It is amazing to me that people chastise me for requiring definitions for words used in arguments.
This morning someone said the US has "slaughtered" many innocent civilians in Afghanistan, as if the statement were supposed to prove in itself that the US has done something wrong in its actions in Afghanistan, because obviously "slaughtering" is bad. Perhaps the US had done something wrong, but if this statement were to prove it, I needed to know what definition of "slaughter" he was using. He got on my case for "playing with the definitions of standard words".
Well, excuse me. You intended to prove something with a word, and I demanded you define your terms. If "slaughter" means merely "killing", then I want more information about how and why the killing is wrong. If it means "intentionally killing," then I want to see evidence of many innocent civilians being intentionally killed.
I can't understand why anyone would ever have a problem with requiring that critical and unclear words in an argument be defined. To progress in an argument without ensuring everyone is using the same words in the same way is nonsense; it is not useful communication, it is different people saying different things and not understanding each other. To use a word and then not want people to know what you mean by it is nonsense; it is not useful communication, it is obfuscation.
Surely the state sponsored murder (intentional killing) of even one innocent civilian is too many. And illegal under US law if memory serves.I want to see evidence of many innocent civilians being intentionally killed.
Re:what do you mean by 'many'?
pudge on 2002-06-18T15:34:14
Sure, those are reasonable questions, and I have no problem discussing them. The point of the journal entry isn't to defend the US or discuss the issue at hand -- I pondered picking a different example, but this one was fresh in my mind -- but just to note that we should not fear these kinds of discussions, defining our terms, making sure everyone knows what we mean, if we really want to have honest communication.
Sometimes it does descend into an endless pit of defining and redefining every word. At that point, I usually step back and say, "what are we really trying to prove here?" As in this case: he was trying to prove America was wrong. So I try to get the conversation away from labels describing the situation (slaughtered, terrorized, murdered) and get to a simple factual description of what was done that is wrong (killed 30 innocent civilians in an air raid on an al Qaeda hideout). Then we can discuss what the motivation was, what the intent was, what the justification was, and perhaps reach some sort of conclusion.
If that doesn't work, give up.:-)
[As a side note, a friend of mine asked me this morning how to define terrorism to include bad things like the attack on the WTC, and not include other more justified things, like the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I tried to explain that labels are just conveniences so we can have a good idea about something without having to think so hard. If they get in the way, they are not doing their job, and you should get rid of them. No, this is not an attempt to justify through undefining, it is a recognizing of the fact that labels are imperfect conveniences. Yes, this is an implicit denunciation of Bush's War On Terror as portrayed by and through the dominant mass media.]
"Slaughtered" is a good example. US soldiers "slaughtered" someone and, therefore, (as the unspoken assumption goes) since "slaughtering" is evil and bad, then the US soldiers are evil and bad.
Replacing "slaughtered" with "killed" removes some (but not all) of the emotive nature of the word. There was a lovely little book called "Straight and Crooked Thinking" (now sadly out of print) which exposed this and similar fallacies. (confusion of "some", "many" and "all", for instance, and argument in a circle)
So I agree that precise terminology in debate is fundamental.
Even so, I think it's bloody annoying trying to argue with someone who has no problems coming out with "it depends on what your definition of "is" is".
Re:Straight and Crooked Thinking
pudge on 2002-06-18T15:23:43
Yes, that's the fear, and I admit that sometimes I do that, but usually only when goofing around. Another example (from a similar discussion elsewhere) was "terrorist". That is an exceedingly difficult word to define, and I usually don't attempt to, but when someone says to me "this is terrorist and that is not" as a means to prove some nation is just as bad as another, and then I ask him to define the term, he shouldn't get mad at me for asking.:)
Even Muddier Water
chaoticset on 2002-06-18T17:21:02
There are those who have an extensive theory of 'fourth-generation warfare'.
