Opinions on Fat Studies

[Fishbucket]

P.S. how the hell did this become a conversation about people's diets? Think about it for a second. Weirdness to the max. Also boring to the max. 

[asleepawake]

What I really want to know (since I can't not want to know) is how hard determinism can coexist with cultural studies or any kind of social theory/activism (assuming you do cultural studies-esque work).

 

They actually make a lot of sense together, at least to me. My interest in prison studies, for example, is helped, not hindered, by my belief that nobody "deserves" to languish away in deplorable conditions. We can certainly do work in the humanities and in social justice without needing to do that work out of free will. Likewise, I think that we can talk about "agency" without needing to have free will. We still have wants and we still suffer. We still value the feeling of free will.

[asleepawake]

ETA: It's late, and I'm too tired to write a badass defense of free will tonight.  But I will say that hard determinism is 1) epistemologically untenable and 2) unable to account for the reality of abstract phenomena.  Think about the ontology of mathematics and stuff.  Ditto for sentences.

 

If you have time tomorrow, I'd love to hear more on this! My views are always malleable.

[thatjewishgirl]

P.S. how the hell did this become a conversation about people's diets? Think about it for a second. Weirdness to the max. Also boring to the max. 

 

Veganism isn't a "diet." Why can't we make a connection between fat studies and the way people eat?

[Fishbucket]

Veganism isn't a "diet." Why can't we make a connection between fat studies and the way people eat?

 

Not if you want to be hardcore about it. Read the book. Shit's cray

[asleepawake]

It's more of a theoretical belief than a practical one, right? Because if you truly felt that all your actions were determined by something other than yourself, would you even bother to get out of bed in the morning?

 

Absolutely. I still feel like I make all of my decisions. I still get mad at people when they act in ways that I don't like. I still yell at nobody when some horrible driver cuts me off. I still feel like I'm the one making a decision about where I will go to school in the fall. It's only when I really think about it that I just can't believe in it.

[bluecheese]

::People are so rational. I always assume that they should do the correct thing and comport to my techno-futurist utopian ideals that ignore all cultural, social, racial, sexual, economic, etc. contingencies.::

 

 

Also, various "-studies" often exist is already-extant departments.

 

I think English departments should be eliminated because it is stupid that there is a department that focuses on one language (xenophobic, racist). I think everything should be merged into comparative literature. I have no real reason for doing this, except out of snark. That said, if we're talking eliminating disciplines for arbitrary reasons, I think my idea is better.

Edited February 28, 2013 by bluecheese

[asleepawake]

Veganism isn't a "diet." Why can't we make a connection between fat studies and the way people eat?

 

 

Not if you want to be hardcore about it. Read the book. Shit's cray

 

To be fair, the book is just one resource on a new field. We can talk about it in different ways. But being a vegan doesn't make you magically thin. I'm an overweight vegetarian. So many vegan carbs.

[Two Espressos]

They actually make a lot of sense together, at least to me. My interest in prison studies, for example, is helped, not hindered, by my belief that nobody "deserves" to languish away in deplorable conditions. We can certainly do work in the humanities and in social justice without needing to do that work out of free will. Likewise, I think that we can talk about "agency" without needing to have free will. We still have wants and we still suffer. We still value the feeling of free will.

 

Well yes, but you have to accept that anything you dislike/find morally objectionable cannot be held liable for being so.  Nazis cannot be blamed for doing what they did, for example.  Of course, you cannot be blamed for finding their actions morally objectionable as well, but you see where this is going: everything is as it "ought" (ought put in quotes because if you're a hard determinist, you cannot believe that anything "ought" to be the case in an objective sense).

 

Hard determinism destroys the possibility of knowledge.  It's not possible to know that something is the case if you cannot not know that something is the case.  Hard determinism is self-assumptively incoherent in that it destroys its own premise: were it the case that hard-line determinism is true, we couldn't know that determinism is true or not, as everything is causally reducible to the physics of subatomic particles.

