Euphemism creep and immigration — and politicization issues

First, "euphemism creep", or the "euphemism treadmill," per Steven Pinker is a real thing. James McWhorter has also written much about it.

It's when a euphemism replaces a no-longer acceptable term, but soon enough becomes no longer acceptable itself.

Think "handicapped" being replaced by "disabled," then that becoming not acceptable and it being replaced by "differently abled." Some day in the not too distant future, because of the word "differently," that will be replaced as well.

This is a field with enough to mine that I am going to write about this on various spots, including my philosophy and critical thinking blog. But, there as here, I'll use the same starting point — Substacker Corey Hutchins talking about how different media outlets in Colorado struggle (or maybe "struggle" with scare quotes intended) on how to talk about "people who aren't supposed to be here," or if I need scare quotes inside that, "people who aren't 'supposed' to be here."

Or, per old friend Brains, who used it non-disparagingly? "Ill Eagles." 

Here, it's not just ground-level, but, in media, an official style issue, as the Associated Press long ago said both "illegal immigrant" and "illegal alien" aren't allows.

I agree for sure with the word "alien." That said, quoting Hutchins, I disagree with the AP already trying to get ahead of euphemism creep three years ago.

“We don’t use the terms illegal immigrant, unauthorized immigrant, irregular migrant, alien, an illegal, illegals or undocumented (except when quoting people or documents that use these terms),” the AP wrote. “Many immigrants and migrants have some sort of documents, but not the necessary ones.”

As I said in a comment to Hutchins, why not just add "allegedly" in front of "undocumented immigrants"? 

Per that Shitter link, the AP does offer alternatives. But? Most of them are kind of cumbersome, which undercuts the usefulness of language.

Also, per the authors I cited at the top of the page, this issue tends to get politicized. And, it's usually "conservatives" vs "liberals." Setting aside L/libertarians and some Green types who claim to be neither right nor left, the politicized polarity also ignores friendly skeptical non-liberal leftists.

In my first comment, Hutchins noted that I had used the word "roundup" and he had edited it out of his post, when thinking about using it, as dehumanizing. I noted that I've seen "roundup" in places like a "kindergarten roundup" at a local school district.

I also commented, in a short bit lower in his post, about a Denver TV news anchor wearing a tie from a Soviet journalist to make a statement about the Russia-Ukraine War. I first noted the fact that, pre-invasion, Zelensky was already restricting press freedom in Ukraine. I then referenced Gaza. Hutchins didn't refer to either one.

And, with that, it strikes me that he's probably framing this in a politicized sense, and within the conservative-liberal axis, or, within the two-party duopoly axis.

To me, right-thinking (NO pun, intended or unintended!) people in general should step outside that box. And, media shouldn't step into that box in general.

We all should move beyond language that's harmful, but at the same time:

• Recognize the euphemism treadmill is real;
• Avoid politicization;
• Accept we won't please everybody;
• And, per Humpty Dumpty, never let language be the master. 

And, that's that.

What color are these strawberries is ultimately a philosophical question, not scientific

A lot of people have probably, via Facebook friends or whatever, seen the photo of strawberries at left, whose production is described here.

I haven't actually opened the picture in Photoshop, but I'll take at face value the claim it has no red pixels.

But, what does that actually mean?

Photoshop's default on color pictures is to present a photo in "RGB" format. That's Red, Green, and Blue — the three primary colors. But, many Photoshop commands let one manipulate not only those three colors, but the three commonly accepted secondary colors of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow, plus a channel for Black. If you've ever heard of CMYK (B already used for Blue) photo editing, that's where it comes from. The Black channel is necessitated by the conversion of primary colors back to secondary.

Anyway, back to RGB colors. Several thoughts here.

First, many colors, even in "normal lighting," whatever that is, aren't what we think. If you use Photoshop much, you'll see that the "green" in grass is about one-third yellow.

Second, does Photoshop's 256-level format (two to the eighth power of bits on eight-bit basis) for each color channel imply a level of digital accuracy that doesn't exist? I mean, we can peg light to 500 nanometers. But, is that blue or is that cyan, or turquoise, if we use a non-technical color, or what? Wiki has a full piece on "spectral color" which raises such issues.

