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E = Purple Custard
When I was in college, it was a running joke before exams that we would write answers in essay form for every mathematical question, and propose numerical answers for every essay question. I thought it was hysterical, but maybe you had to be there.
Yet this is actually a mistake we make all the time. When we use the wrong language, then the results are meaningless. If car mechanics could only deploy poetry or house cleaners were limited to metaphysics, then hilarity might well ensue – but not working cars or clean houses.
It is a strategic error to accept battle on the enemy’s battlefield. What we fail to understand that is language itself is the most potent battlefield of all. We live in a world where a cat that has its testes crushed is called “fixed,” and killing the unborn is known as “choice,” so we should recognize that allowing the other side to choose the language means that we have failed the examination even before we picked up our pencils.
This problem is not new; it is as old as language itself. I have a particular pet peeve for Greek concepts that have become broadly accepted in the world. Words like “perfection” and “truth” and “happiness” and “love” have Greek meanings that, in addition to their other flaws, also often lead to mathematical answers to essay questions.
Take “equality.” This word is particularly pernicious because it creates a virtual “=” sign, which is used to compare two numbers on a number line. In other words, it is a word that describes a mathematical concept. And we misuse it dreadfully.
When we ask, for example, whether people are treated “equally,” we find ourselves blindly reaching out in the dark to define what the specific number line is. But because the way we treat someone actually has no numerical value – and thus no rational way to draw a mathematical comparison – there is no way to prove or disprove whether people have been treated “equally.” We lose the argument the instant the question has been posed.
This is in no small part because people are not numbers on a number line. Nor can our behavior or language be reduced to a mere notch on a stick without stripping away all of our humanity. People each possess multi-dimensional and temporally-shifting hues of varying qualities and quantities; any reduction to a mere figure on a two-dimensional line denies everything that makes someone who they actually are. None of us should be numbers; we are all people with names and personalities.
But the language keeps sucking us in. “Are men and women equal?” is a pernicious question, one that ignores the fact that men and women largely occupy different planes of existence. There are points of intersection between us, but nothing so boring or as predictable as a two-dimensional equivalence. One might just as well ask which would be faster in a race: the color mauve or bunny fur.
We who are religious have a simple way to solve this problem: if we treat each person as if they have a divinely-gifted soul, then we can respect their potential regardless of whether or not they have realized any of it, or are even aware that they are more than mere animals. Human rights follow not from an empirical measurement of mankind’s worth, but from a faith that each person has an intrinsic value even if we can perceive no value whatsoever!
I am not sure how best to effectively reject the premise when someone uses the wrong language to describe something. In general, the person who asks the question always has the upper hand, because they have set the language and the battlefield. This is why Jordan Peterson, who is as good at this as anyone, is still almost always on the defensive. Every interview starts with him being put on the spot by an aggressive (however foolish) interviewer.
Nevertheless, you’ll see a pattern: Peterson shines when he goes on the offensive and starts asking the questions. “Do you think we should force more women to be garbage collectors?” “Should we tell women they cannot be doctors or nurses because their dominance in health case is prima facie proof of sexism?”
I think this might actually be a useful technique for conservatives to use in the future: never answer the question from a hostile source. Always ask one back instead, using the language that shows the preposterousness of the questioner’s assumptions. Change the battlefield every single time. Because otherwise, we have already ceded the initiative, and probably the battle.
Candace Owens is quite good at this, because she instantly goes on offense, attacking liberal flanks in a disarmingly effective way: Owens forces her own language instead of that of the questioner. It is just like celebrating Juneteenth as the day Republicans freed black slaves owned by Democrats. We can own the language, and win the argument. Most conservatives could learn a lot from her.
Published in General
It’s not only a meme; it’s the truth.
Your knowledge of Greek philosophy is poor. You may yourself be using entirely the wrong concepts when thinking about what Greek concepts actually are.
You are definitely using the wrong concepts when thinking of Christian theology.
Well, I like it.
I like it.
That was yesterday’s version. It needs a generalization.
I disagree. I think that we can determine if a person has been treated equally.
If equal treatment were meaningless as you say, then the American Revolution would have no moral legitimacy. But I think it does have moral legitimacy.
In would take a linguistic approach. I have long thought that the saying that every argument begins by defining terms, and when this is done, the argument is over was a gross exaggeration. But after having engaged in conversations here for two or three years, I think, that when conversing in writing, at least, this is almost always true. Of course, if you can’t come to an agreement on terms, it is impossible to come to any agreement about the broader argument.
