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The equating of objective facts with "male-dominant views" is just bizarre. I mean, seriously, they are saying that in the feminist view is that there is no ob

The equating of objective facts with "male-dominant views" is just bizarre. I mean, seriously, they are saying that in the feminist view is that there is no objective reality? I suppose they are saying that feminists... don't live in... reality. You can't make this stuff up. At least they're up front about it, I suppose.

danharaj 10y ago
A fact is a human construct. It is a symbol. You just conflated facts with reality. A cursory examination of reality will reveal that observations of reality are observer dependent. So what is an objective fact? An objective fact must be one that is covariant in change of observer interpreting the fact. Physical laws like General Relativity are covariant in this way: the facts of relativity differ symbolically depending on the reference frame of the observer but different observers' facts are related in a coherent way. In GR an observer is a reference frame. In order to define objective fact you need to presuppose what an observer is. It is a masculine behavior to consider this question unimportant. A feminine science is much more interested in the study of the subjective because you can't be objective without understanding subjectivity. Ultimately an observer in science is a human. That means objective fact can only be understood by understanding the subjectivity of the scientist. An objective fact is in fact an intersubjective fact, and intersubjectivity is an essential contribution to science by feminism. It's a good keyword to google.
- Practicality 10y ago
  Ok. So this is semantics and in this science there is a different meaning for the word "fact." What is the utility of redefining a fact as a human construct of accepted information, rather than as data points corresponding to components of objective reality?
  - thaw13579 10y ago
    I think it's important to think about this because we as humans have major limitations in our understanding. For example, we are limited and biased due to the spatial and temporal scales of our senses, and we may be similarly affected by social things such as language, personal beliefs, interpersonal interactions.
  - danharaj 10y ago
    Because you're putting the cart before the horse. Science is building a picture of """objective reality""" from human subjectivity. Data points aren't reality, they have to be interpreted. No matter how you try to do it, at some point you have to accept that a human being is doing science and the way science is done is fundamentally an intersubjective phenomenon. Science isn't reality. Scientific knowledge isn't reality. Science is a human activity and scientific knowledge is a relationship between humans and reality. I'm not redefining what a fact is, I'm unpacking the definition of a scientific fact and scrutinizing its dynamics. Why is this useful? Because if you don't look at science from this point of view, you can't understand or even recognize good or bad science. The scientific method can only fail in its execution. Its execution is fundamentally an intersubjective phenomenon. There is a deeper philosophical advantage to this point of view: This is the correct formulation of science if you want to do science about science. That is, if you want to study scientifically the method by which discoveries are made, become verified, and evolve into commonly held "objective facts", you have to formulate science in this way. If you want to study scientifically how people become scientists, you have to formulate science this way. If you want to study why scientific illiteracy is still a major sociological problem, you have to formulate science this way. Et cetera. In light of all this, I have to ask: What is the utility of the idea of objective facts, objective reality, a science that is not intersubjective, one that is merely acquired and applied in the masculine mode? My answer to that question is engineering: Engineering is not interested in doing science, but applying it. In which case, objective reality is merely a shortcut to using scientific knowledge. I think that's an admissible use, but it is inadequate for science itself and understanding the relationship between science and society. P.S. When I say masculine and feminine, I certainly do not mean qualities intrinsic to men or women. I am referring to archetypal abstract masculinity and femininity which are themselves diffuse aspects of human intersubjectivity the study of which reveals long-scale correlations in human politics and social structure.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > Data points aren't reality, they have to be interpreted Data points perhaps need to be interpreted for utility, but they represent facts (but those are facts of sense experience, which is ultimately subjective, though often expressed in terms of a fairly restrained conclusion of that subjective experience.) Which is not to say I disagree with your broader point.
- wfo 10y ago
