http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_campus_rape.html

Quote :

"It’s a lonely job, working the phones at a college rape crisis center. Day after day, you wait for the casualties to show up from the alleged campus rape epidemic—but no one calls. Could this mean that the crisis is overblown? No: it means, according to the campus sexual-assault industry, that the abuse of coeds is worse than anyone had ever imagined. It means that consultants and counselors need more funding to persuade student rape victims to break the silence of their suffering. The campus rape movement highlights the current condition of radical feminism, from its self-indulgent bathos to its embrace of ever more vulnerable female victimhood. But the movement is an even more important barometer of academia itself. In a delicious historical irony, the baby boomers who dismantled the university’s intellectual architecture in favor of unbridled sex and protest have now bureaucratized both. While women’s studies professors bang pots and blow whistles at antirape rallies, in the dorm next door, freshman counselors and deans pass out tips for better orgasms and the use of sex toys. The academic bureaucracy is roomy enough to sponsor both the dour antimale feminism of the college rape movement and the promiscuous hookup culture of student life. The only thing that doesn’t fit into the university’s new commitments is serious scholarly purpose. The campus rape industry’s central tenet is that one-quarter of all college girls will be raped or be the targets of attempted rape by the end of their college years (completed rapes outnumbering attempted rapes by a ratio of about three to two). The girls’ assailants are not terrifying strangers grabbing them in dark alleys but the guys sitting next to them in class or at the cafeteria. This claim, first published in Ms. magazine in 1987, took the universities by storm. By the early 1990s, campus rape centers and 24-hour hotlines were opening across the country, aided by tens of millions of dollars of federal funding. Victimhood rituals sprang up: first the Take Back the Night rallies, in which alleged rape victims reveal their stories to gathered crowds of candle-holding supporters; then the Clothesline Project, in which T-shirts made by self-proclaimed rape survivors are strung on campus, while recorded sounds of gongs and drums mark minute-by-minute casualties of the “rape culture.” A special rhetoric emerged: victims’ family and friends were “co-survivors”; “survivors” existed in a larger “community of survivors.” An army of salesmen took to the road, selling advice to administrators on how to structure sexual-assault procedures, and lecturing freshmen on the “undetected rapists” in their midst. Rape bureaucrats exchanged notes at such gatherings as the Inter Ivy Sexual Assault Conferences and the New England College Sexual Assault Network. Organizations like One in Four and Men Can Stop Rape tried to persuade college boys to redefine their masculinity away from the “rape culture.” The college rape infrastructure shows no signs of a slowdown. In 2006, for example, Yale created a new Sexual Harassment and Assault Resources and Education Center, despite numerous resources for rape victims already on campus. If the one-in-four statistic is correct—it is sometimes modified to “one-in-five to one-in-four”—campus rape represents a crime wave of unprecedented proportions. No crime, much less one as serious as rape, has a victimization rate remotely approaching 20 or 25 percent, even over many years. The 2006 violent crime rate in Detroit, one of the most violent cities in America, was 2,400 murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults per 100,000 inhabitants—a rate of 2.4 percent. The one-in-four statistic would mean that every year, millions of young women graduate who have suffered the most terrifying assault, short of murder, that a woman can experience. Such a crime wave would require nothing less than a state of emergency—Take Back the Night rallies and 24-hour hotlines would hardly be adequate to counter this tsunami of sexual violence. Admissions policies letting in tens of thousands of vicious criminals would require a complete revision, perhaps banning boys entirely. The nation’s nearly 10 million female undergrads would need to take the most stringent safety precautions. Certainly, they would have to alter their sexual behavior radically to avoid falling prey to the rape epidemic. None of this crisis response occurs, of course—because the crisis doesn’t exist. During the 1980s, feminist researchers committed to the rape-culture theory had discovered that asking women directly if they had been raped yielded disappointing results—very few women said that they had been. So Ms. commissioned University of Arizona public health professor Mary Koss to develop a different way of measuring the prevalence of rape. Rather than asking female students about rape per se, Koss asked them if they had experienced actions that she then classified as rape. Koss’s method produced the 25 percent rate, which Ms. then published. Koss’s study had serious flaws. Her survey instrument was highly ambiguous, as University of California at Berkeley social-welfare professor Neil Gilbert has pointed out. But the most powerful refutation of Koss’s research came from her own subjects: 73 percent of the women whom she characterized as rape victims said that they hadn’t been raped. Further—though it is inconceivable that a raped woman would voluntarily have sex again with the fiend who attacked her—42 percent of Koss’s supposed victims had intercourse again with their alleged assailants."

