In a recent post, I outlined some problems I identified with Scott Alexander’s Noncentral Fallacy. He identified a very real problem in the discourse, but I disagreed with him about what made it fallacious. Briefly, Scott believed the problem lay in the use of applying technically correct
> Lawyers are notoriously allergic to linguistic ambiguity, as evidenced by the sheer cliffs of verbosity present within dense and convoluted legislation and statutory codes.
I'm surprised to hear you have this impression. Whenever I try to read a legal document I rapidly get frustrated at how incredibly vague it is, or how they define things in inane ways, like the "bees are fish" example. The latter could have been avoided by simply referring to a well-established biological definition of "fish", but this was not done presumably because it wouldn't seem "official enough", or they actually wanted to smuggle non-fish creatures into the category.
As someone used to reading formal texts like math and code, legal text strikes me as of a different kind entirely. It's not trying to actually *be* rigorous and unambiguous, it's trying to *appear* complicated with pointless jargon (similar to a lot of academic papers nowadays), so as to intimidate the common man into not pointing out how stupid it is, and allowing legislators to later argue for an interpretation that they wouldn't want to argue for when getting the bill passed.
I'd be curious to see an example of what you saw as incredibly vague. Maybe I should've clarified that lawyers are allergic to ambiguity because of the very real danger that others will exploit it.
When I read legal text, especially statutory codes, it's almost like seeing the matrix green letters for me. I can very quickly surmise things like "oh they likely added this clause because someone got cute". That's why when California passed the regulations for fish and wildlife, they didn't want people to get cute regarding fishing regulations and argue in court "well you said I couldn't *fish*, but all I did was harvest 800 clams which clearly are not a fish" and so they expand the list to be over-comprehensive.
> I'd be curious to see an example of what you saw as incredibly vague
Sure, a recent example I came across was in section 921.141 of the Florida statutes, on the requirements for capital punishment. (http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm) A list of "mitigating circumstances" is provided, and while I think most of them are unnecessarily vague, the most egregious is the one that only says "The age of the defendant at the time of the crime." It doesn't actually tell you *what* ages are considered a mitigating circumstance. Presumably most juries will interpret this to mean "they were less than 18" or similar, but I'd be perfectly following the letter of the law if I argued "the defendant is 38, and I believe that that age is a mitigating circumstance."
(Imagine if it listed "the defendant's hair color" instead. Everyone has a hair color, so without specifying how one color is supposed to be treated differently from another, this is totally meaningless.)
> they didn't want people to get cute regarding fishing regulations and argue in court "well you said I couldn't *fish*, but all I did was harvest 800 clams which clearly are not a fish" and so they expand the list to be over-comprehensive.
Why would they choose such a strange way of addressing that, redefining the word "fish" to mean something entirely different from its English meaning? They could have said "you may not harvest any aquatic animal", or whatever it is that they actually meant.
I think the way it's outlined make sense to me, especially considering they end with a grab-bag provision of "any other factors in the defendant’s background that would mitigate against imposition of the death penalty". I forgot the term for this, but it ultimately gives the jury broad discretion to consider whatever might be relevant, but it sets the framing by first outlining concrete examples.
Sentencing necessarily has to be an open-ended question past a certain point, because it's just not possible for the legislation to preemptively anticipate every possible scenario. Since this particular provision is a question for the jury, it's also one that is intentionally grounded in common sense as reflected by the jury demographic. Most people will consider age either on the low (lacking maturity, etc) or high (executing a 78 year old might not make sense, or maybe they had cognitive decline). If you bring up "age 38 is a mitigating circumstance) to 11 random jurors, you're bound to get blank stares.
> They could have said "you may not harvest any aquatic animal"
You'll still need to define "aquatic animal" somewhere within the law, and you're just back to square one. Many laws pick a common word (like 'fish') and define it in a particular way for purposes of the legislation, for example in including dolphins and whales in fishing regulations. If you just used "aquatic animal" without defining it, would that include beavers, otters, or alligators? Would it include pelicans or penguins? Would invertebrates like squids and jellyfish count as "animals"? Does "animal" require the presence of a central nervous system and therefore exclude mollusk? And so on.
There's always the added risk that the term of art is defined differently in another chapter of the law. So the safest bet is to pick one term, and give it its own (often weird and unintuitive) definition within the relevant chapter.
If they wanted to let the jury do whatever it wants, why not just say that? This feels to me like saying "let X be 1, 3, 6, or any other number". Either the person writing the section is deeply confused about how variables work, or they're attempting to subtly bias the reader into thinking of X as being more likely one of those first three numbers.
I'm sure that the age line doesn't cause many problems *in practice*, but I don't think that bears much relation to its ambiguity in a technical sense. If there were to be a court case based on this, a lawyer could argue in favor of the 38 interpretation, and couldn't be refuted with "just read the law"; the refutation would have to be "yes you're technically correct, but most reasonable people all have the same inference of that that line is intended to mean, so we're going to ignore what's actually written in the law text". That's not unambiguous!
(And I doubt it's even that clear cut. I personally didn't think that old age would have been intended to qualify, I only considered young age. And I expect there'd be many arguments about where exactly from 16-21 to draw the line.)
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"Animal" has a well-accepted definition; why would the legislators need to come up with their own? Defining every word in a law is impossible, since words can only be defined in terms of other words. The words with rigorous scientific definitions are the ones *least* in need of clarification, not most. Mollusks are indisputably animals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mollusca
"Aquatic" I agree is ambiguous and should come with a more rigorous definition, but even if they had left it completely undefined, that *still* would have had better results. Bees are not aquatic by any reasonable interpretation of the term.
Here's another way of seeing the problem: Take whatever definition you believe needs to exist in the law, and then ask yourself why it needs to be applied to the word "fish". Why couldn't they just provide the definition on its own, and then say "you can't harvest anything that fits this definition"? If they needed a specific term for it, they could have come up with their own, like "class 5 unharvestable objects" or whatever; a term that doesn't have any other meanings and therefore couldn't lead to confusion from someone more familiar with a different meaning.
The only reasons I can think of to redefine the word "fish" are deceptive in nature; trying to create a motte-and-bailey where different people will understand "fish" in the law to mean different things. This could, for example, allow them to say in public statements "don't worry, our law only applies to fish, not anything else", gaining public acceptance while actually restricting much more than people think.
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I think you may be falling prey to a variant of the Barnum effect. I see this a lot in codes of conduct; someone crafts a document that is deliberately vague while using terms that each reader is likely to have their own feelings about and will interpret in a specific way. This avoids complaints about lack of guidance while allowing the people in charge to justify pretty much whatever they want when it comes to enforcement.
e.g. a rule of "our members must strive to create an inclusive community" will appeal to basically everyone. But exactly what behaviors are considered "inclusive" or "exclusive" varies wildly from person to person, so if the authority wants to exclude anyone they dislike or to exclude nobody at all, either one can be justified as "we're being inclusive".
> or they're attempting to subtly bias the reader into thinking of X as being more likely one of those first three numbers.
