A few more FGCAs. Some of these aren’t really arguments, but anyone mounting an FGCA is unlikely to be concerned about epistemological propriety, and all of these things can be used together in support of each other.
“Check your privilege.”
“Check your premises.”
Psychologising the opposition.
“This is settled science.”
Emphasis and reassertion of the thesis.
“Oh. My. God.”
“*facepalm*”
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
Satire.
Parody.
Pretty much anything, said in your own echo chamber. NB. Link to your allies’ actual postings, but not to your enemies’. A link to the top of their blog is better.
Cite some other blogger and say they’ve completely eviscerated the enemy.
Irregular verbs. (“We are right/You are wrong.” “These studies prove/Those studies are flawed.” “We have the support of.../You are in the pocket of...”)
And a Fully General way of generating all of these and more: bottom-lining. Nail your desired conclusion to a wall marked “TRUE” and your opponents’ to a wall marked “FALSE”, and ask the virtual outcome pump in your head to fill in the empty space on the walls. There is no conclusion, however absurd or repellent, that you cannot do this with. The smarter and better educated you are, the more puzzle pieces you have available to play with and the more easily you can invent new ways to put them together. Related quote from Foucault’s Pendulum.
Someone said to me “you’re just repeating a lot of the talking points on the other side.”
I pointed out that this was just a FGCA, so they linked to this post and said “Oh what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to list Fully General Counter Arguments. Of course that sentiment probably counts as a Fully General Counterargument: Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel. Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel.” Did I break him?
On psychologizing: the problem is I think you have to do that when you find out you have a connotation problem on your hand, not a denotation problem. You see some guy giving PUA (pick-up artist) advice. The denotation, actually actionable ideas how to find a girlfriend may or may not work, you don’t know. But you see really problematic connotations behind the words, the usage of words, they tend towards hostility, enmity felt towards women, tend towards a cultish mindset, tend towards a manipulating guys through their sense of pride and so on. But it is the connotation, not the denotation. You can debate denotations rationally but connotations not, and yet it seems the main problems always from connotations.
I must admit the only solution for the connotation problem I found and it really does not work today is that you must have a community with a shared sense of connotations and people may disagree only in the denotations. So they can argue about ideas rationally but they must feel emotionally the same way about the major concepts and simply exclude everybody else.
For example I am one of those atheists who can argue with religious folks because my denotation about the Catholic church is that it is about worshipping something that does not exist, but my general connotation / feeling is that it is a nicely moderate civilizing force led by quite logical folks. So my attitude is so positive that they don’t get defensive and angry and we can stick to the rational, denotational level. But of course today you cannot arrange things so that only those atheists who don’t hate religion should debate it. So it does not really work.
I don’t see any way to keep people denotationally rational but to enforce connotational harmony somehow which is essentially policing feelings. I know some folks here who would restore capital punishment. To have a productive debate we must first ensure we connotationally feel the same, such as, we feel life is relative sacred but not absolutely so, or something along those lines, before we can engage it productively.
I seriously don’t know how else to deal with connotational problems.
A few more FGCAs. Some of these aren’t really arguments, but anyone mounting an FGCA is unlikely to be concerned about epistemological propriety, and all of these things can be used together in support of each other.
“Check your privilege.”
“Check your premises.”
Psychologising the opposition.
“This is settled science.”
Emphasis and reassertion of the thesis.
“Oh. My. God.”
“*facepalm*”
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
Satire.
Parody.
Pretty much anything, said in your own echo chamber. NB. Link to your allies’ actual postings, but not to your enemies’. A link to the top of their blog is better.
Cite some other blogger and say they’ve completely eviscerated the enemy.
Irregular verbs. (“We are right/You are wrong.” “These studies prove/Those studies are flawed.” “We have the support of.../You are in the pocket of...”)
And a Fully General way of generating all of these and more: bottom-lining. Nail your desired conclusion to a wall marked “TRUE” and your opponents’ to a wall marked “FALSE”, and ask the virtual outcome pump in your head to fill in the empty space on the walls. There is no conclusion, however absurd or repellent, that you cannot do this with. The smarter and better educated you are, the more puzzle pieces you have available to play with and the more easily you can invent new ways to put them together. Related quote from Foucault’s Pendulum.
Someone said to me “you’re just repeating a lot of the talking points on the other side.”
I pointed out that this was just a FGCA, so they linked to this post and said “Oh what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to list Fully General Counter Arguments. Of course that sentiment probably counts as a Fully General Counterargument: Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel. Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel.” Did I break him?
To add to this list, Snark. It’s way more effective than satire or parody because you can claim innocence if called out on it.
On psychologizing: the problem is I think you have to do that when you find out you have a connotation problem on your hand, not a denotation problem. You see some guy giving PUA (pick-up artist) advice. The denotation, actually actionable ideas how to find a girlfriend may or may not work, you don’t know. But you see really problematic connotations behind the words, the usage of words, they tend towards hostility, enmity felt towards women, tend towards a cultish mindset, tend towards a manipulating guys through their sense of pride and so on. But it is the connotation, not the denotation. You can debate denotations rationally but connotations not, and yet it seems the main problems always from connotations.
I must admit the only solution for the connotation problem I found and it really does not work today is that you must have a community with a shared sense of connotations and people may disagree only in the denotations. So they can argue about ideas rationally but they must feel emotionally the same way about the major concepts and simply exclude everybody else.
For example I am one of those atheists who can argue with religious folks because my denotation about the Catholic church is that it is about worshipping something that does not exist, but my general connotation / feeling is that it is a nicely moderate civilizing force led by quite logical folks. So my attitude is so positive that they don’t get defensive and angry and we can stick to the rational, denotational level. But of course today you cannot arrange things so that only those atheists who don’t hate religion should debate it. So it does not really work.
I don’t see any way to keep people denotationally rational but to enforce connotational harmony somehow which is essentially policing feelings. I know some folks here who would restore capital punishment. To have a productive debate we must first ensure we connotationally feel the same, such as, we feel life is relative sacred but not absolutely so, or something along those lines, before we can engage it productively.
I seriously don’t know how else to deal with connotational problems.