And, with that, we're into various issues of philosophy.

Setting aside some aspects of epistemology, we've got what would be either informal logic or linguistic philosophy, first. That is the issue of categories and definitions.

Per what I posted above, where does one color "stop" and another "begin"? That's not a science issue, that's a philosophy issue.

We also have linguistic philosophy issues on how one defines color. Setting aside the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which is nonetheless of a certain degree of strength, some languages distinguish between more colors than others. Isaac Newton, with the rainbows produced by his prism, famously distinguished indigo as a seventh color of the spectrum.

To the degree the above photo is an optical illusion, it trades on something else which is related to epistemology, and to David Hume's project of empiricism. That is the idea of qualia, or why do things seem to be the way they are.

The idea of qualia, if accepted in one of its several forms and definings, undercuts the "blank slate" idea of human perception stressed by Hume, and to fair degree by fellow empiricists. A child old enough to point to a red splotch in normal light, when shown this picture above, would not be able to point to claim it has a color similar to that red splotch on the blank slate theory of the human mind. (I frame the example this way to try to bracket the issue of the baby's mind being "contaminated" by explicit written or oral conversation.)

As to opponents of the idea of qualia? As I've gotten older, and more read in modern philosophy, I find Dan Dennett's arguments more and more lacking. The more and more we do current research in robots, artificial intelligence and similar, the more and more we realize human minds don't work that way. Dennett's other objections are somewhat functionalist in nature.

A side issue is that discussions of qualia often get wrapped up with issues of ontological dualism, even though in reality the two are separate items.

===

Or IS it ultimately a philosophical, not a scientific, question?

Nature painting by tetrachromat Concetta Antico

After all, the issue of color persistence, which is at the heart of the illusion, is a scientific issue, not a philosophical one. So is the related issue of the structure and operation of the human eye's cone cells. And, just as Nelson Goodman's "grue" is a philosophical question, special glasses that can make people see tetrachromatically (allegedly) are scientific issues — even if the fourth "primary color" might be something they wind up calling "grue." Beyond glasses, natural tetrachromatic people are already here, albeit a small minority, and one quite hard to identify — and self-identify —, which puts back to the issue of philosophy.

Per what I said above about a lot of green in Photoshop actually being yellow, I can see, looking at her paintings, how tetrachromat Antico, at the link above (learn more about her at her website), has her fourth cone cells tuned to somewhere between red and green (which actually shades to a yellowish-green in most people anyway).

Bottom line?

We mustn't steer away from the ditch of scientism only to drive into the other ditch of philosophism.

Nor can we consider many scientific questions outside of philosophy.

On the other hand, we also can't consider many philosophy questions outside of science. Philosophers fear, often rightly, "poaching" on their territory by the science world. On the other hand, in many issues related to consciousness, volition and other matters of the human mind, philosophers all too often remain resistant to legitimate claims of neuroscience and related fields.

A Game with Words: We must run Wittgenstein through Hume

Philosopher friend Dan Kaufman surely would or will disagree if or when he sees this, but I shall explain that header.

On Ludwig Wittgenstein, he does have a lot of insight, but, I don’t ennoble him like Dan does. (Dan might object a bit to the word "ennoble," but ... I'll stand by its sentiment.)

In part, that’s because one can go “meta” on Wittgenstein’s language games idea. I think Walter Kaufmann, with his somewhat contrarian rejection of “guilt” and “justice” as universals or quasi-universals kind of gets at that.

But, there are other issues. And, expanding on a comment I left on a post at Massimo Pigliucci's blog, here are a few of them.

1. Are we talking about descriptive or prescriptive use of a particular word, or words in general?

2. Can we even agree on what “prescriptive” and “descriptive” mean, either in general or with a particular word?

3. How do we make such judgments?

These are just a few of many ideas related to this issue.           

