While the advisory against using a dictionary to resolve such arguments are true, a lot of arguments stem from confusion or disagreement over the meaning of words. Based on the work I've done in philosophy, this type of disagreement probably covers 50% of philosophical debates, with about 2% of the participants in such debates admitting that that is what they disagree about.
For example, "Most atheists believe in the divinity of Christ" could be resolved easily without recourse to the empirical world. If I believe that it is possible for someone to be an atheist and believe in the divinity of Christ, then I am using atheist to mean something very different from its actual meaning.
As you wrote earlier, using words invokes connotations regardless of whether a newly assigned definition merits the same connotations. Some on the far left have defined "racism" to mean "is White and lives in the USA." Appealing to a dictionary is useful in an argument with such a person because it prevents them from using a very charged word inappropriately. Similar tricks occur with "fascism," "freedom," "democracy," and many other such words.
Bas...
In colloge, I led a book discussion group about ethics. Most participants had read the book.
Everyone in the group agreed that ethics and morals were different.
They even agreed on HOW they were different (internal/personal vs group/societal, arrived at vs proscribed, philosophical vs legal).
They REFUSED to agree, however, on what term referred to which distinction.
Sigh...
Based on the work I've done in philosophy, this type of disagreement probably covers 50% of philosophical debates, with about 2% of the participants in such debates admitting that that is what they disagree about. Someone remind me against why I'm supposed to take philosophy seriously.
Because if no one takes philosophy seriously, the philosophers will have nothing at all.
Will you take that away from them? They have so little as it is.
Is atheism a "religion"? Is transhumanism a "cult"?
My favorite example is, Is a fetus a person?
That doesn't answer the question "Is a fœtus a person", it just supplies a definition of "person", which may or may not be relevant to any given query.
Suppose my real query is "Can a fœtus talk?" Now, just because I choose to define "person" in such a way that most "person"s can talk, and in such a way that a fœtus classes as a "person", that doesn't make the probability that a fœtus can talk any different to if I'd defined "person" differently.
The whole point of these examples of disguised queries is that if you find yourself trying to answer them, you're doing it wrong.
Suppose we call the horse's tail a leg.
People who argue that atheism is a religion "because it states beliefs about God" are really trying to argue (I think) that the reasoning methods used in atheism are on a par with the reasoning methods used in religion, or that atheism is no safer than religion in terms of the probability of causally engendering violence, etc...
Or they're applying a Fully General Counterargument without actually trying to make any substantive point, or realizing that they should be?
Atheists may not believe in God, but I think they mostly adhere to the 10 commandments.
I think you're just trying to say that atheists follow moral expectations of modern Christian-influenced culture, but taken literally, the statement's nonsense.
I mean, look at the Ten Commandments:
- Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
- Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image (...).
- Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain (...).
- Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. (...)
- Honour thy father and thy mother (...).
- Thou shalt not kill.
- Thou shalt not commit adultery.
- Thou shalt not steal.
- Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
- Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, (...) nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.
The first 4 are blatantly ignored, 6 is famously problematic, 9 and 10 are mostly ignored (via gossip, status seeking, greed and so on) and finally 7 and 8 might be typically obeyed, but minor theft (especial anonymous) is common and adultery has at least 10% base rates.
How is this a "mostly adhered"? (Obviously, Christians and atheists don't really differ in their behavior here.)
The question "Is this object a blegg?" may stand in for different queries on different occasions. If it weren't standing in for some query, you'd have no reason to care.
Basically, this is pragmatism in a nutshell -- right?
Cheers, Ari
Excellent post, however, "But people often don't realize that their argument about where to draw a definitional boundary, is really a dispute over whether to infer a characteristic shared by most things inside an empirical cluster..." Indeed so, but there are other aspects. Humans also have obsessions with (a) how far your cluster is from mine (kinship or the lack of it) (b) given one empirical cluster, how can I pick a characteristic, however minor, which will allow me to split it into 'us vs them' (Robber's Cave). So when you get to discussing whether an uploaded human brain is part of the cluster 'human', those are the considerations which will be foremost.
My favorite example is, Is a fetus a person? Yes, but it's still okay to murder them.
Micha Gertner has an interesting essay on pragmatism & economics here.
What's really at stake is an atheist's claim of substantial difference and superiority relative to religion
Often semantics matter because laws and contracts are written in words. When "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion", it's sometimes advantageous to claim that you're not a religion, or that your enemy is a religion. If churches get preferential tax treatment, it may be advantageous to claim that you're a church.
