 Trans women are women and we are starting right now with vosh's opening statement. Thanks so much for being with us vosh The floor is all yours Hello, I'm vosh. Okay, so there are two basic arguments here. First of all the idea of sex and gender being distinct Categories they obviously are I don't think anybody disbelieves this There are obviously things that we refer to which are in the purview of the experience of being a man and a woman Which are not defined biologically whether it be light blue and pink being Distinguished gendered colors the clothing that we wear the way we style our hair These are things which are not derivative of our biology They are derivative of social standards which change you can look at other parts of the world which they're different You can look at different points in time within our own country and they are different. There's no getting around that It's not like biology is changing rapidly year to year as the fashions do If people don't like, you know the idea of gender and sex being separate that we can simply say that when I refer to gender I'm referring to some other separate category that is not sex but describes social differences That tend to be associated with sexual ones. And once you have that, you know nailed down the following argument is one of utility Uh, we construct definitions We do it to serve our own purposes as humans the only reason definitions exist is because they serve us We are their masters and if I believe As is the case by the way of many medical and psychiatric institutions if we believe that the definition of woman Being one tied entirely to sexual differentiation is arbitrary inconsistent and harmful And that there was a better a more utility serving definition one to use say by self identification Then that is the one that I will use I have no interest whatsoever in abiding by some harmful arbitrary standard Out of a need to stick to tradition when there's a perfectly serviceable and better one That makes people more happy and hurts nobody lying right there And that is why I say prescriptively that trans women are women and descriptively They have been treated as women Historically in our society in varying extents throughout history depending on the culture and time period It's a complicated business, but we can get there You got it. Thank you very much for that opening bosh And if it's your first time here at modern day debate want to let you know folks We're a neutral platform hosting debates panels and discussions on virtually every topic Want to let you know we hope you feel welcome no matter what walk of life you were from and I'm going to kick it over to dr. Bogartis for his opening as well want to remind you the speakers views are their own So the speakers are not speaking on behalf of any institution that they are affiliated with or have been affiliated with and Dr. Thomas Bogartis is an associate professor of philosophy He earned his phd from the university of texas and works in the areas of epistemology philosophy of mind and philosophy of gender You can find his publications on his website by googling his name and both guests are linked in the description Right now with that doctor Dr. Bogartis, thanks for being with us. The floor is all yours for your opening as well All right, can I share my screen? Okay, um, so everybody can see that yeah, yeah Okay, um, so if you're unable to see this for some reason, you should know that the slides are available at tiny url.com modern day debate june The month of june and there's no spaces or capitals in there Okay, i'm just going to start my timer right now So, um, the topic of our conversation today is um, this sentence trans women are women whether trans women And what I want to try to do is explain Why this is such a persistent philosophical question? I started thinking about this about six or seven years ago And so i'm going to share some of the things i've learned in that time And try to convey to you the the landscape of the debate as I see it In a way that I hope will be useful and interesting no matter what your views are on this topic And to try to explain why it's a persistent philosophical question specifically what i'm going to do is Try to show how on six common interpretations of this sentence trans women are women Including five that vosh has explored and endorsed The sentence turns out not to be true So, um, just a quick I think obvious clarification I think it's pretty obvious to everyone that when people say trans women are women what they mean is All trans women are women not just some So I think that's the question under under consideration whether all trans women are women Now to see whether that's true or false to evaluate whether that's true or false I think we would have to get clear on what it means to be a woman We have to think about the meaning of that word woman in order to see whether it's true that all trans women are women And so now i'm going to consider those views. I promised a second ago The first view is what we might call a biological view according to which women are adult human females Now I think this is the sort of traditional historical ordinary sense of the word. This is what the word ordinarily means There are a few reasons to think that we can talk about these in the discussion period if you'd like First of all, there's Words for other species that we use for the adult males and the adult females of those species And it would be pretty surprising if we didn't have similar words for The adult males and adult females of our species This is the definition that virtually all dictionaries give course dictionaries aren't infallible. They make mistakes But the fact that this is what dictionaries say is some evidence that this is the way the word is ordinarily used But most importantly, I think the strongest bit of evidence is that As far as I can tell virtually all trans inclusive philosophers agree that this is the ordinary use of the word That doesn't mean they recommend it But they acknowledge and can see that this is what people ordinarily mean I'm not sure whether vosh agrees. He said some things that sound like he might disagree Just a few days ago. He said There's so much arbitrarily with how these terms get posed. I don't think that a biologically prescriptivist attitude towards gender is the historically correct So possibly vosh disagrees with this But as I said, a lot of trans inclusive philosophers agree that this is the way the word is used in dominant mainstream contexts So here's some quotations. I'll let you Read those on your own But robin dembrough, marie michela, sally haslinger, jennifer sol. These are all philosophers working very much from a trans inclusive direction Simone de bovoir Seems to use the word in this ordinary biological way as well Again, that's not to me. They recommend this definition A lot of these philosophers think that this is a problem And we need to change it because when you think about the question whether all trans women If being a woman requires being biologically female then these philosophers think it's going to turn out that Not all trans women are women. In fact, none are And they consider that to be a problem Here's a quotation from catherine jenkins saying as much saying that if you fail to respect the gender identifications of trans people That's a serious harm And I think vosh would agree that that is a problem Back in 2021 said if someone makes an argument that a person isn't a woman When they claim to be a woman, I would say that's transphobic And then here's another quotation saying something similar. I'll let you read Okay, so as I say a lot of philosophers wish to move away from this view of what it means to be a woman And one alternative that they've explored is what we might call a social role view according to which To be a woman is to be someone who functions or behaves or is treated a certain way socially Now sometimes vosh seems to endorse this sort of view Here's an example from back in march So he says I am a gender abolitionist so I don't want these designations at all But as long as they exist these designations man and woman. We're talking about social roles And again just a few days ago. So he says Given how arbitrary these definitions are I think one where we acknowledge that man and woman As we refer to it generally as a social trend something which refers to social roles and attitudes not biology That's probably the one that hurts the fewest fewest people Okay, so that's the social role view and now the question before us is Does this sentence come out as true or false on the social role view? Will it be true that all trans women are women? Um, well to figure that out we'd have to know exactly what social role we're talking about What is the social role that is taken to be definitive of womanhood and turns out it's pretty hard to say What social role we're talking about exactly given as vosh said in his opening statement all the variation across time and culture It's hard to say what social role is had in common by all and only women throughout time and place But even if you found one And said there that's the social role. That's definitive of being a woman There's a problem because there's no guarantee that All trans women will play that role will will occupy that position in society Catherine Jenkins again a trans inclusive philosopher criticizes the social role view on those grounds Saying there could there may well be and there easily could be and there may in fact be trans individuals who do not present as women And so are not treated as women don't play this role don't occupy this position in society Or there could be Trans individuals who do present as women but aren't read as women or aren't taken seriously or aren't Treated as women In which case they won't occupy the right position in society in order to count as a woman on this social role view So my sense of the state of play in the current philosophical debate is philosophers have moved away from this social role view because It turns out false that all trans women are women on this view um And at least in the popular culture and even in the philosophical literature the view that's sort of rising the prominence is a self-id view I think that's um coming to be the most popular view as I said at least at the popular level So on this view, um, we're told to be a woman is to be someone who identifies as a woman And I won't be the first to notice that. Oh, well, here's a quotation from boss endorsing that by the way Okay, but I won't be the first to notice that it looks like there's a threat of circularity here We were asked what a what or we asked what a woman is and the definition used the word woman When defining the term But it may be that there's no actual circularity here if the word woman in the definition means something else then The meaning we're supposed to get from this definition. So let me give you one example. Here's something Vosch said If you want you can say a woman is a person who would like to Internally and externally adhere to the social roles and expectations associated with a woman Or at the very least the social archetype So again threat of circularity because reason the word woman there, but suppose we meant Woman in the ordinary sense adult human females. Just suppose. That's what was meant So it's not the very same sense to be defined It's another sense. Well, the problem is that many women won't want that Many women don't wish to adhere to the social roles and expectations associated with being an adult human female As kathryn Jenkins has pointed out a lot of women flout traditional gender norms by kathryn Jenkins says for example Not shaving legs Elizabeth Barnes and other trans inclusive philosopher points out that there might be some women with cognitive disabilities such that they Lack the ability to have this desire to conceptualize this desire to want to adhere to these social roles And um more relevant for our purposes it could easily turn out that some trans women might not like to adhere to these social roles Or these expectations. Um, for example, some trans women who say they don't owe you femininity So the first point was just if this definition is not circular Then whatever the word woman means in the definition, uh, it's going to turn out that not all trans women are women What if it is circular? What if we're told no to be a woman is to identify as a woman in the very same sense to be defined So vash is not so sure that there's a problem here Back in may he said my definition of gender, which is just a woman is someone who identifies as one People complain about it being circular, but I don't think that matters So I think it does matter for at least two reasons that I'll try to explain One is that a circular definition can't convey any meaning. It can't actually tell you what the word means Um, but secondly even if the word has a meaning that didn't get it from this definition, but suppose it has a meaning The statement that to be a woman is to identify as a woman has to be false. It's necessarily false So I'll explain these two in turn So one problem is that circular definitions can't convey meaning. Here's one way to see that or being told is that someone is a woman If and only if she identifies as a woman But now suppose we ask well, what does it mean? What does woman mean there in the definition? What are you identifying as when you identify as a woman? On this alternative, we're being told the very same sense to be defined So what you're identifying as is Someone who identifies as a woman. That's what you're identifying as because that's what a woman is But notice woman shows up again in the definition And so suppose we do another round of recursion and now The definition says to be a woman is to be someone who identifies as someone who identifies as someone Who identifies as and you see that this will just keep going will never eliminate the circularity. It goes on forever We've got this infinite descent And there's this irredeemable void there in the definition Which means that the definition never Expresses any proposition. It never actually tells you what the word means It just keeps promising you a meaning if you just do one more recursion But you never get there. So that's one way to see why circular definitions are deficient Here's another way. It's sort of a little sillier, but um, suppose I tell you that, you know, people collect baseball cards and Pogs, I don't really know what a pog is. Um, I collect blargs And suppose you wonder what a blarg is and I define it for you in a circular way I say look a blarg is just anything that has this really cool feature. It's a blarg So clearly that's a circular definition Now if you really think that there's no problem with circular definitions Then you should be able to find me a blarg Especially if I give you a hint that there's one in the room with you now and I offer you $50 if you could just Find that blarg and bring it to me. So if there's nothing wrong with circular definitions You should be able to find a blarg. You should be in a position to know what a blarg is But obviously you're not in that position. You can't find this blarg because the definition was circular So that's another way to see why circular definitions are deficient Okay, but suppose that somehow the word woman got meaning independently Maybe by pointing or ostension. That's a way that we define words commonly I think still even if the word does have a meaning The claim that to be a woman Is to identify as a woman someone's a woman if and only if she identifies as a woman that has to be false and here's why on this view on this proposal If that phrase being a woman refers to anything Then we're told it refers to a very interesting characteristic a very interesting feature It's a feature that someone has if and only if she identifies as having it There's this tight connection between having the feature being a woman and identifying as having the feature identifying as a woman But if you think about it I think you'll realize that there simply is no feature like that There's no characteristic that you could have if and only if you identify as having it There's no way you could be if and only if you identify as being that way Just think about ordinary features like Being funny or being tall or being