Great article, be sure to read the entire thing. Thoughts?

10/29/2008 1:43:36 PM

to be fair, im sure plenty of women wouldn't call rape what could legally be defined as rape. so attempted rate near 20% doesn't seem that unlikely when you factor in alcohol.

that said, my other answer was a toss up between "well yeah, girls are whores" and "uh, of course she wanted it."

10/29/2008 1:59:40 PM

i can definitely believe that article. mostly for two reasons.

1. there was a girl my freshman year that hung out with some of my friends and i who said that she honestly felt that a girl could decide something was rape after the fact, because there are situations where a guy should know if having sex with the girl was the right thing to do. the example that she classified as rape were if both parties were drunk and had sex and then the next day the woman decided she was unhappy with her decision then it should be able to be classified as rape.

2. i had a roommate who slept with this one chic who- unbeknown to him- had a boyfriend at the time. the boyfriend found out and she then painted the picture as him forcing her to do something she didn't want to do and basically made it seem like rape, despite the fact that we saw her return from the bar with him and then pull him to his bed room while he could barely stand.

based on these two events i can believe that some situations of rape are in fact not rape at all and the overall statistics are blown completely out of proportion.

10/29/2008 2:11:43 PM

Quote :

"the example that she classified as rape were if both parties were drunk and had sex and then the next day the woman decided she was unhappy with her decision then it should be able to be classified as rape."

If they're both drunk, then wouldn't both of them have been raped, legally speaking? Unless the guy admitted to not regretting it in court, which would be stupid of him.

10/29/2008 3:03:17 PM

No, only a woman can be raped according to the law. A man is only sexually assaulted.

10/29/2008 3:06:38 PM

That is an utterly retarded double-standard when it comes to "rapes" based upon intoxication or emotional manipulation.

10/29/2008 3:20:00 PM

pretty much.

so if we're both drunk and have sex, and you realize it was a bad idea, I raped you. If I realized it was a bad idea, I had beer goggles.


ok.....

10/29/2008 3:27:24 PM

Quote :

"42 percent of Koss’s supposed victims had intercourse again with their alleged assailants were okay with it because the guy was hot."

10/29/2008 4:05:18 PM

Quote :

"freshman counselors and deans pass out tips for better orgasms and the use of sex toys"

wat

10/29/2008 5:17:56 PM

i have always held that same theory

10/29/2008 5:23:02 PM

10/29/2008 6:16:02 PM

Is it rape if i was highly intoxicated and some fat girl took advantage of me

10/29/2008 8:10:02 PM

i think this quote needs to be posted:

Quote :

"Even if the Harvard victim’s drunkenness cancels any responsibility that she might share for the interaction’s finale, is she equally without responsibility for all of her behavior up to that point, including getting so drunk that she can’t remember anything? Campus rape ideology holds that inebriation strips women of responsibility for their actions but preserves male responsibility not only for their own actions but for their partners’ as well. Thus do men again become the guardians of female well-being."

10/29/2008 11:34:37 PM

When I joined TKE a lot of the girls I knew said they heard we had a bad rep b/c some guy ruffied a girl at a party and rapped her. As far as I know it never happened, at least not within 10 yrs of me joining. I met some random girl at the fair last week who looked to be at least 5 yrs younger than me and she was like yeah i didn't hang out with the TKEs they had a bad rep (and she said the same thing about the ruffy). Man who the fuck is spreading this bullshit and baseless rumor???

10/29/2008 11:44:37 PM

Seems like victim blaming to me.

Quote :

"But the most powerful refutation of Koss’s research came from her own subjects: 73 percent of the women whom she characterized as rape victims said that they hadn’t been raped. Further—though it is inconceivable that a raped woman would voluntarily have sex again with the fiend who attacked her—42 percent of Koss’s supposed victims had intercourse again with their alleged assailants."

