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TimS comments on The noncentral fallacy - the worst argument in the world? - Less Wrong
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Why are we talking about height differences?
There are popularized science articles that claim women are more empathic, conciliatory, and people oriented, while men are more aggressive and problem oriented. And this "difference" has a biological basis.
An equivalent assertion would be that nerds are inherently Straw Vulcans because of aspects of their genetic code, and therefore one should never take their advice in social situations seriously. The assertion functions to reinforce the status quo, not illuminate truths about human biology.
These assertions are not equivalent in structure: one is "X are more Y", the other is "all X are Y".
In spite of that, people who aren't trying to be careful will often not notice the difference, and people who are trying to be careful will often still habitually treat the former as the latter and fail to notice exceptions.
Both of these ways to interpret a statement (denotation / usage in practice) are vital, and it distresses me that people (in politically charged discussions) seem to almost always see them as opposed sides and consistently emphasize one.
Height differences are obvious, have strong correlations with status and success, and it's really hard to argue that they're not biological. I was responding to the feminist argument, not to the argument that popular science mischaracterizes things for the worse. If we disagree that there ARE biological differences, then we've got a bigger disagreement than about the extent to which misinterpretation of evopsych reinforces the patriarchy.
Respectfully, I think this is the feminist argument.
There obvious are morally relevant differences between men and women (e.g. pregnancy). The open question is whether they require or even justify our current gender roles.
Ability to get pregnant is not, even now, a difference between men and women. Lots of women can't, and some men can. Many feminists argue that there are circumstances where pregnancy/ability to get pregnant/desire to get pregnant are relevant and justify different treatment, but that we should ignore the correlation with gender.
I reject some combination of your usage of "is", "difference" or "men and woman" as impractical. I suggest that whatever kind of wordplay is used to make this claim could be used to make all sorts of utterly absurd claims that MixedNuts would reject as pure silliness and yet which are less objectively absurd than the claim in question.
Ignore the correlation with gender. Of pregnancy. That seems impractical. If I plan on becoming a father then I am most certainly going to direct my courtship attention to those who appear to be women while attempting to achieve that goal. Because being aware of correlations is overwhelmingly useful to me.
The relevant subargument here is: "Male psychology is deeply affected by inability to ever be pregnant, which makes it essentially different from female psychology" is false, because men who can and do get pregnant don't have extraordinarily un-male psychology, they're just more or less regular dudes plus a bun in the oven.
That argument I would object to. There are probably differences in average male and female psychologies which have a causal history related to the ability to become pregnant---even 'creepiness' instincts are probably somewhat related. But that isn't the same thing as pregnancy directly meaning the female and male psychologies different through knowing about pregnancy.
Hm.
So, I would object to the line you quote, but mostly because I don't have a clue what "essentially different" means.
On the other hand, something like "Differences in how men and women get pregnant, and knowledge of and experiences that depend on those differences, is a significant source of between-group variance in the behavior of men and women" doesn't strike me as objectionable at all. I mean, it might turn out to be false, but it seems to me a plausible belief in advance of experimental confirmation/rejection.
I'm not sure if we disagree on this.
I acknowledge that the theoretical distinction between sex and gender is not universally accepted, but I think the distinction is incredibly useful. I'm talking about physical causes of gender roles, and it's essentially impossible to deny that they exist. The fact that "able to get pregnant" != "woman" is irrelevant to my argument - and I reject any assertion that the exceptions deserve the negative moral judgments that society places on them.
If some feminists would like to totally ignore physical facts, I assert their political tactics are likely to be ineffective. In terms of outreach, acknowledging physical facts and dismissing their relevance is more effective than denying the physical facts exist.
Because for a materialist the brain is a physical organ, and its characteristics much like any other physical characteristic.
Well is that true or not?
Well, is that true or not?
It's hard to tell because it's practically impossible to run double-blind experiments on the process of evolution.
But it wouldn't be the first time that scientists gave their blessing to the norms of the day when the empirical evidence didn't truly support the assertion. Politics being the mind-killer, we should probably expect that morally controversial scientific results are biased. I suspect the bias is in favor of the status quo, but I'm sure there are counter-examples.
A brain is also an information-processing system, and as such, by Occam's razor it seems more probable that information within it comes from its environment rather than genetics (the human genome fits on a floppy drive, but the set of all Disney movies does not, at present).
Some of the information within the human brain "comes from genetics" through the expression of genetics in the environment and its observation by the human in question.
For instance, I believe that I have brown hair, ten fingers, a hairy chest, the ability to count, and various other attributes. These beliefs are information in my brain; however, they are also more than a little bit "genetically determined". My brain didn't start out with a genetically-determined belief "I have brown hair"; rather, my body ("genetically") grows hair of a type that I've ("socially") learned to identify as "brown" rather than "blond", "black", "red", or other labels. In the counterfactual world where my genes expressed as black hair, I would believe "I have black hair".
Can you extend this argument to the sort of social messages conveyed in Disney movies, in anything more than a trivial way ("Humans make disney movies, so disney movies come from genetics")?
Hmm ... I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for here in terms of "social messages".
Disney movies contain characters having interpersonal cooperation and conflict — which are pretty damn universal in human societies, and we probably have some adaptations for them, at least some of which we accurately observe. Disney movies contain characters using facial expressions of emotion (e.g. wide-eyed interest or attraction; crying to express sadness or upset); etc.
So — Messages such as "cooperation lets you accomplish more than you could accomplish alone [and we have adaptations to enable us to do this]" or "humans are moved [instinctively] by other humans' expressions of emotion" ... sure.
However, if you're going for things like "Snow White conveys ideals of female submission and purity," ... no.
You think there's no message in the different moral judgment we are expected to have for Snow White vs. the Wicked Queen? Something about vanity, plus it doesn't hurt to notice that the morally upright woman is also better looking.
Oh, of course there is a social message there. I think eridu was asking whether I thought it was genetically determined.
By hypothesis, the Wicked Queen is the second most beautiful woman in the land. This seems to weaken that point.
Yes, that is exactly the sort of message that I care about.
I don't see how that follows, and "By Occam's razor" should only be invoked once you've established that two models are equivalent except for some extraneous detail.