rich or something like that It's one thing to be rich. It's something else to identify as being rich You could be rich without identifying as being rich. You could identify as being rich without actually being rich And so on and this just holds generally For every feature any property you choose any feature you choose And so what that means what one and two entail here is on this view The phrase being a woman doesn't refer to anything Because there's no feature that answers to this definition. There's no such thing And so a kind of surprising result is on this view. It looks like there are no women And there are no trans women therefore and for our purposes what follows is It's false that all trans women are women or at least it's not true Um, in fact, it looks like none are because there are no women at all Okay, um, here's a couple other views. I think those are sort of the big three But here are some other views that have been discussed By vosh one is gender abolition on this view ideally there are no genders So ideally women don't exist. Here's vosh expressing that sort of view I think gender is a destructive concept. He says so eventually I want it gone Sally Haslinger trans inclusive philosopher at mit says something similar. She adopted a social role view She thought to be a woman is to be oppressed. So she says a main Part of the project of feminism is to eliminate women, which sounds kind of surprising But that was her view So, um, I think we can at least agree that on this view if you ask, um, how things should be ideally They would say ideally, uh, there are no women at all and they would say ideally there are no trans women So that's a kind of surprising implication of that view Here's another one, which I think vosh might want to defend today. He says in his opening statements that He says prescriptively trans women or women. So that's another view that I've heard expressed in his videos On this view when you say trans women or women What you're actually doing is giving a kind of command or prescription. You're saying you should speak and act as though Trans woman or women is literally true He should speak and act as though trans women or women is literally true And if you ask why as vosh said in his opening statement, it's justified by utility by good consequences by benefits um So here's a statement of vosh, uh, sort of expressing that so he says What people mean when they say they're women is women is a social category I'd like to be a part of I want to think of myself as it as part of it and be thought of as part of it Um, tell me may bet you're a trans philosopher says something similar In trans inclusive and queer communities gender presentation indicates how you want to be treated So if you think that we should treat people how they want to be treated Then when you say trans women or women what you might be communicating is we should treat people how they want to be treated We should treat trans women how they want to be treated Okay, and again, it's justified by utility. So I'll just point out with respect to the prescriptive claim whether this is something we should do something that doesn't seem to enter into um Everybody's moral calculations is whether or not what we're saying is true And 60 seconds left Okay, and given what I've said so far it looks like this statement trans women are women Is uh, literally not true And so we can at least agree on that if we asked this prescriptivist view Strictly speaking literally are all trans women women. I think given what we've said the view has to agree with has to say no Okay, let's see if I can fit this in I ran out of space on my slide But sometimes vosh seems to be a nihilist or an anti-realist about gender Sometimes he says gender concepts are arbitrary social designations and in reality there are no men no women etc Here's a quotation from vosh back in 2019 saying all categories are socially constructed. They don't exist in nature We built them So if you hold that view and then you ask well really literally Um are all trans women women? I think the view has to say no in reality. No Okay, so I tried to show that the statement trans women are women is not true on every view. We've looked at including five from vosh Thank you for your attention Thank you very much for that opening and with that we're going to jump into open conversation Want to say folks? Thrill to let you know we have a lot of upcoming debates You don't want to miss them. So for example just confirm today at the bottom right of your screen Whether or not it is okay for kids to go to drag queen shows with You betcha vosh and alex stein next Tuesday. You don't want to miss it hit that subscribe button So you don't miss it and with that we're going to jump it open conversation. Thanks so much gentlemen. The floor is all yours All right, I'm sure that you won't mind after that if I take a moment to respond to your premises As I have plenty to say as we as we it seems we both do So the issue I have here is that every I feel as though you've misrepresented some of my views and definitions here And what's more all of these views are incoherent The the construct I often find is that people treat the biological view as though because it's the traditionally accepted one It's the coherent one, but in reality. It's nothing but there's a reason why nature The arguably one of the most respected scientific journals in the history of the species Has been putting out article after op ed about how The idea that sex and gender are the same or that gender should be considered an extension of a biological category is Ahistorical a scientific and just false and the reason for that is because what you obfuscate when you refer to the biological sex version of gender Is the literal millennia Of arguments and inconsistencies over what exactly it means to draw that line Of course for most of human's history. We have no idea what chromosomes or even hormone washes are so Only recently has a full understanding of the actual things that differentiate biological males and females even been known to us But even leaving that aside Long standing have been the practices of intersex people having their genitals mutilated by doctors who want to get them cleanly fit In one category another biologically male or biologically female Often to the psychological detriment of those people because those doctors are trying to force people into a binary construct That just doesn't work and the existence of intersex people at all simply destroys the concept of A sex-based gender because a binary is just that a binary you can't have a system that you claim is coherent when it's like Well, 99 percent of people fit to it Well, 99 percent of people leaves out millions and what are those millions then aberrant counter examples? No, the system never functioned and it never made that much sense and it never survived scrutiny by the way It's not as though medieval french peasants were undergoing significant sociological analysis of the concept of the social construction of sex They didn't have sociology back then. It's a fairly modern construction When it comes to what we talk about like with the prescription of gender and all statements of definition are prescriptive By the way, because we do create these definitions. We didn't unearth them in stone tablets written by god You know, we had to make efforts to understand them What we're really doing is trying to find what serves us best now There is meaningful utility and understanding the difference between a biological male and a biological female There are categorical differences that are worth respecting in a biological sense But that doesn't encompass the wide variety of social differences between most men and most women that are largely socially ascribed So when you have this dissonance here, we're so much of what it means to be a man Isn't actually what it means to be biologically male in both the modern world and throughout history in many cultures There are differences between those two things. We have an issue What is a consistent rigorous 100 of the time effective applicable mode of gender? What works the answer is nothing it simply doesn't it's a stupid concept And we really shouldn't be respecting it much as a social construct at all as long as people do respect it We should go by the definitions that hurt people the least that is after all why we build our definitions to serve human utility And to that effect, uh, you call it the self id view The prescriptive view I don't think is inconsistent, but I stand by this what we mean when we say woman a woman is a person who chooses to adhere to a broad constructed collection of values aesthetics forms rules And perspectives that we consider to be a part of what it means to be a woman There is no consistency here and you'll never find it No more than you could find consistency in the definition of what it means to be cool You know find me a fine line on that point in the room where the cool You know the cool protons are the cool radiation. It just it's not present and you'll never find it But still we have very strong ideas about what it means to be cool And we argue but the arguments are for a purpose because finding out who's cool What's really cool is socially useful as is whatever definition we arrive at which hurts the smallest number of people Concerning gender and that is why I believe trans women Are women because all definitional statements are necessarily prescriptive and as long as we are dealing with the system that is fundamentally Constructedly absurd. We should at least refer to it in ways that harm people In the to the to the least possible extent Okay, um, so you started that by saying you were going to respond to my premises But I'm struggling to see how any of this responded to Any premise of any argument I gave Um, so let's go through some of the things you said, um, you said all of these views are incoherent You said there's no coherent concept of gender Is that is that right that I get you right there? You will not find me a definition of gender That is 100 consistent and all-encompassing and has no flaws in it. There are no such things You'll you can't be found. So there's no consistent definition of gender So no matter who I asked if I asked anybody what is a woman no matter what they say Um, you think there's going to be some sort of impossibility or contradiction or inconsistency You will always be able to find a whole or an exception Whether they take a biological or a self-idea social role or an abolitionist perspective There will always be well gender abolition is a prescription not a description of current gender states But no matter what a person's definition of a woman is there was always going to be something you can pin them on Okay, so then it sounds like your view entails there are no women Because there's no true definition of woman. No not at all There are plenty of social constructions that I think have meaning and serve utility even if there are no consistencies to it I think cool people exist But I don't think I could ever find a single definition of cool that is perfectly delineates in all Like categories and situations between cool and uncool people. Okay, so you said the concepts are incoherent and inconsistent But I think what you just mean is perhaps vague So allow for borderline cases or difficult to articulate I think maybe that's what you mean when you say all definitions are incoherent and inconsistent all definitions of gender anyway I think what you mean is they allow for borderline cases. They'll be vague in various ways And what was the second thing I said vague in various ways And hard to articulate difficult to articulate. It'll be hard to come up with or express or verbalize A definition that Includes everyone who should be included and excludes everyone who should be excluded So that's the view. I guess I would agree with that. Yeah definitions are hard to come by typically And most of them, especially in biology are vague and admit of borderline cases But nevertheless, they may be true There may be true definitions even if they're difficult to express or articulate You gave the example one of your arguments against the biological definition of Woman was that we didn't know about chromosomes many years ago Well, first of all, I don't think biological sex is defined in terms of chromosomes But let's just use the example of water. Maybe we could agree that water is h2o That was true even before we knew about chemistry That was the definition of water before anybody knew anything about chemistry before we knew about h2o back when Aristotle thought Water was just an element Nevertheless, it was h2o I'm sorry. This isn't true That water has not always been h2o. Yeah, all you have to do is cross the mexican border and over there. It's aqua That's h2o not water Aqua means water aqua is water Actually, it's agua. It's not aqua, right? And we're referring to terms and definitions here No, I'm referring to water the stuff that fills lakes and rivers I'm not talking about the word one many things filled lakes and rivers Okay, um, do you honestly not know what I mean when I talk about water? Or are you just a little I think you you made a mistake before you began that argument Which is that you said just because people didn't always know something it doesn't mean that it can't be true But that can't be the case when we're talking about definitions things that are true have constructed premises that lead necessarily to an Outcome a resolution, but a definition is something applied presuppositionally You can say for example that the light the the spectrum of light that we see the visible spectrum of light Is something that exists outside of our perception and that is certainly true But how we perceive it is not existentially correct And what's more the definition between red orange and yellow is not something that you can find proven Anywhere in the real world we have to arrive at arbitrary distinctions Um, so that's that's just ask you about water again Do you do you not think water is h2o? But I think we've come up with a term to describe what we refer to as water There are other cultures that I agree with you We came up with a term to talk about water that time is water and we came up with terms to talk about hydrogen and oxygen Um, but what's here? Here's a sentence water is h2o You know what those terms mean now think about what? Idea is expressed by the words. What's the thought that's expressed we could express it in many different languages Now think about the thought that's expressed by that sentence. That's true. Isn't it the thought that is expressed by the sentences water is h2o What do you think and it was long before we got here long before humans got here water has always been h2o Well ice of course is also h2o, but water is it is defined it as within a given, you know Ice is also water. It's not liquid water. Yeah, but locally people refer to ice as ice and water as water And whether or not they're going to use either of those definitions is going to come down to context And what about heavy water to h2o or dieterium oxide? Which is referred to as water and is in fact a type of water an isotope But it's not in fact h2o. There's an extra hydrogen atom holding on there making the substance denser So if this is taking me back to chemistry class, but um, did you say deuterium? Is that right? Is that heavy water? Yes, that's just an isotope. Is it an isotope of oxygen that makes that If that's an isotope, it's still oxygen and it's still h2o and that is still h2o. That's still water It's a different chemical compound than water Certainly if people wanted to refer to it as a different type of thing not water, but let's say they chose the term Waterium, I don't know scientists come up with wacky names if they wanted to come up with a term like that to describe it They would have a significant taxonomical distinction to refer to a different molecular composition But we refer to it as water You might say it's trans water a bit of a difference, but fundamentally very similar Okay, so you're resisting me on the claim that water is h2o. Um, let me try a different one How about I'm resisting you on definitional prescriptivism. I think that we have I'm not prescribing any definitions. I'm just saying water is h2o