather derives from much more ancient capacities.

"Young Female Chimps Cradle Stick-Toys like Doll", reports Scientific American. What are we to make of this?

* * *

You are welcome to read the rest of my response. As I note, I am proud to have receivedRenaissgrl's seal of approval on that one. I think you will see that I do take into account the sentiment that Crow's comment touches upon, even if I did address him or his words directly.

Yes, there is a tendency among little boys to behave in certainly culturally expected ways (i.e., the culture aligns with the way individual persons who happen to inhabit male bodies are most likely to behave) and a tendency among little girls to behave in certain culturally expected ways (i.e., the culture aligns with the way individual persons who happen to inhabit female bodies are most likely to behave). We see that in chimpanzees, we see it in humans.

This, however, tells us nothing about how an individual person we have yet to observe is inclined to behave. This is why we are doing a dangerous thing when we try to make an argument about men in the aggregate or women in the aggregate. Induction from statistical probability is a method of reasoning, but not a method of proof. It is only a means of obtaining an educated guess. But that's all it is, a guess. Translating that guess into a belief is to engage in the common sense game.

FUNDAMENTALIST COMMON SENSE

Even a po-mo fundamentalist, to coin a phrase, has to be mute in the face of actual experience - an experience which other (academic) parents have expressed to me.

Trust me, they aren't mute. They're quite vociferous: saying anything they can to avoid actually addressing the empirical evidence, because to do that would be to deny the quasi-religious authority of common sense.

Bottom line: I'm dreadfully sorry if the world doesn't conform to your presuppositions. What's the joke? "An intellectual is someone who worries that what works in practice won't work in theory."

That knife cuts both ways. One can be just as unconcerned that what works in theory doesn't work in practice. That's what the "in the aggregate" argument shows, a lack of concern for how the theory that "gender x in the aggregate is better suited for" does not always work in practice, even if it does much of the time.

Close enough isn't good enough. Reducing individual persons to a commonsensical theory about what is true in the statistical aggregate: this is fundamentally bad practice.

ON THE ISSUE OF LEGISLATION

Moving on. I subsequently said the following.

Uh, Groucho, proud libertarian here, but not quite the objectivist that I believe businesses can operate in a legislation-free regime.

To which you replied:

Where did I ever say there shouldn't be legislation?

You didn't. You did seem to be making the argument that legislation was incompatible with business, at least certain types of legislation, which I interpreted (wrongly, it would seem) as an argument that anyone in favor of legislation was anti-business.

Contract law is part of what makes markets work - a huge part. Indeed, China needs more of the right kind of laws, the kind that are based on fairness and transparency rather than state power and government fiat.

Agreed. I would, however, note imbtween's argument (which I have disagreements with) that laws are "inherently punitive" (an assertion he has made at least twice). i.e., by that argument, which has some merit, but also some flaws, laws based on fairness and transparency are no less punitive. Where they effect business, they still interfere with the operations of business. Even a law enforcing fairness is government fiat in the end.

LAW OF CONTRACT

Now, you specifically speak of "contract law" above. Here's the thing. Employment law is contract law. To hire someone and be hired by someone is to have a contractual agreement, even if nothing is put on paper.

A large part of contract law, meanwhile, is about spelling out contractual terms that are assumed unless the contracting parties choose to stipulate otherwise. This is done both to reduce paperwork (why spell out the same terms in a million contracts if they can be spelled out once in an act of legislation) and to protect contracting parties from unfair practices, where a dispute turns into a game of "but that wasn't in the contract, so I'm not bound by it".

Legislation specifying that employers may not discriminate in setting wages then, as an example, is essentially specifying default terms to employment contracts. Undersigned employer agrees that they will not pay undersigned employee less than other employees performing the same tasks and having the same level of seniority, without respect to their gender, or some such.

Now, the difference here is that neither employers nor employees have the option to put terms in their contract that authorize the employer to discriminate, on the basis of gender, in the payment of wages. I said above that contract law specified assumed terms of contract unless the parties choose to contract according to other terms. Here, however, we have a law that is prohibitory. It doesn't allow the default terms to be modified.

Well, we can have a discussion about that. I'm sure if I thought about it I could come up with examples of prohibitory laws that nonetheless are commonsensically designed to enforce fairness and transparency. I'm not going to just now, however, but if you want we can explore that issue further.

ONCE AGAIN, ON THE MATTER OF FAIRNESS

On the point of fairness, please see the Lakoff quote at the end of my last post. The entire argument you were having with Slowbie, so far as I understood it, was an argument about what is fair.

