Rationalist Taboo is a technique for fighting muddles in discussions. By prohibiting the use of a certain word and all the words synonymous to it, people are forced to elucidate the specific contextual meaning they want to express, thus removing ambiguity otherwise present in a single word.
Mainstream philosophy has a parallel procedure called “unpacking”. Unpacking has the requirement that the contentious or doubtful term be expanded out—not just replaced with a synonym—and only used as a collection of subcomponent concepts.
Main Posts
Other Posts
Disputing Definitions—An example of how the technique helps.
Words as Hidden Inferences—The mere presence of words can influence thinking, sometimes misleading it.
Detached Lever Fallacy—There is a lot of machinery hidden beneath the words, and rationalist’s taboo is one way to make a step towards exposing it.