true or false and it sounds like you're reluctant to say true No, I know I agree. I I agree that water and we we referred to h2o as water colloquially Yeah, of course, I'm I'm finding the waters h2o and it was h2o long before humans came along Another example wasn't a concept back then I know but nevertheless water was there Actually, water's never been a concept. Um water's always been a molecule Um, we have a concept of water, but the concept is not itself water But our understanding of it and the differentiations that we make when we distinguish it from things like heavy water These are socially constructed After all you just said it's still fundamentally water, but we're talking about a different molecular shape now That's because you've arbitrarily Branched these two within a category that because there's a relationship between them But that's a social phenomenon the universe doesn't give a shit whether you refer to heavy water as water or some other You know molecule entirely. It's utterly indifferent to your perception of reality But we still choose to prescribe and that I think a lot of people when it comes down to Definitional games, you know, they start doing this. Well, these things are these things and you know We have a lot of power over that some animals are different species But we distinguish what makes something a different species the taxonomy for what it refers to species differentiation We made that up. We didn't it we we invented it. We didn't discover it Yeah, so I agree with you that species are um The distinction between species is less clear than distinctions we would find in physics and chemistry So that's why um, no surprise. I'm focusing on physics and chemistry How do we feel about the claim that gold is atomic number 79? Do you would you agree with that or are you skeptical of that too? I think that's how we refer to it. Oh, sure I'll take your word for it. I don't have the the the the periodic tip memorized. Yeah well, um, I'm benefiting from the fact that this is a bit of a Commonly used a philosophical example. So that's really why I know that. Um, but yeah gold that term in english refers to Um, a certain element that has 79 protons. It's a topic number 79 So gold has been around for a long time Long before the word gold came on the scene gold gold gold predates the word gold So yeah, this is just supposed to be an example of a definition. That's true and we went down a rabbit hole a little bit What do you mean by True if if we had taken another definition if we had created another definition to say gold And the term gold referred to a collection Of uh of elements So let's say gold and lead and the term gold was something people used to refer to both That definition would be as true as the one we use today for gold They would have simply made the choice to include two different elements in their definition Just as you've included standard water and the isotope of heavy water in the definition of water That's just a definitional game as long as they distinguish between the two subcategories of gold and iron with the respect of atomic weights The singular term like how we have terms for metals We have terms for for for the um the the gases the inert gases help me out You know more than me the um to go out the noble gases the noble gases. Yes, we invented those distinctions We saw the terms the terms. Yes, because the distinctions are only meaningful When we notice them the universe doesn't Care whether or not we think there's something meaningful or significant about noble gases versus the other stuff We just saw those differences. There is a different Oh, so we saw the differences the differences were there the differences are real and then we came along and decided You know what? We're going to name these differences. We're going to assign some names to these different Um elements agreed. Yeah Okay, now i'm trying to remember why why we started down this rabbit hole um I didn't get very far through the things you said. Oh, it's just the first thing I brought up was you It said all these views are incoherent but then we kind of clarified that what you meant was um any any of the popular views of women that have been proposed are vague and difficult to articulate And then I guess I was just trying to point out that um a definition might exist and be true Even if it hasn't been articulated Um, so like rewind before humans came on the scene. I would have thought Water was h2o even before anyone was around to name water or to realize its chemical essence um, so I was just disagreeing with that point about Um, how definitions work. I don't think definitions Properly understood are linguistic entities. I think there are facts out there in the world But anyway, um, but our well wait. I have to challenge that there are facts in the world But definitions are categorically linguistic We create them because we identify differences of things that we see in the world The facts of the world There are many the the spectrum of light that we consider to be blue contains within an infinite range of potential blue values But we don't have an infinite number of names to describe them There may be a set number of facts in the world But the categories we use to separate those facts are entirely up to us and our perceptions So another example of this For would be like in terms of gender prescription There are cultures historically that have had third genders for a long time often the third gender is a biologically male Uh, a gender class that adopts roles that are much more similar to the biologically female There are non-human animals that do this as well. You know, it's it's not it's not unique to us Um, and in that case there's there's a separate category and maybe they felt clearly they felt that the Difference between these more feminized biological males and the regular biological males was something worth Distinguishing in a in a gender oriented taxonomical sense, but that's not any more right or wrong than what we do They just see different meaningful differences and apply different terms So you can't make these objective arguments about terms terms may refer to the facts of the world But we draw the borders the land on earth might be uh, uh, you know, um Objective but the borders of the nations that we build over them those we rule on on paper We just have to be you know considerate of human need when we're describing what here we actually want to build yeah Okay, gosh, there was a there's a lot I disagree with in there, but I'm trying to be um Trying to be selective or efficient with our time here um Maybe let me just ask you this. Um, it sounded like in your response to me You raised some objections to um the biological view that I expressed that women are adult human females and you brought up Well, you thought you said, you know, we haven't always known about chromosomes again I don't think that chromosomes figure into the definition of biological sex. You also mentioned intersex people so it sounded like you were trying to argue against the the reality of males and females, but then at other times You say You know, there are other cultures that have a third gender that are biologically male And I think you might agree that there are animals that are biologically male and biologically female So I guess just let me let me get clear on your view. Do you think that there are males and females? Of course out there in the world I believe it's bimodal there are males and females and most people will fall pretty solidly on either end of the Spectrum, but I do feel there are a significant number of people who are closer to the middle in terms of intersex expression Oh, well, if you also think that there are adults and humans Then um, what exactly is wrong with the definition that women women are adult human females? You believe in adults You believe in humans and you believe in females Is it just you think there are counter examples to this definition? Is that the problem? My belief in the value of a definition it should be said first is not determined by its consistency There are consistent definitions that are still morally wrong. For example The nazis grouped humans into taxonomical categories, which at times were consistent Usually because they were very blunt and lacking in nuance. They were just monstrous and unnecessary They were suitable to the nazis in a political sense because they allowed for the dehumanization of large groups of people But I don't think we review them in retrospect based on their consistency Like oh, well, they say any of the descendants of the 12 tribes of israel are subhuman Ah, well, that's easy to find out with a 23 in me. Of course not. So I just I'm not saying you're doing that I'm only saying that my concern here first and foremost is not one of consistency Even if the biological model was perfectly consistent, I would oppose it, but it's not Um, because chromosomal abnormalities are all it takes to throw this up for a loop Especially because when you transition, you know, you do change your sex to an extent not entirely But certainly there are categories of sex that are altered when you have chromosomes of a certain designation it determines the hormone washes that you receive both during puberty and In the womb and that determines the shape your body takes the genitalia you form the ways in which your body developed But if you have a trans woman who took puberty blockers before she hit puberty then transitioned medically You have a person who is let's say a doctor would not call them a biological male In terms of the risk of breast cancer prostate cancer a wide variety of bone and heart related conditions This is not a person who'd be going to the doctor and saying yep, i'm a male and the doctor would go Yep, your problems are male problems. It just it just it wouldn't so if that's the case, you know Where does that line fall? What about people who have the x x y chromosomal abnormality or people whose Y chromosome doesn't sufficiently inhibit the development of the x chromosomal female hormones they receive These categories are not called for and that's why traditionally doctors have just Cut off the aberrant genitalia of intersex people or try to force people into roles that Made them fit a binary. It just doesn't always work. Okay. Yes I have watched some of your videos and I've heard your views on biological sex And um, I think it's a commonly held view about love sex. What biological sex consistent Um, I think it is based on a misunderstanding. I don't think that biological sex Is defined in terms of chromosomes or genitals or hormone levels and you can see that by just considering the full range of the plant and animal kingdom and how The sexes are realized across the plant and animal kingdom and you'll see that There's no no facts about genitals figuring the definition. Nothing about hormones. Nothing about chromosomes So we can talk about that a little more if you'd like and try to get clear on What biological sex really is but I just wanted to quickly point out that Um in my opening statement what I argued was On all these proposals. It turns out that not all transominal women On every proposal it is false that all transominal women So I'm not I'm not really in a position That I need to defend the biological view if you want to beat up on it and criticize it and reject it Okay All I said was if this is what woman means then not all transominal women and I guess we agree on that But I thought it would have been more pressing given your views to Try to defend the charges that all those other proposals also entail that not all transominal women And as far as I can tell you haven't tried to do that yet So the prescriptive view would you like to talk about biological sex or should we move on to something a little more relevant? Uh, well the biological sex thing if if it's something you feel the need to defend we can I assume this is your you're the belief of course that a woman is defined by biology If you are asking me What does the word ordinarily mean Then I think those um trans inclusive philosophers that I quoted are correct. That is what the word ordinarily means I think I'm not asking what it ordinarily means. What do you think means? What does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to be a woman? Well, I if you were to ask me, what does it mean to be? A computer or a television or I'm just pointing at things in the room I would take that question to be asking. What are those words ordinarily mean? I don't have my own private language. I communicate. I communicate using a public language that we all share And so if you ask me what a word means I would I mean and I didn't know I might check the dictionary To see what this word means is entirely informed by tradition You're you're you're aware of course of the fact that the majority of americans today Believe in accepting the identity of trans people by a slim margin in 20 years My view will be more popular than yours Will you switch over then? Are you going to defer entirely to what you see in the dictionary? Then it would no longer be true that that's what the word ordinarily means So okay, well, then sure then that's fine by me if we're to hear if we're here to make prescriptions, then sure My I haven't made any prescriptions You deferred the prescriptions of others all definitions are fought for from the from the definition of soil in the books of Geologists to the definition of skyscraper in the book of civil engineers everything is fought for and I will fight for the definition The prescriptive view that trans women are women Because there is harm and inconsistency present in other definitions I can you can you tell me what the definition is that you defend? Sure, I think that woman like the concept of woman is an arbitrary and vague collection of aesthetics values roles A bunch of social constructions that are typically tied to sex That just sort of float in the public conscious. They vary depending on where you are What a woman is expected to be in the bible belt south is very different from what they're expected to be in like seattle or whatever Hold on a second. So when you said in the bible belt south, there's something that a woman is expected to be Can you tell me who it is that's expected to be this way? What did women mean in that sentence? Well, whoever they would consider to be a woman, which overwhelming would be biologically female people Whoever they would consider to be a woman Um, and what did women mean there when you said like well, let's check who they would consider to be a woman I already said biologically female. You don't need to prompt that. I already said it biologically female Yes, oh adult human females. You mean well We are talking about adult humans. I assume Okay, so you're saying what woman means is it's this collection of aesthetics rules and perspectives Um That are associated with women and by women you mean adult human females Yes, typically the role of woman in a social construct is one which is tied to sex But that doesn't mean that it's prescriptively tied to sex or to give another example You're going to see types of music preferences Which are heavily associated with people's racial groups or nationalities But that doesn't mean that there's an inherent Prescriptive association there only that circumstantially these arbitrary associations came to be or to put it another way The type of music that you're going to hear in thailand hit like number one charts Is pretty different what you're going to hear like number one charting over here in america But that doesn't mean that people over there are biologically inclined to that music as opposed to ours It's due to proximate bias people in that area of the world listen to that music because that's the music they have And because that's the music they have they pass it down to other people who are around who happen to be people in that part of the world And likewise, you know, you have an example here of woman a sort of broad definition That we do prescribe to biological females, but that's precisely my argument. See, I'm a Libertarian here in the classical sense. I don't believe it's right to impart roles and responsibilities onto a person Based on their birth genitalia. It's very weird to me. I'm not looking for an end to sex Biological