(Again, replying relatively-quickly, not in depth.)
These seem semantically equivalent to me?
Not to me. I would say someone is “objecting to a strawman” if someone else had constructed the strawman, but I wouldn’t say they’re “strawmanning” in that situation.
(E.g. Alice: “X”. Bob: “Alice says Y.” Carol: “According to Bob, Alice says Y. She’s wrong because...”.)
(Even if they were semantically equivalent, that doesn’t mean they have the same valence. But I think in this case the valency difference is mostly downstream of the semantic difference.)
...But in this case: there’s no third party, the quote continued ”...of his own creation”, and Duncan explicitly says “strawmanning” elsewhere, so sure. This point doesn’t seem relevant.
Hm, maybe I shouldn’t have said “easy.”
“Easy” is a large part of what I was replying to.
Paraphrasing, you said something like: “I’m inclined to tentatively reject (accusation). If it were true, it would be easy to prove. This hasn’t been done.” If it’s not easy to prove, even when true, then the justification to reject is weaker.
I think I want to claim that “The critic is misunderstanding me” is something an author can credibly claim without an explanation (because the author is presumed to be a privileged authority on what their ideas are), but “The critic is strawmanning me” is an accusation that needs an explanation in order to be credible?
Like, from a Bayesian perspective? I don’t see why this would be the case—if we agree that these accusations aren’t easy to prove even when true, then lack of proof isn’t strong Bayesian evidence of falsehood.
(Even when they are easy to prove, someone might have various reasons not to provide the proof, so I still don’t think it’s particularly strong evidence.)
(Replies to possible objections. 1. You said “explanation” rather than “proof”, but I think explanations aren’t easy to give either. 2. We could say that if an accusation isn’t easy to explain/prove then the accuser also shouldn’t be confident in it—but I don’t think that would be true.)
Another thing I want to say is that with accusations of strawmanning, I don’t think the relevant context is limited to “here is what I said, here is what you said when replying”. It might be the case that there are patterns appearing over a long timeframe and many conversations. Such patterns, if they appear, are the sort of thing that an accuser can be very confident in while also being very hard to prove. Especially given that things on the internet sometimes disappear.
And from my understanding of the history between you and Duncan, I’d say that’s almost certainly part of the picture, in this instance.
So to summarize:
If you are mischaracterizing Duncan in “Aiming for convergence...”, I think this is something Duncan could demonstrate “locally”, i.e. by quoting your text and quoting his text and comparing. I don’t think this would be easy.
If you are strawmanning Duncan in that piece, I think this is not necessarily—in fact, probably not—something Duncan could demonstrate “locally”. And any demonstration, if possible at all, would be harder than in the above case.
In both cases, I think failure on Duncan’s part to demonstrate the accusation, is not strong evidence that the accusation is false. (Which obviously doesn’t mean it’s true, either.)
(Again, replying relatively-quickly, not in depth.)
Not to me. I would say someone is “objecting to a strawman” if someone else had constructed the strawman, but I wouldn’t say they’re “strawmanning” in that situation.
(E.g. Alice: “X”. Bob: “Alice says Y.” Carol: “According to Bob, Alice says Y. She’s wrong because...”.)
(Even if they were semantically equivalent, that doesn’t mean they have the same valence. But I think in this case the valency difference is mostly downstream of the semantic difference.)
...But in this case: there’s no third party, the quote continued ”...of his own creation”, and Duncan explicitly says “strawmanning” elsewhere, so sure. This point doesn’t seem relevant.
“Easy” is a large part of what I was replying to.
Paraphrasing, you said something like: “I’m inclined to tentatively reject (accusation). If it were true, it would be easy to prove. This hasn’t been done.” If it’s not easy to prove, even when true, then the justification to reject is weaker.
Like, from a Bayesian perspective? I don’t see why this would be the case—if we agree that these accusations aren’t easy to prove even when true, then lack of proof isn’t strong Bayesian evidence of falsehood.
(Even when they are easy to prove, someone might have various reasons not to provide the proof, so I still don’t think it’s particularly strong evidence.)
(Replies to possible objections. 1. You said “explanation” rather than “proof”, but I think explanations aren’t easy to give either. 2. We could say that if an accusation isn’t easy to explain/prove then the accuser also shouldn’t be confident in it—but I don’t think that would be true.)
Another thing I want to say is that with accusations of strawmanning, I don’t think the relevant context is limited to “here is what I said, here is what you said when replying”. It might be the case that there are patterns appearing over a long timeframe and many conversations. Such patterns, if they appear, are the sort of thing that an accuser can be very confident in while also being very hard to prove. Especially given that things on the internet sometimes disappear.
And from my understanding of the history between you and Duncan, I’d say that’s almost certainly part of the picture, in this instance.
So to summarize:
If you are mischaracterizing Duncan in “Aiming for convergence...”, I think this is something Duncan could demonstrate “locally”, i.e. by quoting your text and quoting his text and comparing. I don’t think this would be easy.
If you are strawmanning Duncan in that piece, I think this is not necessarily—in fact, probably not—something Duncan could demonstrate “locally”. And any demonstration, if possible at all, would be harder than in the above case.
In both cases, I think failure on Duncan’s part to demonstrate the accusation, is not strong evidence that the accusation is false. (Which obviously doesn’t mean it’s true, either.)