From the radical feminist perspective, this argument fails. The patriarchy conditions women to accept mistreatment.

10/30/2008 1:53:30 AM

^ So according to radical feminists, women are mentally inferior? Because if they can be conditioned (PROGRAMMED) by men into being mistreated, they are obviously not the equal of men cerebrally speaking, right? But isn't one of their fundamental tenets that women are equal to men when it comes to brain power?

10/30/2008 8:09:01 AM

Quote :

"I joined TKE a lot of the girls I knew said they heard we had a bad rep b/c some guy ruffied a girl at a party and rapped her. As far as I know it never happened"

Weren't ruffies the way you got girls in bed Pat??

10/30/2008 9:11:06 AM

Quote :

"Campus rape ideology holds that inebriation strips women of responsibility for their actions but preserves male responsibility not only for their own actions but for their partners’ as well. Thus do men again become the guardians of female well-being.""

This was exactly the thought process of that girl with whom i hung out freshman year, and its absolutely absurd. If i get drunk and rob a bank am i no longer responsible? This is hardly the case. by not holding women to the same standards we expect mean to upkeep then we are treating them inferior which is inherently sexist within itself. The feminists neglect to correct such a grave act of highlights the sheer misandric nature of the movement itself and further demonstrates that the feminist movement is more about control than it is equality.

Quote :

"The patriarchy conditions women to accept mistreatment."

If you're going to provide such a bold claim as this then you will actually have to support it with reason. How is it that the patriarchy conditions women to accept mistreatment. What factors take place to encourage this and as an acquired trait, how does it get so entrenched in their psyche?

10/30/2008 9:25:59 AM

but the good news is he was hot as f...

10/30/2008 10:52:58 AM

Quote :

"The patriarchy conditions women to accept mistreatment."

and women created the patriarchy by their sexual preference for dominant alpha-males.

Either way, this is not a legal justification for accusing someone of rape after the fact.



However, freshmen males reading this, commit this simple statement to memory, "the bitch is always right." I say bitch because it doesn't matter how low down, trifling, skanky a whore she is; if she accuses you of sexual assault, the burden of proof will be on you to prove your innocence, not on her.

10/30/2008 11:18:17 AM

Quote :

"So according to radical feminists, women are mentally inferior?"

Absolutely not. (You know this.) Socially inferior currently, yes. That's why we need the type of feminist revolution suggested by Shulamith Firestone in The Dialectic of Sex.

Quote :

"Because if they can be conditioned (PROGRAMMED) by men into being mistreated, they are obviously not the equal of men cerebrally speaking, right?"

Wrong. How does that follow? We're all conditioned, a product of genes and environment.

Quote :

"How is it that the patriarchy conditions women to accept mistreatment. What factors take place to encourage this and as an acquired trait, how does it get so entrenched in their psyche?"

I imagine it starts in the family, with early insistence on gender differentiation. Girls get trained to be girls, boys trained to be boys. Daddy traditionally rules. We learn about hierarchy and punishment. Going beyond the house, media beat the established order into our heads. For example, countless works of fiction suggest women should take shit from men. It's seen as proving love. Sex gets associated with power and dominance. And so on. We hardly notice this conditioning, as it goes so deep.

Quote :

"Either way, this is not a legal justification for accusing someone of rape after the fact."

I think you'll enjoy Twisty Faster's perspective on the issue:

http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2007/05/12/she-said-i-know-what-its-like-to-be-dead/

How's that for a rape law?

10/30/2008 12:58:31 PM

Quote :

"How's that for a rape law?"

Luckily angry feminists aren't yet writing our laws. The amount of anger in that post and the comments is simply appalling.

10/30/2008 1:35:39 PM

^ Thousands of years of oppression can do that to people.

