Gender theory question

[pozorvlak]

Gender-theory kru, your attention please:

I came across the following recently, and wondered if any of you might have some idea of its source:

Gender is not like some of the other grammatical modes which express precisely a mode of conception without any reality that corresponds to the conceptual mode, and consequently do not express precisely something in reality by which the intellect could be moved to conceive a thing the way it does, even where that motive is not something in the thing as such.

Any thoughts? And can someone tell me what it means?

Comments

[ryani.livejournal.com]

Spoiler Warning

I just saw that as well, on Paul Graham's "On Philosophy" essay.

The footnote says:
This is actually from the Ordinatio of Duns Scotus (ca. 1300), with "number" replaced by "gender." Plus ca change.

Wolter, Allan (trans), Duns Scotus: Philosophical Writings, Nelson, 1963, p. 92.

I believe it was to show a point: lots of impressive-sounding words put together in a way that's hard to understand makes it easy to think that there is some underlying meaning that you are missing, as opposed to just being badly written.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

Dude, at least include some spoiler space :-)

I'd assumed that was his point (though actually, I think steerpikelet has done a decent job extracting meaning from it, and probably something pretty close to the original meaning), but I wanted to see how the gender-theory crowd would react. Not entirely ethical, and not very scientific, but still potentially interesting. The game may be up now, but I'll screen your comment and let it run for a bit longer.