sex is always going to be a category. We have to deal with You know for the foreseeable future at least what I'm against is the idea that some arbitrary hormone washes you received while in the womb should decide a massive category of Expectations and behaviors that are assigned to you afterwards. And that's what I'm talking about prescriptively I don't think we should be saddled with that True identity should be self ascribed which in this case, I believe they are So this sounds like a view that I that was expressed in one of the quotations I provided in my slides It sounds like you're giving voice to a social role view According to which to be a woman is to as you said in that quotation Want to internally and externally adhere to a certain sets a certain set of aesthetics rules perspective, etc That's what it is to be a woman To want to or to actually occupy A certain social role or a certain social position or live associated with women. I don't think it makes you a woman though Oh, but I had asked you what your definition of woman is what makes someone a woman That's I thought you had answered that but now we're going to get a different answer These go into what woman is the concept of woman No, I'm asking about in my prescriptive view is simply a person who prefers to be associated with that broad range of archetypes Any person who prefers to be associated, right? Yeah, that's the social role view So what do you make of my argument that on that definition? Not all trans women will be women No, they would they want to be associated with that broad range of archetypes But that doesn't mean that their identity is dependent on fulfilling those roles Well, not all trans women not all trans women will want to be associated with those aesthetics and rules and perspectives or whatever But they are nonetheless by choosing to refer to themselves as women What if you asked them do you do you want to adhere to these expectations and roles and so on? I would have thought it's totally possible and probably actual for some trans women to say no, thanks I mean some women some women say no, thanks, right some cis women Um So then won't it follow then on this view that you're expressing that not all trans women are women? No, because they still subscribe to the archetype the archetype merely contains the collection of social values that we associate with women There are cis and trans women who for example Want to be women but fervently reject elements of what women are expected to be but this doesn't make them any less of women I'm only saying they've still chosen to associate themselves with that archetype Much as I choose to associate myself with the archetype of being a man And there are roles associated with being a man that I'm not interested in adopting or fulfilling Okay, so there's this archetype archetypal woman Um, and I guess if I'd asked you what this archetypal woman archetypal woman is you would say Where's a dress and where's pink? No, no, it's just what would you say it's a collection of categories I don't think there could be one archetypal women because there are so many I was I was going to be really viciously stereotypical No, no, there can't be one woman because these concepts are arbitrary and stupid for example Well, when you say trans women subscribe to the archetype What is the archetype the archetype is defined by its name and all we tie to it to give you an example A woman a stereotypical woman can be a very maternal motherly kind gentle person But they can also be like a jerseys or jerseys shore like bratty mall hopping selfish type Now those are two archetypes of woman and femininity that are completely contradictory You can't simultaneously be calm caring and motherly while also being you know selfish bitchy and like you know Money-grubbing those don't fit but nonetheless. They're both considered archetypes of femininity So it's about associating yourself with the collection of categories rather than representing the singular archetype of those categories Okay, so you had said a woman is anyone who subscribes to the archetype Of woman and then when I said what is this archetype? You said is it is defined by the name Woman, I guess the collection of all we associate with it. Yeah, and we associate many things with women Very few of which I think have to do with biology. There's a whole lot of social crap on top that you kind of layer you know There was another quotation I didn't include where you'd said something like this and a way to avoid the circularity worry with a self ID version of self ID definition of woman Is to say that a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman and then mention the word don't use the word Just mention the word anyone who is willing to say things like I am a woman anyone who's willing to Attribute that word to themselves So then you avoid the circularity worry, but as I said, I zipped I zipped around it Well, as I said in my opening statement if this definition isn't circular Then whatever you whatever the definition means It's going to exclude some trans women and here's how it's going to work in this case This this definition you just provided is going to make it so that being a woman is an english-speaking affair So there are no women outside of the english-speaking world You would have to be familiar with the word woman Attributed to yourself and so an implication is there are no non english-speaking women And there are no women before english came along I find those to be pretty implausible implications I think that the category of woman didn't really exist in the form that it does as much as six months ago Let alone throughout all of human history You know the the archetype i'm referring to this broad collection of tropes and categories that I refer to as like the woman That we that women associate themselves with you're right It may not exist to people who don't speak english But by the time they learn there will be a different one And it's different in every culture in every neighborhood in every society at every point in time It will constantly shift. I don't think there's an objective definition here But if you're looking for some truly exclusionary stuff I would agree that any person who was raised by wolves in the forest and had never come into contact with human society Could not be described as having a gender. I think their gender would have to be a some kind of A recursive It would have to be like a product of their engagement with social roles and expectations That they would have to develop even if you could easily identify their sex But that's the only case I think where a human has no contact with gender roles because they're pretty ubiquitous all over We've got to jump into the qna shortly. So maybe oh goodness time flies when we have fun Sorry, well, let me just respond quickly to a couple things you said you said um It seemed like you were willing to concede that the category of woman didn't exist six months ago You said not this category. Yeah, so then it sounds like you agree with me that your view doesn't tail There are no women outside of english-speaking contexts And in fact, you might even agree there were no women eight months ago Um, so these are these are surprising implications to say the least with with respect Wait, if I may with respect not to get into linguistic traps here because the concept changes That doesn't mean that there weren't equivalents across time culture and society German have a concept of frau, you know, the spanish have more or whatever the fuck the spanish term for For women is, you know, um, I don't literally mean the art the concept, you know, the the social collection Popped into existence here, but you're right because depending on what word you use to refer to women Whatever word you have for that. It's gonna be a different collection of who would you be referring to you there? You said whatever words you used to refer to women. Who would you be referring to there? Well, anyone any anyone Eddie no matter what word you use to refer to women as an archetype as That will inform to an extent what you imagine women to be and this is self-evidently true go to india They don't have the word woman for woman But they have very different expectations of what it means to be a woman over there than we do over here massively So and they have a lot of women there despite the fact that the word woman doesn't exist. Um Yeah, I agree with wait with respect. I feel like I don't know if how you're interpreting what I'm saying here They don't use the term woman. I they have I don't know what the indian term for woman is But yeah, well, I'm sure we do speak english, but right go on when I say The term doesn't exist outside the definition of woman What I'm saying is that if it's a multifaceted gem That changes with time and we see it from different facets depending on where we are and what we are What a woman is is so different to like a southern conservative bell Then it is to a progressive living new york city. In fact, there's such different concepts in terms of the social roles involved That we they're practically two different genders honest to god Um, that's all i'm referring to so i'm not literally saying that the archetype the range of concepts popped up into existence six months ago and Exclusively exist in english. I'm only saying it's so multivariate. It's so arbitrary so Meaningless that there are a million variants of it right now and there were a million more yesterday This might be a decent time to jump into the queue and I know that you've got another round in the chamber ready to fire I love talking with it. Yeah, sorry Both of you guys I know you do but I do want to jump into these because folks I got to tell you too. I tried to spam the chat and let you know We can't take any more questions We've gotten a ton of questions and we have a limited time for the q and a these are both busy guys We want to get them out of here at a decent time So we're going to jump into it right now. Thanks very much elusive viper says Can you identify Someone whose favorite color is red without identifying quote on quote red as your favorite color This is a question for me. Yeah, they Hadn't specified in this one. Can you identify some can you repeat the question? Can you identify someone? Yep, they said can you identify as someone whose favorite color is red without identifying red? as your favorite color Can you identify as someone whose favorite color is red without? Without what having red as your favorite color without identifying red as your favorite color Oh without identifying Oh, I think this is supposed to be a counter example to my claim that there's no feature such that you have it If and only if you identify as having it and maybe what this person is asking is isn't this an example having the feature of Your favorite color is red or you as they put it identify Your favorite color is red Okay, so suppose we're thinking of that feature Having red as a favorite color Is that going to be necessarily co extensive with identifying as having red as a favorite color? So, no, I don't think I don't think so. I think that's going to be another example Just like being rich and being funny and being tall or whatever It is possible for your favorite color to be red And not know that your favorite color is red and not identify as having the favorite colors of and as having a favorite color of I don't even know how to finish that sense and not identify in that way. Here's an example of how that could be Suppose you're just new to colors you you were colorblind from birth But a surgery was performed and now you're seeing colors for the first time But it's just color splotches on the wall and you don't know which color is which but you know that one's your favorite So your favorite color is red But you don't know that this color is red. You don't identify as having a favorite color as red So that would be An example to show how those two could come apart. Um, can I just button really quick and say um, I meant to Start the debate in a more sort of ironic way and say something nice about vosh. Um, but then we just got straight into the Straight in the definition stuff I wanted to say that um when I first got in this invitation. I mean, I didn't know about this corner of YouTube or twitch or wherever I am right now. I didn't know about it. Um, but after watching a lot of videos in this corner of the internet Um, I was really heartened and encouraged by the sort of thing that vosh has engaged in You know debating and exchanging arguments evaluating arguments giving objections Um, sometimes, you know, a middle-aged person like me worries about kids these days And how they're not really interested in arguments or evidence anymore So I was just happy to see that there's this community thriving Again on I don't even really know what twitch is. But if that's where it is Good for you and I'm happy you're doing it. Um, and I encourage you to keep doing what you're doing Wanted to say that before time ran out I'll respond when I get a question You got it this one coming in from spring drew of doom. I think this is for you vosh They say intersex people are still one of two sexes because sex is defined in humans as to what gametes are produced and every human Every has only produced at most one of two gametes for reproduction Um, so yeah, that's just not true. Um, you can look at any biological journal if you want The funny thing is is that like the definition keeps receding as it keeps getting proven wrong Like at first it was like genitalia But that doesn't correspond perfectly to biological sex and then it was chromosomes And that doesn't correspond either because there were chromosomal abnormalities that correspond with like intersex And then it's like gametes, you know, it's like and they keep running back and running back running back Eventually like people who are super harped in this argument are going to settle on a definition of sex That has absolutely no utility, you know, like their definition of sex is going to be like, okay Here we finally found something consistent There are only one of two possible outcomes whether or not like the the the half-life decay of this atom Spun left or spun right in the in the exact moment the cell was fertilized and that's the one thing that determines sex And it's like, okay at this point like what are you talking about? Shut the fuck up. Um, yeah It's just not true. Um, but like they can believe whatever they want about biological sex um, because like at the end of the day the the the biological argument of this has been more or less settled You know all the major biological journals are talking about the ambiguity of sex and how it's bimodal and so on So I feel like at this point there are people far more qualified than I to make that argument about how much variance there is And to follow uh to follow up on that. I enjoyed talking with you very much thomas Dr. Bogartis, I should say you see I'm so used you can you can call me thomas Cal thomas. I'm so used to talking to youtubers. Um, you know, it's it's it's wonderful to um To speak with with people with a higher education Especially once you take my argument seriously enough to quote me in their PowerPoint presentations No, it's it's been a delight. Thank you for being on here Next up from brenton langel a long time front of the channel says H2o is a symbol. Dr. Bogartis I think that you are confusing the symbol for the real thing it refers to all symbols and definitions are flawed as if they weren't They would be the thing itself and not the symbol All right, um, that wasn't really a question though Correct you're So the claim was h2o is a symbol so, um I mean Speaking verbally. It's hard to make a use mention distinction But I if the person meant quote h2o Is a symbol. Well, yeah, I agree You mean like that symbol h2o. Yeah, that's a symbol But if you meant h2o like the thing that's in this bottle. No, that's not a symbol That's a molecule that we drink. Um, and we're not drinking symbols Um, so yeah, we're I think that the confusion there is just between using The the term h2o and mentioning the term Um, so we use the term when we say, you know, there's h2o in that lake over there We mentioned the term when we say h2o Features the letter h or something um So I I guess I