Well, I say "habit," but I'm speaking more in terms of individual experience. What I'm getting at is that it seems to me that Butler places more of an emphasis on environment than biology. I mean, that whole binary deconstructs when you really look at it, anyway, but I still think it's fair to say that the latter changes more slowly; my analogy has always been water dripping on a rock, where water stands in for environment and the rock for biology.

Anyway, trans people is a good point of contention for what I'm talking about: can her theory account for why trans people don't feel "right" in the role they've been conditioned into? To the extent that some find it impossible to adequately live up to that role and are Queered into the discourse? If not... I mean, I think that throws a huge wrench into the idea that that which feels "natural" is that which has been socially conditioned.

My main contention is that I feel like they're too focused on habit developed through reward and punishment. Of course I think it plays a role, but like... Well, I think it makes sense to relate it to something "performative" in the more colloquial sense of the word, which is dance. I don't think there's such a thing as a dance that is not socially constructed in some way, that is not imitive. But I don't think that is the driving force of dance: the driving force of dance is the affectual experience of music. Actually, I'm in the process of developing this concept of passion that draws from Deleuze and Guattari's writing on desire. Anyway!

Repetition can make dance feel less natural: you can lose the feeling of it and start going through the motions. I know it's different: I do think one thing Butler is talking about is how we "go through the motions" with gendered behavior; we don't even think about what we're doing, and that's why they feel natural. Even so, I feel like perhaps hormones and center of gravity play a bigger role than Butler gives them credit for.

All that having been said, I haven't read as much Butler as much as I could have. You seem to be very familiar with them, though; what do you think?

Karen Barad draws from them but also critiques them. I mean, that's not the whole point of the book, but... Well, "Meeting the Universe Halfway" is a fantastic book! The argument is that the relationship between the social and material is not one of unidirectional restraint

Great article! I think Nietzsche is overrated, but through no fault of his own. It's this almost worshipful attitude some people have toward him (I even saw someone refer to him once as "the great prophet Nietzsche"), and it's like... That kind of person tends to think that he has all the answers that will work for everyone and anyone; if they don't, you're just not "trying hard enough" (which, having grown up fundamentalist Christian, sounds familiar!). I think often those are the people who don't really get his work, too. Because I mean... Haven't they just replaced God with Nietzsche? Kinda undercuts what he was saying, actually. That is, turns out what happens is that people will just invent new gods. Although of course not everyone does that.

Also there's the idea that the particles are conscious without the system of AI being conscious. And again, what kind of "consciousness" are we talking about? Panpsychism assumes that sentience is ubiquitous, but sapience is still emergent.

Oooh, ok. Now that you mention it, I may have seen her talk before. I'm always surprised when I see serious philosophers making hard statements about philosophy they're clearly not familiar with. Like, I felt foolish in undergrad when I realized that people meant something more like "personality" by self, and not "sentience" like I thought... I get that a lot of layperson wouldn't know that panpsychism is about sentience and not sapience, but if you're out there writing papers and giving talks about the topic... Good Lord, how can you be out there publishing about it when you don't have even the most basic grasp of what the theory says?! How do you even get away with it??? And I see that particular error a lot. Makes me feel like maybe I'm not doing so bad after all, lol.

Agreeing. It seems strange to me that the author of the article got that wrong; that's a common misconception among laypeople, but if you're writing an article about it??? Seems like at least a terrible choice of words.

As for physicalism... Lol, I will never pass up an opportunity to critique that!

"Observation" doesn't even mean "looking at," it means making a measurement with equipment that intra-acts with the particle.

Also you don't need quantum physics to challenge that kind of physicalism: that comes down to a logical absurdity.

What do you mean, "iffy takes on panpsychism?"