 

Also, hard determinists can simply shrug off their opponents as being physiologically compelled to state the arguments that they do.  Freudians do a somewhat similar thing by trying to claim that their opponents' rejection of the existence of Freudian ideas is in itself evidence of Freudian ideas.

 

ETA: I'm a compatibilist determinist, by the way.  I haven't read/researched these issues enough to feel qualified to call myself that, but that is the technical term for it.  Perhaps it's possible that human cognition/free will is an emergent property.  I don't know.  But I'm really tired and incoherent right now, so I'm going to bed.

Edited February 28, 2013 by Two Espressos

[planesandtrains]

Well, I mean what I said... I believe in hard determinism. I don't believe that the human brain is the only thing in the universe that does not bend to the laws of cause and effect. I am by no means an expert, and I could be convinced of the existence of free will with the right evidence. I used to believe in it quite a bit (it's pretty much the default in our culture).  Here's a decent article.

 

the world revealed by quantum mechanics is one of probabilities, not determined outcomes. physicists haven't believed in determinism since the 19th century. to believe in free will is not to assign the human mind a special status, but rather to say it acts like other matter - partly constrained and subject to laws of probability, but not predetermined.

[asleepawake]

Well yes, but you have to accept that anything you dislike/find morally objectionable cannot be held liable for being so.  Nazis cannot be blamed for doing what they did, for example.  Of course, you cannot be blamed for finding their actions morally objectionable as well, but you see where this is going: everything is as it "ought" (ought put in quotes because if you're a hard determinist, you cannot believe that anything "ought" to be the case in an objective sense).

 

It is possible to hold someone responsible for their actions without holding them culpable, I think. I consider myself a hard determinist because I can't buy the concept of free will, and I can't just say it must exist because it makes it easier for me to be consistent. The cognitive-disonance is a bit maddening. I think you have good points, but more than anything they just seem to posit the difficulties we have as a species if determinism is true, but not actually evidence against its existence. Even if we cannot know with certainty, we can gain knowledge in the same way that a bird can test the materials that are best for its nest.

 

(You were right about it being late, and I'm probably not making sense anymore. I lose this round.)

Edited February 28, 2013 by asleepawake

[asleepawake]

the world revealed by quantum mechanics is one of probabilities, not determined outcomes. physicists haven't believed in determinism since the 19th century. to believe in free will is not to assign the human mind a special status, but rather to say it acts like other matter - partly constrained and subject to laws of probability, but not predetermined.

 

Determinism does not require that things are "predetermined" in the sense that they are predictable--things can be unpredictable and also determined. I think it's a bit rash to say "physicists believe" any single thing. Einstein did not believe in freewill (in the 20th century), and the small number of physicists that I know now aren't too keen on it either. Of course there may be many physicists who do believe in free will, and I've love to hear what they have to say.

[bluecheese]

I really need an all encompassing system to help me feel better about the fact that most of what I do is stupid and that I'm probably just going to die an incredibly stupid death in a cubicle in a third tier university reading papers by some student who poorly quotes talking heads from FOX News.

[asleepawake]

I really need an all encompassing system to help me feel better about the fact that most of what I do is stupid and that I'm probably just going to die an incredibly stupid death in a cubicle in a third tier university reading papers by some student who poorly quotes talking heads from FOX News.

 

LOL thanks for the jab. This certainly doesn't sound like the worst future possible, though...

[thebeatgoeson]

I really need an all encompassing system to help me feel better about the fact that most of what I do is stupid and that I'm probably just going to die an incredibly stupid death in a cubicle in a third tier university reading papers by some student who poorly quotes talking heads from FOX News.

 

I didn't not just read one of those papers.  Le sigh.

[asleepawake]

I didn't not just read one of those papers.  Le sigh.

 

Only one? It's a good day.

[Hugh10]

I am also at the moment too tired to jump into this discusson on free will, but it is one of my favorite topics and I just couldn't resist posting something now.  I think this podcast provides a good examination of some of the issues: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00z5y9z

 

BTW: I would call myself a determinist, but I do not see it as contradictory to my interests in cultural analysis.