don't disagree with what the person said as long as the person meant Mentioning h2o. It's a symbol. Yeah, I agree Water has five letters. Yeah With quotation marks water has five letters. Yes Water has five letters. No water doesn't have any letters at all The stuff that we drink doesn't have any letters at all Um, that's a pretty basic distinction, but I think it's important To recognize and appreciate All right, you got it. Singer of doom strikes again says heavy water isn't an extra hydrogen It's an extra neutron in the hydrogen. It's still h2o Yes Okay, so I think I got that wrong if I said it was an isotope of oxygen that makes it Is it deuterium? Did we say that? So it's an isotope of hydrogen It's an isotope of hydrogen. So I guess it's one proton and one neutron. Is that right? Whatever still h2o though Um Yeah, well, I guess I guess I need to wait until it's appropriate to respond to the biological sex stuff Um, so maybe I'll get a question about that. I'll just hold tight You got it this one from sid dave says I can answer that question. Let's see. No, there are not no matter how many surgeries Let's see Okay, that's not as the brenton langel. There's your question says h2o is not water in the same sense that the pipe and renais Magritte's let me know if I'm saying that wrong treachery of images is not a pipe You are falling for the treachery of concepts Yeah Right, so I think they're referring to that painting of a pipe and then it says this is not a pipe Yeah, it's a painting. It's not a pipe. So it's It's doing the equivalent of mentioning a pipe But there's no actual pipe there Um, so I think this is the same as the last sort of statement I got when I was told h2o is a symbol Not a molecule Yeah, h2o is a symbol But h2o the stuff in lakes and rivers is not a symbol This is just a difference between word and object Um But I can assure you I appreciate that distinction and I I hope we all do You got it this one from david crackle says if ice can be water. Why can't a trans woman be a woman? Oh, wow If ice can be water Which it can be I think it is water because it's h2o. Why can't a trans woman be a woman? I assume that question's for me Well, ice is water because um come to find out. It's the same stuff that liquid water is Um, it's all the same stuff just in different phases. It's all h2o. It's the same thing Just in different arrangements That's why ice is water. It's not liquid water. It's solid water Okay So now the question is is a trans woman a woman? Well, that would depend on what woman means and then we'd have to check um, whatever woman means Is it the case that being a trans woman guarantees that you're a woman in that sense? And I think the reason as I said, this is such a persistent philosophical puzzle is it turns out that um on all the views that are sort of being discussed in the literature Uh, the answer is no It doesn't turn out that all trans women are women whatever woman means Um, it's going to be possible for someone to Identify as a woman while being assigned male at birth But not meet that definition of woman You got this one for vosh Made by jim bob says if the term woman is a construct doesn't that mean quote? Trans women are women isn't actually true and is just a construct itself Something being a construct and being true aren't mutually exclusive Most things that we say when we're referring to interpersonal interactions are only true in a constructed sense But I still think that they're true, you know Um, otherwise, I mean what what does it mean for a person to be tall? You know, there's no set definition of what percentage or what like how many orders of magnitude above the average height of a given Type of person a given type of area like there's no just because something's constructed doesn't mean it's not true You know, you can say a person seven feet tall and be true as hell to that but Finding a concrete definition a non constructed definition of tall is not something you're going to be able to do Um, yeah, so there's nothing wrong with something being socially constructed I just think we should be aware of how much power we have to rearrange these terms as we see fit That's not playing god. That's what we've always done. We've always done that forever. It's all we can do We made language, you know, um, I just think that we should use it responsibly You got it Singer doom strikes again. This one for you boss says Sex is the reproductive conduct condition of an organism in humans This is achieved via gametes and there are only two gametes in humans that leads to reproduction chromosomal Ana ploidy, which meaning whether there's a lack of chromosome or an extra chromosome compared to usual Is irrelevant they say Is to keep switching up the definition of what sex is it was all chromosomes years ago No, again, like the biological community has made its mark on this The idea that sex is purely binary and not bimodal is just not something taken seriously In um in in studies to this effect. So it seems quite silly Look again, like even if you could even if you could like 100 male female differentiate It wouldn't change any of my prescriptions. You could make it, you know, so flatly and Unchangably biologically male and female with nothing in between and I would still say what I say It's not really relevant to my arguments. It's only the fact that you're wrong gives credit to the argument that the biological Differentiation is inconsistent at best and quite harmful as well um You know also who talking about gametes like I like anyone looks at a person's gametes when they're trying to gender a person Come on. That's always been the silliest argument, right? They start going back before first was what genitals are like you have tits or not or what your hair looks like and then it goes Further and further in, you know, uh, I'm telling you it's going to be the half life the radioactive decay that that spin That you're going to get and that'll that'll that'll determine it. We'll just judge our We'll decide whether people wear suits or dresses based on that spin Made by jim bob says vosh can someone with ben benjamin button disease if you guys uh, namely like aging backwards Claim an age inconsistent with birth date But consistent with their apparent biological age I Don't entirely know what that means, but if the art if this is a question of like being trans age or whatever Um, keep in mind. We're talking about magic here. I mean you would have a person who's like what five years old but has every imaginable You know, um a trait associated with an 85 year old or something and I have no I you know, I gotta tell you I don't know how the legal system or the philosophical community would handle the existence of such a person Um, you know, I I imagine if they had the knowledge and wisdom and experience of an 80 year old Even if they were only five years old They would probably be treated as like an 80 year old because they're like they look and act like one I don't really know that, you know, you got when that happens. Okay, you can try to stump me You got it. This one coming in from Raymond Ryder. Appreciate it says Vosh Is it the case that you're engaging in an ameliorative project? When you mentioned normative standards for definitions Isn't this just shifting the subject? I love to ameliorate the the the conjugated definition of the The superlative wait, what was it? I can't tell if that was if that was a real question If it was making fun of how I talked which either way fair I could I could explain it if you want. That was a sort of question from the actual question Whenever I hear the word ameliorate, I assume people are making fun of me because I use that word the most The way most people use ums, you know, wait, wait, James. Can you repeat it? I just need to hear it again I'll take it more seriously It's a technical term from the literature I'd be happy to just tell you what it means if you want No, I know what it means I just wasn't listening to the question because I assume I was listening for like funny I was thinking of funny jokes that I could say in response Um They said vosh seems to be engaging in an ameliorative project when he mentioned normative standards for definitions Isn't this shifting the subject? Um, no, I don't think there are any types of other arguments that you can make when it comes to definitions I think that at the end of the day, even when you're making descriptive arguments about definitions You're ultimately making the prescriptive statement that we should adhere to the commonly accepted Decryptus a descriptive statement. I don't think there's any way around that After all, these are things that we construct. I mean we all, you know, it's it's a little bit like um, like slavery, right? You know, like people make arguments foreign against it or at least they used to well, they still do but they did more in the past, you know But if a person's only statement on the subject is slavery exists for x reasons Even though that would be a descriptive argument if that was all they contributed to the discussion It would still serve the role of a soft prescriptive argument in favor of the institution Because when something exists and has the capacity to be changed an acceptance of and passive defense of the purpose Of such a system is considered to be um, a kind of soft prescriptive argument for it So, of course, yeah, I'm not saying this all slavery. I'm just saying, you know, it's uh You got it. It's been known to happen. Dr. Pogartis, are you saying that in the like specifically the word ameliorative is A concept or term from the philosophy of gender in particular ameliorative Ameliorative inquiry is a little phrase that has a very specific meaning in this philosophy of gender literature. Yes Oh, okay. Yeah, do you want me to tell you what it means? I'm curious. Okay. Yeah, it's just um, it's sometimes called Conceptual engineering and it's the project I described when I said like hey, we've got this um biological definition Even trans inclusive philosophers agree. That's what the word has traditionally historically meant But then when I said like they don't they don't like that. They don't recommend it They think that we should use the word woman to express a different concept And when they're deciding which concept to express with the word woman, they call this This is ameliorative inquiry. It's a kind of inquiry or attempt at coming up with an analysis That is meant to make the world a better place to ameliorate injustices. And so there are um explicitly Moral inputs into the project. They're asking their so they're asking themselves What concept would do the most good in the world? And so I think vosh is engaged in this sort of project But yeah, it is a technical term from the literature um So the worry is By doing that by self consciously using an old word to express a new concept You're just you're changing the subject. So feminism was about the cause of women Adult human females But now we're just using the word woman and expressing a new concept Maybe the social role view or the self-idea view or something like that And so we're not talking about women anymore. We're talking about something else. We've changed the subject So this is a common worry about the whole conceptual engineering project will just be Changing the subject, but I think that's just for what it's worth. I think that's the least serious worry I think the the more serious worry is all the definitions that have been proposed are trans exclusive You got it and this one from mr. Saxa keats says dr. Bogartis What is your own definition though of woman and by your own logic? It can't be cultural nor social nor plastic nor prescriptive Nor plastic. Oh, wow So again, if you just ask me what is my definition, I would say I don't speak like a little private language I speak a language shared by a community and so I think the question is just what does this word ordinarily mean? What has it meant for the history of feminism up until at least the second wave? What did it mean? And again trans inclusive philosophers agree ordinarily historically traditionally It's meant adult human female And I'm just going to use this opportunity to say what it is to be female or what it is to be male Um, so I agree that if you ask people what is biological sex or what is it to be male or what is it to be female? You'll often get from ordinary people Answers in terms of genitals or chromosomes or maybe hormone levels or maybe like stereotypes I don't know if you watch that matt walsh documentary, but he asks people You know, what is it to be a woman and you get these sorts of definitions in terms of genitals stereotypes and so on Um, but as we briefly discussed during our little back and forth If you accept that sexual reproduction It occurs across the animal and plant kingdom and has been going on for a very long time Longer than saturn has had has had rings. It turns out Longer than polaris the north star has existed This is a very old sort of strategy that organisms have used to reproduce You'll realize that Genitals are not required. Um, I'm told I haven't actually checked but I'm told that a lot of male birds just lack external genitals entirely Um, there's no particular sort of chromosome structure that you need in order to be male or female if you just think about how plants do it It's super complicated. Think about how a platypus does it. It's very very different from how we do it Hormone levels aren't required. You don't need any sort of particular hormone level My understanding is the most basic Organism that reproduces sexually is something called I think it's pronounced placa zoa or something a placa zoa And it's only a couple thousand cells But what makes it the sort of organism that has males and females is Some of them produce sperm Some of them produce eggs That's all that biologists have ever meant By male and female now I agree that ordinary people have been confused about what it means to be male and female And sometimes they're confused by a sort of chauvinism about our own species But if you just think about what biologists mean when they study other organisms when they say Of a flowering plant here are the male parts and here are the female parts They are talking about gametes And when they say males produce sperm females produce ova They mean the same sort of thing that they would mean if they said hearts pump blood kidneys filter waste they mean When functioning properly This may be interfered with due to age disease injury, etc But when functioning properly, that's what happens. Wait, I have I have to jump in briefly How can you how can you defer to traditional definitions when using one that you have to correct the majority of people on The majority of humans when asked what it means to be a man or a woman are not going to give The definition you just provided they're like the common definition was the one you were referring to earlier the traditional one The one you use in in in light of a it were an absence of a prescriptive one But now you're making a prescriptive statement that maybe one in a thousand humans would even get in the ballpark of And you can't even defer to scientific definitions either because the science on this matter If you go to american scientific or nature.com don't agree with you You're deferring to a definition which is neither scientifically accepted or commonly accepted So why earlier were you talking about how you just defer to the commonly accepted one? And you said that you don't want to weigh in on this topic as to what it means because You know, you just go with what's commonly accepted. That's not the case at all It's not commonly accepted what it means to be a woman is literally one of the most hotly discussed topics today It's hugely contentious. I mean that's like somebody asked you what honor means and you're like Well, I go by the historical definition of honor, but there is no single historical definition of honor Certainly not when used today it varies massively It feels like you're trying to assume The legitimacy of the common definition when the one you use is used neither commonly nor specifically by scientists Okay, I think this is a good point vash and this really brings up something that we disagree very deeply about. Um, namely I think when you use the word definition What