What the evidence indicates is that congenital factors strongly influence sexual orientation outcomes with some subpopulations more influenced by these factors than others. It also is clear that it isn't choosen in the same way someone decides if they are going to date someone. The psychoanalytic idea that Droopy brought up in a recent thread of early family dynamics being a major factor is long-discredited like the "refrigerator-mom" theory of autism. How odd that Droopy's long, intense history of study on subjects he pontificates on also can be gathered by skimming crank ideas on popular fundamentalist websites right now. But even if the family dynamics theory were true, early environmental impacts on sexual development don't argue in favor of "choice" - if anything it argues against it.

That aside, I don't think people choose their beliefs. While a person may decide if they are going to attend Church today, they don't really get to decide if they think Mormonism is correct or not. So it isn't a choice in that sense. But I don't see why it matters either way. That doesn't make it above criticism. And it wouldn't be Ok to bully homosexuals even if orientation was freely choosen on a whim.

Well, I'm not at all shocked by this. Not a bit.



1. What is the origin, ultimate ground, or nucleus of "choice?" That is, what is it that chooses and what is the relation of choice to that through which choices is centered and emerges?



Yes...right E. And doubtless you're now going to wrap this highly problematic speculative philosophical positivism up in the pretty paper and ribbons of "science," aren't you?



What kind of propositions can have truth value under conditions in which perception and choice as to the basis and comprehension of "truth" is nothing more than an epiphenomena of the structure and function of the brain? If choice of belief system and what constitutes "truth" and what does not is a purely a mechanical process that conditions perception variably within each individual toward numerous, multiple outcomes, upon what basis can "truth value" be attached to anything beyond bare empirical facts of experience and rudimentary sense data?



You just cannot be this philosophically facile and simplistic, E. You just can't.

In various books in the Bible, God gave plenty of commandments for people not to do stuff because it was wrong. Even if people were doing it. Slavery, on the other hand, God actively commanded at times and laid down specific laws for practicing. Never does it get condemned. The most clear reading of this is that slavery, Biblical speaking, is morally permissible in the eyes of God if you take the whole revelation from God thing literally. (More accurately, people were codifying their cultural mores in the name of God, but whatevs.) If you want to strain your readings because you live in a world that recognizes this for the barbaric view that it is, go for it. I'm happy you do. It'll be up to those who succeed you to do the same with homosexuality.



I've read his advice column almost weekly for around two decades. I know who Dan Savage is. He appears to have just entered your orbit via bangup sources like Brietbart. Maybe you can talk with Kevin Barney and he can explain to you why Savage is an excellent advice columnist. I'm serious.

You're badly misusing terms to the point that it is clear you don't really understand what you are talking about and are reacting to words that are dog-whistles for you. Go ahead and name me some prominent philosophers who think physicialism entails radical skepticism towards truth value and post their arguments. I was being kind by writing that instead saying what probably should be said. Asserting physcialism is in no way tantamount to "naked 19th century positivism." That's moronic.

Which I have said, numerous times, I essentially agree with, except for the use of the term "strong." There is not strong, or robust evidence of such primary influence as to biological factors. I would rather say, "congenital factors condition and affect sexual orientation outcomes, in conjunction with other complex variables, with some subpopulations more influenced by these factors than others."



But homosexual behavior is, and especially so with the various idiosyncratic sexual personae one finds in the Gay subculture, what I would call psychosexual affect, a variety of forms of sub-cultural sexual role playing, and other various highly stylized elements of the "gay" identity and subculture that must be modeled, learned, and practiced to become natural and internalized.



Elements of the specific Freudian view of this certainly has been - as has Freudianism generally, but the idea that early family dynamics are key in the development of SSA - as in much else - has hardly been "discredited." Metaphysical materialists/philosophical positivists like E., who cling to the worldview of secular naturalism/humanism like a baby monkey to a cloth surrogate stuffed animal mother, need desperately to believe their own internal myths of origin, fall, and redemption, for to look outside that box risks flinging humans - and E. himself - from their lofty perch as "the measure of all things" to the relative ontological status of "the dust of the earth," where they must reevaluate their self deification in light of their actual condition within the cosmos.



Neither lying regarding my views (which are my own, have nothing to do with Christian fundamentalism (they are LDS based) and yes, come as a result of an adult lifetime of study, reflection, and observation) and their origins, or mentally masturbating yourself into a frenzy of moral and intellectual self congratulation at your own anointed secularist brilliance is going to do what you need these tactics to do - circumvent the hard thinking and hard issues involved in seriously grappling with homosexuality in its modern cultural and political context.



Wrong. Human sexuality appears to be fairly plastic within the womb and for at least a short period during infancy and a bit beyond. I know of no evidence that sexual orientation - heterosexual or homosexual - is "set" in vitro. And it is plastic and pliable enough to be modified, distorted, and redirected perceptually in the early years of life.

