Your body

[Pariah]

So what is it Kai? Are you retarded, or a fuckwit?  I'm leaning towards retarded fuckwit.

Fuckwit is not an actual word silly! 

[Sir Squid Diddimus]

SO.. to sum it up

Straw Man
retarded fuckwit
false
cartesian duality
philosophy
moran
stupid
flaw
intelligence
BLAH BLAH BLAH

yeah. got it. 

[Bu🤠ns]

So what is it Kai? Are you retarded, or a fuckwit?  I'm leaning towards retarded fuckwit.

Fuckwit is not an actual word silly! 

not to derail the thread or anything, but isn't it fuckTARD?

[Dead Kennedy]

Dissecting the OP.

Your body

The title makes the broad topic of the clear, and prompts the reader to ask "What about my body?"

Hey, how do you like that thing? Pretty neat, isn't it? I mean, if you think about it.

Preamble.  Irrelevant to the argument.

What follows is the actual argument.   The argument is presented as a standard 5 paragraph essay, with an introduction, three paragraphs presenting supporting arguments, and a conclusion.  This is the format we are all taught in high school.  You may want to actually read that page to refresh your memory if it's been awhile, as I will be making many references to the five paragraph essay.

So the deal is, the first thing that happens when you arrive is you get dumped into a yellowish or brownish meat-bag filled with red and white. It grows, and if you're lucky it all works like it's supposed to; totally sweet functional legs for perambulation, arms with dexterous graspers on the end, built-in audio and video perception devices, a noisemaker. Pretty fucking awesome! If you're lucky, you get to keep this thing for upward of 90 years, which is a pretty sweet deal even though it starts to break down a bit before the end. These things come in roughly three varieties; male, female, and both. The male ones have primarily external sexual reproductive organs at the lower limb Y-junction, and the female ones have primarily internal sexual reproductive organs for incubating more meat-bags, with the entrance at the same Y-junction. The both ones have some combination of the two and are somewhat of an anomaly.

The Introduction.  True to standard form, the thesis or premise is presented in the very first line of the argument:  "So the deal is, the first thing that happens when you arrive is you get dumped into a yellowish or brownish meat-bag filled with red and white." 

"So the deal is" is a very clear and powerful statement.  What is the deal with this essay? "So the deal is, the first thing that happens when you arrive is you get dumped into a yellowish or brownish meat-bag filled with red and white."

Essentially what Nigel is saying is "The premise of this essay is that Cartesian dualism is real."  She uses the term "you" and "person" exclusively to refer to the Mind, and uses the pronoun "it" to refer to the body.  The person is not the body, they are the mind.  This is textbook Cartesian dualism, with the body presented as a biological machine controlled by Mind.  The usage of "it" is powerful, as it is used to represent an inanimate thing or a person or animal whose gender is unknown or disregarded.  This characterization of the body as a thing  -- Nigel even uses that exact word, thing -- separate from Mind is important to Nigel's argument, and will appear again.

On to the Body of the essay:

For some reason a lot of the people inhabiting the meat-bags have decided to define themselves based on what sort of meat-bag they happen to have gotten dumped into. They've made up all kinds of fairly arbitrary assignations like "pretty" and "ugly", which are subject to change at any time for no reason whatsoever, then they identify their self-ness based on these assignations. They've also created categories for different colors of meat-bag, and for different forms of sexual behavior. They have created behavioral categories for the male and the female, which they call "gender". People are expected to pick one to identify with, and this identity dictates their behavior.

The first paragraph should present the strongest argument.  Nigel doesn't actually present a strong argument at all, in fact the purpose of this paragraph is extremely unclear.  It has no actual point.  Nigel says "For some reason people (Mind) inhabiting the meat-bags have decided to define themselves based on [various factors]" but never explains why people "decide" to do this.  That would seem to be the relevant point, but instead Nigel simply tells us that people do these things.  She apparently doesn't understand why.