In short, Wittgenstein’s idea on language games, in the real world, must be run through …

Wait for it, those of you know one of my favorite philosophers …

Wittgenstein must in some way be run through Ye Olde Philter of Induction, courtesy David Hume.

#Mysticism, refudiated

Massimo Pigliucci has a guest poster at his new philosophy webzine site, commenting about mysticism in general, and Karen Armstrong's brand of it in general. (I think it's fair to call her a mystic of some sort.)

First, I agree with Massimo (which essayist Daniel Linford didn't so bluntly state) that Armstrong is fluff. But, because she makes Islam look halfway New Agey, she gets respect, or Respect. (And, she's a TED Prize winner, so! So what? The E in TED stands for Entertainment, let's not forget.)

But, she has Grounds for Respect.

Because capitalizing letters for phrases like Ground of Being is of course how you prove mystic claims.

Speaking of, the piece has brought said mystic provers out of the woodwork. Most of them (if they'd actually read and learn) could stand a good dose of Wittgenstein on private languages. They could also stand a moderate dose of Hume coupled with knowledge of the naturalistic, biochemical cause of brain states that exactly parallel "mystical experiences." Hume comes in with the good old is-ought distinction. Just because we evolved agency imputers in our mental makeup that sometimes run wild doesn't mean that they ought to run wild.

This is primarily drawn from my last comment there.

The “mystic experience” is just brain activity. It’s that humans, with a fuller sense of self, in part, and the evolution of attribution of agency as part of that, read into this brain chemistry things that other animals don’t.

On my last comment, I told Mario that Siberians’ reindeer eat the magic mushrooms just like the shamans do.

Why? Presumably, they’re having the same brain experience, and tripping out, in just the same way the shamans are.

But, because they don’t have the same sense of self or the attribution of agency to things, they don’t interpret this as a mystic experience or contact with the Divine or the Ground of Reindeer Being.

They just experience it, then eat some more shrooms. Period.

To wrap this up, let’s go back to the early master of human nature (what a shame he didn’t live post-Darwin), Hume.

This is a classic is-ought, in my opinion.

Just because we evolved these agency-imputing mechanisms is no reason to keep using them today. There’s no mystic entity behind the rustling mental grass waiting to mystically enlighten you, to riff on an old illustration.

Or, again, per earlier comment and Daniel’s theme (which has indeed been addressed by non-mystics), Your Mysticism Is Too Egocentric.

Wm. Burgess believes that atheists haven't rejected belief in his kind of god. He also comes very much from the school of Capitalizing Various Things to Make Them Sound Mystical and Ineffable.

To him, I replied: It sounds to me like you’re either not listening to atheists carefully enough, or reading or meeting enough of them, or to riff on Coel’s article about religious and secular liberties, you’re demanding a laundry list, into which you’ll insert your own version of a “pantheism of the gaps.”

So, if you want it said directly, I for one don’t accept your version of god either. Beyond that, I addressed the use of capitalized nouns in my first post, so I already said I didn’t believe in that version of God/Ground of Being/Dust of Being/Quarks of Being/Higgs Bosons of Being or anything like it. Nor do I believe in the Sacred/Divine/Ineffable/Noumena/Logos/Atman/Wholly Other or any other capitalized Essence that I my have missed.

Or Process/Action/Motion/Movement or any other capitalized Verb or Gerund that I may have missed.

Or Love/Hope/Orgiasticness (thanks, F. Scott Fitzgerald, or Diogenes) or any capitalized Abstract Noun I may have missed.

More generally, English isn’t German, and it certainly isn’t German run through the filter of Heidegger. Capitalizing a word proves nothing.

And, lest we get a mystic via negativa popping up, capitalizing a word doesn’t prove Nothing, either.

Michael Ahles along with Fred Eaker are the two mystics who, as I put it my second comment, insist on using a private language to describe (their own?) mystical experience while insisting that the rest of us agree that this is actually a public language and we accept its terms. Ahles goes beyond that to accuse some of not listening well enough, to which I replied: “Private ears” or “selective deafness” fall under the rubric of private languages. Already asked and answered.

