Yes, I agree that it’s a mistake to equate status (or gender, or etc.) with an outside phenomenon, just like it’s a mistake to equate my memory of an event with the event itself.
OTOH, there is a story to be told about why proto-humans whose brains had states homologous with the states of our brains that we label “gender,” “status,” and so forth succeeded in passing their genes along to the present day, while their siblings who lacked such states did not. (1)
Which suggests that there is—or at least was—something in the world that these brain states correlate with non-accidentally.
And if you want to understand that brain state at a functional level, you want to understand that corresponding thing-in-the-world.
So when you suggest
A primitive “gender” flag exists, and has no intrinsic meaning except for how it influences our actions
...well, sure, in some sense that’s true. Nothing in my brain has any intrinsic meaning, it’s all just a mechanism that influences my actions.
But I would counter-suggest that the “primitive gender flag” (assuming it actually is a simple primitive, rather than a complex contingent data structure) got that way for a reason, and that reason has to do with facts about the world, and an understanding of gender that fails to take those facts about the world into account is an importantly incomplete understanding of gender.
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(1) Well, probably. It’s possible that it was just an accident, I guess. But it doesn’t seem like the thing to bet on.
...well, sure, in some sense that’s true. Nothing in my brain has any intrinsic meaning, it’s all just a mechanism that influences my actions.
Of course. And indeed for most purposes gender can be identified with sex. However introducing reflection into the system, or keeping multiple variables all “representing” the same thing, introduces the possibility that the reflection can lose sync with what it is supposed to be reflecting, or that the various representations may lose sync with each other. If a human designed the system he’d call the resulting state “inconsistent”, but the program runs nonetheless. And so if we want to know what’s going to occur, at this point it no longer suffices to identify the reflection with the territory; we have to begin analyzing what the variable actually does; if there is more than one, we have to begin analyzing which representations the program uses for which purposes (which, if it were in a consistent state, would be irrelevant). If we are discussing gender in a context where transgendered people are relevant, we have to discuss what being set to “male” actually does, discuss the code rather than the comments. I agree though that this distinction can usually be elided.
As regards status, ISTM to just be a weird evolved system of social organization and not a reflection of anything in particular. Something like Morendil’s idea that it’s this thing that you can gain and spend, though that particular idea looks simplistic to me (ISTM high-status people can often get large things done without spending status). I’m not sure I’ve seen any proposal for what it might reflect that both avoids self-reference and is anywhere close to consistent with how it actually works. But like I said, I see no reason why self-reference need be avoided here (except that self-reference is not so good a way to state things); such systems seem to be entirely evolvable when you consider all the other complex systems of coordinated behavior that have evolved. I suppose we would expect the variables in such a system to initially correspond to real, outside, quantities, but once a whole community is using it for coordination I don’t see why such a correspondence would have to continue, especially as behaviors evolve specifically to take advantage of the system.
OTOH, there is a story to be told about why proto-humans whose brains had states homologous with the states of our brains that we label “gender,” “status,” and so forth succeeded in passing their genes along to the present day, while their siblings who lacked such states did not.
Which suggests that there is—or at least was—something in the world that these brain states correlate with non-accidentally.
That story heavily involves the different roles the genders play in reproduction.
In particular the something that the brain states correlate with is whether you contribute sperms or eggs to the next generation.
Sure, it would be startling if that weren’t a big part of it.
It also probably relates to whether fetuses gestate inside you or not, and to whether you lactate. It might relate to how you bond emotionally to a one-week-old, though then again it might not. It might relate to the selection criteria you use to choose mates. It might relate to the selection criteria you use to choose allies. Etc.
If we actually want to understand “what gender is,” it behooves us to understand the things that it relates to and the things that it doesn’t. And because each of those things is being altered by social changes in different ways, knowing what gender actually relates to helps us predict and understand the effects of various social changes on people of various genders.
Yes, I agree that it’s a mistake to equate status (or gender, or etc.) with an outside phenomenon, just like it’s a mistake to equate my memory of an event with the event itself.
OTOH, there is a story to be told about why proto-humans whose brains had states homologous with the states of our brains that we label “gender,” “status,” and so forth succeeded in passing their genes along to the present day, while their siblings who lacked such states did not. (1)
Which suggests that there is—or at least was—something in the world that these brain states correlate with non-accidentally.
And if you want to understand that brain state at a functional level, you want to understand that corresponding thing-in-the-world.
So when you suggest
...well, sure, in some sense that’s true. Nothing in my brain has any intrinsic meaning, it’s all just a mechanism that influences my actions.
But I would counter-suggest that the “primitive gender flag” (assuming it actually is a simple primitive, rather than a complex contingent data structure) got that way for a reason, and that reason has to do with facts about the world, and an understanding of gender that fails to take those facts about the world into account is an importantly incomplete understanding of gender.
==
(1) Well, probably. It’s possible that it was just an accident, I guess. But it doesn’t seem like the thing to bet on.
Of course. And indeed for most purposes gender can be identified with sex. However introducing reflection into the system, or keeping multiple variables all “representing” the same thing, introduces the possibility that the reflection can lose sync with what it is supposed to be reflecting, or that the various representations may lose sync with each other. If a human designed the system he’d call the resulting state “inconsistent”, but the program runs nonetheless. And so if we want to know what’s going to occur, at this point it no longer suffices to identify the reflection with the territory; we have to begin analyzing what the variable actually does; if there is more than one, we have to begin analyzing which representations the program uses for which purposes (which, if it were in a consistent state, would be irrelevant). If we are discussing gender in a context where transgendered people are relevant, we have to discuss what being set to “male” actually does, discuss the code rather than the comments. I agree though that this distinction can usually be elided.
As regards status, ISTM to just be a weird evolved system of social organization and not a reflection of anything in particular. Something like Morendil’s idea that it’s this thing that you can gain and spend, though that particular idea looks simplistic to me (ISTM high-status people can often get large things done without spending status). I’m not sure I’ve seen any proposal for what it might reflect that both avoids self-reference and is anywhere close to consistent with how it actually works. But like I said, I see no reason why self-reference need be avoided here (except that self-reference is not so good a way to state things); such systems seem to be entirely evolvable when you consider all the other complex systems of coordinated behavior that have evolved. I suppose we would expect the variables in such a system to initially correspond to real, outside, quantities, but once a whole community is using it for coordination I don’t see why such a correspondence would have to continue, especially as behaviors evolve specifically to take advantage of the system.
That story heavily involves the different roles the genders play in reproduction. In particular the something that the brain states correlate with is whether you contribute sperms or eggs to the next generation.
Sure, it would be startling if that weren’t a big part of it.
It also probably relates to whether fetuses gestate inside you or not, and to whether you lactate. It might relate to how you bond emotionally to a one-week-old, though then again it might not. It might relate to the selection criteria you use to choose mates. It might relate to the selection criteria you use to choose allies. Etc.
If we actually want to understand “what gender is,” it behooves us to understand the things that it relates to and the things that it doesn’t. And because each of those things is being altered by social changes in different ways, knowing what gender actually relates to helps us predict and understand the effects of various social changes on people of various genders.