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Let's not compare gender studies to a park. That's a bit apples and oranges. Humanities are meant to have some redeeming value and some rigorousness even when

by eloff 6y ago

Let's not compare gender studies to a park. That's a bit apples and oranges. Humanities are meant to have some redeeming value and some rigorousness even when you can't apply the scientific method. History, literature, philosophy, and anthropology are all good examples of valuable humanities where there is some grounding in logic and facts. Gender studies on the other hand is just an ideology with very little basis in reality, and little grounding of any kind in facts and logic. You could call it a religion of sorts, but it would be insulting to religions which at least have a richness of tradition and culture and philosophy behind them.

woodruffw 6y ago
> History, literature, philosophy, and anthropology are all good examples of valuable humanities where there is some grounding in logic and facts. I'm sorry, but this is a profound misapprehension of the humanities: one of the first things you do in the study of history is learn that history is a human project, subject to human flaws. We don't take Thucydides and Herodotus at their words; we expect the "facts" of history to be distorted. Philosophy predates what you think of as "logic," and does not use the phrase to refer solely to systems that map roughly to the constrained proof structures that programmers are taught. More profoundly, many philosophers will outright reject the idea that logic is some kind of a priori substrate: not because they think it's wrong or not, but because they think that it's the responsibility of philosophy to consider what would have to be for it to be otherwise. I know that it's difficult, but please consider whether your own positions have become dogmatic. You don't have to agree with prevailing views in gender studies (I don't even know what they are!); you merely have to ask yourself whether you're qualified to dismiss it as "an ideology with very little basis in reality."
- eloff 6y ago
  > I'm sorry, but this is a profound misapprehension of the humanities: one of the first things you do in the study of history is learn that history is a human project, subject to human flaws. We don't take Thucydides and Herodotus at their words; we expect the "facts" of history to be distorted. Sure, but there's still a basis in facts where can corroborate accounts from different authors, even different sides in a war. yes it's subject to interpretation, and there's no one right answer. But you also can't just make stuff up and get people to take you seriously. There's some rigour to making and presenting your arguments. Very different to gender studies. > I know that it's difficult, but please consider whether your own positions have become dogmatic. You don't have to agree with prevailing views in gender studies (I don't even know what they are!); you merely have to ask yourself whether you're qualified to dismiss it as "an ideology with very little basis in reality." Maybe. I've seen a lot of terrible examples of things from gender studies. I'm sure there have to be some redeeming ideas right? The whole field can't be 100% worthless. But by and large there's not much value in it and a lot of nonsense, incorrect, and even dangerous thinking to be found there.
  - woodruffw 6y ago
    > Sure, but there's still a basis in facts where can corroborate accounts from different authors, even different sides in a war. yes it's subject to interpretation, and there's no one right answer. But you also can't just make stuff up and get people to take you seriously. There's some rigour to making and presenting your arguments. Very different to gender studies. Except that a lot of it is just made up! Both the Greeks and Romans were happy to make up foundational and battle stories to support their cultural lodestones; we don't really know much about how Rome was founded other than that it certainly wasn't Romulus and Remus. Even our best period sources (Dionysus of Halicarnassus and Livy) were (1) 800 years too late, and (2) under immense political pressure to "prove" (there's that word again) that the myths were real. And note: the greatness of Rome is conditioned on the greatness of their founding myth, which goes from Romulus and Remus to the great Aeneas of Troy[1]. The greatness of the Western neoclassicial period (democracy, free speech, property, capitalism!), in turn, is conditioned on the greatness and intellectual rightness of Greece and Rome. There's a reason why George Washington is apotheosized on the Capitol Rotunda, and it's not just because Brumidi thought it would look cool. If you can see why these kinds of observations and analysis might be interesting, you can get an inkling of why people find gender and other critical studies interesting: they don't exist to destroy Western culture, only to reconcile its lionizations with what we actually know. And, as it turns out, we don't know a whole lot other than what our progenitors want us to know. [1]: This, among many other reasons, is why Rome had its own reactionary anti-Hellenic scholars. Modern conservative groups frequently borrow their names. Parallels abound.
    - eloff 6y ago
      You seem to have a post factual philosophy. Just because some things are made up in history does not mean the whole field is without rigor, nor does it make it equivalent to the counter factual nonsense coming out of gender studies. That you can find examples to the contrary does not prove the rule or make everything somehow equal.
      - woodruffw 6y ago
        I'm sorry if it wasn't clear, but those weren't supposed to be examples to the contrary (it's a matter of historical fact that people believed those myths, and acted based on those beliefs), nor do I have a "post factual" personal philosophy (I'm actually a Rawlsian and a moral realist, which is about as stodgy and non-postmodern as you can get by moral philosophy standards). The point with that whole digression was to provide a little window into the kinds of analyses that a critical philosopher might do: they're not interested in dismantling history as a whole; they're interested in carving at the joints between phenomena that are taken for granted as conjoined. I think that's important, even if it isn't the kind of research that I personally excel at (or even understand especially well).