Beyond that, they and others refuse to answer basic questions, rhetorically posted. (Yet, Fred can accuse me of missing his point, when my rhetorical questions below are addressed exactly to his point.)

First, how do you know a mystic experience isn’t a hallucination? Or mental illness? Or a brain illness? Or a brain condition from some other illness? Or a brain trauma? (Directly to Fred, I also asked how does he tell true from false mystics, and since he's tripping on Hinduism, specifically mentioned Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and Ram Dass.)

Answers to the above? Respectively, peyote and LSD, schizophrenia, temporal lobe epilepsy, the hypoxia often associated with near death experiences, or brain traumas along the general lines of Phineas Gage’s, can all cause all the symptoms and perceptions you think prove your mystical experience is “real.”

Back to the private languages issue, because it connects with a "superior knowledge" issue, and there's nothing new here, either.

It goes back to the Christian New Testament, after all. And Gnosticism, whether Christian, Jewish or Pagan.

Even in the Christian Bible, it’s there.

Hebrews 5:13-14

For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.

And 1 Corinthians 3:2

I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.

Nothing new under the sun, including claims of special enlightenment by “transcendent” means.

Tom Dobrzeniecki seems to think that Gödel and his ideas on incompleteness mean that atheism is just as much a leap of faith as theism. Another old chestnut from some theists, not just mystics. To him, I replied: If you see Gödel implying that methodological naturalism is “incomplete,” well, we could all become Pyrrhonic Skeptics and say almost everything of significance in life is a leap of faith, I guess.

Of course, this ties back to the private languages issue. If any serious event is considered a “leap of faith,” then private languages abound!

Bottom line is that mysticism, like the belief that UFOs are visiting little old me, even though Planet Earth in general, and little old you in particular, have nothing to teach a possible alien life form of that level of intelligence?

Bottom line is that there's a lot of egocentricity and grandiosity in a lot of mysticism.

That said, part of what was discussed applies to good old conservative Christians like Christian apologist Alvin Plantinga.

The "transcendence" of the mystic walks hand in hand with the "inscrutability" of the conservative, and both of them are usually trying to tap dance around Ye Olde Problem of Evil.

Riffing on the old Problem of Evil, I call it the Problem of Psychological Evil and have blogged about this before. Any deity, or any Ground of Being, sufficiently powerful to make him/her/itself comprehensible to sentient creatures, but refusing to do so, creates Psychological Evil.

That said, of course, this isn’t just related to transcendence of the extreme Armstrong sort. I crafted it in response to the traditional conservative theologians like Plantinga who refer to Paul’s quote of Job about god’s inscrutability. Daniel kind of picks up on that in his footnote 12 area, but is pretty much only referring to the Armstrong-type mystic, not the traditional conservative Christian like Plantinga. But, in various ways, it applies to both.

Romans 11:33-34

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?

Otherwise, any type of theology, or general belief, is also partially subject to the same critique.

The ineffability of the god of the mystics is the same as the inscrutability of the god of the traditional omnipotent monotheists. With both groups at times, and especially and often with the latter, it's an attempt to avoid Ye Olde Problem of Evil. And, it fails.

I've blogged at my secondary blog how this ultimately falls prey to the Problem of Psychological Evil, discussed in a bit more detail here.

I have to disagree with Massimo Pigliucci: a public intellectual misstep?

And, regular readers of this blog, or viewers of my comments on Google+, will probably be surprised. And they should be.

Oh, sure, we have some differences of opinion on what free will may or may not be. But, those are fairly nuanced positions on an issue where there's little certain knowledge at all.

Rather, I'm disagreeing a bit more substantially with ideas behind his latest post, On the Biology of Race.

Obviously, this can be an explosive issue. I certainly agree with the thumping he gives to Nicholas Wade's new book. He does acknowledge that Wade does give credence (if Wade isn't just using a rhetorical gambit; I've not yet read the book) to Hume's is/ought distinction.

But, trying to redefine the word "race"? No.

Massimo first notes this:

“Race” is a rather fuzzy concept in biology to begin with, even outside of the human case. More often than not, however, in biology a race is a subspecies, or incipient species

So far, so good.