10/30/2008 1:43:13 PM

listen man coming from my ethnic background i could also make the argument about me being the product of a thousand years of oppression and write tireless essays about how this social stratification has led me to be inferior in x way and prevented me from achieving y, or, alternatively, i could do what i did and get over it and realize that i am actually capable. If i did anything other than that I would have earned my "social inferiority", and that is something that can affect groups but is assigned on an individual basis.

to tell women repeatedly that they are not capable of deciding for themselves what is right and what is wrong and that someone has to do it for them only further subjects them to this inferiority complex. they should be expected to be just as responsible for decisions made as men are. if they decide to get drunk and while drunk they decide to willingly engage in sex, then, regardless of the "buyers remorse" the exhibit after the fact they are still responsible. to suggest otherwise is disgusting and is an act that is truly degrading to women.

10/30/2008 1:53:12 PM

Quote :

"listen man coming from my ethnic background i could also make the argument about me being the product of a thousand years of oppression and write tireless essays about how this social stratification has led me to be inferior in x way and prevented me from achieving y,"

You might have a good argument for this. If so, you should recognize the inequality and demand its abolition. In my experience, radical feminist don't use the patriarchy as an excuse for failure. They do their best to smash it.

Quote :

"to tell women repeatedly that they are not capable of deciding for themselves what is right and what is wrong and that someone has to do it for them only further subjects them to this inferiority complex."

Who's doing that?

Quote :

"they should be expected to be just as responsible for decisions made as men are."

What if those decisions are made under different conditions?

10/30/2008 2:00:41 PM

Quote :

"They do their best to smash it."

...by completely abdicating any responsibility over their actions and blaming all social evils upon men. Or, such choice little gems like in the thread from the blog post above, where we take features like a categorical presumption of guilt for an entire gender. When such misandry is called as such, it's called "abetting." Others make such fabulous contentions such as treating the innocent as collateral damage - because, you see, there's a war on, people!

Seriously, you have to be some kind of magnet for crazy. Every time you post around here it's some new crackpot theory - it's about all I ever see you glom onto. The more positively insane and illogical, the better.

10/30/2008 2:07:47 PM

Quote :

"You might have a good argument for this. If so, you should recognize the inequality and demand its abolition. In my experience, radical feminist don't use the patriarchy as an excuse for failure. They do their best to smash it."

I guess the issue at hand. I acknowledge that things at times can be harder, but only if i allow myself to play the victim, otherwise i seen no effect. furthermore, by suggesting that women are "programmed" and that programming is a result of the patriarchy you are by extension allowing the patriarchy to act as an excuse for your failure. it the overwhelming majority of situations the opportunity exists for people to be able to exert themselves equally as those who have been prior oppressors of that group. suggesting otherwise is sophistry. feminist are about control and not equality. This is why they toe the line of women not being required to exhibit the same characteristics and/or responsibilities of a man- which is some times a privilege of their own- while continuing to demand that they receive equal privileges.

Quote :

"Who's doing that? "

Other women who tell women that they are not in a position to decide for themselves if something was rape or not and associate their disagreement with an inability to come to these terms as a result of being systematically suppressed.

Quote :

"What if those decisions are made under different conditions?"

you'll have to elaborate on that. because in the scenario which we have been discussing it is one where both parties are equally intoxicated enter consensual sex and then the next day the woman changes her position for some reason or another.

there are always situations in which ones decisions they made can be mitigated (i.e. coercion or extortion) and even in the case of men those mitigating circumstances can lead to diminished responsibility, but the standards for what diminishes responsibility for an action needs to be equal.

10/30/2008 2:17:58 PM

I am open to the articles arguments, espicially the desire for true empiricism on the matter but it was hard for me to keep reading after this

Quote :

"The academic bureaucracy is roomy enough to sponsor both the dour antimale feminism of the college rape movement and the promiscuous hookup culture of student life. The only thing that doesn’t fit into the university’s new commitments is serious scholarly purpose."

10/30/2008 2:23:37 PM

Quote :

"we need the type of feminist revolution suggested by Shulamith Firestone in The Dialectic of Sex."

The problem is, most women have no desire for this revolution. Of course, it is easy for feminists to sidestep this by stating that these women are obviously brainwashed by the patriarchy.

Must be nice holding a position that is simultaneously self-reinforcing of your own enlightened virtue and also provides a convenient escape for having to justify why no-one else supports you.

The reason the revolution will never come is because it isn't in the reproductive interest of the human species. Perhaps in the post-singularity world this will fall away, but we are still very biologically driven creatures.


