Problems of ontology and problems of semantics
Because it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot. You can only think about something for so long before it goes away — that’s what writing is for. And here we are.
Right, so… I can’t think of an example off the top of my head that’s more suitable that the one that inspired this line of thinking, so let’s just go with that.
I’m helping a friend with an artistic project. They’re very interested in questions of robotics and AI and robot autonomy etc etc, and one question they like to ask is “would you consider dating a robot”? From my unique vantage point working behind the scenes I get to see what people have said in answer to this question, and one theme is to what extent the term “dating” is one that applies solely to humans as opposed to, say, encapsulating certain feelings and methodologies that might be associated with romance amongst not-humans.
So now there’s an interesting dichotomy that’s set up, which is the title of this session: are the problems we face problems that exist from how things really, materially are in the world, or are we just worried about how we define our terms? Gay marriage is another good example of this. A lot of (presumably otherwise rational) people argued against the legality of gay marriage on the grounds that, sure, gay people fall in love and have relationships, but the term marriage is one that already has a history of traditionally being between a man and a woman, and so it shouldn’t be applied to gay people. This is a nifty little loophole for bigots, because it allows them to assert that they don’t have anything against gay people per se, it would just need… what? A new definition? I’m not really sure what the next part of the argument is.
The fallacy here, or honestly maybe it isn’t even a fallacy but it’s definitely bad, is that separation necessitates discrimination. Remember “separate but equal” in the US, where black people had all the same things as white people, they just couldn’t be in the same place, and that was fine because everyone was equal? Except they weren’t, and it was racist bullshit, which is why we don’t do it anymore. Separation begets discrimination, always. This is the groundwork that underlays a lot of my writings on identity, especially in the context of nationalism and one’s identity in the nation-state, because I think it’s an area where a lot of progress still stands to be made. As-is, the best way to ameliorate the discrimination and, often, oppression that comes from separation (which is always going to be a thing anyway because people will always have different identities) is to make the stakes of having those different identities as small as possible. Thus, in a roundabout way, why gay people have to be allowed to get “married” as opposed to “married2, the new different marriage”. Even if, legally, they act the same way, semantically they set us up for discrimination because we are no longer dealing with the same thing. “I get married and I’m gay” is a very different statement then “I am a gay and I do the marriage thing for gays”, because that’s implying that, rather than one’s homosexuality being incidental to their getting married, the two depend on each other, which I think is something we want to avoid.
Does this do enough to make sure people’s different identities can flourish without being threatened by homogenization? Maybe not. I’m not quite sure.
