despite that, circular arguments in a tightly closed loop with no reference to empirical observations seem like so little evidence that they’re almost worthless
In such situations, “that argument seems to be unsupported by empirical evidence” seems to me like a better counterargument than “that argument is circular”.
Possible, although I think you probably reach that point much faster if you can establish that your conversational partner disagrees with the idea that arguments should be supported or at least supportable by empirical evidence.
In such situations, “that argument seems to be unsupported by empirical evidence” seems to me like a better counterargument than “that argument is circular”.
They mean the same thing, “you’re not making sense”, so they’ll probably dislike it just as much.
Possible, although I think you probably reach that point much faster if you can establish that your conversational partner disagrees with the idea that arguments should be supported or at least supportable by empirical evidence.