But go ahead and blame women for being so dumb that they can't realize they're being oppressed by a patriarchy they created through their own reproductive choices.

10/30/2008 3:10:44 PM

Quote :

"...by completely abdicating any responsibility over their actions and blaming all social evils upon men."

As men have had considerable control over society for ages now, their complaints make sense.

Quote :

"Seriously, you have to be some kind of magnet for crazy."

I'm like a chimera crafted from salisburyboy and Kris. Something had to fill the void.

Quote :

"furthermore, by suggesting that women are "programmed" and that programming is a result of the patriarchy you are by extension allowing the patriarchy to act as an excuse for your failure."

As I'm not a woman, there's an entirely different dynamic at play. But we're all programmed, as I mentioned above. Needless to say, this doesn't make the programming wrong. I believe much of my conditioning goes counter to the concepts I value the most: liberty and equality. If you're satisfied, feel free to support the status quo.

Quote :

"The problem is, most women have no desire for this revolution."

The same would be true for most causes I support. I don't expect successful revolts against hierarchy and gender. The best reasonable scenario has small egalitarian communes, perhaps far away from the rest of civilization. We've got a big universe.

Quote :

"Perhaps in the post-singularity world this will fall away, but we are still very biologically driven creatures."

As you know, I want to change this, to obliterate the gender distinction and escape biology.

Quote :

"But go ahead and blame women for being so dumb that they can't realize they're being oppressed by a patriarchy they created through their own reproductive choices."

I blame the patriarchy, not the woman. (You walked right into that one.)

10/30/2008 3:41:20 PM

You're implying all but a select few women cannot escape the patriarchy. That is a pretty dim view of women. Very Jehovah Witnesses-esque.

Quote :

"I want to change this, to obliterate the gender distinction and escape biology."

I've found that most people who want to reject humanity do so out of a social incompetence. I know because I've felt it a time or two myself, but it calls into question your rationale. Are you arguing from a heartfelt belief in feminist doctrine or are you, as I feel most feminists are, just picking up your ball and going home because you can't win under the current rules?

10/30/2008 3:46:15 PM

Quote :

"You're implying all but a select few women cannot escape the patriarchy. That is a pretty dim view of women. Very Jehovah Witnesses-esque."

I can't win for losing, huh? Look, I'm just trying to be realistic here. As much as I might like it, I see little evidence the world will suddenly embrace my radical views.

Quote :

"I've found that most people who want to reject humanity do so out of a social incompetence."

I don't reject humanity. Only the meat and hierarchy.

Quote :

"Are you arguing from a heartfelt belief in feminist doctrine or are you, as I feel most feminists are, just picking up your ball and going home because you can't win under the current rules?"

A bit of both, I imagine.

10/30/2008 4:01:15 PM

Quote :

"kwsmith2 : I am open to the articles arguments, especially the desire for true empiricism on the matter but it was hard for me to keep reading after this Quote : "The only thing that doesn’t fit into the university’s new commitments is serious scholarly purpose."

why so?

because you don't believe college anti-rape programs have a scholarly purpose?

or because the article so arrogantly dismisses them out of hand, claiming that they don't?

10/30/2008 4:21:10 PM

Quote :

"As men have had considerable control over society for ages now, their complaints make sense."

No they don't. Unless women really are simply the lower beings that supposedly justified the patriarchy in the first place.

Women can make their own choices, and as a result, are responsible for those choices. Forsaking responsibility for those choices ultimately means forsaking those choices entirely.

10/30/2008 4:21:47 PM

Those bitches wanted to be fucked!

10/30/2008 7:25:44 PM

^^ I'm not a huge fan of choice and responsibility. The popular notion of free will seems downright magical to me. We're the product of our DNA and environment. That's where our decisions come from. The doctrine of personal responsibility can be useful, but it's too often merely another way of justifying the status quo.

10/31/2008 12:33:00 AM

^ I really hope you are being sarcastic

10/31/2008 1:02:14 AM

^ You and everybody else. No, I'm serious. When stressing personal responsibility produces results without causing significant harm, fine. Far as I'm concerned, it's just a tool. A way to influence human behavior. Some of y'all seem to regard it as a fundamental truth or moral doctrine.