[asleepawake]

I am also at the moment too tired to jump into this discusson on free will, but it is one of my favorite topics and I just couldn't resist posting something now.  I think this podcast provides a good examination of some of the issues: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00z5y9z

 

BTW: I would call myself a determinist, but I do not see it as contradictory to my interests in cultural analysis.

 

Thanks for posting this! I'm sleepy now but I'll try to listen tomorrow.

[planesandtrains]

Determinism does not require that things are "predetermined" in the sense that they are predictable--things can be unpredictable and also determined. I think it's a bit rash to say "physicists believe" any single thing. Einstein did not believe in freewill (in the 20th century), and the small number of physicists that I know now aren't too keen on it either. Of course there may be many physicists who do believe in free will, and I've love to hear what they have to say.

 

you've switched from talking about ontology to talking about epistemology, which the term "predetermined" doesn't require, since it doesn't imply anything about predictability (which is an epistemological concern). quantum mechanics requires talking about things in terms of distributions and patterns and probabilities, but no one single outcome can ever be said to be predetermined (in an ontological sense). einstein thought bohr/quantum was straight-up wrong and couldn't reconcile it with his relativity, but most physicists now see it as fundamental and not some blip that will be smoothed out later.

 

my point is that scientific consensus in the 19th century cohered around strong determinism; that is no longer true, which even the article you posted acknowledges. making an appeal to science (asserting that people who are not determinists are assigning the brain a status different than they are other matter, and different than a scientific definition of matter) to support determinism doesn't make much sense.

Edited February 28, 2013 by planesandtrains

[galateaencore]

1. When you let humanities people weigh in on medical topics, they invariably come up with nonsequiturs like "[meat and dairy] are completely irrelevant to a good diet" and then mislead themselves and others into considering this bullshit even for a second because they have a PhD attached to their name.

 

2. A large (HAHAHAHA) part of fat studies, like a large part of fat acceptance, deals with STIGMA. It does not normalize the health defects and athletic performance dampeners of fatness - it normalizes the BODY TYPE. It says that a fat person, regardless of whatever made them fat, deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Given how many people in this society are considered, or consider themselves, to be fat, this field of study will prove to provide many cultural benefits to society and many pecuniary benefits for its harbingers. 

 

In light of 1, I don't think fat studies should deal with the medical side of the issue - none of this expounding on "fat is a lifestyle choice" and "[meat and dairy] are completely irrelevant to a good diet", because we have no scientific data to back up these claims. However, in light of 2, it will and should inform the rhetoric that defines the medical field's perceptions of obesity, and certainly the widespread cultural rhetoric that informs our society. The fact (just proven in this topic) that people who are presumably applying to Harvard PhDs have the audacity to fart out opinions based on nonexistent  evidence, Special K commercials, and the experience of their mom's boyfriend's sister's childhood best friend points to a glaring gap in the market.

[damequixote]

Asleepawake, I think you are my soul mate.

[Troppman]

Reading this conversation has proven a bit unnerving. Counter how the field has been presented here, there are works within the canon that actually elevate the fat body insofar as it signifies death. In other words the fat body--like the smoker or any number of other examples--has political purchase, according to some authors, insofar as it disrupts (social, cultural, and structured) illusions of vitality, autonomy, and (im)mortality. Fat studies isn't just 'fat people are people too' or 'we are amidst an epidemic.' Edit: To clarify, this isn't to say that such works claim people should be fat, neither are such works an attempt to encourage fatness. The argument that the fat body disrupts our cultural order--an order arguably premised on subordinating/denying thanatos--would find great support in some of the above posts.

10-4, checking out of this thread. 

 

Second edit: To asleepawake below: no doubt :-). 

Edited February 28, 2013 by StephanieDelacour

[asleepawake]

Asleepawake, I think you are my soul mate.

