All of your proposals miss my point, as does the idea of counter-counterspells. They may be epistemically virtuous, but they are what Alexander would call Meta-Debate, discussion of what can be debated, who is a trusted source, and how the discussion can be held. As Alexander points out, there’s nothing wrong with Meta-Debate, and it can be useful. It’s still not part of the actual debate.
I’ve placed it in a sphinx outside the pyramid to emphasize that it’s not a bad argument for the thing, it’s just an argument about something completely different.
Ultimately they have no bearing on whether or not the topic of discussion is true or false. Certainly I could tell someone, “Your belief in a flat earth makes me not interested in trusting your thoughts on homeopathy”, and I would be right to do so. But homeopathy is still true or false regardless of this person’s other unconventional beliefs.
Even beyond that, assuming the goal of a discussion is to change your partner’s mind (I know it’s not always, but let’s assume), then these do a terrible job of that. Counterspells are designed with the assumption that you want to convince someone discussion in good faith, and designed to engage with their (incorrect) arguments directly. What you propose are all dismissals.
Even so, I don’t think they’re great meta-arguments. Certainly you can see the problem with, “Martin Luther King was a criminal, criminals are usually bad, and I have a limited amount of time to analyze every argument that comes my way.”
Ultimately they have no bearing on whether or not the topic of discussion is true or false. Certainly I could tell someone, “Your belief in a flat earth makes me not interested in trusting your thoughts on homeopathy”, and I would be right to do so. But homeopathy is still true or false regardless of this person’s other unconventional beliefs.
But the purpose of our discussion is to change my mind about homeopathy. There’s something of a frequentist epistemology behind saying that homeopathy is true or false regardless of your other beliefs—it’s certainly true, but that doesn’t help me make up my mind about:
1. Whether or not it’s true.
2. Whether or not it’s useful to discuss this specific aspect.
Counter-counter-spells are a way of pointing out when a bias is actually a heuristic. Your Martin Luther King example isn’t such a case, but there are certainly many cases where it is a good heuristic.
You seem to be thinking of a case where Counterspells would be used against honest epistemological heuristics. I agree that this is inappropriate. But in such a case you just need to tell them that you were making a call about the discussion rather than their position (this is still meta-debate), something like: “I didn’t suggest that your tone makes you wrong, but it does make me not want to engage with you.” Though frankly in such a case I can’t see why you would want to engage further, making me even more skeptical of the idea of these double counters.
The idea of a Counterspell assumes (by definition; I invented it) 1) That the original speaker made a true logical fallacy, 2) That the responder is choosing to engage and respond in good faith, and 3) That the Counterspell response is appropriate, i.e. that it really does point out why the original argument was incorrect in that it didn’t provide good evidence for some conclusion. If they fail at that, it’s not a Counterspell. Because of this, the very idea of counter-counterspells is wrongheaded. The suggestion is to make a dismissive response to an honest, correct, and good-faith attempt to engage with someone. That’s something I’m not interested in.
Another way to put it is that Counterspells are intended to move discussions away from meta-debate. Rather than calling someone out for violating norms and trying to rack up hits against their credibility, Counterspells help you to engage with the content of someone’s complaint even as you are disagreeing with it. I think that’s incredibly helpful.
(Also I can’t see why this is at all frequentist in perspective. Bayesians can believe in true states of the world as well.)
All of your proposals miss my point, as does the idea of counter-counterspells. They may be epistemically virtuous, but they are what Alexander would call Meta-Debate, discussion of what can be debated, who is a trusted source, and how the discussion can be held. As Alexander points out, there’s nothing wrong with Meta-Debate, and it can be useful. It’s still not part of the actual debate.
Ultimately they have no bearing on whether or not the topic of discussion is true or false. Certainly I could tell someone, “Your belief in a flat earth makes me not interested in trusting your thoughts on homeopathy”, and I would be right to do so. But homeopathy is still true or false regardless of this person’s other unconventional beliefs.
Even beyond that, assuming the goal of a discussion is to change your partner’s mind (I know it’s not always, but let’s assume), then these do a terrible job of that. Counterspells are designed with the assumption that you want to convince someone discussion in good faith, and designed to engage with their (incorrect) arguments directly. What you propose are all dismissals.
Even so, I don’t think they’re great meta-arguments. Certainly you can see the problem with, “Martin Luther King was a criminal, criminals are usually bad, and I have a limited amount of time to analyze every argument that comes my way.”
But the purpose of our discussion is to change my mind about homeopathy. There’s something of a frequentist epistemology behind saying that homeopathy is true or false regardless of your other beliefs—it’s certainly true, but that doesn’t help me make up my mind about:
1. Whether or not it’s true.
2. Whether or not it’s useful to discuss this specific aspect.
Counter-counter-spells are a way of pointing out when a bias is actually a heuristic. Your Martin Luther King example isn’t such a case, but there are certainly many cases where it is a good heuristic.
You seem to be thinking of a case where Counterspells would be used against honest epistemological heuristics. I agree that this is inappropriate. But in such a case you just need to tell them that you were making a call about the discussion rather than their position (this is still meta-debate), something like: “I didn’t suggest that your tone makes you wrong, but it does make me not want to engage with you.” Though frankly in such a case I can’t see why you would want to engage further, making me even more skeptical of the idea of these double counters.
The idea of a Counterspell assumes (by definition; I invented it) 1) That the original speaker made a true logical fallacy, 2) That the responder is choosing to engage and respond in good faith, and 3) That the Counterspell response is appropriate, i.e. that it really does point out why the original argument was incorrect in that it didn’t provide good evidence for some conclusion. If they fail at that, it’s not a Counterspell. Because of this, the very idea of counter-counterspells is wrongheaded. The suggestion is to make a dismissive response to an honest, correct, and good-faith attempt to engage with someone. That’s something I’m not interested in.
Another way to put it is that Counterspells are intended to move discussions away from meta-debate. Rather than calling someone out for violating norms and trying to rack up hits against their credibility, Counterspells help you to engage with the content of someone’s complaint even as you are disagreeing with it. I think that’s incredibly helpful.
(Also I can’t see why this is at all frequentist in perspective. Bayesians can believe in true states of the world as well.)