10/31/2008 1:11:33 AM

Because it's simply an act of sophistry to argue against free will. Something that keeps philosophers and scores of crackpots employed, but in the end, is something we dispense with at the end of the day.

Everything we do in life comes down to an act of free choice. Even the mundane things, like what to eat for breakfast or whether or not to go to work. Genes don't tell us what we're having for breakfast. They don't tell us what color shirt to wear.

In short, they're not deterministic when it comes down to behavior.

10/31/2008 1:29:02 AM

whatever you want to think about it is fine, but more and more evidence is lining up against free will.

still, im glad to hear you've proven the unprovable


i'm really looking forward to your next trick where you'll prove the existence of god for us.

10/31/2008 2:25:32 AM

Quote :

"but more and more evidence is lining up against free will. "

to exactly what evidence are you referring. (you can be general i don't need specifics)

10/31/2008 9:09:55 AM

Quote :

"whatever you want to think about it is fine, but more and more evidence is lining up against free will."

Which evidence are you referring to, exactly?

Quote :

"still, im glad to hear you've proven the unprovable"

No, I've simply pointed out that this is the same kind of rhetorical sophistry as the metaphysicist who points out that nothing is real, including the walls, yet when he leaves the room, still uses the door. Because even he doesn't actually buy his argument outside of the limited intellectual context.

Oh, and,

10/31/2008 9:38:51 AM

Quote :

"Everything we do in life comes down to an act of free choice."

Where does the choice come from? Even on the personal level, I don't understand free will. I do things because of who I am and the situation I'm in. I came to be who I am because of my genes and environment. I'm the sum of my experiences.

Quote :

"In short, they're not deterministic when it comes down to behavior."

Not simply deterministic, no. It's an incredibility complex process. Each of our choices proceeds from countless influences. But I don't see any materialistic explanation beyond genes, environment, and randomness.

The doctrine of personal responsibility has a strange causal breakdown. Peoples choices define them, but those choices don't come from anywhere. I don't get it.

10/31/2008 11:36:33 AM

Quote :

"Not simply deterministic, no. It's an incredibility complex process. Each of our choices proceeds from countless influences. But I don't see any materialistic explanation beyond genes, environment, and randomness."

I'll buy this to an extent. But one of the hallmark features of the human race is our ability to form complex thought out of observations of our environment and then act upon those observations. That is pretty damn close to free-will. The implication of free-will isn't that there are no consequences for our actions, but rather that we are capable of assessing those consequences and making determinations on our own as to how we'll approach them.

If you want to argue that the only true "free-will" is decisions made in a vacuum, then you are arguing that the only real free-will in decision making can only occur where there are no decisions to be made. Like [user]DrChaos[/user] said, this is an intellectually fun game, but not realistic.

10/31/2008 11:46:14 AM

Quote :

"That is pretty damn close to free-will."

It is? It's not close to the version of free will I see invoked around these parts. The idea that anybody can do anything if they really want to. That background and circumstances are just excuses, not explanations.

Quote :

"The implication of free-will isn't that there are no consequences for our actions, but rather that we are capable of assessing those consequences and making determinations on our own as to how we'll approach them."

Wait a moment. The doctrine of personal responsibility has consequences for actions. That's a central tenant. It fails to recognize that actions themselves are consequences. I agree we do the things you describe. But a careful analysis of any situation must include a recognition of limitations. Conscious thought itself isn't the whole picture. Many of our choices bypass that process completely.

10/31/2008 12:05:24 PM

Quote :

"Where does the choice come from? Even on the personal level, I don't understand free will. I do things because of who I am and the situation I'm in. I came to be who I am because of my genes and environment. I'm the sum of my experiences."

Where does the mind's conception of self come from? How does the human brain allow for higher processes of abstraction that aren't available to other animals?

These too are complex questions, but the simple fact that we can't answer them (yet) doesn't mean these things don't exist.

Quote :

"Not simply deterministic, no. It's an incredibility complex process. Each of our choices proceeds from countless influences. But I don't see any materialistic explanation beyond genes, environment, and randomness."