That's exactly right, it's called "illustrative enumeration". Jury instructions with this level of discretion shouldn't be seen as a representative example of legal ambiguity because it's simply impractical to enumerate every possible scenario. Given the broad landscape of mitigating circumstances, it's not feasible for the instructions to cover every potential factor. What's the minimum amount of factors that you'd think would reach unambiguity?
> falling prey to a variant of the Barnum effect
That's why legislation aims to be unambiguous about its definitions. A common canon of interpretation in criminal law is the "rule of lenity" where any ambiguity within the law must be resolved in favor of the defendant. The rule makes sense morally, but it also has the potential to turn legal codes into unenforceable swiss cheese if left unchecked.
Your criticism of the "fish are bees" isn't the lack of ambiguity, but that they arbitrarily redefined a word. Fine, but they still need to pick something as a shorthand to reference in other parts of the chapter, and I'm not sure "applicable organism" would be an improvement.
> What's the minimum amount of factors that you'd think would reach unambiguity?
There's no specific number of factors; it depends on what the factors actually are. This is like asking "what's the minimum lines of code needed to make this program run properly"; technically 1 I guess, but really it's just a completely unhelpful metric.
If you're asking how I would have written it, if the intention is "the jury can do whatever it believes to be reasonable", I would have just said that. If the intention is to require that the defendant being of certain ages always be considered a mitigating factor, I would have stated that explicitly and listed the ages. If the intention is "the jury can do whatever it wants, but we politely recommend that the jury consider the following to be mitigating factors", I would disagree with the underlying philosophy here, but it could still just say that. I don't see why "saying what you mean" is not an option?
My claim is not that the law should be completely formalized such that a computer could execute the judgement; that's obviously infeasible given the number of degrees of freedom involved. My claim is that legal documents are often much more ambiguous than they reasonably needed to be; it would frequently be possible to lower the total number of ambiguities while reducing their length.
Here's another example: 810.11 talks about "erecting signs upon land or upon trees upon land". "Upon trees" is what I've taken to calling a duct-tape solution (https://outsidetheasylum.blog/duct-tape-and-fence-posts/). Presumably what happened is it used to just say "upon land", and then someone put a sign on a tree and tried to argue that it wasn't on the land. But this fix is terrible, because now someone could put a sign up on, say, a large rock, and use the same argument. By adding the clarification of "upon trees", the law implies that "upon a tree" does not count as "upon the land", thus opening up myriad new loopholes. I'm not sure why they felt the need to add that clarification in the first place- I think most reasonable people would consider "on" to be transitive in this context- but if a clarification was needed they should have said "upon any item upon land" rather than restricting it to trees specifically.
Interesting that your link to Alexander's post is to a Less Wrong article of some 12 years ago -- any more recent discussions? Has he responded yet to your emailing him of your previous post?
In any case, nice example of the composition and division fallacies. Apropos of which, you might be interested in a case of the former from Helen Joyce:
HJ: "And if you're a mammal every part of your body is female ... but you know my hands are female my jaw is female ..."
She might just as well assert that if she was still a teenager then every part of her body is a teenager; similarly, that every part of her body is a vertebrate because she, presumably, has a spine.
Rather disconcerting position to take for someone ostensibly "trained" as a mathematician. Whole transgender issue and related dogma has corrupted the "thinking" of too many people -- or at least draw attention to their "cognitive distortions".
But, speaking of Alexander and Joyce and "white hats" with clay feet, you might also be interested in, or amused by, Scott's "defenestration" of me, apparently for challenging his inclusion of transwomen in the "women" cohort of his survey:
Steersman: "But my point is that Scott's presumed inclusion of a large percentage of males in the female cohort is going to give a false reading of the magnitude of that effect. Hardly an 'unbiased' sample."
Blocked me to boot; kind of a "so let it be written, so let it be done" anathematization. Though I suppose I should be thankful that he at least hasn't deleted all of my comments -- rather large number of people -- "women" for the most part for some strange unfathomable 'reason' but still supposedly on the "right side of history" -- who get quite "peeved" when one challenges their articles of faith. A couple of examples, a pair of lawyers in fact ... 😉🙂:
Rather "demented" idea that sex is "immutable". It is not just the transgendered who've turned the sexes into identities rather than labels for transitory reproductive abilities.
I 100% had you and our respective position on this topic in mind when I was writing this post. That's unfortunately impulsive behavior from Scott, I'm surprised by it. He hasn't responded to my previous draft yet but I assume he gets an avalanche of emails so I don't find it dispositive.
👍🙂 Then I guess I'll have to take a closer look at both of your posts and Scott's original. 🙂 Though, en passant, he periodically has his "Open Threads" so you might want to post a link or two there to your own.
But I quite agree with your "the result of fallacious reasoning and how vulnerable we are to it" -- the ubiquity of various logical fallacies and cognitive distortions. Relative to which, I recently ran across a fairly decent article that you might have some interest in:
"Culture or Biology? If This Sounds Interesting, You Might Be Confused"
Think the author -- Sebastian Watzl, a philosopher in Denmark if I remember correctly --has some good points about "psychological essentialism" -- arguably a major sticking point in the "debate" over sex and gender -- but very wide of the mark when it comes to the biological definitions for the sexes.
🙂 Maybe you think I was "guilty" of the "Sticker Fallacy" there -- and when you had me "100% in mind"? 😉🙂
Bit difficult for me to see the offending thread on Scott's post -- smartphone and Substack limitations -- but one might reasonably argue, Your Honour 🙂, that my "sexless eunuchs" was more of a rhetorical question, and both more accurate and relevant to my "large percentage of males in the female cohort" objection.
That he was "offended" by me calling a spade an effen shovel -- underlining the standard biological definitions -- should not have precluded him from addressing that "fatal flaw" in his survey.
It was probably the result of a snap judgment that is a sort of sticker shortcut on Scott's end, though not one I think was all that unreasonable.
Eunuchs were historically explicitly either slaves or the victim of a degrading mutilation in order to render them non-threatening and more servile, so the term has serious insulting connotations. To the extent that anyone believes having a sex makes them human, calling someone sexless would be viewed as a putdown or a way to say someone is lacking an essential human trait.
If someone is not familiar with your particular form of (admirable!) pedantry, they're likely to get the wrong impression.
So your "slaves ... or degrading mutilation" is something of a questionable stereotype. And underscores my argument that too many people are turning the sexes into "immutable" identities, something that, as you suggested, one MUST possess to qualify as human. "Deeply problematic" as Substacker and Quillette editor Jonathan Kay puts it.
But apropos of which, you've covered a lot of ground in your two posts, as has Alexander, which I may try to address later, maybe in a post or a Note. But that ground is "littered" -- probably not at all intentionally -- with rabbit holes of one sort or another that I could easily get lost in without some detailed and convoluted preambles, without some anchors in what's "real". Somewhat offhand, I kind of think you and Scott are saying, as you've suggested or more or less conceded, pretty much the same things -- some devils in the details there that are not easily grappled with.
