I mean that doctors only really care about curing symptoms because if they can cure all the symptoms then, by definition, what's left has no effect on your well-being. They only want to cure the underlying problem because that's the best way to cure all of the symptoms. Symptoms are the reason why we want to cure diseases in the first place.
If you were told you have "flumgumbus" but it has no measurable effect on you or anyone else, would you pay for a doctor to treat you?
Okay, here's another thought experiment which I believe is exactly ethically equivalent:
The Borg come to Earth, abduct you, and alter your consciousness so that you derive extreme pleasure from serving the collective. You are in bliss, but you're also a cybernetic drone living in a metal cube with flickering green lights everywhere. Your job, which you deeply enjoy, involves invading other planets and infecting their citizens with the same nanites you were infected with. If asked, you would say you are much happier in your new life.
I assume you would consider that a bad thing, right?
Let me rephrase: matter, or states of matter, that interacts with other matter or states of matter, is real. Abstract ideas like gender or morality are states of matter in a material brain
Well, damn. That's the best argument for morality existing that I've heard. Thanks.
"Disorder" here only means deviation from what you consider "normal". What if instead we started considering it one of the "normal" behaviours?
Transgenderism cannot be "cured" with present knowledge, so it's hard to discuss whether cure would always be desirable without knowing what it would entail.
Obesity is an illness, and it is curable. Yet we do accomodate for obese people in society. Many eyesight disorders are left untreated, and society does not reprehend those who for lack of treating their eyesight disorders need to move closer to read things. Being too tall could be considered a disorder, yet we as a society do not absolutely refuse any kind of accomodation for height and see shortening surgery as the only reasonable option.
I'm curious as to how self-interest differs from "feeling good". Though you might imagine a more noble purpose in whatever thing you accomplish, you only judge its worth in how good you feel about it. No?
Great post, and I hope I'm not just saying that because I agree with it. I am indeed arguing for the abolition of gender.
I see where I've misunderstood you. I took you a little too literally when you said "alleviate" (make less severe) gender dysphoria. If you had said "cure" gender dysphoria, I would have just disagreed that hormones and surgery is a cure.
Of course. I don't believe that those two thought experiments are equivalent, however. It's not in my self-interest to be absorbed into the collective against my will, and to assert otherwise is to conflate hedonism and self-interest, as has happened elsewhere in this thread. In contrast, it is in my interest to cure my mental deficiencies, as in your previous example. Although having typed that out, I'm less sure of myself. I'll think on this a little more. Thank you user.
How do you define self-interest then?
Thought is most definitely real although not material, to deny this is incoherent nonsense, however that is not what I was referring to at all, I am referring to the reality of immaterial things, specifically socially constructed reality as no less real than material reality. The law, family, property, morality and gender are not thoughts, they exist in thoughts but also outside them, they exist in our behaviour, in our social life, in our daily existence and experience.
I get the impression that you do not understand what the terms idealism and materialism mean, no one in this thread has advanced an idealist position, in arguing that social constructs no one is claiming they are a priori of material reality or exist independently, in fact my argument from the start asserted that these things such as gender haven't always existed, they are not intrinsic and are historically and socially contingent, this is a thoroughly materialist position.
This discussion is not one of materialism vs idealism but rather of moral and epistemic realism and anti-realism.
But they are objectively real, we experience them and they affect us, our entire lives are structured around them, you can't coherently argue that property isn't real because to do so with any consistency would lead to you self-destroying, anti-realism of this degree is untenable. By committing yourself to this nonsensical position that only that which is material is real and reject the reality of social constructs you place yourself in an impossible position. This should make you stop and reconsider whether you're right or not and whether you're just placing an arbitrary and useless qualification in a misguided quest for supposed objectivity.
That’s kind of the point. Because gender doesn’t objectively exist, there’s no reason to treat as more than a subjective experience.
That's a serious reach, isn't it?
It doesn't matter what we consider normal to be. Normal exists. Determining what normal is is the difficult part. But just because it's hard, perhaps even impossible, does not mean normal is arbitrary.
I think I disagree, but it depends on what you're implying with "what it would entail". If the cure is just "take these pills twice a day and you will have no gender dysphoria", I think it would be very hard to argue that that isn't desirable.
Perhaps if we didn't, there would be less obese people. Sorry, couldn't resist.
Of course, the equivalent of this would be people who just live with their gender dysphoria and make do as best as they can.
I don't like physical analogies because they just really don't apply very well, and it muddies the waters.
No. There are plenty of things I have done in the past, and continue to do now, that make me absolutely miserable, but they are in my self-interest to do; not because they hurt in the short-term but make me "feel good" in the long term, but (as an example) because in doing them I fulfill my responsibilities. I don't "feel good" when I meet my obligations, yet I do them because to do otherwise would negatively affect my life.
I am afraid I have to concede to you. You are obviously more intelligent and well read, and I can't argue on the same level that you can.
Perhaps I'm reading too much into your posts due to insecurity, but it seems like you are trying to win the argument and prove me wrong, rather than to help me to understand why I am wrong. I'm not a fan of the confrontational style of debating, because I get nothing from it except a bruised ego. I hope at least that some anons were able to read our exchange and benefit from it in some way. Thanks for your time.