  And yet, would the feminist science claim that intersubjectivity is the correct view to take? Can it? Or must it be that intersubjectivity is only the view of certain feminists and itself depends on the observer -- to some observer, independent observable facts exists, and to some others, they do not as they are intersubjective? I think your position is interesting if odd and completely alienated from the way science is done or thought about in all of human history. I think the downvotes are coming from referring to standard "incorrect" science in your view (as it does not embrace intersubjectivity) as "masculine" and the "correct" view as "feminine" -- to put gender labels on abstract philosophical positions seems contrived and silly to some (me, at least). What does masculinity have to do with belief in objective facts? Why do only women understand that facts depend on the observer? Is it just because the person who introduced reference frames and general relativity to modern science, Albert Einstein, was female? What does adding these incendiary labels to the positions you outline and contrast add to the discussion, other than encouraging your mostly male and mostly skeptical-of-gender-politics audience to not listen?
  - danharaj 10y ago
    Intersubjectivity is a major part of modern psychology. It is a relatively new concept. Its influence grows slowly as more and more people find it usefully applicable to their work. Like most science, actually. Intersubjectivity is not a normative idea or a theory, but more of a point of view. It is a heuristic that says, in order to study a thing, study the subjective experiences of that thing and their relations. Observer-invariance is too strong of a constraint on what is a fact: physics already embraces this. What you want instead is covariance, which is how observations transform when you change the observer. Studying the covariance of observations is intrinsically a study of intersubjectivity, although I need to point out here that I am merely making an analogy between human observers and the abstract observers of physics, which are themselves simplifications of human observers. > independent observable facts Independent of what? Observation? A fact is necessarily tied to how it is observed. That's what I'm talking about here. It is a fundamental aspect of the scientific method that scientific observations can be made by different people and then their results can be compared. The dependence of facts on observation is absolutely crucial, so I'm not sure what sort of independence you're talking about. W.r.t. masculine and feminine, I wrote my first post on a phone while in a taxi and I think one of my paragraphs clarifying this point got eaten by a pothole. I clarified in a sibling post but I'll expound here: I don't mean anything intrinsic to men or women. I am referring to archetypal masculinity and femininity, which are social constructs. Every society has had these archetypes, for example the ideas of Yin and Yang, the feminine and masculine principles of ancient Chinese thought. There is little physical basis as they apply to the human sexual dimorphism for these archetypes and they vary from society to society. There is well established scientific literature observing these aspects of society. For example, women are expected to understand the emotions of others far more than men are. I'm time constrained so I won't cite this; it's not hard to peruse the literature. Does this mean that men can't empathize or that it makes them girly if they do? Of course not! > What does adding these incendiary labels to the positions you outline and contrast add to the discussion, other than encouraging your mostly male and mostly skeptical-of-gender-politics audience not listen? I don't feel like I'm being incendiary. Why are you receiving my words that way? It's an interesting phenomenon. And this might sound pedantic but, I don't care if you're skeptical of gender politics because gender politics are real, and they have been real for thousands of years. Masculinity and femininity as social concepts are real in that sense whether you acknowledge their existence or not. Feminists did not invent gender politics, they merely scrutinize them. There was a time when gender was considered an inviolable concept writ large across the cosmos by a male deity. Was a time? Still a time for hundreds of millions of people. The fact that people, mostly women because they were the most incentivized to do so, started critically engaging these ideas philosophically (thus laying the groundwork for scientific investigation) is a boon to me and you. I would suggest y'all stop taking gendered analysis of social phenomenon personally because it can only enrich your conceptual toolbox. > I think your position is interesting if odd and completely alienated from the way science is done or thought about in all of human history. I did math research a long time ago. I'm still pretty connected to the mathematical research community. These ideas are corroborated by my own experiences. We need to make a distinction between what people say is the way science is done and what the actual way science is done. We need to make a distinction between the way science is thought about and the way people think they think about science is done. This isn't pedantry or navel gazing or postmodern bullshit, this is hard-nosed critical thinking.