But more importantly, you've raised a couple of salient and quite cogent points in your first post that might reasonably be highlighted here for later elaboration. First, and somewhat relevant to my defenestration by Scott, you had said:
YM: "The only effective response when someone is deadset on a categorization question is to directly ask why the categorization matters."
Amen to that. But that is largely my point with the eunuchs quip which was to emphasize that Scott was rather fraudulently lumping males in with females in his survey -- another poster had argued that some 12% of his "women" were transwomen. Maybe moot how much that would skew the conclusions but it should at least raise and justify a question or two -- or a dozen -- which he was clearly "reluctant" to consider. Somewhat "disconcerting" given the principles that he's nailed to his masthead, and which I've been tweeting and posting thither and yon for a coon's age:
SA: "Topics here tend to center vaguely around this meta-philosophical idea of how people evaluate arguments for their beliefs, and especially whether this process is spectacularly broken in a way that may or may not doom us all."
But both you and Scott have quite reasonably and commendably drawn attention to some serious problems in how we "evaluate arguments for our beliefs". And that is no more evident in how we stipulate and determine membership in the sex categories. As to why that "matters", one might reasonably argue that America -- in particular, although both the UK and Canada similarly -- are at something of a crossroads, at a tipping point on that issue. Something of a watershed moment, and it's rather moot which side has the greater number of precipitous cliffs, bottomless pits, and "sloughs of despond". Apropos of which, something from a site that should warm the cockles of your heart ... even if only as a case of "politics and strange bedfellows" ... 😉🙂
A major topic in itself that I can only touch on briefly here, but, as a lawyer, you may wish to consider weighing-in on the efforts of various States to write what are ostensibly -- though, in fact, quite unscientific and egregiously fraudulent -- "biological" definitions for the sexes into law:
NPR: "These states are narrowly defining who is 'female' and 'male' in law"
Not too unreasonable to argue that much of the transgender clusterfuck, at least in the UK with their "Gender Recognition Act", is due to various so-called "lawyers" and "politicians" trying to proclaim, rather imperiously and in effect, that the tides can only come in between the hours of 2 to 4 P.M., Monday to Friday ... Egregious Lysenkoism, corrupting biology and science for the purposes of questionable social policy.
I've already broached that issue with a couple of other lawyers, although they're all of the "female persuasion" and for most of whom "sex is immutable!!11!!" is an article of faith, and a heresy to even question. And for whom "how dare you!, how DARE you deny my humanity?!! 🙄" is the go-to response. "Doomed", I say. But you at least more or less accept it as something of a questionable hypothesis.
But of a piece with the foregoing is this somewhat "problematic" comment of yours from your first post:
YM: "... but he’s misidentifying why it’s a problem because the concept of 'centrality' is both incoherent and irrelevant."
Bit murky as to exactly what and how Scott is thinking about that idea in his post, but this might provide an avenue into where I think you're going off into the weeds with that comment of yours, the "incoherent and irrelevant" bit in particular:
SA: "I declare the Worst Argument In The World to be this: 'X is in a category whose archetypal member gives us a certain emotional reaction. Therefore, we should apply that emotional reaction to X, even though it is not a central category member.' ...."
Categorization is a rather complex issue with any number of pitfalls as you've both drawn attention to. But I've found that the dichotomy between polythetic and monothetic types -- an idea originally courtesy of Colin Wright -- provides a way of separating wheat and chaff, and which I've elaborated on in some detail here:
But the Cole's Notes version is that polythetic categories constitute a spectrum -- there are many sufficient properties that grant category membership, only one of which is necessary -- whereas monothetic categories stipulate single necessary AND sufficient conditions. "woman" -- as "adult human female" -- is a monothetic category since one must be adult AND human AND female (produces ova, right now) to so qualify. Whereas "woman" -- as a gender, as anyone who exhibits any trait typical of adult human females (sex) -- constitutes a spectrum, a multitude of conditions that are sufficient to grant category membership: one puts on a dress and one becomes, one "performs", a woman. Though it might be emphasized that there are two quite incompatible definitions there even if they share the same name -- which causes its own problems. Something can't be both A and Not-A, at least simultaneously.
So that is, at least to some extent, one part of your "incoherent and irrelevant". Another part is highlighted by Scott's "a category whose archetypal member" with "archetypal" meaning "very typical of a certain kind of person or thing".
And, as a way of illustrating both those parts, consider an analogy with the visible colour spectrum. Each of the colours in the spectrum -- from red to violet with green as more or less the midpoint -- constitutes a "sufficient" condition for category membership, i.e., wavelengths from 380 to 750 nm.
But suppose that some of the colours are more common than others -- maybe the chemical compounds and elements that produce red and violet are uncommon and that the compounds and elements that produce green are much more prevalent. One might then say that "green is the archetypal colour", that by population distributions at least, it is more "central" with a higher frequency, and with the other colours falling off on either side in a typical normal distribution. One might then say that one is engaging in "colourism" by using such stereotypes, that one is "privileging" green. But not at all justified to say that "centrality" is "incoherent or irrelevant", even if it's somewhat obscure.
In any case, a rather lengthy introduction to maybe a more detailed, though quite important discussion of more than passing relevance. But as some further "grist for the mill", you might have some interest in a Quillette post by "philosopher" Alex Byrne who I think is more a part of the problem with his own bastardization of the biological definitions -- a rather serious social problem with far reaching consequences:
Many of their posts are generally paywalled, at least to comment, but that one, and the comments -- mine included, should be visible; I expect I can get an archive copy for you if not. But while I've not used my Steersman handle, it should be obvious which comment is mine ... 😉🙂
Yes, I don't deny at all that you raised a substantive point regarding how Scott lumped males in with females in his survey. I readily concede that my stereotype about eunuchs might not be accurate, but that's besides the point since I was citing "how the term is likely to be interpreted" rather than "historically accurate interpretation".
I don't quite understand your objection to my criticism on centrality being "incoherent and irrelevant". I think the color spectrum analogy is great because my point is that the category boundaries we pick (and therefore what our 'central' archetype would be) is culturally arbitrary and ambiguous. Japanese doesn't distinguish green from blue, and Russian has two different words for light blue and dark blue. Even within the same language, there will be disputes over the exact boundaries between colors.
Progress! 🙂 I hope you raise it with Scott should you happen to be chatting with him ... 😉🙂
> "... that's besides the point since I was citing 'how the term is likely to be interpreted' ..."
So what if someone "misinterprets" the term? So what if they get "offended"? You think we should be "kind"? You said yourself that "There are actually valid purposes to these types of semantic arguments, ... or when someone wants to draw attention to similarities between categories that may otherwise get drowned out." The categories in question being for man and woman, for male and female.
Scott was, as you've acknowledged, lumping "males" in with "females". One of my eunuch comments -- i.e., "If 12% of the 'women' respondents are male, or sexless eunuchs as the case may be ..., then of course the 'final conclusions' will be affected." -- was more or less designed to fire a shot across his bow. He could have insisted those "eunuchs" were still male -- the typical response -- but then he's shooting himself in the feet. Maybe he realized that he'd painted himself into a corner so his only response was to ban me?
