Ultimately they have no bearing on whether or not the topic of discussion is true or false. Certainly I could tell someone, “Your belief in a flat earth makes me not interested in trusting your thoughts on homeopathy”, and I would be right to do so. But homeopathy is still true or false regardless of this person’s other unconventional beliefs.
But the purpose of our discussion is to change my mind about homeopathy. There’s something of a frequentist epistemology behind saying that homeopathy is true or false regardless of your other beliefs—it’s certainly true, but that doesn’t help me make up my mind about:
1. Whether or not it’s true.
2. Whether or not it’s useful to discuss this specific aspect.
Counter-counter-spells are a way of pointing out when a bias is actually a heuristic. Your Martin Luther King example isn’t such a case, but there are certainly many cases where it is a good heuristic.
You seem to be thinking of a case where Counterspells would be used against honest epistemological heuristics. I agree that this is inappropriate. But in such a case you just need to tell them that you were making a call about the discussion rather than their position (this is still meta-debate), something like: “I didn’t suggest that your tone makes you wrong, but it does make me not want to engage with you.” Though frankly in such a case I can’t see why you would want to engage further, making me even more skeptical of the idea of these double counters.
The idea of a Counterspell assumes (by definition; I invented it) 1) That the original speaker made a true logical fallacy, 2) That the responder is choosing to engage and respond in good faith, and 3) That the Counterspell response is appropriate, i.e. that it really does point out why the original argument was incorrect in that it didn’t provide good evidence for some conclusion. If they fail at that, it’s not a Counterspell. Because of this, the very idea of counter-counterspells is wrongheaded. The suggestion is to make a dismissive response to an honest, correct, and good-faith attempt to engage with someone. That’s something I’m not interested in.
Another way to put it is that Counterspells are intended to move discussions away from meta-debate. Rather than calling someone out for violating norms and trying to rack up hits against their credibility, Counterspells help you to engage with the content of someone’s complaint even as you are disagreeing with it. I think that’s incredibly helpful.
(Also I can’t see why this is at all frequentist in perspective. Bayesians can believe in true states of the world as well.)
But the purpose of our discussion is to change my mind about homeopathy. There’s something of a frequentist epistemology behind saying that homeopathy is true or false regardless of your other beliefs—it’s certainly true, but that doesn’t help me make up my mind about:
1. Whether or not it’s true.
2. Whether or not it’s useful to discuss this specific aspect.
Counter-counter-spells are a way of pointing out when a bias is actually a heuristic. Your Martin Luther King example isn’t such a case, but there are certainly many cases where it is a good heuristic.
You seem to be thinking of a case where Counterspells would be used against honest epistemological heuristics. I agree that this is inappropriate. But in such a case you just need to tell them that you were making a call about the discussion rather than their position (this is still meta-debate), something like: “I didn’t suggest that your tone makes you wrong, but it does make me not want to engage with you.” Though frankly in such a case I can’t see why you would want to engage further, making me even more skeptical of the idea of these double counters.
The idea of a Counterspell assumes (by definition; I invented it) 1) That the original speaker made a true logical fallacy, 2) That the responder is choosing to engage and respond in good faith, and 3) That the Counterspell response is appropriate, i.e. that it really does point out why the original argument was incorrect in that it didn’t provide good evidence for some conclusion. If they fail at that, it’s not a Counterspell. Because of this, the very idea of counter-counterspells is wrongheaded. The suggestion is to make a dismissive response to an honest, correct, and good-faith attempt to engage with someone. That’s something I’m not interested in.
Another way to put it is that Counterspells are intended to move discussions away from meta-debate. Rather than calling someone out for violating norms and trying to rack up hits against their credibility, Counterspells help you to engage with the content of someone’s complaint even as you are disagreeing with it. I think that’s incredibly helpful.
(Also I can’t see why this is at all frequentist in perspective. Bayesians can believe in true states of the world as well.)