Lefties always be assuming things they shouldn’t. When they put it in a question, it’s what the logic textbooks call the Loaded Question Fallacy.
I recently asked this on Facebook, and it went reasonably well:
It isn’t an exaggeration. It is simply false.
Camp’s Law is that dialog begins with defining terms and assumptions. Not that it ends there.
(To Camp, the beginning of an argument and the end of an argument are two different things).
No, if there is no well-defined question, there is no dialog to begin with. That is different from there being a dialog without agreement. You are conflating two different things.
“When I was in college, it was a running joke before exams that we would write answers in essay form for every mathematical question, and propose numerical answers for every essay question. I thought it was hysterical, but maybe you had to be there.”
I suspect it was hysterical if you were there. To consider the actual experience invites engaging in someting beyond a typical out of body experierience. I did many crazy things in college but writing mathematical questions in essay form anticipating the numerical solution would have required far more fuel than the ripple wine and cheap dope I had available when I was a student back in the day.
Perhaps. My Aristotle is weak, but my Plato is strong. My mother was no dummy, and she taught both for many decades.
In this piece, I am addressing how people use these words and concepts today. Plato said every man seeks happiness. I know this to be nonsense. Truth is seen as objective and absolute; I see neither. “Perfection” is the worst of them all.
Do you really want to talk about this? I mean, really?
Really? Are you using today’s concept of happiness to disagree with something Plato said about a different concept of happiness?
Okay, I just had to do this:
You’re welcome. :-)
Amen.
I would put it differently. Is iWe substituting a definition (not a concept) of happiness in a statement Plato made in which by the word he meant some other idea? Doing that is a form of deception or foolishness called sophistry: playing games with the meanings of words to make fallacious substantive arguments.
I guess what I’m saying is that the defining of terms is the argument. If you want to debate what argument means, I’ll concede that to you. And you win the argument. :)
Why, thank you.
It’s not sophistry if it’s an accident.
You know, if I were a member of BLM, and I didn’t end up with a house in Topanga Canyon as a result, I do believe that I’d have some questions about that …
I suppose that guy is too old to play you in the meme, but I had limited options.
I hope it gets spread far and wide.
Hmm dunno if I’d categorize BLM as “societal structure or institution” but it might get there soon. Right now it seems to be more of a for-profit business.
Please don’t take me too seriously, but for this we need to define dialog. I’d ask first that we define the words of the question, and their meanings within the question. This would be a dialog about the question itself. My contention is that once this is done, the argument is often over.
A good example of this is when Miss Litella says at the end of one her brief debates, when the word violence is clarified to mutual satisfaction, Oh! Nevermind.
I’ve seen here on Ricochet that many or most protracted debates are really simply defining terms. And when the terms are mutually understood, or are understood and mutually contradicted, the debate stops abruptly.
Sorta like trying to “debate” that abortion is really still okay once it’s been established that a unique human life is ended.
Nope. Money came in, contracts got signed, money went out … BLM is one or the other or both.
I would say it’s more of a “societal structure or institution” than IBM, but so far less of one than the Democrat Party.
Such a fun graphic.
Given how the left talks, this would seem to be the right question. But I did have 3 smart people on Facebook tell me that that’s not exactly what CRT says.
I’ve heard that kind of apologia also from “smart” people who claimed that “defund the police!” doesn’t really mean to defund the police. And then the “defund the police” people say yes, that’s really what we mean.
So my guess is that “Critical Race Theory” really does mean that, but – as with “defund the police” – they’re just too stupid to really understand their own ideas. (Or at least the ideas being fed to them.)
Pick off the pawns first.
Or, lop off the head of the beast and the rest will die.
Postmodernism means one thing when someone like Derridas or Lyotard writes a serious piece of philosophy.
It means quite another thing when the English teachers get their hands on the lingo and ignore the actual meaning of the books they’re sort-of drawing from.
CRT might mean something like what the smart people say it means–in the claims of the original scholars. It might mean just what this awesome meme says–in the claims of everyone else.
The somewhat-more-intelligent-but-still-far-from-enough might say that “CRT means everything is racist” is just immanentizing the eschaton or something to make themselves feel smarter, but like with “defund the police” they aren’t the ones who get to decide what it REALLY means.