Not at all impressed with him, at least on that account.
> "I don't quite understand your objection to my criticism on centrality being 'incoherent and irrelevant'. ...."
The $64,000 question -- about $300 grand in today's money. 🙂 As I've said, I think you've raised some good points, but I also think you've gone off into the weeds on a number of points, and are misunderstanding Scott's argument which might be more because of his sloppy phrasing; more on which later.
But your rather disingenuous red herrings -- "Japanese doesn't distinguish green from blue", and related comments -- isn't a good sign of being willing to address my arguments. Apropos of which, you might take gander at the Wiki article on the visible spectrum -- the dividing line between red and orange can be specified, if desired or needed, to the billionth of a meter or less; other colours likewise:
The issue isn't how we can specify category membership -- which can be tailor-made for the purposes at hand. The issue is about the uses and misuses of those definitions and criteria for category membership. Which brings me to what appears to be your "misinterpretation" of his argument, this statement of yours in particular in response to his:
SA: "Therefore, we should apply that emotional reaction to X, even though it is not a central category member."
YM: "No one who engages in the Worst Argument will ever ever ever concede the bolded clause, because doing so completely nullifies their attempted sophistry!"
Of course they won't -- no criminal engaged in a bait-and-switch wants their marks to realize that; that's their subtext, that's the misstep they want the marks to make. That is what they want OTHERS to do -- they are, as you've pointed out, trying to get others to mis-apply that emotional reaction so the "marks" will make the wrong conclusion. I kind of think you & Scott are saying pretty much the same things -- I just think his "we" is, somewhat sloppily, referring to his interlocutors, his opponents in an argument, not to himself.
Which brings me to your "criticism on centrality". Which I'd tried to address with the concept of polythetic categories as spectra. You have basically agreed that "criminal" is such a spectrum by recognizing the many different types of crimes that are on the books, some more odious and reprehensible -- and/or simply more common or prevalent, at least in the public's eye -- than others. In which case one might create a graph showing those types and whatever other ranking we might think is relevant and useful.
Not sure how much statistics you have under your belt but I'd written a "primer" on the topic that uses the heights of men and women for illustration purposes -- men are, on average, some four inches taller than women:
And here are a couple of graphs showing, first, the percentage of the female population in each 5 cm (2 inch) wide bin, and, secondly, a stylized or theoretical graph showing the percentages for males and females:
But, in the first case, the 160 to 165 cm "bin" is the most common or the average; it has the largest percentage of the female population in it, and is "central" -- which is largely what Scott seems to be getting at. Why I'd quoted the definition for "archetypal": "very typical of a certain kind of person or thing". That is what the average IS -- the most salient or most typical subsection, or subtype, of the category in question -- "height" in this case.
But too many people don't seem to realize that there are differences between the subtypes and the averages in terms of population percentages. Why so many people will say or suggest or infer that, for example, ALL men are taller than ALL women -- which is simply not the case as indicated in the second graph above. You may be able to explain that with your somewhat idiosyncratic use of the "fallacy of composition", but Scott's "point of view" is apparently based more on a statistical distribution and the concept of stereotyping: you say po-tat-oe; he says po-ta- toe.
Why I think your "adjudicating agreement on which archetypes should be central is beyond hopeless" is somewhat wide of the mark. You might rail against what the public sees as the most "central" archetype and how they reach that "conclusion". But the point is that they DO have that archetype, that subtype (e.g., the 160 to 165 cm bin), and its often pejorative connotations in mind -- often for some credible reasons as in the population height analogy -- when you say "criminal". Which are used by political opportunists for their own ends -- as you put it, "a 'subtle' way of shifting someone's stance by altering the foundation of their argument".
But, to reiterate, it seems to me that you're saying "the real issue is not the centrality of the label but the use of connotation-heavy labels as a way to shortcut substantive debate". And Scott is apparently saying that the negative connotations of the most "central" or most typical subcategory are being applied to other non-central subcategories -- e.g., to female height bins other than the 160 to 165 average -- to "shortcut substantive debate": stereotyping writ large. Kind of think it would take a Philadelphia lawyer some time -- which I don't have a great deal of -- to track down any substantive differences in those two positions or phrasings.
> And if you're a mammal every part of your body is female ... but you know my hands are female my jaw is female ...
I don't know the context, but this seems like a reasonable statement to me. The DNA contained in all the body parts is female, their shape and size may be slightly different from their male counterparts, etc.
Like, if someone finds a bone on the ground and says "oh, that's a female pelvic bone", that seems like a sensible statement to me. Everyone understands what they mean.
I agree with Steersman on this issue. If the definition of male/female is based on reproductive capacity, that label can only apply to reproductive organs or to organism that have those organs.
It's still accurate to say "this is a pelvic bone that is indicative of female phenotype" but I think it's nonsensical to claim the bone itself is male/female unless you expand the definition. If someone with fully working testicles was born with a physical deformity and ended up with a pelvic bone that you "typically find in the human female phenotype", it would be weird to claim his pelvic bone is "female".
Which you may want to take close look at, particularly my comments about the categories, "teenager" and "vertebrate". Do you think it's logically coherent to say, as Joyce is in effect saying, that, if she was still a teenager, every part of her body is a teenager? Is a vertebrate? Same thing with the categories "male" and "female".
You might also note the standard biological definitions, "female" in particular:
"Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the larger gametes in anisogamous systems."
What's necessary to qualify as a female is to be producing large gametes. Which is, of course, impossible for our arms and legs and kidneys to do; only whole bodies do so.
ETA. In addition to which, your "female pelvic bone" is the pelvic bone OF a (deceased) female. You might note the standard definitions for "female" and "male", the latter of which is a bit clearer on that score:
"male (adjective): Of or denoting the sex that produces gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring."
Kinda think that first "of" -- a preposition "expressing the relationship between a part and a whole" -- emphasizes that, in phrases like "male brain" and "female pelvis", the nouns "brain" and "pelvis" are parts of individuals who are male and female. Not that brains and pelvises themselves are males and females.
> Lawyers are notoriously allergic to linguistic ambiguity, as evidenced by the sheer cliffs of verbosity present within dense and convoluted legislation and statutory codes.
I'm surprised to hear you have this impression. Whenever I try to read a legal document I rapidly get frustrated at how incredibly vague it is, or how they define things in inane ways, like the "bees are fish" example. The latter could have been avoided by simply referring to a well-established biological definition of "fish", but this was not done presumably because it wouldn't seem "official enough", or they actually wanted to smuggle non-fish creatures into the category.
As someone used to reading formal texts like math and code, legal text strikes me as of a different kind entirely. It's not trying to actually *be* rigorous and unambiguous, it's trying to *appear* complicated with pointless jargon (similar to a lot of academic papers nowadays), so as to intimidate the common man into not pointing out how stupid it is, and allowing legislators to later argue for an interpretation that they wouldn't want to argue for when getting the bill passed.