But, then, we have at best, a stumble, at second best, a wrong turning, and at third best, a violation of at least the spirit of the Tractatus-era Wittgenstein and his famous quote, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

Here's that wrong turning.

If human races are not subspecies, is there any scientifically meaningful way to recover the concept of “race” as it applies to our species, and how does this square with the “folk” concept of species (i.e., with talk of “blacks, Caucasians, Asians,” and so forth)?

Jonathan Kaplan and I (first reference mentioned in [6]) think there is. We suggested that human races are really what biologists call “ecotypes” [11], geographically distinct populations that have evolved some special way of adapting to their local environment.

I'm not disagreeing with him as a biologist. I have no academic standing to do so. And, I have no doubt the word "race" can be defined as an "ectype," as he does.

The real question is, Should it be?

In other words, should be be using the word "race" at all?

I say no, firmly so.

We've at least gotten past "race" used for a cultural grouping from one country, like "the English race" or the "British race," etc., that was common out of the mouth of a Teddy Roosevelt or a young Winston Churchill. It's time to take the next step, and, as much as possible, stop using "race" for people of different skin tones.

Unfortunately, Massimo focuses his ecotypes for human races exactly on generalized, or overgeneralized, or even stereotypical, racial characteristics:

The idea, then, is that certain superficial physical characteristics in humans — chiefly, but not exclusively, skin and eye color — did evolve genetically, likely in response to natural selection for adaptation to certain types of environments, most obviously dark skin to protect people from high levels of UV radiation, and light skin to minimize inability to synthesize vitamin D in places where high incidence of sunlight is not the most pressing problem.

Eye color may be a spandrel, or, at least, co-evolved.

Skin color? H. sapiens arctus could have evolved a different mechanism for Vitamin D needs, like more efficient obtaining of it from food sources. After all, Andeans and Himalayans have evolved different mechanisms for living at high altitude. And, Southeast Asians have evolved a rough parallel to West Africans' sickle-cell defense against malaria.

And, on skin tone, many East Asians, even ones at more northerly latitudes, are of slightly to moderately darker skin than many Europeans.

That said, he goes on to acknowledge some of this.

For instance, light skin evolved following different genetic pathways in Western and Eastern Eurasian populations. Moreover, although South Asian populations retained the ancestral dark pigmentation, its genetic modulation appears to be very different from that of, say, West African populations.

Fair enough? Well, maybe, maybe not. It's only a partial acknowledgement, not a full one. Nor is it an acknowledgement that by focusing on skin tone, Massimo's barking up the wrong ecotype tree.

Docgee in comments speaks for me here:

If you already have a perfectly good term, i.e., “ecotype,” then what’s the point of tacking “race” onto it? You admit that your definition has little in common with the “folk” definition, which is in fact very different. So what is there that’s so attractive about “race” that you feel the need to revive (and redefine) the term at all? Since most people feel they already know what “race” means, using it as an alternative to “ecotype” will only lead to confusion. And in the process, encourage the many racists among us.

Moreover, when you actually study the literature of population genetics you’ll see that there is no such thing as a human “ecotype” either. At least not in any sense remotely comparable to race. What “race” are the Ainu of Japan, who are phenotypically “caucasian”? What race are the Andaman Islanders, who look “just like” African Pygmies, but are much closer genetically to Asians. What “race” are American “blacks,” many of whom are primarily of European or British descent, yet simply look “negroid” to your typical American.

Exactly. While Massimo again gives a nod to a narrow focus on ecotypes:

As we have seen, insofar as biologically meaningful races are conceptualized as populations more like ecotypes than like incipient species, many of the arguments purporting to show that there are no human races miss their mark.

He still doesn't discuss why skin tone, contra a Docgee, should be the starting point for defining, or defining into existence, human ecotypes.

So, I correct myself. As a layperson, I'm not disagreeing with his knowledge of biology, I'm disagreeing with the way he's constructing definitions.

So, let's say that this is a philosophical disagreement. It's about philosophy of language, and since it's about said branch of philosophy in the use of science, it's a philosophy of science disagreement of sorts.

