I have to agree with pldennison. One person’s unequivocal term is another person’s politically-loaded concept.
Ideally, Person Two OUGHT to take apart the concept FIRST, rather than debate Person One for a page and a half of GD and THEN say “oh by the way your use of the word ‘deviant’ seems to imply blah blah blah as an automatic corrolary of yadda yadda yadda, and I object to the equivocation and didn’t MEAN what you imply thant I meant when I said ‘quote quote quote’ about the civil rights of deviants” – but that assumes that Person Two was aware of Person One’s use of the word, and had made the necessary distinction, before making the string of GD posts.
That doesn’t make it OK to play wriggly little semantic games, but the point is that there are some entirely legitimate arguments to be made about words, meaning, and the use of them in a political context (including the politics of the SDMB debates of course).
It has been my experience in a decade of debates on various net forums that arguments bog down in accusations of semantics long before they bog down in actual semantics. Accusing someone of resorting to semantics is in fact the second bastion* of the small-minded, the first being to foist accusations of small-mindedness. There is, in fact, no defense against either accusation, because the defense will be treated as a compound of the crime.
A poster will cry “Semantics!” after having been caught making an error in logic, usually equivocation, and once that card is in play, it has a way of trumping everything else. It’s just the shabbiest kind of dodge for muddy thinkers who can’t be bothered to try and understand someone else’s objection, or worse, won’t be cornered into admiting they have erred.
Do you mean that it’s not clear whether I take exception to the insinuation of the thread title independent of its lack of support in the body of the OP, or whether I mean to challenge Scylla’s proscription through its assumptions without questioning its soundness?
No, I mean that it is conceivable that both you and Scylla are right. It is possible that semantics is frequently used as a dishonest debating technique, as the OP suggests, while at the same time accusations of semantics are frequently used as the “shabbiest kind of dodge for muddy thinkers”. (I am not endorsing the latter position - merely noting that it is compatible with the OP).
Right on Johnny Angel. I agree with you. I admit that I have very little experience with online forums, but whenever I get in trouble in a debate I know that I cry ‘semantics!’ long before I start quibbling about semantics.
I wouldn’t say that I disagree with the statement that using semantic quibbling to weasel out of a position is dishonest; I just think that it isn’t as common as you might think.
After all, when you are debating something how do you avoid semantics? You are communicating via language and language is all about semantics. I just don’t see how you escape defining your use of a word if you want to be clear.
Semantic weaseling is still not a cool thing to do, it is just that a true case of unalloyed semantic weaseling is (I believe) uncommon. (How can you refute me, by the way? How do you know what another person actually meant? On the flip side, how can I make these claims without knowing what other people mean? Truth is, I can’t.)
I submit this as sjc’s first rule regarding semantic weaseling:
Use the accusation of semantic quibbling only as a last resort and never as a direct accusation.
At least he didn’t say “You are wrong, wrong, wrong!” I see quite a big difference between saying that you “strongly disagree” with someone and that that person is wrong unequivocally. He didn’t even say he thinks you are wrong. I mean to say, do you have a problem with someone thinking you are wrong? There will always be someone out there who thinks (or knows) you are wrong. If that is the case, I can interpret “I strongly disagree with you” as a person’s way of politely saying that he or she thinks you are wrong. It leaves open the option of changing your mind without losing face.
I humbly submit that playing with words is all we ever do when we are communicating. What may look like a weaselish attempt to change meaning may in fact be an honest concern for understanding.
I suppose I am not disagreeing with you about the fact that debating semantics can used as a underhanded debating tactic, I do think one should be careful about throwing around accusations of semantic quibbling.
I do think that Scylla is expressing a good general point about standards for intellectual honesty, but to the extent that it’s a broadside against semantic argumentation it’s uneeded and irrelevant. “Semantics” is not a dirty practice by itself, nor do I think it’s often used the way Scylla seems to feel it is.
There are times when we are in a quandry as to whether it is more charitable to assume a poster genuinely can’t understand an objection, or is being deliberately obtuse, but this is not the fault of semantic discourse.
My general policy is to always, always, always act as if I think the other poster is acting in good faith. Sometimes I doubt this, and on maybe three occasions in the last two years I have been sure of it, but I never remove my mask of wide-eyed sincerety. It simply can’t accomplish anything–no one can prove that they were sincere, nor can I prove that they are not.
In my experience, if you give someone enough rope, they will hang themselves. You don’t have to hurry it along. So when I suspect that someone may be using semantics as a dodge, I just keep on plugging, reclarifying my position until I am blue in the face, but never showing impatience or suspicion. After about three rounds of this, if they are sincere you have cleaned it up, and if they are being dishonest, they begin to look like a fool.
On the couple of occasions where someone really seemed to be misunderstanding me wiht malace aforethought, I have simply silently bowed out–no use getting in a mud-slinging match with that sort of poster.
As it happens, I also disagree with the title of this thread. As it also happens, the argument that actually appears in scaylla’s post indicates that my original statement may have been in error. Points 1 and 2 are nothing more than semantical exercises. Point 3 places importance of honest people finding consensual agreement upon said semantical exercises.
If scylla agrees with me that precision is an aid to achieving that consensus, then I do not “strongly disagree” with him on the importance of semantic precision, I simply express my evaluation in different terms.
Point 4 is simply a stricture that honest debaters should not be dishonest. The fact that semantical evasions might be used by a dishonest poster does not damn semantics any more than the fact that Vanilla Ice used rhymes damns poetry.
I agree that sometimes semantics is used dishonestly to evade an admission of error or to obfuscate rather than elucidate. Scylla, do you agree that honest posters sometimes find discrepancies of usage interfering with understanding of ideas?
To my mind, semantic precision addresses both of those problems.
Finally, the last bastion of the small-minded is the same as the first bastion of the small-minded: unwavering certainty.