I'd be curious to see an example of what you saw as incredibly vague. Maybe I should've clarified that lawyers are allergic to ambiguity because of the very real danger that others will exploit it.
When I read legal text, especially statutory codes, it's almost like seeing the matrix green letters for me. I can very quickly surmise things like "oh they likely added this clause because someone got cute". That's why when California passed the regulations for fish and wildlife, they didn't want people to get cute regarding fishing regulations and argue in court "well you said I couldn't *fish*, but all I did was harvest 800 clams which clearly are not a fish" and so they expand the list to be over-comprehensive.
> I'd be curious to see an example of what you saw as incredibly vague
Sure, a recent example I came across was in section 921.141 of the Florida statutes, on the requirements for capital punishment. (http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm) A list of "mitigating circumstances" is provided, and while I think most of them are unnecessarily vague, the most egregious is the one that only says "The age of the defendant at the time of the crime." It doesn't actually tell you *what* ages are considered a mitigating circumstance. Presumably most juries will interpret this to mean "they were less than 18" or similar, but I'd be perfectly following the letter of the law if I argued "the defendant is 38, and I believe that that age is a mitigating circumstance."
(Imagine if it listed "the defendant's hair color" instead. Everyone has a hair color, so without specifying how one color is supposed to be treated differently from another, this is totally meaningless.)
> they didn't want people to get cute regarding fishing regulations and argue in court "well you said I couldn't *fish*, but all I did was harvest 800 clams which clearly are not a fish" and so they expand the list to be over-comprehensive.
Why would they choose such a strange way of addressing that, redefining the word "fish" to mean something entirely different from its English meaning? They could have said "you may not harvest any aquatic animal", or whatever it is that they actually meant.
> Florida mitigating circumstances
I think the way it's outlined make sense to me, especially considering they end with a grab-bag provision of "any other factors in the defendant’s background that would mitigate against imposition of the death penalty". I forgot the term for this, but it ultimately gives the jury broad discretion to consider whatever might be relevant, but it sets the framing by first outlining concrete examples.
Sentencing necessarily has to be an open-ended question past a certain point, because it's just not possible for the legislation to preemptively anticipate every possible scenario. Since this particular provision is a question for the jury, it's also one that is intentionally grounded in common sense as reflected by the jury demographic. Most people will consider age either on the low (lacking maturity, etc) or high (executing a 78 year old might not make sense, or maybe they had cognitive decline). If you bring up "age 38 is a mitigating circumstance) to 11 random jurors, you're bound to get blank stares.
> They could have said "you may not harvest any aquatic animal"
You'll still need to define "aquatic animal" somewhere within the law, and you're just back to square one. Many laws pick a common word (like 'fish') and define it in a particular way for purposes of the legislation, for example in including dolphins and whales in fishing regulations. If you just used "aquatic animal" without defining it, would that include beavers, otters, or alligators? Would it include pelicans or penguins? Would invertebrates like squids and jellyfish count as "animals"? Does "animal" require the presence of a central nervous system and therefore exclude mollusk? And so on.
There's always the added risk that the term of art is defined differently in another chapter of the law. So the safest bet is to pick one term, and give it its own (often weird and unintuitive) definition within the relevant chapter.
If they wanted to let the jury do whatever it wants, why not just say that? This feels to me like saying "let X be 1, 3, 6, or any other number". Either the person writing the section is deeply confused about how variables work, or they're attempting to subtly bias the reader into thinking of X as being more likely one of those first three numbers.
I'm sure that the age line doesn't cause many problems *in practice*, but I don't think that bears much relation to its ambiguity in a technical sense. If there were to be a court case based on this, a lawyer could argue in favor of the 38 interpretation, and couldn't be refuted with "just read the law"; the refutation would have to be "yes you're technically correct, but most reasonable people all have the same inference of that that line is intended to mean, so we're going to ignore what's actually written in the law text". That's not unambiguous!
(And I doubt it's even that clear cut. I personally didn't think that old age would have been intended to qualify, I only considered young age. And I expect there'd be many arguments about where exactly from 16-21 to draw the line.)
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"Animal" has a well-accepted definition; why would the legislators need to come up with their own? Defining every word in a law is impossible, since words can only be defined in terms of other words. The words with rigorous scientific definitions are the ones *least* in need of clarification, not most. Mollusks are indisputably animals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mollusca
"Aquatic" I agree is ambiguous and should come with a more rigorous definition, but even if they had left it completely undefined, that *still* would have had better results. Bees are not aquatic by any reasonable interpretation of the term.
Here's another way of seeing the problem: Take whatever definition you believe needs to exist in the law, and then ask yourself why it needs to be applied to the word "fish". Why couldn't they just provide the definition on its own, and then say "you can't harvest anything that fits this definition"? If they needed a specific term for it, they could have come up with their own, like "class 5 unharvestable objects" or whatever; a term that doesn't have any other meanings and therefore couldn't lead to confusion from someone more familiar with a different meaning.
The only reasons I can think of to redefine the word "fish" are deceptive in nature; trying to create a motte-and-bailey where different people will understand "fish" in the law to mean different things. This could, for example, allow them to say in public statements "don't worry, our law only applies to fish, not anything else", gaining public acceptance while actually restricting much more than people think.
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I think you may be falling prey to a variant of the Barnum effect. I see this a lot in codes of conduct; someone crafts a document that is deliberately vague while using terms that each reader is likely to have their own feelings about and will interpret in a specific way. This avoids complaints about lack of guidance while allowing the people in charge to justify pretty much whatever they want when it comes to enforcement.
e.g. a rule of "our members must strive to create an inclusive community" will appeal to basically everyone. But exactly what behaviors are considered "inclusive" or "exclusive" varies wildly from person to person, so if the authority wants to exclude anyone they dislike or to exclude nobody at all, either one can be justified as "we're being inclusive".
> or they're attempting to subtly bias the reader into thinking of X as being more likely one of those first three numbers.
That's exactly right, it's called "illustrative enumeration". Jury instructions with this level of discretion shouldn't be seen as a representative example of legal ambiguity because it's simply impractical to enumerate every possible scenario. Given the broad landscape of mitigating circumstances, it's not feasible for the instructions to cover every potential factor. What's the minimum amount of factors that you'd think would reach unambiguity?
> falling prey to a variant of the Barnum effect
That's why legislation aims to be unambiguous about its definitions. A common canon of interpretation in criminal law is the "rule of lenity" where any ambiguity within the law must be resolved in favor of the defendant. The rule makes sense morally, but it also has the potential to turn legal codes into unenforceable swiss cheese if left unchecked.
Your criticism of the "fish are bees" isn't the lack of ambiguity, but that they arbitrarily redefined a word. Fine, but they still need to pick something as a shorthand to reference in other parts of the chapter, and I'm not sure "applicable organism" would be an improvement.
> What's the minimum amount of factors that you'd think would reach unambiguity?
There's no specific number of factors; it depends on what the factors actually are. This is like asking "what's the minimum lines of code needed to make this program run properly"; technically 1 I guess, but really it's just a completely unhelpful metric.