But, it's more than that.

Massimo stresses the value of public intellectuals, and that's the ultimate grounds of my disagreement. I think, again with Docgee having taken the words out of my mouth, that he is indeed erring as a public intellectual.

Two paragraphs above the last one, he says:

The upshot is that when people think of “blacks” as a race, they are not actually picking a scientifically coherent unit, only one that is defined by a mishmash of small and superficial set of biological traits (skin color etc.) and a convoluted cultural history.

Followed by this in the same paragraph of the "as we have seen" quote:

But again, biology provides no support for the very strong, essentialist-style conception of ‘race’ that has, both historically and at present, underwritten racism (of both the individual and institutional varieties), and indeed, biology reveals that the assumptions underlying such a conception of race are false.

So, why still use the word "race"?

I think Massimo is missing the boat on a branch of evolutionary biology that we both agree is often overblown. However, it is a branch that, with both the word "pop" and the idea of it removed, does have some legitimate contributions.

I'm talking about evolutionary psychology.

Xenophobia is an evolutionarily-guided human trait. The idea of the "outgroup" is deeply rooted.

And, skin color, when people from different parts of the world are thrown into close proximity, especially in larger numbers, is a mentally easy way to distinguish "outgroups."

And, those outgroups have been labeled with the word "race." Even as "we" know that there's no connection between skin tone and other heritable characteristics, people with PhDs still claim there are such connections.

Like Phillipe Rushton. Or, without a PhD, Steve Sailer, referenced as an expert by a Jamaican native, JayMan, who says he is of part African ancestry, here.

Massimo, if dipping into the waters of evolutionary psychology is too much, this might actually be a good time for a quaff of Dan Dennett and his observations about folk psychology. You use the word "folk" yourself, but don't seem to see this as an "aha" moment.

So, no, Massimo.

Because, pace Wittgenstein above and the later linguistic Wittgenstein, to speak of a term loaded with baggage that has sociological and political science connotations, is to speak of a word that, in the public square can't be so easily redefined, and certainly not unilaterally so. (The repeated comments of JayMan, complete with references to posts from his blog, to which I shall not link, are proof positive of this.) And, since political science, in a case like this might even connect to political philosophy, we're definitely back in public intellectual territory.

To riff on John Roberts, the way to stop talking about "race" is to stop talking about "race." Except when necessary to refute the traditional "folk" concept.

Period and end of story.

To try to redefine the word, still using biological concepts, still leaves the door open for the racialist Sailers of the world to commit deliberate bull's-eye fallacies by defining "ecotypes" the way they want to.

Per that later Wittgenstein, and ordinary language philosophy, simply deny that "race" as understood in common language has biological standing.

Consciousness is not the same as attentiveness

It's long been established that we have what could be called "subconscious attentiveness," which can cause things such as certain types of psychological priming through images being presented to people, but too quickly for them to be consciously aware of the images.

It now appears, in the latest in attempts to unravel human consciousness, that this cuts both ways.

But, the story doesn't go as far as it could, both on speculation and on Wittgenstein-like questions on our use of language on these issues.

Perhaps "consciousness," "attentiveness" and "awareness" need more precision in usage in such aspects. Or maybe they need to be redefined to some degree. Or replaced.

Whether language will be crafted to this end remains to be seen.

Atheists who willingly defend misleading language are a frustration

Two weeks ago, I blogged about the latest Pew Research Poll on American religious beliefs, noting this absurdity, among other things:

Americans are so religiously and metaphysically STUPID, on average, that one out of five Americans who claim to be religiously unaffiliated and atheist claim to also believe in a divinity. Half of agnostics in that group make the same claim. ...

Hey, idiots. If you believe something, you can’t be agnostic about it!

But, all is not well in atheist land from where I sit.

Apparently, some people, some atheists, want to defend the use of misleading language, specifically, the illogical phrase “agnostic theism.” It’s a bad enough phrase in general, but in response to a blog post, and an original story, that both talked about “theism,” “agnosticism” and “atheism” all as belief states, it’s off-putting to say the least.