I object to the characterization of this behavior as "deciding," but that's tangential.  Actually,I object to her characterization of every single element she describes, but we have bigger fish to fry.  On to the second paragraph of the Body of the essay:

Yes, they actually do this! I'm not even making it up.

What kind of lazy ass writing is this?  The second paragraph is supposed to contain the second strongest argument, but instead it simply reasserts the first paragraph.  In this second paragraph we learn that people do all the things we learned they do in the previous paragraph, and Nigel still can't believe it.

The hard thing to keep in mind, once you're here, is that your meat-bag is actually just a really cool biological machine. It gets hard to remember, because almost all of the people in their meat-bags all around you are totally buying into the idea that their bags define their personhood, but it's all bullshit. I mean, of course the thing influences your behavior; odds are high that you'll have the desire to mate with other meat-bags, mostly other-sex ones, and all of the machinations of your meat-bag, the chemicals it releases to control various functions, will affect your thoughts and feelings. But still, those aspects are fairly incidental; your vehicle will need a certain amount of care while you're in it, and it may be kind of eccentric and require special care, but that's only to be expected. The main thing to never forget is that the color of it, the sex of it, whether it is at any given moment in time "pretty" or "ugly"... these are all incidental. You would still be you in a void with a thought-operated keyboard for communication. You would still be you if all of these incidentals were excised from you and you were just a featureless blob in a jar. As long as your meat-bag continues to function, you continue to exist, and you are you.

I don't know how anyone denies that this is Cartesian dualism after a doozy like "The hard thing to keep in mind, once you're here, is that your meat-bag is actually just a really cool biological machine."  That is Cartesian in a nutshell: The body is a biological machine. Here's Rene himself:  ""I regard the body as a machine so built and put together...that still, although it had no mind, it would not fail to move."

If that's not enough, Nigel goes on to evoke the "car and driver" metaphor when she says "your vehicle will need a certain amount of care while you're in it." 

The rest of the paragraph reinforces the idea of the mind as a ghost in the machine.  The mind as separate and different from the body, which is only "incidental" to the mind.  The mind is the real person,the body is only some trivial object.  It "influences" the behavior of the mind, but the mind is clearly presented as separate from the body, with its own independent existence -- it must have an independent existence in order to be "influenced," even is such influence is "incidental."  As Nigel says, like a proper Cartesian, "you would still be you in a void."

So take care of the damn thing, appreciate it, and don't place too much value on identifying your person-hood based on what kind you got. It's all a crapshoot; you could have ended up in this bag, and I could have ended up in that one.

The first sentence, the cajoling to treat oneself well, isn't supported anywhere in the Body of the essay, but it's always nice to say something no one will disagree with right before you state your conclusion, to create a yes yes effect.  So here is the conclusion.  "It's all a crapshoot; you could have ended up in this bag, and I could have ended up in that one." 

Like any proper five paragraph essay the premise ties directly to the conclusion. Nigel actually does an artful job of tying the bow on this otherwise ridiculous essay.  Consider:  "So the deal is, the first thing that happens when you arrive is you get dumped into a yellowish or brownish meat-bag filled with red and white...It's all a crapshoot; you could have ended up in this bag, and I could have ended up in that one."

Nicely done.  But here's the problem:  Nigel twice uses the metaphor of the Mind having an existence independent of the body.  The phrase "you arrive" implies that "you" arrives from some other place, just as the phrase "you could have ended up in" implies that you started off from some other place.

That's metaphysics.  That's religion.

So here is a summary of the argument presented by Nigel:

The Mind comes to inhabit the Body, which is a machine. [1] 
The Mind inhabiting the Body defines itself based on various incidental factors.[2]
The Mind has an existence independent of the Body that remains true regardless of the Body. [3]

Except the mind is an emergent property of the body.  My mind could never arise in your body.  My mind is a unique product of my body, and only a body exactly like mine could produce my mind.  Some of the factors that Nigel list are not at all incidental to the mind, and when changed result in a different person.

