Ella S.
Well-Known Member
I notice this problem a lot when I try to communicate with people. I tend to often use words like "justified," "truth," "belief," "value," "fact," "evidence," "impossible," "unlikely," "possible," "plausible," "likely," "almost certain," "logical," "illogical," and "ignorant" in ways that imply the context of epistemic logic, Bayesian epistemology, or Stoic philosophy.
It causes a lot of confusion, particularly because words like "logical" and "fact" and "truth" are often used as loaded language that merely assert some form of general praise. Pointed rhetoric you agree with becomes logical. Opinions become facts. Truth becomes subjective, and we all get our own that can be whatever we feel like making up, and how arrogant is it of me to say that anything could be false!
When I want to "debate" with "arguments," most people aren't jumping to have a dispassionate dialectic in an attempt to reconcile two conflicting viewpoints as a cooperative effort to find common ground and reach the truth. Instead, they passionately defend their position while attacking mine, using whatever dirty persuasive techniques they can, with no intention of ever conceding even the smallest point. They prefer verbal abuse and sarcastic mockery right out the gate.
I don't really know an easy way to overcome this barrier where we mean completely different things by the words we use. The very concepts of "truth" and "knowledge" and "reason" only have rigid meanings in their academic sense. In the popular sense, they have become political buzzwords that are almost entirely devoid of meaning now. At the same time, I can't realistically expect everyone to be educated on every nuance of academic epistemology, can I?
Pessimistically, I suspect that if everyone was educated on epistemology, it would just lead to an even greater misuse of terms as politicians and activists would have to come up with new ways to distort reality to fit their agendas. The smarter the population as a whole becomes, the smarter the con men become, too. It's a philosophical arms race and they're clearly winning, because global inequality has been steadily rising for awhile now and we're not really doing anything in the face of a climate catastrophe that benefits a select few at the expense of everyone else.
It causes a lot of confusion, particularly because words like "logical" and "fact" and "truth" are often used as loaded language that merely assert some form of general praise. Pointed rhetoric you agree with becomes logical. Opinions become facts. Truth becomes subjective, and we all get our own that can be whatever we feel like making up, and how arrogant is it of me to say that anything could be false!
When I want to "debate" with "arguments," most people aren't jumping to have a dispassionate dialectic in an attempt to reconcile two conflicting viewpoints as a cooperative effort to find common ground and reach the truth. Instead, they passionately defend their position while attacking mine, using whatever dirty persuasive techniques they can, with no intention of ever conceding even the smallest point. They prefer verbal abuse and sarcastic mockery right out the gate.
I don't really know an easy way to overcome this barrier where we mean completely different things by the words we use. The very concepts of "truth" and "knowledge" and "reason" only have rigid meanings in their academic sense. In the popular sense, they have become political buzzwords that are almost entirely devoid of meaning now. At the same time, I can't realistically expect everyone to be educated on every nuance of academic epistemology, can I?
Pessimistically, I suspect that if everyone was educated on epistemology, it would just lead to an even greater misuse of terms as politicians and activists would have to come up with new ways to distort reality to fit their agendas. The smarter the population as a whole becomes, the smarter the con men become, too. It's a philosophical arms race and they're clearly winning, because global inequality has been steadily rising for awhile now and we're not really doing anything in the face of a climate catastrophe that benefits a select few at the expense of everyone else.