Here is the bottom line, with a sharp, hard-hitting analogy from American politics:

“Agnostic theism” is like “Democratic Republicanism” and “theistic agnosticism” is like “Republican Democratism.” (Allow the neologism for the noun parallel.)

Or, for Konstantine in Germany, “Agnostic theism” is like “Social Democratic-Christian Democratism” and “theistic agnosticism” is like “Christian Democratic-Social Democratism.”

There. I know everybody reading can understand that analogy.

To Konstantine, Adrian and Austin, I adapt my longer reply based on comments from my original post, with concluding thoughts following this long blockquote:

I stand by the original post, and I stand by saying that you’re using (potentially) misleading language. You, too, or you especially, Austin.

First, it’s clear that I, and the NYTimes linked story were talking about beliefs (or, my alternative phraseology, influenced by Dan Dennett, of “metaphysical belief,”) all along, and not knowledge. The word “belief” is in the first paragraph of my original post.

So, Austin, I never conflated “belief” and “knowledge.” I then said, if you can get Bob Carroll of The Skeptic’s Dictionary to prove me wrong, I’d listen.

Well, I went ahead and did my own research:
First, in hardcopy, my “Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion,” by William L. Reese, says this under “agnosticism”:

It is usually applied, however, principally, to suspension of belief with respect to God. (Emphasis added.)

Now, Bob Carroll does use the word “knowledge,” but as subordinate to “belief”:

Agnosticism is the position of believing that knowledge of the existence or non-existence of God is impossible.

Note the definition is about belief, again.

Again, I've been referring to belief all the time.

So has the Pew poll.

And, per that definition, let me rephrase my original critique:

Phrases like “agnostic theism” or “theistic agnosticism” in that both the governing noun and the adjective talk about states of belief, or metaphysical stances, to use my phrase ...

ARE MISLEADING.

You have incompatible belief states being smashed together.

I don't care if “agnostic theism” has 5,000 Google hits, either. I don’t even care if there’s a website called AgnosticTheism.com. No, I refuse to give it a hyperlink. (Added note to all: remember, “appeal to the crowd” is a logical fallacy anyway.)

I argue that is further proof of the Pew poll, anway. And, beyond that, neither Reese nor Carroll use either that phrase or “theistic agnosticism.”

And, as I said earlier, Austin, I don’t even care if you’re the atheism “guide” for About.com.

Thank doorknob there’s only 5,000 deluded Google hits, too. (Even more fortunately, the equally oxymoronic “theistic agnosticism” has less than 500 hits.)

Next, to tackle this linguistic oxymoron from another angle, let me go to a comment I made on the original post:

Re the Wiki link on agnostic theism that (db0) posts, let’s carefully analyze the English language used here.

“Theism” is the noun. Nouns always take precedence over adjectives like “agnostic.”

For example, you can have simple noun-verb, or N-V, sentences. You cannot have a noun-adjective, or N-Adj, sentence.

The reverse also holds true. You CANNOT be an agnostic, as a primary belief state, and modify it with “theistic,” either. (See below, outside of this blockquote, for a

But I will get beyond that

As for (Konstantine's) implication that many people in Germany, or elsewhere in Europe, or in online communities of his, may understand “atheism” to mean “irreligious,” well, then obviously a bunch of people in those communities are as stupid as they are here. Maybe the equivalent of Pew should poll them. And, I’ll call irreligious people in the UK who call themselves “atheists” idiots, too, db0. Give me e-mail addresses, and I'll even e-mail them that.

Ditto for agnostics using misleading language, or atheists who abet them.

And, as for Konstantine criticizing me, well, instead, he could have taken my article as it read and corrected stupid people on his and Adrian’s side of the pond.

And, per that definition, let me rephrase my original critique of all of you:

Phrases like “agnostic theism” or “theistic agnosticism” in that both the governing noun and the adjective talk about states of belief, or metaphysical stances, to use my phrase ...

ARE MISLEADING.

Merriam-Webster also agrees with me on the use of “agnosticism.”