danharaj 10y ago

A fact is a human construct. It is a symbol. You just conflated facts with reality. A cursory examination of reality will reveal that observations of reality are observer dependent. So what is an objective fact? An objective fact must be one that is covariant in change of observer interpreting the fact. Physical laws like General Relativity are covariant in this way: the facts of relativity differ symbolically depending on the reference frame of the observer but different observers' facts are related in a coherent way. In GR an observer is a reference frame. In order to define objective fact you need to presuppose what an observer is. It is a masculine behavior to consider this question unimportant. A feminine science is much more interested in the study of the subjective because you can't be objective without understanding subjectivity. Ultimately an observer in science is a human. That means objective fact can only be understood by understanding the subjectivity of the scientist. An objective fact is in fact an intersubjective fact, and intersubjectivity is an essential contribution to science by feminism. It's a good keyword to google.

Practicality 10y ago
Ok. So this is semantics and in this science there is a different meaning for the word "fact." What is the utility of redefining a fact as a human construct of accepted information, rather than as data points corresponding to components of objective reality?
- thaw13579 10y ago
  I think it's important to think about this because we as humans have major limitations in our understanding. For example, we are limited and biased due to the spatial and temporal scales of our senses, and we may be similarly affected by social things such as language, personal beliefs, interpersonal interactions.
- danharaj 10y ago
  Because you're putting the cart before the horse. Science is building a picture of """objective reality""" from human subjectivity. Data points aren't reality, they have to be interpreted. No matter how you try to do it, at some point you have to accept that a human being is doing science and the way science is done is fundamentally an intersubjective phenomenon. Science isn't reality. Scientific knowledge isn't reality. Science is a human activity and scientific knowledge is a relationship between humans and reality. I'm not redefining what a fact is, I'm unpacking the definition of a scientific fact and scrutinizing its dynamics. Why is this useful? Because if you don't look at science from this point of view, you can't understand or even recognize good or bad science. The scientific method can only fail in its execution. Its execution is fundamentally an intersubjective phenomenon. There is a deeper philosophical advantage to this point of view: This is the correct formulation of science if you want to do science about science. That is, if you want to study scientifically the method by which discoveries are made, become verified, and evolve into commonly held "objective facts", you have to formulate science in this way. If you want to study scientifically how people become scientists, you have to formulate science this way. If you want to study why scientific illiteracy is still a major sociological problem, you have to formulate science this way. Et cetera. In light of all this, I have to ask: What is the utility of the idea of objective facts, objective reality, a science that is not intersubjective, one that is merely acquired and applied in the masculine mode? My answer to that question is engineering: Engineering is not interested in doing science, but applying it. In which case, objective reality is merely a shortcut to using scientific knowledge. I think that's an admissible use, but it is inadequate for science itself and understanding the relationship between science and society. P.S. When I say masculine and feminine, I certainly do not mean qualities intrinsic to men or women. I am referring to archetypal abstract masculinity and femininity which are themselves diffuse aspects of human intersubjectivity the study of which reveals long-scale correlations in human politics and social structure.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Data points aren't reality, they have to be interpreted Data points perhaps need to be interpreted for utility, but they represent facts (but those are facts of sense experience, which is ultimately subjective, though often expressed in terms of a fairly restrained conclusion of that subjective experience.) Which is not to say I disagree with your broader point.
wfo 10y ago
And yet, would the feminist science claim that intersubjectivity is the correct view to take? Can it? Or must it be that intersubjectivity is only the view of certain feminists and itself depends on the observer -- to some observer, independent observable facts exists, and to some others, they do not as they are intersubjective? I think your position is interesting if odd and completely alienated from the way science is done or thought about in all of human history. I think the downvotes are coming from referring to standard "incorrect" science in your view (as it does not embrace intersubjectivity) as "masculine" and the "correct" view as "feminine" -- to put gender labels on abstract philosophical positions seems contrived and silly to some (me, at least). What does masculinity have to do with belief in objective facts? Why do only women understand that facts depend on the observer? Is it just because the person who introduced reference frames and general relativity to modern science, Albert Einstein, was female? What does adding these incendiary labels to the positions you outline and contrast add to the discussion, other than encouraging your mostly male and mostly skeptical-of-gender-politics audience to not listen?
- danharaj 10y ago
  Intersubjectivity is a major part of modern psychology. It is a relatively new concept. Its influence grows slowly as more and more people find it usefully applicable to their work. Like most science, actually. Intersubjectivity is not a normative idea or a theory, but more of a point of view. It is a heuristic that says, in order to study a thing, study the subjective experiences of that thing and their relations. Observer-invariance is too strong of a constraint on what is a fact: physics already embraces this. What you want instead is covariance, which is how observations transform when you change the observer. Studying the covariance of observations is intrinsically a study of intersubjectivity, although I need to point out here that I am merely making an analogy between human observers and the abstract observers of physics, which are themselves simplifications of human observers. > independent observable facts Independent of what? Observation? A fact is necessarily tied to how it is observed. That's what I'm talking about here. It is a fundamental aspect of the scientific method that scientific observations can be made by different people and then their results can be compared. The dependence of facts on observation is absolutely crucial, so I'm not sure what sort of independence you're talking about. W.r.t. masculine and feminine, I wrote my first post on a phone while in a taxi and I think one of my paragraphs clarifying this point got eaten by a pothole. I clarified in a sibling post but I'll expound here: I don't mean anything intrinsic to men or women. I am referring to archetypal masculinity and femininity, which are social constructs. Every society has had these archetypes, for example the ideas of Yin and Yang, the feminine and masculine principles of ancient Chinese thought. There is little physical basis as they apply to the human sexual dimorphism for these archetypes and they vary from society to society. There is well established scientific literature observing these aspects of society. For example, women are expected to understand the emotions of others far more than men are. I'm time constrained so I won't cite this; it's not hard to peruse the literature. Does this mean that men can't empathize or that it makes them girly if they do? Of course not! > What does adding these incendiary labels to the positions you outline and contrast add to the discussion, other than encouraging your mostly male and mostly skeptical-of-gender-politics audience not listen? I don't feel like I'm being incendiary. Why are you receiving my words that way? It's an interesting phenomenon. And this might sound pedantic but, I don't care if you're skeptical of gender politics because gender politics are real, and they have been real for thousands of years. Masculinity and femininity as social concepts are real in that sense whether you acknowledge their existence or not. Feminists did not invent gender politics, they merely scrutinize them. There was a time when gender was considered an inviolable concept writ large across the cosmos by a male deity. Was a time? Still a time for hundreds of millions of people. The fact that people, mostly women because they were the most incentivized to do so, started critically engaging these ideas philosophically (thus laying the groundwork for scientific investigation) is a boon to me and you. I would suggest y'all stop taking gendered analysis of social phenomenon personally because it can only enrich your conceptual toolbox. > I think your position is interesting if odd and completely alienated from the way science is done or thought about in all of human history. I did math research a long time ago. I'm still pretty connected to the mathematical research community. These ideas are corroborated by my own experiences. We need to make a distinction between what people say is the way science is done and what the actual way science is done. We need to make a distinction between the way science is thought about and the way people think they think about science is done. This isn't pedantry or navel gazing or postmodern bullshit, this is hard-nosed critical thinking.