Rationalist Taboo is a technique for fighting muddles in discussions. By prohibiting the use of a certain word and all the words synonymous to it, people are forced to elucidate the specific contextual meaning they want to express, thus removing ambiguity otherwise present in a single word.

Mainstream philosophy has a parallel procedure called "unpacking". Unpacking has the requirement that the contentious or doubtful term be expanded out--not just replaced with a synonym--and only used as a collection of subcomponent concepts.

Main Posts

Other Posts

Disputing Definitions - An example of how the technique helps.
Words as Hidden Inferences - The mere presence of words can influence thinking, sometimes misleading it.
Detached Lever Fallacy - There is a lot of machinery hidden beneath the words, and rationalist's taboo is one way to make a step towards exposing it.

Posts

Wikitag Contributions

Comments