There is no ghost in the machine that can exist independent of the body.  It is not a crapshoot.  The mind is an emergent property, it does not come from anywhere



[1]"The first thing that happens when you arrive is you get dumped into a yellowish or brownish meat-bag filled with red and white."/"The hard thing to keep in mind, once you're here, is that your meat-bag is actually just a really cool biological machine."

[2] "For some reason people (Mind) inhabiting the meat-bags have decided to define themselves based on [various factors]"/"The main thing to never forget is that the ... [various factors] are all incidental."

[3] "You would still be you in a void..."/"It's all a crapshoot; you could have ended up in this bag, and I could have ended up in that one." 

[Pariah]

The second paragraph is supposed to contain the second strongest argument, but instead it simply reasserts the first paragraph.

Wouldn't the second paragraph be the weakest. I mean both  first impression or first paragraph and last impression or last paragraph are probably going to be of more lasting power.

[Adios]

Dear Dead Kennedy.

1) Please STFU.

2) Some of us are capable of reading a simple rant for exactly what it is.

3) Your over(read under)whelming showing off is certainly not impressing anyone.

4) Did the rant make you jealous?

5) We get little wannabes like you here all the time, you are nothing new or different.

6) The fact that you are here indicates your other 'intelligent' buddies ran your simple ass off.

[Sir Squid Diddimus]

[Dead Kennedy]

The second paragraph is supposed to contain the second strongest argument, but instead it simply reasserts the first paragraph.

Wouldn't the second paragraph be the weakest. I mean both  first impression or first paragraph and last impression or last paragraph are probably going to be of more lasting power.

Traditionally the third paragraph of the body (the fourth paragraph of the essay) presents the weakest argument.  There's no reason not to switch them around, but the default is to present arguments from strongest to weakest.

Regardless, the second argument should not be "See the first argument."

Dear Dead Kennedy.

1) Please STFU.

2) Some of us are capable of reading a simple rant for exactly what it is.

3) Your over(read under)whelming showing off is certainly not impressing anyone.

4) Did the rant make you jealous?

5) We get little wannabes like you here all the time, you are nothing new or different.

6) The fact that you are here indicates your other 'intelligent' buddies ran your simple ass off.

Dear Asshat,

1) No.

2) That statement is functionally meaningless.  It's empty words.

3) Bluster.  The monkey howls.

4) No.  I just think it's stupid superstitious nonsense.

5) More bluster.  The dog pisses on its territory.

6) The implication of this statement is that every person on this forum was chased here by their "intelligent" buddies.

[Adios]

The second paragraph is supposed to contain the second strongest argument, but instead it simply reasserts the first paragraph.

Wouldn't the second paragraph be the weakest. I mean both  first impression or first paragraph and last impression or last paragraph are probably going to be of more lasting power.

Traditionally the third paragraph of the body (the fourth paragraph of the essay) presents the weakest argument.  There's no reason not to switch them around, but the default is to present arguments from strongest to weakest.

Regardless, the second argument should not be "See the first argument."

Dear Dead Kennedy.

1) Please STFU.

2) Some of us are capable of reading a simple rant for exactly what it is.

3) Your over(read under)whelming showing off is certainly not impressing anyone.

4) Did the rant make you jealous?

5) We get little wannabes like you here all the time, you are nothing new or different.

6) The fact that you are here indicates your other 'intelligent' buddies ran your simple ass off.

Dear Asshat,

1) No.

2) That statement is functionally meaningless.  It's empty words.

3) Bluster.  The monkey howls.

4) No.  I just think it's stupid superstitious nonsense.

5) More bluster.  The dog pisses on its territory.

6) The implication of this statement is that every person on this forum was chased here by their "intelligent" buddies.

The above proves beyond a doubt you are incapable of defending your position. Your idea of discussion is obviously ridicule and to insult. You are no longer worthy of my time. Do not respond to me again and assume if I mention you I am talking about you, not to you. I've had more intelligent responses while trolling pagan boards.

