I agree that “resolved” may be too optimistic, but at any rate argument about these questions can (in principle) be markedly improved by moving from ill-defined questions to better-defined ones. Different people might prefer different descriptions but there’s at least some chance that when the question is framed as “which description do you prefer?” they will recognize that a large part of their disagreement is about individual preferences rather than external facts.
Suppose Alice says that Islam is a religion of peace and Bob says it isn’t. If they have this conversation:
A. Islam is a religion of peace.
B. No it’s not.
C. Alice, what do you mean by “religion of peace” and why do you say Islam is one?
A. I mean a religion whose teachings say that peace is valuable and tell its followers to seek it. Islam does those things. (Perhaps at this point Alice will adduce some quotations from the Qur’an in support of her claims. I haven’t any to hand myself.)
C. And Bob, what do you mean and why do you say Islam isn’t one?
B. I mean a religion whose followers actually behave peacefully. Muslims make up a disproportionate fraction of the world’s terrorists and even those who are not terrorists do a very bad job of living at peace with their neighbours.
… then for sure they haven’t reached agreement yet—Alice will doubtless want to suggest that it’s a small fraction of Muslims killing people and making war and so on, while Bob will doubtless want to say that there are Islamic teachings that explicitly endorse violence, etc. -- but they have made a breakthrough because now they can talk about actual facts rather than merely about definitions, and even if they never agree they will have a much clearer idea what they disagree about.
And of course each may still think the other’s usage of “religion of peace” untenable, but again they have a clearer idea what they’re disagreeing about there, and ought to be able to see e.g. that they can dispute the best definition of “religion of peace” separately from disputing how well any given definition applies to Islam.
In practice, Alice and Bob may well be too cross at one another to have so productive a conversation. But if, e.g., instead of Alice and Bob we have two ideas fighting it out within one person’s mind, the practice of separating definitional questions from factual ones is likely to be very helpful.
If everyone understood the disagreement as merely semantic, few would care (once they got used to not thinking of it as a defense of religion or of secularism or whatever).
That only moves the disagreement into the decision about what description would be appropriate. I wouldn’t call that a resolution.
I agree that “resolved” may be too optimistic, but at any rate argument about these questions can (in principle) be markedly improved by moving from ill-defined questions to better-defined ones. Different people might prefer different descriptions but there’s at least some chance that when the question is framed as “which description do you prefer?” they will recognize that a large part of their disagreement is about individual preferences rather than external facts.
Suppose Alice says that Islam is a religion of peace and Bob says it isn’t. If they have this conversation:
A. Islam is a religion of peace.
B. No it’s not.
C. Alice, what do you mean by “religion of peace” and why do you say Islam is one?
A. I mean a religion whose teachings say that peace is valuable and tell its followers to seek it. Islam does those things. (Perhaps at this point Alice will adduce some quotations from the Qur’an in support of her claims. I haven’t any to hand myself.)
C. And Bob, what do you mean and why do you say Islam isn’t one?
B. I mean a religion whose followers actually behave peacefully. Muslims make up a disproportionate fraction of the world’s terrorists and even those who are not terrorists do a very bad job of living at peace with their neighbours.
… then for sure they haven’t reached agreement yet—Alice will doubtless want to suggest that it’s a small fraction of Muslims killing people and making war and so on, while Bob will doubtless want to say that there are Islamic teachings that explicitly endorse violence, etc. -- but they have made a breakthrough because now they can talk about actual facts rather than merely about definitions, and even if they never agree they will have a much clearer idea what they disagree about.
And of course each may still think the other’s usage of “religion of peace” untenable, but again they have a clearer idea what they’re disagreeing about there, and ought to be able to see e.g. that they can dispute the best definition of “religion of peace” separately from disputing how well any given definition applies to Islam.
In practice, Alice and Bob may well be too cross at one another to have so productive a conversation. But if, e.g., instead of Alice and Bob we have two ideas fighting it out within one person’s mind, the practice of separating definitional questions from factual ones is likely to be very helpful.
If everyone understood the disagreement as merely semantic, few would care (once they got used to not thinking of it as a defense of religion or of secularism or whatever).