you really mean is like the conception that people have in their minds when they use a word So if I were to ask someone What does mail mean they might say XY chromosomes or something like that and you say that's their definition But I don't think that's right. I don't think that's the right use of the word definition I would have thought That you don't look towards their conceptions the sort of associations they have in their mind when they use a word And you don't even look at the way people use words because it's possible for a word to be systematically misused What you should look at is what the word actually refers to It might be commonly misused and people might have mistaken conceptions about what it is Um, but the true definition the real definition So you just the word for the divine definition like all the people are wrong the science Well, we do we do investigation. Let me give let me give you an example If you had asked Aristotle, what is water? He would have he might have given you his conception and he would have said something like it's an elements Although he would have said it in greek Um Yeah, and it's might have been possible. Yeah, it's probably possible that some people have systematically misused the word water If they were unwilling to attribute it to ice But here's how we figured out what water is we did some chemistry And we investigated the lakes and the rivers and the ice and we found out. Oh, wow turns out water is not an element It's a molecule. It's h2o We did something similar with biological sex. We noticed this interesting distinction in nature, which I think you yourself acknowledge There's this phenomenon of sexual reproduction and we get these two sub types within a lot of species Some of them produce sperm some of them produce Um ova at least when functioning properly what we're talking about what it means to be a woman though I was talking about what biological sex is a moment ago. Well biological sex, which you think infers what a woman is Which I think implies what a woman is I agree that it might imply it. I don't think that implication is necessarily prescriptive determination though Yeah, no, I'm sorry. It's just being a little pedantic there. Um inference is something that people do implication is something propositions do Don't worry about it. Um So I guess you're referring to the fact that I said Ordinarily the meaning of the word woman is adult human female. That's the meaning No, my my issue is that it feels like earlier you were taking a non prescriptive tone Where you were just referring to commonly accepted definitions Which only work if you're thinking about like Modern history the west because when you brought out there are plenty of counter examples But but then when it comes to like, okay, well, what do I believe then you have a hyper specific definition And you justify the validity of that definition by saying that it defers not from utility not from common acceptance Not from popular use but rather from it being a true definition Which seems like an like an ontological distinction that you're receiving from god, but I'm afraid I'm not hearing the voices in my head I don't know what that means Yeah, oh boy. So a lot just happened there. Um So when I described that biological view, I did claim this is what the word ordinarily means I might have said this is the way it's ordinarily used and I think that's right. I don't think it's being ordinarily misused But if I were going to state the claim as precisely as possible, I would say this is what the word ordinarily means And when I say that I don't mean to say this is what people ordinarily have in mind When they express the word because obviously they don't if you ask ordinary people, what is a woman? They're like, uh, this is something socrates discovered, you know, you ask people about ordinary terms and they're at a loss to articulate a definition So when I say this is what the word ordinarily means, I don't mean this is what people have in mind when they use the word I don't even mean necessarily This is the way the word is ordinarily used because again use is at best an imperfect guide to meaning What I mean is this is what the word Um refers to as it's ordinarily used. I don't think it's misused This is what the word refers to how do you decide what it refers to? So the same way we did with water Aristotle was interested in the same sort of stuff that we were interested in. We have different words for it He thought it was an element. We have discovered through scientific investigation in its molecule and now we know Water is h2o. We did that through scientific investigation. We did something similar with biological sex I mean Aristotle was aware of this phenomenon, but he was not aware of the gametes involved We have discovered the scientific essence Of biological male and biological female through scientific investigation. There's no such thing as a scientific essence You can discover facts of the world But the categories that you apply on top of those facts are something that we have to make decisions about So you can look at water and determine consistently that you know h2o this number of hydrogen and oxygen atoms Because that's an observable fact of the universe But as soon as you start to draw lines between things and assign names to those different categories You are engaging in arbitrary speculation ones Which can only be defined through the utility served by doing so All of this differentiation that we talk about the only reason we distinguish between males and females is because we feel It provides us some utility But when we talk about what we're referring to on a fundamental level the fact of the matter is when it comes to sex There's a ton of variants not just in our own species but others. It's not just chromosomes There are sex characteristics that vary tremendously even within cis people And there's no hard line when we look at those things and I don't think there's a perfect track record of assigning that Like categorization onto gender either in fact They know for a fact there isn't because there are cultures with third genders So I don't know what you mean by the true essence here But I don't feel as though this this mode of investigation gives us a better understanding of what it means to be a woman So when I said, um, we've discovered the scientific essence of water what I meant was h2o We've discovered the essence of gold Which is atomic number 79. This is something we've discovered through chemical investigation That's all that's necessary To be gold is to be atomics number 79. Of course, the greeks were aware of gold Humans throughout time and place have been aware of gold. They weren't aware of what it is essentially Chemistry disclosed that to us. That's what I meant by scientific essence. And I think Biologists did something similar with biological sex. There were Sort of crude theories about how sexual reproduction is accomplished Back in the early days of science, we have since discovered facts about sperm and eggs and that was a discovery of the scientific essence Like the fact that we consider isotopes to still be a member of that element and if an isotope has one extra Neutron, we consider that to be a member of the same element But just a different isotope of it But if we wanted to we could have simply said, oh, that's just another element It's another element with a separate name that has a separate molecular structure And they would have pointed at it and gone. Ah, yeah, well, that's you know, obviously It's very similar to this other element. But as you can see, there's an extra neutron So it can't possibly be the same, you know, was this previous one But but that's what I mean like like discovering facts of the world is not the same as taxonomy. It's not the same as categorization I want to give Dr. Bogartis the last word just because the question was originally for him And then we've got one last question for the q&a before we wrap up I kind of forgot what the original question was at this point I guess I'll just I don't really want the last word to be about noble gases, but here we go Um, I guess I just deny that when we're investigating the world our primary interest when we like decide You know, what word should we introduce? What distinction should we make? I don't think Our primary interest is utility Rather, we're interested in the truth Like if it had somehow turned out that not distinguishing between the noble gases had somehow benefited humanity Like if we had learned that, you know, if we just stick with Aristotle's view or we've just got these five elements Humans will be much better off Scientists wouldn't have done it. They wouldn't have cared. They just wanted to know the truth And they saw these distinctions between the noble gases and they were like, let's introduce some terms to name what's already there I think that's what we did in physics and chemistry and um in biology This one coming up. So what? Sorry about that James. Go ahead and interrupt No, that was that was probably as good a time as any to stop We'll jump in with this last question and then want to remind you folks our guests are linked in the description so If you have not heard enough if you're like, I want to hear more I want to learn more about their views You certainly can by clicking on those links in the description box below and here is that question brand enhancing Ask vosh can a person who has male genitalia x y chromosomes Has absolutely no values slash archetypes that has ever been associated with any vague definition of women But takes the name of woman Are they Yes, though I have to say I have no idea what a human would have to be in order for their behavior Personality to have no overlap with any of the Many incompatible incoherent and self contradictory values we associate with what it means to be a woman They would have to be remarkable I'm trying to think of like a like a male actor like even Dwayne the rock johnson acts like kindly and charitable sometimes You know every time he smiles well smiling is considered a feminine characteristic So hey, I don't know you you would have to find a brick, you know like a proper brick But you know god god bless her, you know transitioning savior You got it and with that want to say folks we really do appreciate our guests as I mentioned You can find their links down below in the description box That includes if you're listening at the podcast because we put our guest links in the description box there too So i want to say one last thank you. It's been a true pleasure for this very cordial Stimulating conversation vosh and dr. Bogartis. It's been a true pleasure. Thank you Thank you both. It's been a tremendous pleasure. Thank you very much 100% stick around folks. I'll be right back with a post credit scene Let you know about upcoming debates that you don't want to miss with that Thanks so much one last time to our guests and I'll be right back in just a moment Ladies and gentlemen, uh, two seconds. Let me just adjust this in here bear with me. Don't worry. I'm still here You can see my eyes at least my dear friends want to say we are thrilled about this debate It was a total blast who really do appreciate our guests for real The guests are the lifeblood of the channel And so if you ever wonder if sometimes you're like james, you know, sometimes you're uh, you know, sometimes you uh, give someone a A crude verbal lashing in the live chat if they're dissing one of the speakers hard enough We understand it's the internet so people are gonna play rough. That's okay. But once in a while, you know, you'll all say Hey, uh, you know, take it easy. Let's not go nuts here is we do want to say we hope you respect our guests We really do we I respect them. I appreciate them They're coming on here because they just love to debate seriously. We we really do appreciate it and it's a fun time I always tell them before we go live I always say you guys this puts me in such a good mood and it really does Like I really enjoy getting to do this and that's why we want to make our guests feel welcome because we appreciate them and so 99.9% of you do a fantastic job of that. I appreciate it so much So I don't want to just call out the people that are sometimes a little bit over the top I understand it's like, you know Passions run wild and you know, it's all water under the bridge. We all forget it But at the same time, I also want to acknowledge like I said 99% of you Thank you so much for being pleasant and being reasonable We appreciate you and good to see you in the old live chat. I want to say hello to you. Nikki Good to see you again. Eileen not caring glad to have you here Peter Zotti happy to have you with us odin all farther. Glad you're with us jade Mako happy to have you here. Greg Jordan glad you're with us Sd skl kjd ls as kdd kind of like sl. Thanks for much for being with us or glad you're here Joe gravy glad you are here and My dear friends if you did not know we do have A podcast did you know that I'm serious. I'm not making this up I have been told by so many people because I I've told you the story many many times when I first put Soads on the podcast which it was about it was almost exactly I'm not exaggerating. It was about exactly two years ago. I was like are people going to use this I don't know. I was like I was like and I felt like an idiot for the longest time because for like two months It was like really it was a very few downloads. I was like, I don't know if people are going to go over this But now it's been growing so fast. It's up to like an average of 2,400 downloads Per debate if I remember right no, no, it's 2,500 which is really fast. I guess in the podcast world That's really so people are apparently finding useful. It's ad-free. So like we don't make a dime off of the podcast It's ad-free. So if you're ever on youtube and you're like Zero on the podcast do you believe me? For real people tell me though. I'm encouraged because they'll say like I listened to it bob, you know He told me he said he's he's like, you know, james. I this is my best side show nav impression bob You know james. I uh Yeah, I go to the beach and i'm in my speedo and i'm listening to modern day to beat podcast. I don't know That's my best. I'm sorry bob But I have encouraged a lot of people not just bob at the beach in a speedo But also people have told me yeah when i'm exercising I you know, I go for a jog and listen to the podcast. It's nice You know, I listen to it on my commute I don't have to use my wi-fi because I can or I should say don't have to use my data because I just download it At home or at the public library wherever it is I download it on my phone and then as I commute I can go for several hours and I've got several debates downloaded ready to play Without using any data because hey, why not? You know save on your data, you know Jay gm Ptw glad to have you here. Thanks for dropping in jeremy wong. We're glad you're here. Mr. E happy to have you back Rockin woodworks. Good to see you again. Excuse me, but glad you are here says. Hmm. Passion's running wild It's not what I meant to you sicko Just lace. Thanks for coming by oh, yes two three says I always love your post of a chat connecting with your audience Thanks for saying that oh yes Three that really means a lot and I enjoy this seriously not only do I enjoy the debates But I do enjoy the post debates because they the post credits seem F for tv. Thanks for being here says good debate. They were pretty articulate I agree. They were very articulate and we really do it. Like I said, they're linked below We really do appreciate our guests It's fun. I love modern day debate. I've told you before I see myself doing this for the rest of my life Like I I enjoyed that much like I just I'm like, this is fun. It's just like a new way of life We've done it for about three and a half years a little bit more than that. We started in september of Was it 2018? It was yeah, that's crazy. So we're going on four years. We're pretty close And that's amazing. Isn't that amazing? That's so long But it's just it's been fun. Like I kind of see it now. As I said, it's just I just the way I do life It's not like uh, so you can notice like we always work on having Whenever a debate happens, we always want to make sure that there's at