In general, when you see two people arguing past each other, these kinds of problems are often involved at the root. Two examples that I can give are the problem of “natural rights” and the problem of “authority”. The natural rights issue needs a pretty long and involved discussion even to understand but it amounts to a long, convoluted sequence of conflations and assumptions.
The problem of authority is easier to describe, since it amounts to a single major error—authority conflates two distinct ideas—knowledge or expertise and justifiable or legitimate force. The two are necessarily linked in parental authority, but they are distinct ideas that tend to cause misunderstandings and resentment when conflated in institutional academic or state interactions.
A good source for understanding the root idea in a political context is Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions where he points out that people tend to use the same word to mean different things—his main examples are “fairness” and “equality”. Those distinct meanings rest on the fact that those words conflate those two (and more) meanings into their definitions—neither side is “misusing” the words—the words themselves, and the fact that most people don’t notice the conflation, is the problem.
In general, when you see two people arguing past each other, these kinds of problems are often involved at the root. Two examples that I can give are the problem of “natural rights” and the problem of “authority”. The natural rights issue needs a pretty long and involved discussion even to understand but it amounts to a long, convoluted sequence of conflations and assumptions.
The problem of authority is easier to describe, since it amounts to a single major error—authority conflates two distinct ideas—knowledge or expertise and justifiable or legitimate force. The two are necessarily linked in parental authority, but they are distinct ideas that tend to cause misunderstandings and resentment when conflated in institutional academic or state interactions.
A good source for understanding the root idea in a political context is Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions where he points out that people tend to use the same word to mean different things—his main examples are “fairness” and “equality”. Those distinct meanings rest on the fact that those words conflate those two (and more) meanings into their definitions—neither side is “misusing” the words—the words themselves, and the fact that most people don’t notice the conflation, is the problem.
Basically: A human’s guide to words