While there is no doubt that heterosexuality is the "default" position of the human species, as it is with all organic life on earth, "orientation" involves more than general biological tendencies and calibration. Actual psychological dynamics - intrapersonal psychological dynamics - where perception of self, elements of personality, self concept, and highly idiosyncratic and unique ideations and perceptions of one's own sexuality reside, are where "sexual orientation" is ultimately centered (as opposed to "sex" as a purely physiological matter) and this is, at an early age (and beyond, for that matter, in another sense) plastic, flexible, and open to modification and conditioning.



This position is a contemporary variation of the historic philosophical tendencies of positivism, reductionism, and philosophical materialism generally. Its implications are a thoroughgoing and relentless moral, value, and epistemological relativism (essentially, nihilism).

You've just checkmated yourself, if you think you have left yourself an hole through which to crawl back to any "truth value" in propositions the subject matter of which is anything beyond gross empirical sense data.

In other words, you're in a philosophical kitchen that's much, much too hot for you.



I'd love to do some research on that and find those who don't think so. I'm aware that they exist. However, these are my claims and my philosophical perspective (and I can find some very distinguished thinkers who agree with me - although whether they will be contemporary academic philosophers or not, I cannot say with any degree of certainty - nor do I see any reason why that would matter) and if you cannot seriously engage and rebut them as an individual thinker, but wish to send me off on a wild goose chase looking to see whether my particular philosophical perspective coincides with that of the consensus of physicalist thinkers (as if what most contemporary academic philosophers think is to any degree important within the larger framework of culture, society, politics, and the present state of the human condition generally, to which I dare say much of academic philosophy has contributed little, when it has not been overtly destructive, when its ideas have bled out of the gnostic chambers of academe and into the surrounding culture) before I dare to take my own position on the statements you have made, then retire from the discussion.



Positivism claims, in a nutshell, that nothing in the universe that is not a logically necessary truth (tautology) or a conclusion that follows necessarily from known true (logically or empirically) premises, or which is not the result of empirical observation and/or experiment, replicable and subject to verification by independent observers, is true, or an actually existing phenomena or condition.

How is contemporary physicalism, which asserts that everything is the universe is physical, or supervenes (utterly dependent upon) or is necessitated by the physical, substantively different from this?

Does this imply that the visible, physical universe we perceive with out senses (and the extension of our senses through various instruments) is all there is (does physicalism imply a thorough metaphysical materialism, or is it doing no more than making an observation of a triviality - that everything appears to have a "material" substrate, something which LDS, in a sense, would agree with)?

Incredible. This is all one sentence.

It's evidence of his prophetic mission. Joseph Smith spoke (er, translated, gave revelations) in run-on sentences too.

If you think this is incredible, you should read the philosophy books I read. Hegel wrote single, internally punctuated sentences that ran for a page to a page and a half. So do many of his modern commentators. Kant, Fichte, Marx, and numerous other thinkers in the western tradition, including people like Foucault, wrote and write in a similar open-ended and dense manner. I tend to write the way I think (as we all do), so it is as it is.

Its not the kind of writing that works for op-ed columns, fluffy news journalism, or team blogs, but its what it is.

My underline.


Not in my experience. But take care.

Nearly all relevant experts? Even non-physicalists aren't apt to use that argument and for someone who is so very deep and educated, you probably would be aware that a large % of philosophers are physicalists, right? Do you think they think that position entails radical skepticism?


You didn't offer an argument. You offered an assertion. What kind of rebuttal do you want?

No.

There you go.



That's logical positivism, which developed in the 20th century, not the 19th. You're confusing that with 19th century positivism. Moreover, one doesn't need to think this to be a physicalist. To wit, physicalism is very popular while logical positivism is essentially dead. Hence my comment. While LP is dead, it wasn't *that* far off and the kind of positions that still are held by most philosophers probably ring as LP to your ears even though there are important distinctions that exist as couterpoint to LP's flaws. My views are best described as scientific realism, for instance, which is perfectly compatible with a physicalist ontology.

For one, Logical positivists assert that statements that do not meet the verificationist criteria are essentially meaningless and physicalists aren't wedded to that position. For two, logical positivism make a clear distinction between analytic and synthetic statements and physicalism doesn't require that.

My initial comment doesn't even have to be read as an assertion of physicalism though. Saying mind is what the brain does and therefore being Mormon is just as much a biological thing as being gay doesn't entail a hard metaphysical position. Numbers can exist as some non-physical abstractum - a position I have no vociferous objection to- and that still be true for instance.

LOL. (Incidentally, I do not think heterosexual/bisexual/homosexual orientation is a choice but what's-his-face's claim is pure flatulence.)

Important things to note:

1. The pro-slavery verses in the NT are all in pseudepigraphal books.
2. Dan Savage is a worthless, fetid sack of excrement.