For one, the materialistic explanation is woefully incomplete as of now. Our understanding of the human mind is incredibly limited. What we describe as consciousness and self-awareness are likely emergent processes which cannot easily be accounted for by the mechanics of individual pieces alone. Rather, the individual pieces have to be accounted for as an entire system governed by feedback loops throughout.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

Furthermore, even making the argument that a person's genes, environment, etc. influence their choices is really a matter of what influences their decision process. The point, however, is that it does not make their decision for them - it simply calibrates their own decision matrix.

Quote :

"The doctrine of personal responsibility has a strange causal breakdown. Peoples choices define them, but those choices don't come from anywhere. I don't get it."

Not knowing where choices come from is not the same as "coming from nowhere." It actually assumes that we know much more about the workings of the human mind to claim that we know where the "illusion" of choice comes from than we actually know. What we do know of right now are how the constituent elements work - we do not have the level of knowledge that your claim suggests to understand how all of those pieces work together, and potentially what complex systems emerge as a result.

10/31/2008 1:02:02 PM

Quote :

"I am because of my genes and environment"

The whole product of genes thing is weak and when used can open the pathway for a slippery slope that is used to support the concept that women are potentially inherently inferior to men based on a different gene set. So if that were to be the case what would be the benefit of extended privileges to those without either the capability, right, and perhaps even desire to obtain them. Following that train, how does extended privileges to those who cannot ever actually earn them beget equality when someone else had to work for those privileges? Typically, i'd argue its a birth right, but if a set is born inferior, as your argument suggests, then that would not be the case.

10/31/2008 1:21:20 PM

^^ Your post strikes me as neither here nor there. I'm familiar with emergence and so on. I know our understanding of the human brain isn't complete. As I said, it's an extremely complex process. How does any of this lead to free will?

Quote :

"The point, however, is that it does not make their decision for them - it simply calibrates their own decision matrix."

Huh? Genes and environment make people, period. Far as I know, nothing else is available. So what are you talking about?

Quote :

"The whole product of genes thing is weak and when used can open the pathway for a slippery slope that is used to support the concept that women are potentially inherently inferior to men based on a different gene set."

Luckily, research suggests this ain't the case.

10/31/2008 1:31:46 PM

Quote :

"Your post strikes me as neither here nor there. I'm familiar with emergence and so on. I know our understanding of the human brain isn't complete. As I said, it's an extremely complex process. How does any of this lead to free will?"

I am suggesting that free will, in analogy to other known complex processes of the mind, may in fact be an emergent phenomena. This, however, does not make it "not real" - any more than the mind's capacity for abstraction is "not real." Which is the claim of those who deny free will.

Your claim rests on biological determinism - which, again, makes the strong claim that our understanding of free will is simply a deterministic result of biological processes. However, our understanding of the mind does not yet allow us to make that strong of a claim. If we are looking for the origin of free will, it may very well be through the same emergent processes that yield self-awareness and the capability of abstraction.

Quote :

"Huh? Genes and environment make people, period. Far as I know, nothing else is available. So what are you talking about?"

I'm saying people are not deterministic actors. Factors like environment and even heredity may influence the norms one uses in making a decision process, but they alone do not make decisions for you. (Or is one's choice of breakfast cereal now a deterministic function?)

In other words, trying to claim "that's it" is simply begging the question in your own favor. Granting that genes & environment influence behavior, they do so by influencing the weighting one gives to different criteria in a decision process. They alone do not determine the outcome.

10/31/2008 2:20:32 PM

Quote :

"I'm saying people are not deterministic actors."

Well, I'll grant there could be significant randomness as well. Is that you mean by free will?

Quote :

"Factors like environment and even heredity may influence the norms one uses in making a decision process, but they alone do not make decisions for you."

No may about it. Psychological research shows that circumstances affect behavior far more than people tend to think. Fundamental attribution error and all that. Within the narrative of free will, environment still matters most, at least for groups.

Quote :

"They alone do not determine the outcome."

What else is available?

Getting back to the original topic, the rate of rape and sexual assault depends on how you define these things. By radical feminist definition, the rape epidemic exists. By other definitions, maybe not.

10/31/2008 2:31:51 PM