Dictionary.com, especially in its first listed definition, agrees as well.

Wittgenstein would be turning over in his grave, if he could.

If I were dead, and could turn over in my grave, I definitely would, too.

I didn’t do my original post, nor this follow-up, seeking to be a one-person English-language equivalent of the Académie française, but I stand by my grammar and linguistics comments. I’m not against neologisms by any means; that’s how Shakespeare enlivened our language 400 years ago.

I AM against confusing, or unnecessary, neologisms, though, and this one, or the two non-equivalent ones, are confusing.

And, I am going to critique Thomas Huxley a bit, too.

I offer one more analogy:

It’s as if Huxley were working on a syllogism. “Knowledge” may have been the fulcrum of his major premise, but “belief” was the keystone of his conclusion.

Beyond that, I blame him for bad language; even though etymology doesn’t determine meaning 100 years out or more, he should have invented “apisteia” or similar, rather than “agnosticism.”

Also, as I e-mailed Austin, I stand by my psychological observation that “agnostic theism” is an attempt to give an intellectual gloss to theistic beliefs. I do not mean that Konstantine or Austin is doing this. But, I mean that I believe it can be used that way, as a sort of a “intellectual New Ageism” for want of a better term. It’s like smearing lipstick on a dying-and-rising savior god, to riff on an American English cliché.

Let me add more.

As far as the “about me,” I don't know if you’ve clicked on that on my blog.

I have a graduate divinity degree, and have read philosophy at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Admittedly, that degree is 22 years old now. And, no, Austin, all my study was here in the U.S.

That said, I had never seen the phrase “agnostic theism” until you used it, Konstantine. No, Austin, I don’t read metaphysics books every day, but I do still keep my nose in philosophy books from time to time.

All that said ...

To the degree Konstantine objects to my “stupid” or “idiots” language, no apologies. Just like Hitchens has no need to apologizes for having the “strongest” language of the New Atheists. To go back to politics, would you call Dick Cheney a “not so nice guy”?

If it’s “condescending” to tell someone I think I have a variety of evidences for my use and understanding of the word “agnostic,” and that therefore I don’t want to “flog a dead horse” anymore, I don’t apologize for that, either. Argue with the dictionaries I linked.

And note that etymology does not define meaning. Besides, I believe Huxley was focused ultimately on “belief” and not “knowledge” anyway.

In my day job, I write an editorial column every week. Some times, there's no soft-spoken way to state something. And, yes, somebody may call that condescending too.

I absolutely reject Konstantine’s “Humpty Dumpty” argument via e-mail:

However, as long as people are speaking about the same thing then it’s all good. It doesn't matter if it’s called Theistic Agnosticism, Fidei[s]m or Purple Banana.

No it’s not. That’s why I said “read Wittgenstein” early on in the thread of comments to my original post.

I have certainly heard of “fideism,” but I don’t think it and “agnostic theism” mean the same thing.

Let’s go back to Wittgenstein once more. Along the lines of the “Tractatus,” not his later writings, I think “agnostic theism,” in one sense, says nothing. That is the thrust of my opening analogy.

And, if it’s “condescending” to say, “No, I won’t let you be Humpty Dumpty with words, at least not on my blog,” I can live with that, too.

In a softer vein, I told Konstantine that’s part of what enables fuzzy thinking and its growth. I do not know if this is an English-language issue, in some part, but I think not.(And, no, I do not mean that to be condescending.)

Adrian or anyone else who, after accepting the apology I offered to Konstantine about calling him a theist, and inferring he was British, still wants to delink my blog because I criticize his or your use of language?

Be my guest.

I would rather not be linked to you, in that case.

Final note: I reserve the right on this post to moderate or delete comments. Per comment to Konstantine, I do not at all mind sharpening wits with other people, but, the core issue has been defined. And no, I don’t think the linguistics are minor. As I told Konstantine, I do not want to go through the frustration of dead horse flogging. The core issue has been defined.

Beyond that, I don’t want the hassle of wondering when I’m going to be called “condescending” again.