I'm having problems with the word "is" in your description.
This is not intended as a snarky comment...
This was a really clarifying post for me. I had gotten to the point of noticing that "What is X?" debates were really just debates over the definition of X, but I hadn't yet taken the next step of asking why people care about how X is defined.
I think another great example of a disguised query is the recurring debate, "Is this art?" People have really widely varying definitions of "art" (e.g., some people's definition includes "aesthetically interesting," other people's definition merely requires "conceptually interesting") -- and in one sense, once both parties explain how they use the word "art," the debate should resolve pretty quickly.
But of course, since it's a disguised query, the question "Is this art?" should really be followed up with the question "Why does it matter?" As far as I can tell, the disguised query in this case is usually "does this deserve to be taken seriously?" which can be translated in practice into, "Is this the sort of thing that deserves to be exhibited in a gallery?" And that's certainly a real, non-semantic debate. But we can have that debate without ev...
I like this post because it shows the usefulness of one of my favourite questions to answer a question with: "What's it for?" What use do you have for the answer to your question?
When I have discussions of the philosophical kind, I have learned that it often pays of to start with defining the words being used: For example, I recall one discussion where I defined Evil as a shorthand for "all corporations and institutions that try to compete by opposing the existence and legitimacy of competitors and newcomers instead of by trying to offer a better product, like Microsoft", and one other discussion where I defined Evil as "Working for Sauron or Saruman or Morgoth", i.e very different. I would never (that is, I try...
I run the Less Wrong meetup group in Palo Alto. After we announced the events at Meetup.com, we often get a lot of guests who are interested in rationality but who have not read the LW sequences. I have an idea for a introductory session where we have the participants do a sorting exercise. Therefore, I am interested in getting 3D printed versions of rubes, bleggs and other items references in this post.
Does anyone have any thoughts on how to do this cheaply? Is there sufficient interest in this to get a kickstarter running? I expect that these items may be of interest to other Less Wrong meetup groups, and possibly to CFAR workshops and/or schools?
Imagine that you have a peculiar job in a peculiar factory: Your task is to take objects from a mysterious conveyor belt, and sort the objects into two bins. When you first arrive, Susan the Senior Sorter explains to you that blue egg-shaped objects are called "bleggs" and go in the "blegg bin", while red cubes are called "rubes" and go in the "rube bin".
Once you start working, you notice that bleggs and rubes differ in ways besides color and shape. Bleggs have fur on their surface, while rubes are smooth. Bleggs flex slightly to the touch; rubes are hard. Bleggs are opaque; the rube's surface slightly translucent.
Soon after you begin working, you encounter a blegg shaded an unusually dark blue—in fact, on closer examination, the color proves to be purple, halfway between red and blue.
Yet wait! Why are you calling this object a "blegg"? A "blegg" was originally defined as blue and egg-shaped—the qualification of blueness appears in the very name "blegg", in fact. This object is not blue. One of the necessary qualifications is missing; you should call this a "purple egg-shaped object", not a "blegg".
But it so happens that, in addition to being purple and egg-shaped, the object is also furred, flexible, and opaque. So when you saw the object, you thought, "Oh, a strangely colored blegg." It certainly isn't a rube... right?
Still, you aren't quite sure what to do next. So you call over Susan the Senior Sorter.
"Oh, yes, it's a blegg," Susan says, "you can put it in the blegg bin."
You start to toss the purple blegg into the blegg bin, but pause for a moment. "Susan," you say, "how do you know this is a blegg?"
Susan looks at you oddly. "Isn't it obvious? This object may be purple, but it's still egg-shaped, furred, flexible, and opaque, like all the other bleggs. You've got to expect a few color defects. Or is this one of those philosophical conundrums, like 'How do you know the world wasn't created five minutes ago complete with false memories?' In a philosophical sense I'm not absolutely certain that this is a blegg, but it seems like a good guess."
"No, I mean..." You pause, searching for words. "Why is there a blegg bin and a rube bin? What's the difference between bleggs and rubes?"
"Bleggs are blue and egg-shaped, rubes are red and cube-shaped," Susan says patiently. "You got the standard orientation lecture, right?"
"Why do bleggs and rubes need to be sorted?"
"Er... because otherwise they'd be all mixed up?" says Susan. "Because nobody will pay us to sit around all day and not sort bleggs and rubes?"
