If you’re claiming “Threats should be taken seriously and punished”, then we agree. If you’re claiming “we should punish groups that threaten violence for political reasons as ‘terrorist’”, then we might agree, but it’s not a big deal and not the point of this post.
If you’re claiming that
If 100 random US citizens are told “X is a group of terrorists” and are told to ask what actions the speaker is trying to imply X engages in, the majority of the group will write “only threatens violence for political reasons”
, then we disagree. I predict they will write a mix of “threatens and commits acts of terror”, but never “only threatens”.
I think you would not be misleading if you said “X is a group of terrorists, but only the kind that threatens violence but hasn’t actually injured/murdered people, but that’s still bad and I think we should take it much more seriously than we are right now”, and that this statement would pass the “100 random people” test above.
If you disagree with my prediction, then that’s just a difference in our priors on how other people qualify that word. This isn’t the point of the post.
If you disagree with “100 random people” test as being a good test, then this is relevant to the post.
While the policy suggestion is indeed outside the scope of the discussion I feel it woud be important to process it differently. “Groups that threaten violence for political reasons are terrorist” and “We should punish terrorists”. Calling someone a terrorist is not itself a punishment (unless again the label triggers unstated mechanisms that are beyond deliberate, concious or official control). In the topic area it is not unheard of to be issues where “terrorist” is a special position that warrants different procedure. There the issues would be “punish as criminals” or “punish as terrorists” (or POW or combatant etc). If we connect the long definition straight to treatment reference to a one word concept is unneccesary.
I was refrring to the threat portion becuase that is the difference that is sometimes included and sometimes not included. “Only threathens” doesn’t really occur.
Exhange that is likely to happen or happens frequently is:
A: “This is a group of terrorists.”
B: “You lied to me. I did research and group has not killed anyone”
Sure if you give long form this kind of misunderstading doesn’t happen that much.But consider this:
A: “This murderer will be held in prison for life”
B: “You lied to me. This guy only killed criminals, that is not murder”
You could avoid this by going
A:”This person committed a lot of murder on criminals but didn’t kill any innocents. He will spend his life in prison.
Now what is or is not murder might be beside the point of the communication. But accomodating such a weird conception of the crime is not exactly neutral. In choosing such a phrasing one could be normalising that criminals have a weakened right to life.
I guess the differences are slight as I don’t really advocate to only use the definitions or conceptions of words you have but I think there is a risk of being too conceptual network pandering and persons should have some share of having some sensibility in their concepts. In particular I think in this instance “definition of murder” would get a population majority behind it yet people would in similar representative way fail to apply the label to these circumstances. Thus the “meaning of words” is more strongly established / can be emphasised more rather than the ad hoc associations.
In terrorist there is a pattern that when evaluating I/me the threat component tends to be weak but when applying to others it tends to be strong. The issue is whether it establishes a principle or whether it is a summation or overview of the attitudial landscape.
If you’re claiming “Threats should be taken seriously and punished”, then we agree. If you’re claiming “we should punish groups that threaten violence for political reasons as ‘terrorist’”, then we might agree, but it’s not a big deal and not the point of this post.
If you’re claiming that
, then we disagree. I predict they will write a mix of “threatens and commits acts of terror”, but never “only threatens”.
I think you would not be misleading if you said “X is a group of terrorists, but only the kind that threatens violence but hasn’t actually injured/murdered people, but that’s still bad and I think we should take it much more seriously than we are right now”, and that this statement would pass the “100 random people” test above.
If you disagree with my prediction, then that’s just a difference in our priors on how other people qualify that word. This isn’t the point of the post.
If you disagree with “100 random people” test as being a good test, then this is relevant to the post.
While the policy suggestion is indeed outside the scope of the discussion I feel it woud be important to process it differently. “Groups that threaten violence for political reasons are terrorist” and “We should punish terrorists”. Calling someone a terrorist is not itself a punishment (unless again the label triggers unstated mechanisms that are beyond deliberate, concious or official control). In the topic area it is not unheard of to be issues where “terrorist” is a special position that warrants different procedure. There the issues would be “punish as criminals” or “punish as terrorists” (or POW or combatant etc). If we connect the long definition straight to treatment reference to a one word concept is unneccesary.
I was refrring to the threat portion becuase that is the difference that is sometimes included and sometimes not included. “Only threathens” doesn’t really occur.
Exhange that is likely to happen or happens frequently is:
Sure if you give long form this kind of misunderstading doesn’t happen that much.But consider this:
You could avoid this by going
Now what is or is not murder might be beside the point of the communication. But accomodating such a weird conception of the crime is not exactly neutral. In choosing such a phrasing one could be normalising that criminals have a weakened right to life.
I guess the differences are slight as I don’t really advocate to only use the definitions or conceptions of words you have but I think there is a risk of being too conceptual network pandering and persons should have some share of having some sensibility in their concepts. In particular I think in this instance “definition of murder” would get a population majority behind it yet people would in similar representative way fail to apply the label to these circumstances. Thus the “meaning of words” is more strongly established / can be emphasised more rather than the ad hoc associations.
In terrorist there is a pattern that when evaluating I/me the threat component tends to be weak but when applying to others it tends to be strong. The issue is whether it establishes a principle or whether it is a summation or overview of the attitudial landscape.