katt, migrating 🌟 🌈 @starkatt@awoo.space

@indi Heh, once again we posted parallel things at the same time.

@indi Okay. The thing is, *I* don't feel like my statement "I am a fox" is literal, yet it's still something I want to reify and defend, and that's something I don't have a great toolkit for? I feel like an even expanded definition of "literal" still contains a statement of categorical equivalence, and that's not something I personally feel applies to myself.

@indi You're saying I shouldn't concede that in the first place, yeah?

@indi But when people insist on saying "you only mean that as a metaphor!" I want to resist and say "even if it is, that doesn't make it any less real or true."

@indi I'd never use "metaphorically" in the core statement. I think "am" suffices, aside from any needs for "literally" or "metaphorically".

@indi Yeah, realizing while writing that that what I was really reaching for was respectability brought around my thinking a fair bit.

@indi IDK. At the end of the day, I don't really actually know *how* I am a fox, just that I definitely *am* one. The framework to me is a lot less important than the core concept, and honestly I don't feel like the core concept is something we have adequate words for as a culture.

@indi If someone asked me that last thing, I'd respond with "yes, metaphorically, but that doesn't make it any less real." Maybe that's me implicitly respectability politicking...

Feeling that invalidation is definitely understandable.

I feel like no matter what, we're gonna get dismissed as irrational and misguided by a lot of people. The dichotomy between "literal" and "metaphorical" is a crock of shit, and I fully think it should be broken down from both directions.

@indi I remember getting into an arugument with a friend once because he was conflating "god literally exists" with "god materially exists", and that definition of "exists" is so boring and limited.

@indi I can see where you're coming from. I want to push back against that delegitimization, because so many people come from a framework where "literal" == "objectively, externally, and empirically verifiable"

Update: "funny" has been updated to "made me laugh so hard I had to go lie down for a minute".

Oh my gosh this game is adorable and funny and good.

Looks like Ladykiller in a Bind is the first of your game recommendations I'll be playing! It was already on my list, and I guess I'm finally in the mood for something porn-y.

@grainloom I guess I can sum up the last five or so years of my personal philosophic development by saying "Even through they're unverifiable, qualia matter."

@grainloom Scientific rationalism is a really, really useful tool for certain kinds of knowledge production. When it comes to say, medicine or moon missions, it'll be what I use.

But it cannot produce all knowledge. By saying "only knowledge produced via my means is real", scientific rationalism discards massive and important parts of human experience.

I used to be a rationalist (see "post-skeptic" in my bio) so I do understand where you're coming from.

@Irick @abbenm I 🖤 postrstructuralism

People tend to think that something being "metaphorical" (like furry/kin identity, or mysticism stuff, or lots of other things) makes it less real.

That's kind of deeply missing the point. Our brains are *entirely* metaphorical. Our perception of the world passes through billions of years of evolutionary processing and filtering, and is only tenuously connected to a deeper fundamental truth. Approximations are all we have.

@Ulfra_Wolfe@witches.town Objective feelings are a myth.

@Fuego PlayStation only afaik :(