"Who originally determined that the first blue egg-shaped object was a 'blegg', and how did they determine that?"
Susan shrugs. "I suppose you could just as easily call the red cube-shaped objects 'bleggs' and the blue egg-shaped objects 'rubes', but it seems easier to remember this way."
You think for a moment. "Suppose a completely mixed-up object came off the conveyor. Like, an orange sphere-shaped furred translucent object with writhing green tentacles. How could I tell whether it was a blegg or a rube?"
"Wow, no one's ever found an object that mixed up," says Susan, "but I guess we'd take it to the sorting scanner."
"How does the sorting scanner work?" you inquire. "X-rays? Magnetic resonance imaging? Fast neutron transmission spectroscopy?"
"I'm told it works by Bayes's Rule, but I don't quite understand how," says Susan. "I like to say it, though. Bayes Bayes Bayes Bayes Bayes."
"What does the sorting scanner tell you?"
"It tells you whether to put the object into the blegg bin or the rube bin. That's why it's called a sorting scanner."
At this point you fall silent.
"Incidentally," Susan says casually, "it may interest you to know that bleggs contain small nuggets of vanadium ore, and rubes contain shreds of palladium, both of which are useful industrially."
"Susan, you are pure evil."
"Thank you."
So now it seems we've discovered the heart and essence of bleggness: a blegg is an object that contains a nugget of vanadium ore. Surface characteristics, like blue color and furredness, do not determine whether an object is a blegg; surface characteristics only matter because they help you infer whether an object is a blegg, that is, whether the object contains vanadium.
Containing vanadium is a necessary and sufficient definition: all bleggs contain vanadium and everything that contains vanadium is a blegg: "blegg" is just a shorthand way of saying "vanadium-containing object." Right?
Not so fast, says Susan: Around 98% of bleggs contain vanadium, but 2% contain palladium instead. To be precise (Susan continues) around 98% of blue egg-shaped furred flexible opaque objects contain vanadium. For unusual bleggs, it may be a different percentage: 95% of purple bleggs contain vanadium, 92% of hard bleggs contain vanadium, etc.
Now suppose you find a blue egg-shaped furred flexible opaque object, an ordinary blegg in every visible way, and just for kicks you take it to the sorting scanner, and the scanner says "palladium"—this is one of the rare 2%. Is it a blegg?
At first you might answer that, since you intend to throw this object in the rube bin, you might as well call it a "rube". However, it turns out that almost all bleggs, if you switch off the lights, glow faintly in the dark; while almost all rubes do not glow in the dark. And the percentage of bleggs that glow in the dark is not significantly different for blue egg-shaped furred flexible opaque objects that contain palladium, instead of vanadium. Thus, if you want to guess whether the object glows like a blegg, or remains dark like a rube, you should guess that it glows like a blegg.
So is the object really a blegg or a rube?
On one hand, you'll throw the object in the rube bin no matter what else you learn. On the other hand, if there are any unknown characteristics of the object you need to infer, you'll infer them as if the object were a blegg, not a rube—group it into the similarity cluster of blue egg-shaped furred flexible opaque things, and not the similarity cluster of red cube-shaped smooth hard translucent things.
The question "Is this object a blegg?" may stand in for different queries on different occasions.
If it weren't standing in for some query, you'd have no reason to care.
Is atheism a "religion"? Is transhumanism a "cult"? People who argue that atheism is a religion "because it states beliefs about God" are really trying to argue (I think) that the reasoning methods used in atheism are on a par with the reasoning methods used in religion, or that atheism is no safer than religion in terms of the probability of causally engendering violence, etc... What's really at stake is an atheist's claim of substantial difference and superiority relative to religion, which the religious person is trying to reject by denying the difference rather than the superiority(!)
But that's not the a priori irrational part: The a priori irrational part is where, in the course of the argument, someone pulls out a dictionary and looks up the definition of "atheism" or "religion". (And yes, it's just as silly whether an atheist or religionist does it.) How could a dictionary possibly decide whether an empirical cluster of atheists is really substantially different from an empirical cluster of theologians? How can reality vary with the meaning of a word? The points in thingspace don't move around when we redraw a boundary.
But people often don't realize that their argument about where to draw a definitional boundary, is really a dispute over whether to infer a characteristic shared by most things inside an empirical cluster...
Hence the phrase, "disguised query".