If you're asking how I would have written it, if the intention is "the jury can do whatever it believes to be reasonable", I would have just said that. If the intention is to require that the defendant being of certain ages always be considered a mitigating factor, I would have stated that explicitly and listed the ages. If the intention is "the jury can do whatever it wants, but we politely recommend that the jury consider the following to be mitigating factors", I would disagree with the underlying philosophy here, but it could still just say that. I don't see why "saying what you mean" is not an option?
My claim is not that the law should be completely formalized such that a computer could execute the judgement; that's obviously infeasible given the number of degrees of freedom involved. My claim is that legal documents are often much more ambiguous than they reasonably needed to be; it would frequently be possible to lower the total number of ambiguities while reducing their length.
Here's another example: 810.11 talks about "erecting signs upon land or upon trees upon land". "Upon trees" is what I've taken to calling a duct-tape solution (https://outsidetheasylum.blog/duct-tape-and-fence-posts/). Presumably what happened is it used to just say "upon land", and then someone put a sign on a tree and tried to argue that it wasn't on the land. But this fix is terrible, because now someone could put a sign up on, say, a large rock, and use the same argument. By adding the clarification of "upon trees", the law implies that "upon a tree" does not count as "upon the land", thus opening up myriad new loopholes. I'm not sure why they felt the need to add that clarification in the first place- I think most reasonable people would consider "on" to be transitive in this context- but if a clarification was needed they should have said "upon any item upon land" rather than restricting it to trees specifically.
Interesting that your link to Alexander's post is to a Less Wrong article of some 12 years ago -- any more recent discussions? Has he responded yet to your emailing him of your previous post?
In any case, nice example of the composition and division fallacies. Apropos of which, you might be interested in a case of the former from Helen Joyce:
HJ: "And if you're a mammal every part of your body is female ... but you know my hands are female my jaw is female ..."
She might just as well assert that if she was still a teenager then every part of her body is a teenager; similarly, that every part of her body is a vertebrate because she, presumably, has a spine.
https://substack.com/@humanuseofhumanbeings/note/c-21582743
Rather disconcerting position to take for someone ostensibly "trained" as a mathematician. Whole transgender issue and related dogma has corrupted the "thinking" of too many people -- or at least draw attention to their "cognitive distortions".
But, speaking of Alexander and Joyce and "white hats" with clay feet, you might also be interested in, or amused by, Scott's "defenestration" of me, apparently for challenging his inclusion of transwomen in the "women" cohort of his survey:
Steersman: "But my point is that Scott's presumed inclusion of a large percentage of males in the female cohort is going to give a false reading of the magnitude of that effect. Hardly an 'unbiased' sample."
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/x-fact-check-does-gender-integration/comment/49768681
SA: "Banned for unnecessarily making this about their opinions of trans people. I won't ban other people who debate transgender in relevant threads."
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/x-fact-check-does-gender-integration/comment/55522545
Blocked me to boot; kind of a "so let it be written, so let it be done" anathematization. Though I suppose I should be thankful that he at least hasn't deleted all of my comments -- rather large number of people -- "women" for the most part for some strange unfathomable 'reason' but still supposedly on the "right side of history" -- who get quite "peeved" when one challenges their articles of faith. A couple of examples, a pair of lawyers in fact ... 😉🙂:
https://alessandraasteriti.substack.com/p/reviewing-the-cass-review/comment/54398724
https://sarahphillimore.substack.com/p/my-first-space-how-did-it-go/comment/39281981
Rather "demented" idea that sex is "immutable". It is not just the transgendered who've turned the sexes into identities rather than labels for transitory reproductive abilities.
I 100% had you and our respective position on this topic in mind when I was writing this post. That's unfortunately impulsive behavior from Scott, I'm surprised by it. He hasn't responded to my previous draft yet but I assume he gets an avalanche of emails so I don't find it dispositive.
👍🙂 Then I guess I'll have to take a closer look at both of your posts and Scott's original. 🙂 Though, en passant, he periodically has his "Open Threads" so you might want to post a link or two there to your own.
But I quite agree with your "the result of fallacious reasoning and how vulnerable we are to it" -- the ubiquity of various logical fallacies and cognitive distortions. Relative to which, I recently ran across a fairly decent article that you might have some interest in:
"Culture or Biology? If This Sounds Interesting, You Might Be Confused"
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-33099-6_4
Paywalled but author has his own website and article posted thereon:
https://www.hf.uio.no/ifikk/english/people/aca/philosophy/tenured/sebaswat/watzl_culture_biology.pdf
Think the author -- Sebastian Watzl, a philosopher in Denmark if I remember correctly --has some good points about "psychological essentialism" -- arguably a major sticking point in the "debate" over sex and gender -- but very wide of the mark when it comes to the biological definitions for the sexes.
Having read the offending comment, I do believe you unnecessarily clouded your point with the "sexless eunuchs" reference.
🙂 Maybe you think I was "guilty" of the "Sticker Fallacy" there -- and when you had me "100% in mind"? 😉🙂
Bit difficult for me to see the offending thread on Scott's post -- smartphone and Substack limitations -- but one might reasonably argue, Your Honour 🙂, that my "sexless eunuchs" was more of a rhetorical question, and both more accurate and relevant to my "large percentage of males in the female cohort" objection.
That he was "offended" by me calling a spade an effen shovel -- underlining the standard biological definitions -- should not have precluded him from addressing that "fatal flaw" in his survey.
It was probably the result of a snap judgment that is a sort of sticker shortcut on Scott's end, though not one I think was all that unreasonable.
Eunuchs were historically explicitly either slaves or the victim of a degrading mutilation in order to render them non-threatening and more servile, so the term has serious insulting connotations. To the extent that anyone believes having a sex makes them human, calling someone sexless would be viewed as a putdown or a way to say someone is lacking an essential human trait.
If someone is not familiar with your particular form of (admirable!) pedantry, they're likely to get the wrong impression.
> "(admirable!) pedantry ..."
Thanks. I think ... 🤔 A left-handed compliment? 😉🙂
Though, somewhat en passant, you might consider "Hidden Power: The Palace Eunuchs of Imperial China":
https://www.usrf.org/news/010308-hiddenpower.html
So your "slaves ... or degrading mutilation" is something of a questionable stereotype. And underscores my argument that too many people are turning the sexes into "immutable" identities, something that, as you suggested, one MUST possess to qualify as human. "Deeply problematic" as Substacker and Quillette editor Jonathan Kay puts it.
But apropos of which, you've covered a lot of ground in your two posts, as has Alexander, which I may try to address later, maybe in a post or a Note. But that ground is "littered" -- probably not at all intentionally -- with rabbit holes of one sort or another that I could easily get lost in without some detailed and convoluted preambles, without some anchors in what's "real". Somewhat offhand, I kind of think you and Scott are saying, as you've suggested or more or less conceded, pretty much the same things -- some devils in the details there that are not easily grappled with.