by eloff 6y ago

woodruffw 6y ago

> History, literature, philosophy, and anthropology are all good examples of valuable humanities where there is some grounding in logic and facts. I'm sorry, but this is a profound misapprehension of the humanities: one of the first things you do in the study of history is learn that history is a human project, subject to human flaws. We don't take Thucydides and Herodotus at their words; we expect the "facts" of history to be distorted. Philosophy predates what you think of as "logic," and does not use the phrase to refer solely to systems that map roughly to the constrained proof structures that programmers are taught. More profoundly, many philosophers will outright reject the idea that logic is some kind of a priori substrate: not because they think it's wrong or not, but because they think that it's the responsibility of philosophy to consider what would have to be for it to be otherwise. I know that it's difficult, but please consider whether your own positions have become dogmatic. You don't have to agree with prevailing views in gender studies (I don't even know what they are!); you merely have to ask yourself whether you're qualified to dismiss it as "an ideology with very little basis in reality."

eloff 6y ago
> I'm sorry, but this is a profound misapprehension of the humanities: one of the first things you do in the study of history is learn that history is a human project, subject to human flaws. We don't take Thucydides and Herodotus at their words; we expect the "facts" of history to be distorted. Sure, but there's still a basis in facts where can corroborate accounts from different authors, even different sides in a war. yes it's subject to interpretation, and there's no one right answer. But you also can't just make stuff up and get people to take you seriously. There's some rigour to making and presenting your arguments. Very different to gender studies. > I know that it's difficult, but please consider whether your own positions have become dogmatic. You don't have to agree with prevailing views in gender studies (I don't even know what they are!); you merely have to ask yourself whether you're qualified to dismiss it as "an ideology with very little basis in reality." Maybe. I've seen a lot of terrible examples of things from gender studies. I'm sure there have to be some redeeming ideas right? The whole field can't be 100% worthless. But by and large there's not much value in it and a lot of nonsense, incorrect, and even dangerous thinking to be found there.
- woodruffw 6y ago
  > Sure, but there's still a basis in facts where can corroborate accounts from different authors, even different sides in a war. yes it's subject to interpretation, and there's no one right answer. But you also can't just make stuff up and get people to take you seriously. There's some rigour to making and presenting your arguments. Very different to gender studies. Except that a lot of it is just made up! Both the Greeks and Romans were happy to make up foundational and battle stories to support their cultural lodestones; we don't really know much about how Rome was founded other than that it certainly wasn't Romulus and Remus. Even our best period sources (Dionysus of Halicarnassus and Livy) were (1) 800 years too late, and (2) under immense political pressure to "prove" (there's that word again) that the myths were real. And note: the greatness of Rome is conditioned on the greatness of their founding myth, which goes from Romulus and Remus to the great Aeneas of Troy[1]. The greatness of the Western neoclassicial period (democracy, free speech, property, capitalism!), in turn, is conditioned on the greatness and intellectual rightness of Greece and Rome. There's a reason why George Washington is apotheosized on the Capitol Rotunda, and it's not just because Brumidi thought it would look cool. If you can see why these kinds of observations and analysis might be interesting, you can get an inkling of why people find gender and other critical studies interesting: they don't exist to destroy Western culture, only to reconcile its lionizations with what we actually know. And, as it turns out, we don't know a whole lot other than what our progenitors want us to know. [1]: This, among many other reasons, is why Rome had its own reactionary anti-Hellenic scholars. Modern conservative groups frequently borrow their names. Parallels abound.
  - eloff 6y ago
    You seem to have a post factual philosophy. Just because some things are made up in history does not mean the whole field is without rigor, nor does it make it equivalent to the counter factual nonsense coming out of gender studies. That you can find examples to the contrary does not prove the rule or make everything somehow equal.
    - woodruffw 6y ago
      I'm sorry if it wasn't clear, but those weren't supposed to be examples to the contrary (it's a matter of historical fact that people believed those myths, and acted based on those beliefs), nor do I have a "post factual" personal philosophy (I'm actually a Rawlsian and a moral realist, which is about as stodgy and non-postmodern as you can get by moral philosophy standards). The point with that whole digression was to provide a little window into the kinds of analyses that a critical philosopher might do: they're not interested in dismantling history as a whole; they're interested in carving at the joints between phenomena that are taken for granted as conjoined. I think that's important, even if it isn't the kind of research that I personally excel at (or even understand especially well).