There's something I've always rather despised, ever since a short series of lessons our English language teacher gave us on rhetoric and debating techniques, lo! these many moons ago. I've always held what I believe to be a pretty reasonable opinion that debates should be won by those who present the most compelling evidence, not by those who merely happen to be better orators or who can indulge in better word-play and suchlike trickery.
Which is why, Gentle Reader, I thought I'd make a short (not necessarily consecutive) series of posts on examples of such nefariousness, as they come to mind.
I'll start with misuse of double-meanings, where a word may technically mean one thing, but often, and often more popularly, it has another meaning which is more likely to be understood by the reader, even whilst the utterer can oh-so-innocently claim to have meant the more obscure but narrowly correct meaning. I thought about starting with the tangled four-way conflations of strong and weak faith and strong and weak belief, but no. Let's ease our way into this with another, simpler example of the trick…
There's a certain kind of religious debater who likes to throw the word "materialist" around, when describing those of a non-spiritual bent. And, on the face of it, they're right. A person who doesn't believe in spiritual and supernatural entities and events—who thinks that material, observable objects and forces are all that exist, or can exist—is, by definition a materialist. Literally "one who believes in nothing but matter." That is, after all, what the word means.
There's also an inherent dishonesty in the use of the label though, I think. There's another, less literal but more culturally widespread definition of the word. And, I'd venture to guess, the second meaning is what nine out of ten people, if you asked them, would ascribe to it. That definition, I have almost no need to tell you, is one of a person who desires "things" over ideas or principles. It implies a wastrel who spends their life accumulating "stuff," throwing away perfectly serviceable items as they replace them with newer models according to the latest fashion. There's an implication of superficiality, shallowness of mind.
The intention, I suspect, is to allow any reader or listener to accept the most popular definition whilst keeping a healthy dose of plausible deniability ("No, no, I never meant to imply that at all!"). And, of course, it creates something of a win-win situation for the spiritualist (see what I did there?), in that if it goes unchallenged, the person being "accused" of materialism will have their image besmirched somewhat, in the eyes of onlookers, while if it is challenged, the challenge provides a distraction from the main debate—which might be much needed, given the lack of convincing supporting evidence or logical arguments for spiritual claims. Personally, I prefer to stay on the main topic and accept the slight besmirchment. If anyone has a proven method of addressing it whilst not allowing the derail, though, I'd be interested to hear it…
—Daz
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To any disparaging label there is always the simple reply: ‘so?’ or ‘so what?’ as it begs the other to explain why they think that is a bad thing for which you can admonish them straying off topic…. sometimes.
Daz,
The obvious word that springs to mind is theory. The creationists present the word as ‘an interesting idea’ quite opposed to, in evolution, consistent with scientific method. Thus belittling it.
Daz, in such situations I tend to adopt a Spanish accent and say ‘That word. I don’t think it means what you think it means’.
It would depend on the context though. If it was an obvious ad hominem I would counter with ‘Yes I am more concerned with matters of consequence, rather than the immaterial – which are by their very nature irrelevant’. Or suchlike.
If it wasn’t I’d let it pass. No point wasting valuable debating minutes on a Gish Gallop.
That’s why I tend to just accept the “insult” un-addressed. Once you start discussing the side issue, you’re basically letting ’em off the hook on the main point. It’s still a tad annoying though, having to cede a point that’s sneaked in under the radar, so to speak.
Oops., sorry Tony—I missed your comment somehow.
Yep, that one’s one to add to the list, for sure. In fact, I might actually post a list of words religionists commonly misuse that way. Anyone got any more suggestions?
I wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve faced this bit of equivocation. It’s damned irritating. You explain the problem well.
Naturalist pragmatist materialist non-determinist mechanist consequentalist here… naturist as well, on sunny days.
The implication that a ‘materialist’ will never see anything beyond the material and hence is committing the heinous philosophical crime of close mindedness is best countered by undermining it at its heart. Alex on Skeptico is a wonderful example of the use of this strawman. Its failure is easily demonstrated by example. Materialism used in this way has to be a fixed construct. They are saying materialism cannot by definition expand to accept their new information. Attack this at its source. What in materialism pins materialism down this way? They like to compare materialism to Newtonian physics; incompatible with QM. But materialism has grown to feature all discovered/understood aspects of the universe, including some quite obviously non material features. Firstly what is ‘material’ about electrons? Or wave particle duality? Our materialism already features particles as wave functions. We have emergent systems and complexity, chaos theory. Much of the material world is defined by non-material mathematical relationships. Much of what happens to matter follows non-material rules. If this cannot highlight a few cracks in the strawman then follow the trail of their thought. If the soul was made of something and interacted with matter in any way why could materialism not expand to feature it? What barrier is expected to keep materialism ‘in its place’? It cannot just be if something is not made of matter – materialistic theories are full of examples of those that are still considered real (probabilistic wave functions for example). If materialism already contains the non-material and there is no reason not to expect it to be able to grow to feature new descriptions of reality then what are they arguing? Seems to me they want to declare a rather outdated and small idea of materialism that isn’t like the real thing, compared to the real materialism that has grown so much over the past 100 years and shows no signs of being intrinsically limited either internally or externally as a philosophy.