I did skim this,[1] but still thought it was an excellent post. The main value I gained from it was the question re what aspects of a debate/question to treat as “exogenous” or not. Being inconsistent about this is what motte-and-bailey is about.
“We need to be clear about the scope of what we’re arguing about, I think XYZ is exogenous.”
“I both agree and disagree about things within what you’re arguing for, so I think we should decouple concerns (narrow the scope) and talk about them individually.”
Related words: argument scope, decoupling, domain, codomain, image, preimage
I think skimming is underappreciated, underutilised, unfairly maligned. If you read a paragraph and effortlessly understand everything without pause, you wasted an entire paragraph’s worth of reading-time.
I did skim this,[1] but still thought it was an excellent post. The main value I gained from it was the question re what aspects of a debate/question to treat as “exogenous” or not. Being inconsistent about this is what motte-and-bailey is about.
“We need to be clear about the scope of what we’re arguing about, I think XYZ is exogenous.”
“I both agree and disagree about things within what you’re arguing for, so I think we should decouple concerns (narrow the scope) and talk about them individually.”
Related words: argument scope, decoupling, domain, codomain, image, preimage
I think skimming is underappreciated, underutilised, unfairly maligned. If you read a paragraph and effortlessly understand everything without pause, you wasted an entire paragraph’s worth of reading-time.