Nussbaum vs Butler

[9toenails]

I wonder if this is a good place to ask.

My question: what is your take on Judith Butler, particularly in the light of Martha Nussbaum's critique? (At e.g. faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Nussbaum-Butler-Critique-NR-2-99.pdf)

-- Why this question, why from me?

I joined MN mainly to look for up-to-date hints/tips about childcare, as an elderly man with the great good fortune to be regularly in sole charge of/caring for small grandchildren. MN is, indeed, useful for that. Thanks MN. I also looked around, and amongst other things, stumbled on some of your 'trans' threads. (I don't do any social media, facebook, twitter; nothing, really, since usenet died and the internet was invaded by advertising.)

At first I took the contemporary trans narrative I came across just as an interesting raw example of cognitive error and its consequences (professionally, in a way, though I won't expand here) ... but then I became disturbed by, well, obviously disturbing things like early transition, puberty blockers, effects on youngsters in general. Also, I count myself feminist (as much as a man can be - I support partner and daughters as well as I can), and the trans narrative, with its peculiar accent on gender, looked more and more anti-feminist the more I found out about it. I see feminism as a hope for the world (trying not to gush too much here!), so anything anti-feminist I'm generally inclined to be opposed to.

OK, so I tried to educate myself a bit on theoretical aspects of what's going on. I had read Greer's 'Female Eunuch' way back in the early 70's, generally convinced by that, albeit I was a bit younger then ... but very little other until fairly recently. Over time I have read various pieces by Martha Nussbaum; she seems one of the greats -- for example my mind was changed in some important ways by 'The Fragility of Goodness' some time ago; it's unusual when a book does that, well worth celebrating. And so on and so on.

There's a little of my background and reasons for asking, anyway. Anyone interested to reply, I wonder? Sorry to be so prolix.

Nussbaum? Or Butler?

I'm sorry, the link didn't work right. Here it is again:
Nussbaum-Butler

Nussbaum without a doubt. She has a stunning intellect and a wonderful ability to develop a nuanced and imaginative argument.

Butler...postmodernist rubbish.

That has filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge, thanks for the link.
I can remember the first time postmodernism ruined something for me; i was a post-graduate fine art student when a visiting professor critiqued my work, ideas, indeed the whole idea and purpose of art from a po-mo perspective, i ended up with artists block for years!

Thanks for the replies.

Booboostwo, yes I tend to agree, particularly wrt Nussbaum. Has postmodernism just died out in more recent feminist theory, I wonder?

wigglybeezer, glad you liked the link. Your story is sad; I did used to think rather of postmodernism as a kind of disease clever young people could catch ... and of at least some of their teachers as engaged in a trahison des clercs. (I'm a little less inclined to be so definite now; 'let a hundred flowers bloom'?)

I do wonder if anything is salvageable from postmodern analysis of sexual politics and gender issues. Is there? Maybe I'm just becoming too tolerant as I get older.

I don't know if postmodernism has died in feminist theory, interesting question though, maybe someone else knows?

I work firmly in the analytic tradition, mainly on Aristotle, so I am more familiar with Nussbaum's earlier works.

9toes \thanks so much for the link, very clear and insightful anaysis!

I think Naussbaum's critique of Butler is rather petulant. Butler is digging around in the epistemology of feminie identity and asking us to consider how it relates to power in a socio-historical context.

Naussbaum seems more concerned that change take place within our current system of thinking. It is compelling because it requires less of a mental upheavel. I think they both have a place. MN is useful when we want to react to something and JB is useful when we want to challenge the way we think about concepts.

Im sorry but your comments about trans identity are naive at best and offensive at worst. It is not tenable to claim you hold a position based on equality (feminism) and describe someone who is transitioning as in a state of 'cognitive error'.

I agree with Chrisgm. I have studied mostly Butler and gender identity over the past year, at Master's level, and managed to go and hear Butler speak in Glasgow just last week. She has a brilliant mind and I think that anyone who dismisses her without reading all of her works and listening to her speak (you can do so on YouTube) is taking a narrow-minded view of her opinions. She has been greatly misinterpreted. As for trans individuals, it doesn't look like you (9toenails) have thought enough about this, nor about how your words sound. The world is full of diverse individuals with different needs, but what everyone is entitled to are equal rights to basic liveable lives. Anti-trans epistemologies are not helpful and, if you are serious about finding out more about trans/non binary lives, why not try Leslie Feinberg's Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink and Blue. This may help you to understand some of the difficulties faced by those whom you deem 'other' at best.