least one other debate being promoted Or you know on the page that people can say, okay, there's a future one too to consider One of them is at the bottom right of your screen. Do you see this? Look, I'm pointing to it right now See that Vosh and alex stein. This is going to be another big one another fun one You don't want to miss it on whether or not it's okay for kids to go to drag queen shows You don't want to miss it folks. If you haven't yet Hit that subscribe button And if you also have been living in a cave on mars with your fingers in your ears We've got to tell you about this other debate. Actually, I just put this one up today So if you haven't heard about it, don't beat yourself up. This one is going to be a juicy one whether or not there is a respectable version of whether or not Christianity is intellectually respectable that was the exact title that they had agreed on Is dan barker and dr. Randall rouser. We've we're thrilled dr. Rouser. We've had on before it's always a good time He's had some great debates with us. It's been a lot of fun to listen to him and it's also it's a We have not had dan barker. You guys probably I don't know if you know who dan barker is But dan barker's been around for a long time. He's literally engaged in hundreds of debates And he's a strong debater. He is a very tough debater So you don't want to miss that one for real, you guys Like this is going to be a really good debate and we're you could say that in terms of modern day debate people Like I actually looked because I can in the creator studio I can look for what people are searching for who watch modern day debate and one of the most common search Phrases was dan barker debates. No joke. And so I was like, I was like, that's right It's like we haven't had dan barker on like what are we doing? So That's going to be a good one Mr sacks a key. Thanks for your super chat coming in late says I appreciate you james You do good work and have an awesome project here. Hope you're well dog. Thanks so much for that support Seriously, it means a lot and our project here is we absolutely are determined to provide a neutral platform So that everybody can make their case on a level playing field We want it to be fair and that's something I think everybody agrees with Whether you'd be politically left politically right christian atheist or one of the many strange creatures in between We know that you agree That value namely fairness that everybody gets their fair shot is important And that's something that we can all get behind and we appreciate that you guys have gotten behind modern day debate You guys have supported us so much and we appreciate that Seriously, it's been so exciting to see the channel grow Not because like oh a numbers person. It's not like that at all It's because we think of it as channel growth rather than being like a notch on the belt is Influence in a positive way on youtube and the social media world namely that everybody people are getting a fair shot in the debate world because I will tell you I used to debate myself like I used to go on debate channels You can see there's also some old debates of me one couple of them even in person Back when we first started modern day debate I love debating. I actually enjoy it to be honest more than moderating But I love moderating and I'm kind of surprised is like well, you know like There aren't a lot of people that are willing to moderate and just do it like as they're They're thing and I'm kind of like, uh, it's like well, I enjoy it Like it's true like not as much as debating debating is kind of therapeutic. You get so into it It's almost like you could forget where you are. You can forget all your problems It really is like you kind of experience this flow as psychologists call it Where time just kind of disappears it fades away in the background and you're really It's fun But I also do love moderating and the reason that I say that though Is because we Are excited about this vision namely like I said It's for us a big deal We're excited about the channel growing because we see it as hey, we are Bringing that vision Into reality namely like I said giving everybody a fair shot and we want to make the world a better We want to make the world a better place Do you know what I mean? So for example We did on saturday, I think it was saturday. I'm a little bit off today. I'm like I think I thought I slept fine last night But I don't think I slept as well as I thought because I'm like I've been having trouble today like remembering what day What day it is and stuff, but I've got to tell you Yeah, it's been pretty bad But I got to tell you this on saturday we hosted this debate, which by the way it was like Is big I I knew it was going to be big but I it was like even bigger than I expected this was between destiny and His partner adam something by partner. I mean debate partner And they were against jackson hinkle and infrared It was a big debate So that one actually has been cruising in terms of it got picked up a little bit by the algorithm Or it's like oh like I think it's like it's uh, I mean glad people enjoyed it And it also raised a significant amount of money for the domestic violence action center Which for us like I said, that's important to us We want to do at least one monthly charity stream where We are making a positive difference in the world where there is a non-partisan charity such as like We've I think we've done it before for diabetes research. We've done it before for alzheimer's research We've done it for a keutzfeldt Gakub disease And we'll do it for other diseases as well We've also done it for you know for orphans for the worldwide orphans as the organization and we always pick a charity that has a very high Charity watchdog rating and the reason is we want to be sure that you know Whoever we're donating to is that the funds are actually used for what they say that they're going to use them for and that There's transparency at the organization. And so that's something that I think we all agree on as well You know that if we are helping orphans throughout the world like that's a good thing And so that's important to us We really do care about that and we want to say thanks so much for supporting us as we work on that vision Other super chats that they didn't read during the debate because they were just weird We we always want more meaningful questions, but these I appreciate too. That's why I'm going to read them now Woody woodpecker. Thanks so much for your super chat super sticker. I should say of a banana. I appreciate that Thank you and thanks for your support woody I know I know that's the thing too. I know in the live chat We talked about this before woody and I'm glad you brought it up is that sometimes the live chat gets to be We don't want it to be all soid out, right? So we do want we like I said, we don't want people to be too. There's like, you know, there's a fine line of like Yeah, we know, you know, some of his people are going to insult the guests. We don't really we don't want that Obviously, but we know it's like it's the internet and we don't want to you know Like the the guests are strong They're not going to you know cry in their corn flakes over someone calling them, you know a dummy or something Like they don't they don't care and they've got thick skin But nonetheless, you know, we do appreciate them so we want to stick up for them And likewise, it's like at the same time, you know, as we talked about woody We don't want this chat to be where people feel like they're walking on eggshells, right? We want people to feel like they can say, you know, we want to feel like they have freedom and that's that makes it fun, right? Is it, you know, you feel like you got freedom? So I agree with you. We're working on that and finding that fine balance always, you know Always a work in progress here at modern day debate. We'll admit I'll be the first to admit We have things that we can improve on And We're working on them and we are getting better and we're excited about the future loss and Harrison says thanks for the content James just got here. What is the current cope level in chat? That's funny Well, all credit to the guests for the content, which is amazing content. Thanks to the guests this one coming in from Coding Jesus says this debate made me want to be want This debate made me want Dr. Bogartis to be my professor Appreciate that. Thanks for your your positivity toward the guests And we always like that when we get to say to a guest, you know, you got a fan out there Brenton Langell says let's see I don't want to read it when it's a challenge to the guests that they're not able to respond to But I want to see Brenton if you're still listening. We appreciate your questions Let's see this. I think there's another oh, thanks. Know your realms is not asking a question Just showing some love. Thanks for that. Seriously. We appreciate that And I hope you're doing all right friend. I know it's been a hard time. So I hope you're all right. Seriously and Let's see Albert Katzstein glad to have you here channel 14 news glad to see you jimmy lecari says you are appreciated james Thank you for having us and for having these debates even if some are nonsensical That's what makes freedom of speech. Great. Thank you. I appreciate it and I agree. It's fun Yeah, I mean I can so shoot me if I like that, you know a little flat earth debate once in a while Like it's a you know, it's kooky and we like the the big foot debates once in a while Those are actually one of my favorite topics. No joke big foot I think the classic one that I like the most is still does god exist. That's a fun topic I think that in terms of political, this is a fun topic because it got into philosophy. I think this is a This is a fun topic tonight And albert katzstein thanks for your heart Zaruba bell squared. Thanks for coming by. I see you there in the old live chat 33 done Thanks for your support of the channel through your channel membership We do have channel membership folks if you want to support the channel That's one way to do it. They're as cheap as 199 for real So, I mean if you you do at 199 and you're like, let's say theoretically you tried it and you're like Oh, and I forgot to you know, let's say you're like, ah, you know, I'm just going to try for a month and then you're like, ah, I forgot to turn it off and And you're like, ah, charge me again. It's like, well, it's 199 You get the sweet emojis, which let me tell you I mean the pleasure that you can get from calling somebody a soy boy Like I'm about to do in the live chat is uh, I'm putting diesel or unleaded is a soy boy The pleasure that you can get from using those emoticons to mock others in chat It's worth the 199. Trust me But want to say thanks for your support, Jimmy Lucari as well as gross patak. Good to see you again Al Solmo. Good to see you again Make it simple. Thanks for coming by. We hope you are doing well. Christine Irvin. Glad you are here We hope that you are doing well Mr. E. Thanks for your kind words says, please pray for me. Let God send me a coherent christian that's actually read the bible I don't know what that means, but we hope you're well and uh, happy to pray for you And andres castanos. I don't know if you mean like to date them or to debate them But anyway, andres castanos. Thanks for coming by. We're glad you were here as well as Anybody in chat that I haven't gotten to say hi to the strong prevail. Glad you're here Why terrani? Thanks for your kind words says James is an ace moderator. I appreciate it And you know, it's true I'll admit our moderating here is some people would say, hey, you know, it's pretty, you know You let the debaters like get away with murder and that's true we do But the reason is one is that debaters don't want to have the moderator breathing down their neck controlling the conversation No, i'm not saying that every other channel that doesn't moderate like us because it's true We're kind of like lightly we'd like people to have their autonomy. We want them to have their freedom and so we don't jump in too often and That's what you should know if you had in some ways somehow not notice that Is we like to kind of let people As guests have their freedom We like to let people in the chat have their freedom and there are ways we can improve at that We'll be honest, but nonetheless, that's important to us And some people are like, nope, I want more moderation and it's like, what's all right? We don't hold it against you. We understand and the reason is Is because Here's one reason If there are other debate channels, we're actually happy to see them grow like we have no grudge or anything We're not the first debate channel I I doubt will be the last debate channel even though like I said, I plan on doing this like for the rest of my life so like conservative estimate I mean, who knows I guess theoretically I get hit by a bus tomorrow But you know, I do plan on doing it for the long run and if I ever, you know If something happens to me where I couldn't do it or something I would probably I would be pumped to pass it on to somebody else to keep it going because I just love the vision I love the purpose that it's kind of a symbol. This isn't my channel. It's not like the james coon's debate show And not to say that there's anything wrong if you had like, you know, like Dillon Dillon burns has the hippie dippy podcast Or show and I'm not trying to knock that at all like I we get along well with dylan So like dylan's helped us a lot in terms of a channel Like we've we've gotten to host some cool people that dylan knows in those collab events like shoe on head and stuff Who it was like, wow, this is really cool Like because you know we've pumped to host people like shoe and others And the corn on the cob guy shake like Like but the point is this It's a symbol really like modern a debate is it's like it's not really a jame It's not like an individual channel. Like it's a symbol. It's like an organization or something And it is truly like whenever I talk to people about modern a debate I tell them I'm like, yeah, you know, we're working on this and we're doing this and they're like, oh It's like you make it sound like it's a team and I'm like and they're like is it like do you have like employees? It's like, wow, it's not like really employees Like we've got like people that just kind of like come in and well in the most obvious sense the speakers like They just love to debate and they come on freely, you know, they're just like, hey, yeah, sure It sounds fun That's an example of where it's like it's it's community effort It's totally a community effort and we also rely on you as an example for the q&a It couldn't we couldn't have a q&a if there weren't questions For real it makes sense, right? So you guys ask questions that contributes like you guys in a way your community support It helps absolutely and then Yeah, I've got to tell you when we've done like those crowd funds so we can do in-person debates You guys help support that way you guys help support because we usually for those crowd funds We throw in a big chunk to get the crowd fund going and that you know Funded by super chats and so when we do that and we were able to cover speaker's flights like we did in january We had our first two-day conference a debate conference for two days. That's a kind of a big thing You know like two days is like wow, that's kind of a real conference and so like a long one but Kind of long compared to one day, but the point is this It's a community effort. We've got people the mods like sideshow nav is the head mod He handles all things mod. So like if people email me about a moderator question like the chat moderators in the live chat I'll be like, you know, we've got to ask Bob it's out of my hands like I just trust him with everything because it's just hard for me to like handle all that When there's already I'm already like so far so behind on emails and I'm sorry if you're waiting on an email response I really I am sorry. I've been meaning to but it's just hard to get to Andres Castano says hey james, you should get our in-law and to jump to debate cliff and steward again That'd be fun. I'm open to it. I can ask maybe this summer Stewart is actually just confirmed that he'll be coming on this friday