[Zenpeanut]

Dude. Two sentences does not constitute a paragraph and treating it as such as mechanical stupidity. The point of it was to showcase the absurdity of the strict male-female gender structure.

Also, no. The standard form for an essay is not strongest-weakest. In fact, that's actually a really bad idea. The second strongest should go near the end with the weaker ones in the middle. Human memory tends to work that way.

[Dead Kennedy]

The above proves beyond a doubt you are incapable of defending your position. Your idea of discussion is obviously ridicule and to insult. You are no longer worthy of my time. Do not respond to me again and assume if I mention you I am talking about you, not to you. I've had more intelligent responses while trolling pagan boards.

Flounce Flounce Flounce!

Hey Asshat, how does that prove I am incapable of defending your position?

Let me guess:  A WIZARD DID IT!

[Adios]

Dude. Two sentences does not constitute a paragraph and treating it as such as mechanical stupidity. The point of it was to showcase the absurdity of the strict male-female gender structure.

Also, no. The standard form for an essay is not strongest-weakest. In fact, that's actually a really bad idea. The second strongest should go near the end with the weaker ones in the middle. Human memory tends to work that way.

Silly Zenpeanut. Introducing logic AND semantics into an emo argument. 

[fomenter]

fuck i should stick to my first instinct and stay out but oh well

Cartesian duality is a model, true in some sense false in some sense meaningless in some seance etc etc (you  should know the rest). so what if Nigel used that model? the point of the piece is don't take social conventions regarding gender and other aspects of identity too seriously, perhaps the same point can be made using the model of emergence from neurology, perhaps even better but that's not the model she chose to use to get the point across (successfully to all but you) and successful transmission of an idea she had about social conventions was her goal and the map she chose worked to that end...

i don't know what her religious metaphysical or philosophical beliefs are and i don't care.. i also don't assume because she used this model in this instance she wouldn't use a different model in a different circumstance.

tear up her use of that model because of your dislike for Cartesian duality all you want, it doesn't change the fact that her rant was a success

[Dead Kennedy]

Dude. Two sentences does not constitute a paragraph and treating it as such as mechanical stupidity.

A paragraph is a distinct portion of written or printed matter dealing with a particular idea, usually beginning with an indentation on a new line.  That's from the dictionary.  One word constitutes a paragraph if it begins on a new line.

Dumbass.

The point of it was to showcase the absurdity of the strict male-female gender structure.

Yes, but it failed.  It only showcased the weakness of the argument.

Also, no. The standard form for an essay is not strongest-weakest. In fact, that's actually a really bad idea. The second strongest should go near the end with the weaker ones in the middle.

I'm not an English major, so I'm going to cite an external authority, The Guide to Grammar and Writing from Capital Community College Foundation:

The second paragraph of the body should contain the second strongest argument, second most significant example, second cleverest illustration, or an obvious follow up the first paragraph in the body....The third paragraph of the body should contain the weakest argument, weakest example, weakest illustration, or an obvious follow up to the second paragraph in the body.

After looking at a dozen other sites, I can't find anything the specifically contradicts that.  Do you have any citations to back up your argument?

No?

You're not talking out of your ass, are you?

I think maybe you are.

Human memory tends to work that way.

Look, it's not like any of this is really relevant.  This is quibbling over bullshit.

The point is that the essay is a bunch of Cartesian bullshit.  Despite what a lot of people in this thread have expended a lot of hot air denying, the entire essay is founded on the assumption that there is a ghost in the machine, a driver in vehicle. She even uses that second metaphor, calls the body a machine, and claims the mind exist independent of the body.

I find such ideas boring and wanky.  I said so.   Everybody is fucking falling over themselves to defend it. I have no idea why.

[Nast]

Has DK fucked off yet or is he still pounding out the shitty-internet-argument-version of War and Peace?