Thanks for the responses Galgorocks and Chrisgm.

Apologies for not replying earlier. I have not been looking at this for a while -- I thought the thread moribund.

I see postmodernist feminism (or feminist postmodernism?) has not wholly died.

I am interested that you both castigate my description of myself finding what I called 'the contemporary trans narrative' to exemplify cognitive error. This strikes you as ' naive at best and offensive at worst' ( Chrisgm); Galgorocks, you convict me of not having ' thought enough about this, nor about how your words sound '.

I wonder what is going on here. Any cursory glance online (or in other media, indeed) at writing or reports on 'trans...' issues reveals a plethora of equivocation fallacies, circular attempted definitions, and so on. You surely cannot have missed this.

Something other than a challenge to the assessment of error, then? Perhaps. Maybe a suggestion to be kind to people who make mistakes? That would be fine in its own way, but more appropriate and so more likely as interpretation elsewhere than here, I feel.

What, then? Possibly an examination of some apects of postmodernist thought may help to see what is going on.

It may be it has been suggested to me explicitly in these terms in the (fairly distant) past that postmodernity must ineluctably view the justification and/or truth of (any) belief as relative to the believer; this, then, it might be held, entails cognitive relativism of some sort or another. (These are murky waters, but the general gist may be clear, I hope.)

(Roughly speaking, in the context we are in, this chain of thought involves picking up the notion of situated knowledge from feminist epistemology (especially) and running with it (over a cliff, I might once have said; I try to be less dogmatic now).)

Fine, now it is easy to overdo cognitive relativism. And if you are worried about the conclusion of an argument, it can seem an easy get-out; 'Yes, but that's just your opinion ...' ... 'That's just not true for me '. Or, sometimes, 'That's just your logic, we don't reason in that way.'

I suspect it is something of this latter that motivates and enables your dislike, Galgorocks and Chrisgm, of my description of cognitive errors as they occur in contemporary trans narratives. I wonder if you might try on this particular cap. Is it close to your size?

Here is an example to try with. To say that to be x is to identify as x says nothing about what x is. That is just obviously true. I have read and heard -- people implicitly deny it; moreover, a denial of its truth is a key part of contemporary trans narrative (which is why these people deny it, of course). Do you deny it? On what grounds? (I think to deny it sincerely is a sign of raw cognitive error, in case that is not clear. You?)

No worries 9toenails, Im pleased it gave you something to think about. It can be difficult for people to think about gender as any other equation than binary. It is a familiar tale in the development of humanity.

I enjoyed reading your reply and found it helpful in getting to grips with some of missteps you have taken. My first thought was that it is difficult to establish what is meant by the claim made about a 'cursorary glance'. It could mean google, jstor, local library, all or none of the above yet no matter as the sentiment falls short of making a point. You can of course find equivocation in any subject in any form. From Heraclitus and Zeno to Descartes and Leibniz and beyond. However, I agree with you it is important to establish a foundation or principle of an understanding before you form a doubt. Galgorocks gives a helpful signpost to some literature and maybe Sandy Stone might be helpful. I would still reccommend Butler although I appreciate that she might not make it onto your reading list. My point here is that citing equivocation as an example to demonstrate an untenable position is disastorous as a theoretical position; it would be like saying, "well not all buses are red, therefore buses are not red." Patently true (for some buses) yet not actually pertinent to a conclusion.

I feel your pain on the postmodern. I too have heard people try to explain postmodernism as a way of thinking that does away with truth. Very odd when you consider that it, like all modern western thought post French Revolution was birthed by Kant.

The following example helped me come unstuck from this lazy thinking that I think has caused you to pin 'relativism' to the theory and ignore it. The example follows from the Platonic conception of the realm of ideas. Plato tells us that ideas (the amorphous principles upon which our knowledge of things is found) are formed as perfect, immaterial and unchanging. Benjamin challenges this saying not that history changes ideas but ideas are formed historically. So essentially, you dont think about the realm of ideas as carved in an immaterial realm or by history but more like revealed through history. My point here is that not as you say, post modernism states that the believer defines truth but it is defined through the believer. Basically, our ideas about the world are not just formed by our experiences but the context in which those experiences take place. Relating to this topic; we dont need to define gender as binary because the precedent for ideological thinking does not call upon us to do so.