for a tag team debate by the way It's not going to be his father cliff as his partner though. It's going to be cinematic psychology It's her first time here And she seems to be interested in psychology. She's actually an agnostic. So he's he's partnering with an agnostic That makes it interesting because it's like usually it's two theists against two atheists this time It's two atheists against an agnostic and a theist teamed up So that'll be up soon. I'll get that make it simple says james. You were born for this. Thanks for your kind words Seriously, it really is fun. Like I love doing this and then Dawn starring said you should be in a debate on this channel I I have been before there if you look me up one of my favorites was in person It was at mancato state in minnesota state University against august berkshire an old friend It was a in person debate too and it was like the editing was really good Like you should see it. So if you guys haven't seen that can I can I plug my own debate? Let me show you guys this Let me put it in chat Okay Where is this? That's as funny as I like google my name in in a modern day debate or uh I'm like seeing these videos that was like, oh, I didn't even know there are these videos were made about me and they're flattering Well, not all of them, but some of most of them But that's okay. You know, like you can't please everybody. That's one thing I believe but uh, let me find this It doesn't look like me at all. Wow that professor dave debate professor dave against kent hovind One that thumbnail was killer. Man. That was a good thumbnail I'm like, man That was one of my best. I love that thumbnail. Holy smokes But also, sorry, I'm bragging. I'm usually not good at thumbnails. That's why I'm so excited about that And then but let me find this darn it all I gotta find this But yeah, we're excited you guys if you didn't know it this debate with wash and alex stein I think that is going to be ginormous. That's going to be next tuesday You guys seriously, it's going to be awesome. You do not want to miss that It's going to be epic So you don't want to miss it Let me just find this really quick two seconds I got distracted I was reading. I was like, let me I'm hold on. I'm going to show you that in just a second Oh, yeah, this says interesting how abraham lincoln is a neutral moderator. Thank you very much appreciate that and Perfect one says dan barker is deceptively unassuming. He's a very good debater. He is really good research earth That's james. Can you debate me? I'm open to debating in the future But the topics that I'd want to debate now are different So now I would like to debate and no offense Probably not you because you haven't pissed me off But I wanted to be so when people are like, uh, modern day debate is so immoral for hosting this topic or that person I want to hold. I want to debate on the topic of deplatforming. So that would be fun That's really fun But yeah, and you know, there's different ways of debating and it's a whole spectrum there's like you can debate in the sense of You know winning people over where they're kind of like, oh a humble person I like that and then you can in the more tribalistic way to especially appease your own base you can debate in the more straightforward frankly more vicious extremely confident like pushing like to the point where it's like inappropriate Is uh, your own your base will love you for it, but the other side isn't necessarily going to be won over But hannah anderson, I see there in the live chat. Thanks for your support says don't forget to hit The subscribe button and push the notification bell Thanks for coming to today's debate modern day debate appreciates you and we do appreciate you folks bean bang Thanks for coming by says can you bring on dr. Hugh ross more often? We should that would be cool I'm open to that and I think he's been pretty busy. I think he's actually retiring. Did you see that? He's handing over uh, this kind of Dr. Fuzz rana will now be at the helm of the ship. So Uh, it's namely like reasonable Reasons to believe is going to be led by fuzz rana So pretty cool fuzz has been on here before too and we like both of those guys We like dr. Zweerink as well And martin kirik. Thanks for coming by. I see you there in the old live chat and let's see your Yeah, sorry. I got distracted. Let me find this My name. My last name is james if you ever change your mind from listening to these debates I've changed my mind out on arguments. I haven't particularly changed my mind on like moving from like let's say politically left to the right or right to the left like i'm kind of like Politically, I think you guys know what I've talked about it kind of like kind of in the more in the middle Like political stuff. I'm like not as decided I am you guys know that I in terms of my metaphysics where I stand I think but jamie lecari says are you appreciated or you are appreciated james Thank you for your kind words and then let me get you get that link though you guys because Yeah, congrats to fuzz rana indeed like that's a pretty big deal am or Akkuck thanks for coming by I see you there in the old live chat wonderful world. Thanks for coming by Know your realm. Thanks for your kind words very charismatic I don't know if you're talking about about me or about one of the people I mentioned But in either case I appreciate your positivity because that's one thing I do love is like you guys are really positive You guys are really supportive. Thank you so much. I'm just I'm always like wow there are just so many people that are super supportive of this Vision this endeavor this goal that we're passionately pursuing Casem hashtag free thugger. Thanks for coming by. We're glad you're here and then let me find you Or let me find uh Andre said I meant debate. Let me find this Oh, you these you meant to someone to debate I I have to give you the most friendly gentle kind of pushback Is that Are you sure that you're one of those types of people that would concede there are reasonable people on the other side I only say that because I'm not trying to come down on you. I'm not trying to be mean or anything like that But like I the one thing I do see on this channel. There's like a spectrum There are some people who are on the middle and they're like, yeah, I I can concede a lot of people out there Uh, uh, they'll disagree with me. They're reasonable. They're intelligent, you know They're sophisticated. They're coherent blah blah blah And then there are some who are like no none of them are on the opposite side of the spectrum and then you know And then there's all Shades of gray in between, right? It's like all these gradations of how charitable you are to the other side You may be of the type and I don't know for sure. I only you know But you may be of the type that like is like no, I don't think any of them are rational I can tell you that I I don't know It just might you can correct me if I'm wrong because I'm not saying it's the case I'm just saying is it is it the case? Rigged election 2020. Thanks for coming by glad you're here I will probably get demonetized for even reading your name, but uh, that's funny And uh, let's see. Excuse me, but thanks for coming by As well as xx wlz xx Have you thought about the ember herd versus johnny depth topic? Yes, we have we tried to set it up But it fell through last week Might happen this saturday, but I don't know alex is hurt ado. Thanks for coming by. I see you there Mr. E good to have you leandro ramires says debate on measurement to deplatforming. You'll be surprised. Thanks for that idea We've uh, somebody I've wanted to have on and we just haven't had on yet, but Let me get you that chat that debate. I've got a like I said, I'm not joking you guys You guys my hair in this looks ridiculous, but I'll show you Oh, yeah, yeah, like I made this thumbnail too, you know Always have to say sorry. Oh, man. I just What was with my hair? Why was I doing that? But uh, let me show you guys this this is the olden days You guys if you want to see me. So this is no joke. I'm gonna put this in the live chat this This was me. How many years ago was this? Uh, this was in 2014. So eight years ago eight years ago Whoa You guys check that out. I'm pinning this to the top of the chat So because you guys might be wondering you're like, oh james. Have you debated before that was one of my I think that was my second in person maybe third I think it was my third in person debate with good old august berkshire And august is a good friend. And so Yeah, I liked august a lot. Yeah, I was like my facial hair I had kind of like the designer beard going on. I was kind of a beard. I don't know It was weird. I think I thought that was a beard back then, but it's not a beard like this Like I like this beard a lot more But yeah, the funny thing is I I think I used to think of that as beard What was my hair though? If you guys are watching this this link that I just put in the chat of myself I'm like, what is going on like Why do I look why did I have it like coming out at the front and all weird like that? and That was just strange But that was a fun debate. Yeah and august like I said, I it's like august is uh I just kind of I always loved his His easygoing style and he's just he's fun. Like he's just kind of has this kind of dry sense of humor I just always liked And you know, I I still see him post on facebook and I just I'm like I just yeah, I like but anyway derpenheimer Glad you're here He says what a coward who's a coward? regular election 2020 says thanks for holding these debates my pleasure. We appreciate that Dante's guide. Good to see you says. Hey, what's up guys? Glad you're here. Dante's guide And yeah, also like I said, I really can't believe that was me So what was I was just a spring chicken? I think I might I almost look older now because I'm not as fat as I was then I'm not I mean, I wasn't that fat But anyway, let's see Hannah Anderson says wow, that was a while ago the hair. Yeah, I know I'm like, uh, that was a weird why I guess that was cool back then guys I'm a boomer, but let me uh, let's see Thiero says James. Have you ever thought about debating someone yourself on this channel? I have I have no joke. I there are old debates of me debating like Jared and t-jump and Trying to remember some of the other people that I had debated They're probably like maybe three or four different people that had debated on this channel In the remote style so where it was it was not in person because this and they're from just a few years ago The one that I posted from 2014. I'm like, holy smokes. I can't believe it's been almost 10 years But yeah, I loved that debating is fun. I want to say thank you guys for all of your support I hope you guys have a great rest of your night. It's getting late here. I should get ready for bed soon I've got to wash off this lotion. It's very it's got a powerful scent. It's almost pungent. It's very strong And I have to wash this off before I go to bed So I want to say thanks guys for your support. Seriously, you guys think this fun You know, it's so hard for me to go But uh, yeah, I am not joking that we've got a lot of epic debates coming up As I mentioned this one I'm excited for both this one on the bottom right that we were showing with dan barker and randall rouser As well as this one that you can now see in the bottom right of your screen Bosch and alex stein you don't want to miss that Dave gar says I missed the arnold schwarzenegger soundboard. I also missed this debate. Watch it later. That's funny. Dave gar Diesel or unleaded did you see Hear that we used to as a joke We used to like have a soundboard that I would sometimes hit the button for And I can still do it. It's pretty fun Like I the truth is like arnold soundboard. I I think it's super fun But I would do it and then but eventually we got to the point where like At least if I was using it during the debates, it just didn't seem super professional. So I stopped doing it But we can do it in the post credit scene. That's for sure Let me find that soundboard's pretty slow. It takes like 8 000 years for the sound to come out So let me find a quicker Quicker one realm of darkness as always you can always count on them for a good soundboard, but Let's see Thanks for your kind words. Nikki says blessings james. Appreciate that. Thanks so much martin kirrick says hello And let's see here. Thanks for your kind words. Coffee mom says no you hang up first. I know it is just like that and Hello cutie pie Then yes, this is so look what we have here. This is so fun The diesel are unleaded. I don't know if you're listening to this, but yes, we can play this game This is fun, but let me see here Oh, yeah, this is fun. I've always you guys I don't know if you know I'm not kidding Well, yeah, it was cringe if it was during the debate But it's not cringe if it's during the post credit scene then it's fun But I I thought it was hilarious and the but yeah, but yeah, so oh, yeah says we needed jesse lee peterson one Let me find it. Don't worry. There is one out there. You guys have heard that one too jesse lee peterson soundboard There there certainly is let me just play this because i'm having fun here. I'm just enjoying myself Is this it? No that that can't be it Amazing I think this is it Yep takes takes a lot to load, but Amazing. Are you a beta male? Interesting Amazing stuff express Your stuff I am an Oreo cookie white on the inside black on the outside I'm black. I'm white. I'm up. I'm down Isn't that amazing because he's a white man a slut maker Do you love black people? So I have a base take something that's going to be offensive, uh, but I have to say it though Uh, let's do it another time. I'm kind of tired. So I I want to say thank you guys Uh, let's see. I can't just introduce and then not say it. I'll tell you Gris patat. Good to see you in the live chat. Mr. E glad you were here as well as cd. Thanks for coming by and And Gregory Bujak here Bujakian Thanks for coming by says Where's get to the japa? Yeah, that's strangely it's not always as available as you think on those sound boards And then stupid whore energy says amazing. Thanks for your support. Appreciate that And yeah, let's see Dave gar says wow, they got a bit personal What was it that I said? I can't remember. Oh my base take Yeah, yeah, we'll save it for next time. You guys gonna ask me next time. Like James, what was your take that was going to offend everybody? So I want to say thanks everybody. I hope you guys are having a great rest of your night Keep sifting through the uh, keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable Is that the old phrase that we used to say keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable And I want to say thanks for you guys for being with us. We appreciate it. Thanks for all of your guys's support We're excited about the future about modern day debate. We've got big things planned big big things You know, you could say big chances we're taking we're pumped about the future Dave gar thanks for your super chat says have a coffee on me. Thanks, brother. I appreciate that seriously. That means a lot that is So thank you guys. I hope you have a great rest of your night It's always fun and we'll catch you on the next one We have one for this friday. I have I have to get the event up But yeah, we do have one for this friday maybe for this saturday, but for sure for next tuesday We've got bosh as they mentioned coming back with alex stein and then wednesday we've got Uh, oh, we got monday. We got dan barker and randall rouser. That's going to be good And man, we've got a lot of cool stuff. So thanks guys for your support. We're excited about the future Our future is bright. We're going to do big things. This is only the beginning of our story here at modern day debate So thank you guys. Join us while we are small. We are only just beginning right now So thanks everybody and we'll see you the next one. Take care Are you a beta male? amazing beta and so Get it off your chest. I absolutely appreciate it President trump That's great Follow messiah. Can you imagine? You're on the air, sir An evil woman There's no proof of that Black as the ace of space. What am I lying about? She is a lesbian All this world, sir. How are you? rebuilding the man mama mia