If we look at the ten types of fairness Lakoff outlines, I'd predict that you would identify some of those types of fairness as more directly related to your argument against certain types of legislation, and Slowbie would identify others on the same list as more directly relevant to her argument in favor of the same legislation. Were you both to identify the same types of fairness in common, I suspect that the analysis Lakoff engages in, showing how the metrics we use to employ any particular type of fairness can differ wildly, would hold true for the two of you, also.

In other words, Slowbie as I understood it, was arguing that the United States needed more of the right kind of laws, the kind that are based on fairness and transparency. Meanwhile, you were arguing, about the same laws, that they are the wrong kind of laws, because they are unfair (whatever you might say about whether they are transparent or not) to businesses. That's what I understood of the argument, anyway.

EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT

I just get fucking pissed off when people ignore the positive re BOTH the private and public sectors. "Hey, I don't have to point out the virtues of [the sector I want to disparage] b/c everyone else is doing it."

Yes, some people do have a bug up their butt about groups they don't look favorably upon. I'm waiting for you to point out the virtues of those in the humanities who you seem to disparage so. :/

This isn't to justify the unwillingness of those who have a grudge against some group of people or other to ignore things that are of meaning and value to others. It is only to note that we all do it. I hear that you get fucking pissed when you hear it done to sectors you value. I'm guessing that Slowbie gets fucking pissed when she hears it done to sectors, or groups, or ideological camps, that she values.

Everyone is doing it. We're all hearing what we don't like about what the other side is saying, and that makes it very hard for us to actually have a meaningful conversation with them. It's so much easier to dismiss the other person's commonsensical (to them) beliefs in favor of our own commonsensical (to us) beliefs.

The sooner we stop relying on common sense, and start actually trying to make sense of what the other person might be pissed off about (rather than telling them what we believe they're pissed off about), the sooner we can have more meaningful discussions. That's my belief, anyway. I don't always do what I proscribe here well, but that's what I aim to do as much as possible.

A WORD ABOUT RELATIVISM

I hear the charge of relativism being readied as I type. I'll save you (if not Groucho, then someone) the trouble. Relativism is a position, as I understand it, that says no one's truth is really true, because everyone else have different truths, which are all equally true, and thus also not really true. That's not what I'm saying here.

The problem I have with relativism, is that it's the last defense of hypocrites. It's all relative, which is why my truth is the only truth that matters. Or, it's all relative, which is why we have no authority to take action when we see something as unfair or immoral. Yeah, okay, go meditate over there for a while. See if you can do it until you die of dehydration. I'll just be over here, trying to understand other people's truths and seeking to intervene where I relativistically believe it's necessary.

What I am saying is that the stories we tell about what is common sense divert our attention from truth, rather than point to it. There is truth, not in the materialist sense of something one can find or reveal or unearth, but in the libidinal, even essentialist, sense of there being something that organizes the world we live in into coherent, meaningful experiences.

I just don't believe that truth is related to through stories, or judgments, or diagnoses, or sense, common or otherwise. That's like trying to relate to gravity through the planets. We have a relationship to gravity, so do the planets, but we don't experience our relationship to gravity through the planets, we experience our relationship to gravity through gravity. We certainly have a relationship to the planets, a relationship mediated by our relationship with gravity (as our relationships to all objects of any mass are mediated by gravity), but it's a different relationship from our relationship with gravity as gravity.

So, I profess, it is with our relationship to truth. It isn't to be found in common sense. It isn't even going to be found in logic. It is found in the embodied structures that mediate our relationships to both common sense and to logic.

TOO FUCKING MUCH

Is it too fucking much to ask that people should modulate their POV to reflect, uh, the way things actually are, and in this case specifically our dependence on both spheres? I don't think so.

Is it too fucking much to ask people to modulate their point-of-view to reflect, uh, the way we believe things actually are? No, it is not too fucking much to ask that.

Is it too fucking much to expect people to modulate their point-of-view to reflect, uh, the way we believe things actually are? Yes, I think it is. That won't stop me from asking, though. I try very hard to modulate my own expectations on that front.

Is it too fucking much to tell people they should modulate their point-of-view? Yes, I believe it is. You have a choice to ask someone to do something, you can make a request, and they can make a choice to honor that request or not. You likewise have a choice as to whether you modulate your expectations as to their honoring your request or not.

You even have a choice of declaring that someone "should" do something you are wanting them to do. You can certainly make that demand, if you so choose. I, however, believe that is too fucking much. Just sayin.

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