Response: Possible Pronouns

In response to Brandon Gaudet's post "He or She is Not Gender Neutral" (April 21, 2012):

In addition to the somewhat problematic singular 'they,' people have attempted to come up with various alternative pronouns which are gender neutral.  Perhaps the best known of these is the 'ze/zhe, zir/hir' system.  Unfortunately, in modern culture, people tend to use these pronouns only for those who do not fit into the gender binary, not to refer to a person of unknown gender (as in, 'the cloaked individual adjusted zir hood').  Furthermore, many find these pronouns rather awkward to use, as the letter 'z' is uncommon.  The pronouns are also rather annoyingly close to pre-existing gender-specific pronouns - 'ze' is basically 'he', 'hir' is almost indistinguishable from 'her.'  As such, I think it would be easier for people to adjust to singular, gender-neutral pronouns based off 'they' and 'their' - perhaps 'vey' and 'veir,' as the 'v' sound is not terribly dissimilar to the 'th' sound.  This way, one would be more likely to associate the new pronouns with the gender-neutral term 'they' than with the single-gender 'he' or 'she.'

Unemotional Reasoning

While, in an earlier post, I acknowledged the potential usefulness of felt reasons as a tool for appeal to the masses, I also think that felt reasons have some major flaws which non-felt reasons do not possess.  Most importantly, I think that basing one's actions on felt reasons can result in one neglecting certain morally obligatory actions because they fail to appeal to one's emotions.  As a personal example of this, I am a vegetarian for ethical reasons.  I made the decision to become a vegetarian due to non-felt reasons; if I had relied on felt reasons, I would likely only have eliminated some meats from my diet, because I dislike certain animals from which common meat products come, such as cows.  Thus, if I had relied on felt reasons, I would still eat beef.

It is true that one can apply general felt reasons to specific categories - so, one can decide that cruelty to animals is wrong based on felt reasons, and then apply that to all individual animals despite dislike for some animals.  However, the sizes of categories and their relationships to one another are variable, and so hard to determine.  It would be very easy to claim that a general felt reason did not apply to some specific category or another.

Rejecting Solipsism

In class, we touched on the subject of solipsism and how many people choose to reject it because it 'feels wrong.'  I will not argue about the latter point; it seems likely that most people do find that it feels wrong.  However, I am not certain that this is a valid basis for rejecting it.  Saying that something cannot be so because it feels wrong leads very quickly down a slippery slope to invalid and illogical arguments.  For example, the applied-ethics theorist Michael Levin claims that homosexuality must be unnatural or immoral because, to him, it 'feels wrong' - specifically, he finds the idea of homosexual acts repulsive.

Of course, we may accept the possibility of solipsism but still choose to act as if we know that other people, and the world around us, exists.  Thus, we can build up metaphysical and ethical theories, discuss existentialism and the nature of humanity, and otherwise philosophise with the base assumption that empirical evidence is relatively reliable.  This is a kind of contained fallibilism, whereby one can interact with the world as it seems to be (due to granting a higher likelihood to this view of reality), yet not deny or even really dispute the possibility that absolutely nothing may be as it appears.