{"id":5571,"date":"2020-08-28T11:45:14","date_gmt":"2020-08-28T16:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=5571"},"modified":"2020-08-28T11:45:14","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T16:45:14","slug":"magic-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=5571","title":{"rendered":"Magic words"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Some of what argumentation theorists do is produce a metalanguage of argument. They make up names for stuff. Stuff you shouldn’t do (hollow man<\/a>) stuff you should sometimes do (iron man<\/a>). It’s partially a normative study, so the metalanguage is normative. As the Owl of Minerva Problem<\/a> points out, however, there’s an inherent challenge in that the metalanguage for argument warps our performances. It’s a new thing to keep track of<\/a> and it alters the way we interact. The thing it was meant to solve isn’t solved. It gets absorbed into the problem it was trying to solve. Interestingly, this is also the case for the Owl of Minerva problem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here is a variation on the Owl of Minerva Problem. Recall that the Owl of Minerva is retrospective, and productive of new normative terms. In some cases, once these terms get introduced, they are so powerful that they can never be used. This is to say that once a term becomes associated with a certain kind of extreme failure, it becomes magical. It’s a normative term with actual descriptive power. Take “racism.” Though there are significant disagreements about what really is the issue (ask a philosopher of race), there are no (significant) disagreements that it is bad, very bad. The same is true (with some perverse exceptions) of Nazism). No one wants to be a Nazi, even people who literally hold Nazi views. This video pretty much sums this up:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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