4 ms·

The arrogance in this post is stunning. Nobody has ever or ever will have more knowledge or experience than you on any topic at all. And to put any trust in ano

The arrogance in this post is stunning. Nobody has ever or ever will have more knowledge or experience than you on any topic at all. And to put any trust in another person is equivalent to theological 'faith'. Wow. Firstly theology isn't a good comparison because god isn't a concept that can be 'experienced' or disproved. The issues that feminists talk about are generally not like this: if you really want to know how much more physically threatening the world seems as a woman, one could feasibly have a sex change operation or similar to allow you to experience the world as a woman. Or if you aren't so arrogant as to discount all knowledge that you didn't directly experience yourself, you could ask a large number of women and see what they have to say. Secondly, you seem vastly ignorant about epistemology and how science works in general. Ultimately it very much is a system of trust in people and institutions. Your categorising of knowledge into "theology" and "real knowledge" based on one requiring faith is a false dichotomy. I can only imagine how awful it must be to know you in real life if you never trust a single thing other people say to you without verifying it yourself (that is my way of saying you are a terrible human being).

philwelch 14y ago
What feminists and theologians have in common--and how I differ from them, based on more familiarity with epistemology than you think--is that they never seem to entertain the possibility that they are wrong. I, on the other hand, don't actually claim to know anything about anything as mysterious as gods, or as complicated as human society. I just have working estimates. I trust that other people have evidence that I don't and that they can't give to me. I can even accept it as some sort of indirect evidence, so that if other people unanimously tell me that Nevada exists and practically no one disagrees, I accept the claim. What I can't do is accept a seemingly dogmatic ideology like feminism based solely upon trusting some, but clearly not all women. I can be influenced by it, and when presented with direct and indirect evidence I can allow that evidence to upgrade my estimate, but in my experience feminists are unaccepting of anything short of full, dogmatic agreement. That--the attitude of any ideologue--is as good a marker as I've ever found that someone isn't using their evidence correctly. My working estimate so far includes a pretty reliable heuristic--it's always more complicated. Feminism, like any ideology, is actually pretty enlightening from a certain perspective, since it raises a lot of issues that can complicate our understanding of the world. But the problem is, the world is even more complicated than the feminists themselves think. So yes, I listen to indirect evidence, but I don't buy other people's conclusions wholesale. And far from being arrogant--I'm often more willing to throw my hands in the air and admit I really don't and can't know the answer to the question. I struggle with things like voting a lot because of this.

philwelch 14y ago

What feminists and theologians have in common--and how I differ from them, based on more familiarity with epistemology than you think--is that they never seem to entertain the possibility that they are wrong. I, on the other hand, don't actually claim to know anything about anything as mysterious as gods, or as complicated as human society. I just have working estimates. I trust that other people have evidence that I don't and that they can't give to me. I can even accept it as some sort of indirect evidence, so that if other people unanimously tell me that Nevada exists and practically no one disagrees, I accept the claim. What I can't do is accept a seemingly dogmatic ideology like feminism based solely upon trusting some, but clearly not all women. I can be influenced by it, and when presented with direct and indirect evidence I can allow that evidence to upgrade my estimate, but in my experience feminists are unaccepting of anything short of full, dogmatic agreement. That--the attitude of any ideologue--is as good a marker as I've ever found that someone isn't using their evidence correctly. My working estimate so far includes a pretty reliable heuristic--it's always more complicated. Feminism, like any ideology, is actually pretty enlightening from a certain perspective, since it raises a lot of issues that can complicate our understanding of the world. But the problem is, the world is even more complicated than the feminists themselves think. So yes, I listen to indirect evidence, but I don't buy other people's conclusions wholesale. And far from being arrogant--I'm often more willing to throw my hands in the air and admit I really don't and can't know the answer to the question. I struggle with things like voting a lot because of this.