Finally, the example that sets to demonstrate the notion that self-identifying is logically fallacious does at a glance sound strong. You are right it is 'obviously true' about x. Yet I am unclear about the route that is being taken here. It sounds like a personal-identity claim a la metapysics and therefore doesnt work in the way you want it to; in this sense human consciousness is not in play but immaterial so what x cannot be recognised as gendered. If you relate it to social theory then I dont find it to be problematic either. I mean a conservative thinker will if pushed define X as binary but that doesnt mean we have to hold that line. Such a definition cannot work any longer from a practical standpoint alone. I am saying that I dont think the question is worth affirming or denying.

I think the real question here relates to a point about problematising; what do you think is so problematic about an individual identifying as trans?

Hello Chrisgm and thanks for your response.

It often, as now, takes me a few days to check what's going on online. I hope that is OK with you.

[This is a bit rushed and too long. Sorry I do not have time to make it shorter.]

Of course it is good to find someone who will explain one's missteps. Let me try to take up some of your points.

Equivocation. ' ... citing equivocation as an example to demonstrate an untenable position is disastrous as a theoretical position; it would be like saying, "well not all buses are red, therefore buses are not red." ' you say.

I am sorry, I just do not understand. Is there supposed to be an equivocation there? Is it on the quantifiers? Or what? I am just at a loss about what you are trying to say with this; it does not seem to engage with my remarks about finding clear examples of equivocation fallacies in some (notorious) contexts of contemporary discourse.

Perhaps we mean something different by 'equivocation'? Possibly I was unclear. Do you have any Liebnizean examples to hand, for instance, to illustrate your meaning? (I confess to being a bit of a Liebniz fan.)

When I mentioned 'equivocation fallacies', I was thinking of what has become known as the 'fallacy of equivocation'. (Am I being over precise with this, I wonder? I suspect you of being a grannie already adept at egg-sucking. But there may be some reading this who might profit.)

The notion goes back at least to Aristotle: see 165b25 (OK with Bekker numbers? Sophistical Refutations, anyway). It is the first of his list of fallacies in dictione ( semantic, in this case), and also one of the first specific fallacies philosophy students (yes, in the post-Kantian continental tradition as well as the analytic) learn to spot and name. I suppose I expected you to know that. Maybe you thought I meant something else.

In this sense of equivocation, anyway, 'citing equivocation' is very much not theoretically 'disastrous', as you claim, Chrisgm. It is very useful in learning to spot cases in which what we thought were good reasons to believe something true are actually not -- useful for distinguishing 'genuine from sham' arguments, as Aristotle himself puts it. (164a25)

It is in this sense of 'equivocation' that, as I wrote, ' Any cursory glance online (or in other media, indeed) at writing or reports on 'trans...' issues reveals a plethora of equivocation fallacies ...'.
Do you deny this, Chrisgm? Shall we look at some examples, perhaps? Or can anyone suggest any?

Interestingly, Chrisgm, when you write of ' the Platonic conception of the realm of ideas ' and later, ' our ideas about the world ' as formed by the contexts in which we experience the world, you equivocate on 'ideas' (deliberately? I am not sure): the Platonic conception of the realm of Forms (or ideas) is anyway very different from, say, Cartesian ideas (as explained, say, in Meditations 3 ), which are much more like 'our ideas of the world' (in your phrase) than Platonic Forms are.

'Idea' is an interesting and somewhat fraught philosophical term of art whose meaning has changed greatly over the years. (Think of Locke's or Kant's ideas, too, for example: hardly Platonic Forms, however we turn them round under the light of reason.)

All that is one reason I long ago went with the flow and decided to refer to 'Forms' in Plato rather than 'ideas'. Fewer fallacies of equivocation in students' arguments ... also comparisons of Aristotelian forms makes more sense ... well, and so on I guess; all pretty basic stuff, you will say, I am sure. But it is interesting and useful, certainly not ' theoretically disastrous ', to note and cite equivocation in such cases.

Re modern-day Platonism (or, perhaps, Realism there are differing usages even in my own (fairly narrowly defined) fields): from what you say I suspect we would agree possibly contra conventional wisdom -- that a turn away from Platonism does not entail an acceptance of non- or anti-Realism of any stripe. And certainly not a turn away from truth. (Possibly for different reasons, but let that stand for now.) It is good to agree on that, at least.

But ( Mais ...) revenons à nos moutons :

Your ' real question here ' at the end I found super interesting. What on earth, I asked myself, makes her think I find anything ' problematic about an individual identifying as trans '? I do not. Nor does anything I have written imply I do. But you think I do, knowing only what I have written. Why?