 

YAY! I'm glad not everyone thinks I made a fool of myself in this thread... (though I probably did)

 

Reading this conversation has proven a bit unnerving. Counter how the field has been presented here, there are works within the canon that actually elevate the fat body insofar as it signifies death. In other words the fat body--like the smoker or any number of other examples--has political purchase, according to some authors, insofar as it disrupts (social, cultural, and structured) illusions of vitality, autonomy, and (im)mortality. Fat studies isn't just 'fat people are people too' or 'we are amidst an epidemic.' Edit: To clarify, this isn't to say that such works claim people should be fat, neither are such works an attempt to encourage fatness. The argument that the fat body disrupts our cultural order--an order arguably premised on subordinating/denying thanatos--would find great support in some of the above posts.

10-4, checking out of this thread. 

 

Yes, despite how I've discussed it here I agree with this. I was more concerned with defending the field from those who see fatness as a personal failing that is as unworthy of discussion as "unflattering outfits," etc. I can't speak for others, but I was not trying to speak to the work that has been done in the field. 

Edited February 28, 2013 by asleepawake

[practical cat]

Reading this conversation has proven a bit unnerving. Counter how the field has been presented here, there are works within the canon that actually elevate the fat body insofar as it signifies death. In other words the fat body--like the smoker or any number of other examples--has political purchase, according to some authors, insofar as it disrupts (social, cultural, and structured) illusions of vitality, autonomy, and (im)mortality. Fat studies isn't just 'fat people are people too' or 'we are amidst an epidemic.' Edit: To clarify, this isn't to say that such works claim people should be fat, neither are such works an attempt to encourage fatness. The argument that the fat body disrupts our cultural order--an order arguably premised on subordinating/denying thanatos--would find great support in some of the above posts.

10-4, checking out of this thread. 

 

Second edit: To asleepawake below: no doubt :-). 

Huh. This is cool. All I know of the field is from a legal scholar so I really only know about fatness and rights (bleak, unsettling stuff that). Thanks for this.

Edited February 28, 2013 by girl who wears glasses

[bluecheese]

1. When you let humanities people weigh in on medical topics, they invariably come up with nonsequiturs like "[meat and dairy] are completely irrelevant to a good diet" and then mislead themselves and others into considering this bullshit even for a second because they have a PhD attached to their name.

 

2. A large (HAHAHAHA) part of fat studies, like a large part of fat acceptance, deals with STIGMA. It does not normalize the health defects and athletic performance dampeners of fatness - it normalizes the BODY TYPE. It says that a fat person, regardless of whatever made them fat, deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Given how many people in this society are considered, or consider themselves, to be fat, this field of study will prove to provide many cultural benefits to society and many pecuniary benefits for its harbingers. 

 

In light of 1, I don't think fat studies should deal with the medical side of the issue - none of this expounding on "fat is a lifestyle choice" and "[meat and dairy] are completely irrelevant to a good diet", because we have no scientific data to back up these claims. However, in light of 2, it will and should inform the rhetoric that defines the medical field's perceptions of obesity, and certainly the widespread cultural rhetoric that informs our society. The fact (just proven in this topic) that people who are presumably applying to Harvard PhDs have the audacity to fart out opinions based on nonexistent  evidence, Special K commercials, and the experience of their mom's boyfriend's sister's childhood best friend points to a glaring gap in the market.

 

Seriously? Medical discourse takes all kinds of troublesome positions on things. Also, how is medical discourse immunologically distinct from "culture"?

 

Also also, why are you being a dick toward vegetarians?

 

Personally, I try to only eat things that I've shot in the face myself (my parents have a farm). But I definitely don't gesticulate pointless, seemingly-testosterone-scented comments toward people who are doing something because they feel it is right (sure, it often is an excuse to be political in a very harmless way, but some of the most radical and engaged people I know have also been vegetarians... so it isn't a single kind of person that makes that choice).

 

Ugh. This thread is super annoying.

Edited February 28, 2013 by bluecheese