33 Comments
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John Encaustum's avatar

Personally I call it "pushing a premise" as part of a somewhat tongue in cheek "hierarchy of assertions" that flips over Paul Graham's "hierarchy of disagreements." It's just above the lowest level of straight "pushing a point" and below "forcing a frame."

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John Encaustum's avatar

I went ahead and posted this "assertion hierarchy" here, if you're interested: https://blackthornhedge.substack.com/p/inverting-paul-grahams-how-to-disagree

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Both Sides Brigade's avatar

My problem with this is that, without specific content for what E, H1, and H2 are, I can't determine who is being reasonable and who is being unreasonable here. Imagine E is something like the statement "Frank weighs more than Bill," while H1 is a set of objective facts about the physical mass of their bodies in comparison and H2 is an observer's subjective sense of who looks fatter. In that case, doesn't it seem pretty reasonable for the first person to say that the H2 advocate just isn't talking about "actual weight?" Obviously that's an extreme example, but it seems really implausible to me that there can't be something we consider essential to the meaning of a term, or that there's no point at which someone's conception of E can be so radically distinct from mine that I'm justified in saying they aren't talking about the "actual E." Whether that's the case in relation to the situations where these things are most often said (morality, history, aesthetics, whatever) is a whole other question but I don't think there's any formal reason to dismiss the idea that the H1 guy (or at least his non-parodied version) could be correct.

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Nathan Ormond's avatar

The problem as I see it is the same again, its a failure to disambiguate between your and your interlocutors beliefs, and so slipping between intensional contexts when making claims.

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Both Sides Brigade's avatar

Well yes, I certainly agree there. People shouldn't just barge into conversations with inflexible conceptualizations they take to be obviously and incontrovertibly true. But that's just a matter of etiquette - it doesn't imply the content of a concept is totally malleable.

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John Encaustum's avatar

I think it's a bit more than a matter of etiquette, though I agree the contents of concepts are not totally malleable. It's a form of discursive incompetence to fail to recognize the nature of the disagreement.

It may be that H1 is correct, but it is not the case that the believer of H1 is taking competent discursive action in support of H1 or E -> H1.

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Nathan Ormond's avatar

*From whose point of view*?

Your explanandum is ordinary discourse, where words are USED in the same way. You're then tacking on "an account".

These metaphysical theories aren't changing ordinary use, they're taking it for granted.

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Vulteius Catellus's avatar

FrOm WhOsE pOiNt Of ViEw?

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Nathan Ormond's avatar

Yeah that is the question! Do you have an answer?

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Vulteius Catellus's avatar

That depends on your point of view!

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SAPERE AUDE (Taylor)'s avatar

incredulism? Probably doesn’t do it justice haha..side note: I call your moms’ hands theories because they be gripping

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Mon0's avatar

I demand the examples!

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Nathan Ormond's avatar

They’re on their way — from a number of statistics and psychology textbooks no less!

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Quiop's avatar

Telling your opponent "an incredulous stare is not an argument" works best when you have a good argument for your own position, e.g. a Moorean one:

https://substack.com/@wrongontheinternet/note/c-120538360

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Lance S. Bush's avatar

What do you mean? Anyone can make a Moorean argument for pretty much anything.

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Quiop's avatar

(Yes, that's the joke.)

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Lance S. Bush's avatar

Damn it. I thought you were serious. You got me.

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