There is surely something here to uncover.

Let us think about 'identifying', first. The philosophical problem usually designated that of Personal Identity has a long and distinguished history. What is it that makes me, me? And how does that relate to how or to what extent I am the same person as I was yesterday, last week, or seventy years ago? What about me now, if anything, is identical with me then?

This relation between a person's identity and the relation of identity (sc . of things being the same ) may be worth bearing in mind. But I suggest we need not get too much into all that as a problem. (You might say a 'metaphysical' problem; me, I am not so sure. But let that pass.)

Consider some everyday examples of individuals identifying as so-and-so. My grandson tells me he is a long-eared bat: '... I'm a mummy long-eared bat, Grandad,' is actually what he told me recently. That in itself is not problematic; he and I both know he will sleep in his bed tonight and not hanging upside down in the loft. It would become problematic if he insisted on trying to fly out of the window with his eyes closed, but that is unlikely, knowing him.

OK, think of someone identifying as a member of a particular religion. 'I am a Christian' (or 'Zoroastrian', 'Animist' ... whatever). Problematic? No, surely not. We think ill of societies where apostacy is not allowed, for instance. Pluralism is a societal virtue in that way.

And why we came think of someone identifying as trans. Problematic? Again, surely not. Pluralism rules here too.

Now, I know what it is to be a bat, more or less, even if (Thomas Nagel, anyone?) I do not know what it is like to be a bat. (Nagel is wrong, btw. But no matter.) I also have some idea of what it is to be a Zoroastrian, and if I do not, I can look it up in Wikipedia or whatever. And so on.

So what is it to be trans? When I first came across this (see my OP), like many people I read 'transwoman' (or 'trans woman'? it does not matter afaics) as indicating a woman who felt she wanted to be a man and 'transman' vice versa. No, of course, that is wrong: a transman is a woman who wants to be a man and correlatively. Problematic? I do not see why. Coiners of neologisms have authorial rights.

But, now, some people want to claim more. A transman, they say, is a man, and not just a woman who wants to be a man. That seems fine, until we notice that our everyday use of 'man' (the word) the meaning of 'man' in other words (no specific definition in question, notice: beware arguments about definitions) precludes its use to designate such people. (Meaning is normative, we might recall here if we want to raise the technical level a little.)

Fine, some say, but words change meanings all the time, for lots of reasons. Reasons are offered (sometimes to do with clearly laudable aims such as alleviating suffering or even preventing suicide) for changing the meaning of 'man' to accommodate the 'transmen are men' claim -- to make it at least possibly true.

Leave aside, now, questions about the relative advantages of such a change of meaning: we are still in the dark about what the new meaning is intended to be. What is this new meaning intended to allow the possibility of the truth of 'transmen are men', remember to be?

Perhaps 'man' should be used of anyone who wears trousers or has a beard or ... well, no, that would just be silly, we all agree. So what? The only suggestion I have seen (maybe I have not looked hard enough?) is that the new meaning of 'man' should encompass all those who say they are men. Problematic? Surely so. We know why: To say that to be x is to identify as x says nothing about what x is.

Self-ID as trans is wholly unproblematic. But self-ID as a man or woman is problematic if it requires we make sense of being x depending on identifying as x as contemporary trans narratives demand, because we cannot so make sense.

It is simple enough to work out obvious consequences for social (and personal) policy from this, even if some of our politicians and commentators are themselves apparently too simple to notice.

-- And, my question, 'Why' did Chrisgm think I found something problematic about someone identifying as trans? I suspect it may be a ‭kind of bait-and-switch (although I am fairly sure, Chrisgm, you were not consciously employing such a tactic):

Arguing about the real problematic, self-ID as a man or woman, is a certain loser, as we see ... but if you can switch the ground to an hypothetical problematic about self-ID as trans, you might see yourself as firing from the (moral) higher ground of supporting pluralism and societal inclusion onto the pusillanimous deniers of inclusion down below, and so win the day. This diagnosis neatly answers, too, the question of how TRA claim to see themselves as progressives when actually their agenda is thoroughly reactionary. (Why 'reactionary'? Perhaps for another day.)

Moral? An exercise for the reader (if there are any such by now).

Do you see, Chrisgm?

[Perhaps I should say this is not an exhaustive account of the problems inherent in contemporary trans discourse. Far from it.]