I think in that specific example, they’re not arguing about the meaning of the word “immoral” so much as morality itself.
That’s my feeling as well. Morality is usually treated as a conceptual primary. If I were to substitute it out of a statement, I would substitute in it’s place comments about my own recursive levels of approval/disapproval and associated reward/punishment. For the most part, people can’t and won’t substitute out for “morality”, because there is just a lot of conceptual nonsense generally tied up in it.
If the OP hadn’t started with morality, but had taken the more general case, I’d say he was correct. People argue over definition of terms in an attempt to lay definitive claim to a connotation of a word. But the point of claim is to thereby smuggle in an associated moral connotation.
The characterization of what one approves/disapproves of in terms of harm, fairness, in group solidarity, authority, etc., is usually identified as a disagreement over the “nature of morality”. and not the definition of the term.
If the OP hadn’t started with morality, but had taken the more general case, I’d say he was correct
I wanted an example to demonstrate the general case; but I’m beginning to think “morality” made a very poor example—precisely because the “conceptual nonsense” you mention gets in the way of the point.
I’ll see if I can come up with a better example by this evening.
I think the canonical example is whether a fetus is a human being.
But to give you my stock reply to this kind of argument by definition, I say it’s grounded in a fundamental mistake—valuing according to your categories, instead of categorizing according to your values. It’s not whether a fetus fits into some typology, it’s whether you value it in the full context of all of it’s qualities, regardless of what labels you apply to it.
That’s both a better example and good answer to it; my point was that I think the mistake (or at least, its use and abuse in argument) is at least somewhat intentional.
That’s a hard one. Recently, I’ve more and more concluded that there are fundamentally different modes of thinking and behaving that distinguish different types of people.
The intent is to win. The mind seeks out arguments that will win. Only a subset of minds are subconsciously concerned about the logical validity of the argument used to win. So I wouldn’t say that people “intend to use a logically invalid argument to win”; the logical validity of the argument is just irrelevant to their minds, and thereby unnoticed, unless it is explicitly brought to their consciousness by their opponent, and even then it’s often not so relevant.
That’s my feeling as well. Morality is usually treated as a conceptual primary. If I were to substitute it out of a statement, I would substitute in it’s place comments about my own recursive levels of approval/disapproval and associated reward/punishment. For the most part, people can’t and won’t substitute out for “morality”, because there is just a lot of conceptual nonsense generally tied up in it.
If the OP hadn’t started with morality, but had taken the more general case, I’d say he was correct. People argue over definition of terms in an attempt to lay definitive claim to a connotation of a word. But the point of claim is to thereby smuggle in an associated moral connotation.
The characterization of what one approves/disapproves of in terms of harm, fairness, in group solidarity, authority, etc., is usually identified as a disagreement over the “nature of morality”. and not the definition of the term.
I wanted an example to demonstrate the general case; but I’m beginning to think “morality” made a very poor example—precisely because the “conceptual nonsense” you mention gets in the way of the point.
I’ll see if I can come up with a better example by this evening.
I think the canonical example is whether a fetus is a human being.
But to give you my stock reply to this kind of argument by definition, I say it’s grounded in a fundamental mistake—valuing according to your categories, instead of categorizing according to your values. It’s not whether a fetus fits into some typology, it’s whether you value it in the full context of all of it’s qualities, regardless of what labels you apply to it.
That’s both a better example and good answer to it; my point was that I think the mistake (or at least, its use and abuse in argument) is at least somewhat intentional.
That’s a hard one. Recently, I’ve more and more concluded that there are fundamentally different modes of thinking and behaving that distinguish different types of people.
The intent is to win. The mind seeks out arguments that will win. Only a subset of minds are subconsciously concerned about the logical validity of the argument used to win. So I wouldn’t say that people “intend to use a logically invalid argument to win”; the logical validity of the argument is just irrelevant to their minds, and thereby unnoticed, unless it is explicitly brought to their consciousness by their opponent, and even then it’s often not so relevant.
How about:
Whether dolphins are fish or mammals
Whether the plural of “fish” is “fish” or “fishes”
Whether the author of the original post (that is, you), should be referred to as “he”, “they”, or “ey”