But more importantly, you've raised a couple of salient and quite cogent points in your first post that might reasonably be highlighted here for later elaboration. First, and somewhat relevant to my defenestration by Scott, you had said:
YM: "The only effective response when someone is deadset on a categorization question is to directly ask why the categorization matters."
Amen to that. But that is largely my point with the eunuchs quip which was to emphasize that Scott was rather fraudulently lumping males in with females in his survey -- another poster had argued that some 12% of his "women" were transwomen. Maybe moot how much that would skew the conclusions but it should at least raise and justify a question or two -- or a dozen -- which he was clearly "reluctant" to consider. Somewhat "disconcerting" given the principles that he's nailed to his masthead, and which I've been tweeting and posting thither and yon for a coon's age:
SA: "Topics here tend to center vaguely around this meta-philosophical idea of how people evaluate arguments for their beliefs, and especially whether this process is spectacularly broken in a way that may or may not doom us all."
https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/20/writing-advice/
"Doomed! I say, doomed!" 😉🙂
But both you and Scott have quite reasonably and commendably drawn attention to some serious problems in how we "evaluate arguments for our beliefs". And that is no more evident in how we stipulate and determine membership in the sex categories. As to why that "matters", one might reasonably argue that America -- in particular, although both the UK and Canada similarly -- are at something of a crossroads, at a tipping point on that issue. Something of a watershed moment, and it's rather moot which side has the greater number of precipitous cliffs, bottomless pits, and "sloughs of despond". Apropos of which, something from a site that should warm the cockles of your heart ... even if only as a case of "politics and strange bedfellows" ... 😉🙂
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/6/20/no-party-deserves-the-feminist-vote-in-the-uk-election
A major topic in itself that I can only touch on briefly here, but, as a lawyer, you may wish to consider weighing-in on the efforts of various States to write what are ostensibly -- though, in fact, quite unscientific and egregiously fraudulent -- "biological" definitions for the sexes into law:
NPR: "These states are narrowly defining who is 'female' and 'male' in law"
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/03/1172821119/kansas-montana-tennessee-narrowly-define-sex-female-male-transgender-intersex
Not too unreasonable to argue that much of the transgender clusterfuck, at least in the UK with their "Gender Recognition Act", is due to various so-called "lawyers" and "politicians" trying to proclaim, rather imperiously and in effect, that the tides can only come in between the hours of 2 to 4 P.M., Monday to Friday ... Egregious Lysenkoism, corrupting biology and science for the purposes of questionable social policy.
I've already broached that issue with a couple of other lawyers, although they're all of the "female persuasion" and for most of whom "sex is immutable!!11!!" is an article of faith, and a heresy to even question. And for whom "how dare you!, how DARE you deny my humanity?!! 🙄" is the go-to response. "Doomed", I say. But you at least more or less accept it as something of a questionable hypothesis.
But of a piece with the foregoing is this somewhat "problematic" comment of yours from your first post:
YM: "... but he’s misidentifying why it’s a problem because the concept of 'centrality' is both incoherent and irrelevant."
Bit murky as to exactly what and how Scott is thinking about that idea in his post, but this might provide an avenue into where I think you're going off into the weeds with that comment of yours, the "incoherent and irrelevant" bit in particular:
SA: "I declare the Worst Argument In The World to be this: 'X is in a category whose archetypal member gives us a certain emotional reaction. Therefore, we should apply that emotional reaction to X, even though it is not a central category member.' ...."
Categorization is a rather complex issue with any number of pitfalls as you've both drawn attention to. But I've found that the dichotomy between polythetic and monothetic types -- an idea originally courtesy of Colin Wright -- provides a way of separating wheat and chaff, and which I've elaborated on in some detail here:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/binarists-vs-spectrumists
But the Cole's Notes version is that polythetic categories constitute a spectrum -- there are many sufficient properties that grant category membership, only one of which is necessary -- whereas monothetic categories stipulate single necessary AND sufficient conditions. "woman" -- as "adult human female" -- is a monothetic category since one must be adult AND human AND female (produces ova, right now) to so qualify. Whereas "woman" -- as a gender, as anyone who exhibits any trait typical of adult human females (sex) -- constitutes a spectrum, a multitude of conditions that are sufficient to grant category membership: one puts on a dress and one becomes, one "performs", a woman. Though it might be emphasized that there are two quite incompatible definitions there even if they share the same name -- which causes its own problems. Something can't be both A and Not-A, at least simultaneously.
So that is, at least to some extent, one part of your "incoherent and irrelevant". Another part is highlighted by Scott's "a category whose archetypal member" with "archetypal" meaning "very typical of a certain kind of person or thing".
And, as a way of illustrating both those parts, consider an analogy with the visible colour spectrum. Each of the colours in the spectrum -- from red to violet with green as more or less the midpoint -- constitutes a "sufficient" condition for category membership, i.e., wavelengths from 380 to 750 nm.
But suppose that some of the colours are more common than others -- maybe the chemical compounds and elements that produce red and violet are uncommon and that the compounds and elements that produce green are much more prevalent. One might then say that "green is the archetypal colour", that by population distributions at least, it is more "central" with a higher frequency, and with the other colours falling off on either side in a typical normal distribution. One might then say that one is engaging in "colourism" by using such stereotypes, that one is "privileging" green. But not at all justified to say that "centrality" is "incoherent or irrelevant", even if it's somewhat obscure.
In any case, a rather lengthy introduction to maybe a more detailed, though quite important discussion of more than passing relevance. But as some further "grist for the mill", you might have some interest in a Quillette post by "philosopher" Alex Byrne who I think is more a part of the problem with his own bastardization of the biological definitions -- a rather serious social problem with far reaching consequences:
https://quillette.com/2024/06/16/in-defence-of-john-money/
Many of their posts are generally paywalled, at least to comment, but that one, and the comments -- mine included, should be visible; I expect I can get an archive copy for you if not. But while I've not used my Steersman handle, it should be obvious which comment is mine ... 😉🙂
Yes, I don't deny at all that you raised a substantive point regarding how Scott lumped males in with females in his survey. I readily concede that my stereotype about eunuchs might not be accurate, but that's besides the point since I was citing "how the term is likely to be interpreted" rather than "historically accurate interpretation".
I don't quite understand your objection to my criticism on centrality being "incoherent and irrelevant". I think the color spectrum analogy is great because my point is that the category boundaries we pick (and therefore what our 'central' archetype would be) is culturally arbitrary and ambiguous. Japanese doesn't distinguish green from blue, and Russian has two different words for light blue and dark blue. Even within the same language, there will be disputes over the exact boundaries between colors.
> "... you raised a substantive point ...."
Progress! 🙂 I hope you raise it with Scott should you happen to be chatting with him ... 😉🙂
> "... that's besides the point since I was citing 'how the term is likely to be interpreted' ..."
So what if someone "misinterprets" the term? So what if they get "offended"? You think we should be "kind"? You said yourself that "There are actually valid purposes to these types of semantic arguments, ... or when someone wants to draw attention to similarities between categories that may otherwise get drowned out." The categories in question being for man and woman, for male and female.
