maklelan wrote:quote="Droopy"
So then, language creates reality?
No, it describes it. The reality is there whether it is described or not.
Well, at least we've come that far.
Droopy wrote:Any label I care to use against you, to describe "observable behavior" (which may be nothing more than thoughts, beliefs, arguments, and principled philosophical positions I find ideologically objectionable) must "stick" and be accepted as legitimate descriptive concepts in reality based upon nothing more than my creation and usage of the terms.
If it is observable, it exists, whatever name you give it.
Yes, but
what is it?
My point was that the behavior exists, not that any label attached to it is etymologically accurate. When you group a behavior with a preexisting category for rhetorical reasons, you're not so much describing it as judging it.
What's wrong with judging behavior against a background of fundamental, underlying moral/ethical principles?
The descriptor is secondary, and when value judgments are used for the labeling of behaviors, there is commonly disagreement.
But this is a triviality, surely?
The disagreement is not over whether the behavior exists, though, it's over whether or not the label can be widely agreed upon. Whether or not "homophobia" is actually a phobia, the behavior that is described by the common use of the term exists.
I'm afraid this is where your argument falls apart, mak, because that which you have chosen to term "homophobia" is, according to the internal logic of your own argument here, not clear, unambiguous behavior, but only your subjective (ideologically colored?) interpretation of it.
The medicalization and pathologization of ideological/philosophcal differences of opinion or world view is an old story, mak, and like the whack-a-mole, as soon as one is beaten down, another one pops up to take its place.
Droopy wrote:I see.
We all know what this really is, and its known as Newspeak, or PC, or just good old well poisoning.
No, those are just rather naïve ways to stick on a label that you think will serve to pigeonhole it for easy dismissal.
I'll have to disagree with you here as a matter of principle and history. "Homophobia" is Newspeak (or political correctness, to use its modern designation) precisely because it is not a descriptive term at all, but a
prescriptive term, connoting a pathological or deranged state of mind within others holding views with which you disagree.
It is used, like other such terms, to brand the politically incorrect as ideologically unclean. It does not describe a philosophical position, but only anathematizes it in relation to another position considered beyond question.
It is an undeniable fact that no letter, words, or phrases that exist or that have ever existed have carried any actual inherent meaning. Linguistic meaning is nothing more than an agreement about what semantic senses and referents are to be attached to what symbols. When there is agreement, there is meaning, even if it is only between two people. That's not up for debate.
But this doesn't justify the speakers of the same language, the lexical definitions and possible colorations of which have long been settled, to poison the well of discourse by labeling principled dissent as a sign of psychopathology in need of medical or psychological treatment.