Scott was, as you've acknowledged, lumping "males" in with "females". One of my eunuch comments -- i.e., "If 12% of the 'women' respondents are male, or sexless eunuchs as the case may be ..., then of course the 'final conclusions' will be affected." -- was more or less designed to fire a shot across his bow. He could have insisted those "eunuchs" were still male -- the typical response -- but then he's shooting himself in the feet. Maybe he realized that he'd painted himself into a corner so his only response was to ban me?
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/x-fact-check-does-gender-integration/comment/49643596
Not at all impressed with him, at least on that account.
> "I don't quite understand your objection to my criticism on centrality being 'incoherent and irrelevant'. ...."
The $64,000 question -- about $300 grand in today's money. 🙂 As I've said, I think you've raised some good points, but I also think you've gone off into the weeds on a number of points, and are misunderstanding Scott's argument which might be more because of his sloppy phrasing; more on which later.
But your rather disingenuous red herrings -- "Japanese doesn't distinguish green from blue", and related comments -- isn't a good sign of being willing to address my arguments. Apropos of which, you might take gander at the Wiki article on the visible spectrum -- the dividing line between red and orange can be specified, if desired or needed, to the billionth of a meter or less; other colours likewise:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_spectrum#Spectral_colors
The issue isn't how we can specify category membership -- which can be tailor-made for the purposes at hand. The issue is about the uses and misuses of those definitions and criteria for category membership. Which brings me to what appears to be your "misinterpretation" of his argument, this statement of yours in particular in response to his:
SA: "Therefore, we should apply that emotional reaction to X, even though it is not a central category member."
YM: "No one who engages in the Worst Argument will ever ever ever concede the bolded clause, because doing so completely nullifies their attempted sophistry!"
Of course they won't -- no criminal engaged in a bait-and-switch wants their marks to realize that; that's their subtext, that's the misstep they want the marks to make. That is what they want OTHERS to do -- they are, as you've pointed out, trying to get others to mis-apply that emotional reaction so the "marks" will make the wrong conclusion. I kind of think you & Scott are saying pretty much the same things -- I just think his "we" is, somewhat sloppily, referring to his interlocutors, his opponents in an argument, not to himself.
Which brings me to your "criticism on centrality". Which I'd tried to address with the concept of polythetic categories as spectra. You have basically agreed that "criminal" is such a spectrum by recognizing the many different types of crimes that are on the books, some more odious and reprehensible -- and/or simply more common or prevalent, at least in the public's eye -- than others. In which case one might create a graph showing those types and whatever other ranking we might think is relevant and useful.
Not sure how much statistics you have under your belt but I'd written a "primer" on the topic that uses the heights of men and women for illustration purposes -- men are, on average, some four inches taller than women:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/lies-damned-lies-and-statistics
And here are a couple of graphs showing, first, the percentage of the female population in each 5 cm (2 inch) wide bin, and, secondly, a stylized or theoretical graph showing the percentages for males and females:
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8766b394-fb9b-4a4d-94fa-f5cf5c9f6dcd_452x363.jpeg
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F023d2103-e46a-4d56-ab3e-2ef016f79504_590x457.jpeg
But, in the first case, the 160 to 165 cm "bin" is the most common or the average; it has the largest percentage of the female population in it, and is "central" -- which is largely what Scott seems to be getting at. Why I'd quoted the definition for "archetypal": "very typical of a certain kind of person or thing". That is what the average IS -- the most salient or most typical subsection, or subtype, of the category in question -- "height" in this case.
But too many people don't seem to realize that there are differences between the subtypes and the averages in terms of population percentages. Why so many people will say or suggest or infer that, for example, ALL men are taller than ALL women -- which is simply not the case as indicated in the second graph above. You may be able to explain that with your somewhat idiosyncratic use of the "fallacy of composition", but Scott's "point of view" is apparently based more on a statistical distribution and the concept of stereotyping: you say po-tat-oe; he says po-ta- toe.
Why I think your "adjudicating agreement on which archetypes should be central is beyond hopeless" is somewhat wide of the mark. You might rail against what the public sees as the most "central" archetype and how they reach that "conclusion". But the point is that they DO have that archetype, that subtype (e.g., the 160 to 165 cm bin), and its often pejorative connotations in mind -- often for some credible reasons as in the population height analogy -- when you say "criminal". Which are used by political opportunists for their own ends -- as you put it, "a 'subtle' way of shifting someone's stance by altering the foundation of their argument".
But, to reiterate, it seems to me that you're saying "the real issue is not the centrality of the label but the use of connotation-heavy labels as a way to shortcut substantive debate". And Scott is apparently saying that the negative connotations of the most "central" or most typical subcategory are being applied to other non-central subcategories -- e.g., to female height bins other than the 160 to 165 average -- to "shortcut substantive debate": stereotyping writ large. Kind of think it would take a Philadelphia lawyer some time -- which I don't have a great deal of -- to track down any substantive differences in those two positions or phrasings.
> And if you're a mammal every part of your body is female ... but you know my hands are female my jaw is female ...
I don't know the context, but this seems like a reasonable statement to me. The DNA contained in all the body parts is female, their shape and size may be slightly different from their male counterparts, etc.
Like, if someone finds a bone on the ground and says "oh, that's a female pelvic bone", that seems like a sensible statement to me. Everyone understands what they mean.
I agree with Steersman on this issue. If the definition of male/female is based on reproductive capacity, that label can only apply to reproductive organs or to organism that have those organs.
It's still accurate to say "this is a pelvic bone that is indicative of female phenotype" but I think it's nonsensical to claim the bone itself is male/female unless you expand the definition. If someone with fully working testicles was born with a physical deformity and ended up with a pelvic bone that you "typically find in the human female phenotype", it would be weird to claim his pelvic bone is "female".
As I had indicated in my Note that I'd linked to above, the context was a conversation between Joyce and Dawkins:
https://substack.com/@humanuseofhumanbeings/note/c-21582743
Which you may want to take close look at, particularly my comments about the categories, "teenager" and "vertebrate". Do you think it's logically coherent to say, as Joyce is in effect saying, that, if she was still a teenager, every part of her body is a teenager? Is a vertebrate? Same thing with the categories "male" and "female".
Yassine's "fallacy of division":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_division
You might also note the standard biological definitions, "female" in particular:
"Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the larger gametes in anisogamous systems."
What's necessary to qualify as a female is to be producing large gametes. Which is, of course, impossible for our arms and legs and kidneys to do; only whole bodies do so.
ETA. In addition to which, your "female pelvic bone" is the pelvic bone OF a (deceased) female. You might note the standard definitions for "female" and "male", the latter of which is a bit clearer on that score:
https://web.archive.org/web/20181020204521/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/female
https://web.archive.org/web/20190608135422/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/male
"male (adjective): Of or denoting the sex that produces gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring."
Kinda think that first "of" -- a preposition "expressing the relationship between a part and a whole" -- emphasizes that, in phrases like "male brain" and "female pelvis", the nouns "brain" and "pelvis" are parts of individuals who are male and female. Not that brains and pelvises themselves are males and females.