Language Matters – Page 27 – Maverick Philosopher

Tongue and Pen

Christ has harsh words for those who misuse the power of speech at Matthew 12:36: "But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." But what about every idle word that bloggers blog and scribblers scribble? Must not the discipline of the tongue extend to the pen?

Suppose we back up a step. What is wrong with idle talk and idle writing? The most metaphysical of the gospels begins magnificently: "In the beginning was the Word and Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1) The Word (Logos, Verbum) is divine, and if we are made in the divine image and likeness, then the logical power, the verbal power, the power to think, judge, speak, and write is a god-like power in us. If so, then it ought not be abused. But in idle talk it is abused. Here then is a reason why idle talk is wrong.

But if idle talk is wrong, then so is all idle expression. And if all idle expression is wrong, then it is difficult to see how idle thoughts could be morally neutral. For thought is the root and source of expression. If we take Christ's words in their spirit rather than in their mere letter, moral accountability extends from speech to all forms of expression, and beyond that to the unexpressed but expressible preconditions of expression, namely, thoughts. Is it not a necessary truth that any communicative expressing is the expressing of a thought? (Think about that, and ask yourself: does a voice synthesizer speak to you?)

So a first reason to avoid idle thoughts and their expression is that entertaining the thoughts and expressing them debases the god-like power of the Logos in us. A second reason is that idle words may lead on to what is worse than idle words, to words that cause dissension and discord and violence. What starts out persiflage may end up billingsgate. (This is another reason why there cannot be an absolute right to free speech: one cannot have a right to speech that can be expected to issue in physical violence and death. Consider how this must be qualified to accommodate a just judge's sentencing a man to death.)

There is a third reason to avoid idle expression and the idle thoughts at their base. Idle words and thoughts impede entrance into silence. But this is not because they are idle, but because they are words and thoughts. By 'silence' I mean the interior silence, the inner quiet of the mind which is not the mere absence of sound, but the presence of that which, deeper than the discursive intellect, makes possibly both thought and discourse. But I won't say more about this now. See Meditation category.

What go me thinking about this topic is the 'paradox' of Thomas Merton whose works I have been re-reading. He wrote a very good book, The Silent Life, a book I recommend, though I cannot recommend his work in general. The Mertonian 'paradox' is this: how can one praise the life of deep interior solitude and silence while writing 70 books, numerous articles and reviews, seven volumes of journals, and giving all sorts of talks, presentations, workshops, and whatnot? And all that travel! It is a sad irony that he died far from his Kentucky abbey, Gethsemane, in Bangkok, Thailand at the young age of 53 while attending yet another conference. (Those of a monkish disposition are able to, and ought to, admit that many if not most conferences are useless, or else suboptimal uses of one's time, apart from such practical activities as securing a teaching position, or making other contacts necessary for getting on in the world.)

There is a related but different sort of paradox in Pascal. He told us that philosophy is not worth an hour's trouble. But then he bequeathed to us that big fat wonderful book of Pensées, Thoughts, as if to say: philosophy is not worth an hour's trouble — except mine. Why did he not spend his time better — by his own understanding of what 'better' involves — praying, meditating, and engaging in related religious activities?

And then there is that Danish Writing Machine Kierkegaard who in his short life (1813-1855) produced a staggeringly prodigious output of books and journal entries. When did he have time to practice his religion as opposed to writing about it?

I of course ask myself similar questions. One answer is that writing itself can be a spiritual practice. But I fear I have posted too much idle rubbish over the years. I shall try to do better in future.

Bill O’Reilly the Other Night

It "drives him crazy" that people say 'at the end of the day.'

(Now why did I use double and then revert to single quotation marks? Because I went from quoting a particular person to mentioning a phrase in widespread use, but not quoting any particular person. There is no need for you to be so punctilious. Just don't call me inconsistent.)

Denying that There is Political Correctness . . .

. . . is like a mafioso's denying that there is a mafia. "Mafia? What mafia? There's no mafia. We're just businessmen trying to do right by out families." Our mafioso might go on to explain that 'mafia' is really just an ethnic slur used to denigrate businessmen of Italian extraction.

This an instance of a rhetorical pattern. Can we tease out the pattern and present it in abstracto? Roughly the pattern is this: A person who is something denies that there is that something. A proponent of a view denies that there is any such view as the one he proposes. A representative of an attitude denies that there is any such attitude as the one he represents. An employer of a tactic denies that there is any such tactic as the one he employs. A performer in a musical genre denies that there is any such genre as the one in which he performs. (I'll have to check, but I seem to recall that Dylan in his folk phase in an interview denied the existence of folk music.)

For instance, a person who is politically correct denies that there is political correctness. Note that only the politically correct deny that there is political correctness, just as only mafiosi deny that there is a mafia. Note also that the denial is not that there are politically correct people, but that the very concept of political correctness is misbegotten, or incoherent, or introduced only as a semantic bludgeon. The idea is not that a person who is something denies that he is that something, but that there is that something.

But we need more examples. Some of the people who are proponents of scientism deny that there is scientism. They may go on to reject the word as meaningless or impossible of application or merely emotive. But of course there is such a thing as scientism. Scientism, roughly, is the philosophical thesis that the only genuine knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge. Not only is there that view; it has representatives.

Suppose that some conservative denies that there is Islamophobia. Then I would have to object. There are a few people who have an irrational fear of Islam and/or of Muslims. They are accurately labelled "Islamophobes.' "Islamophobia' does pick out something real, a 'syndrome' of sorts.

But of course the vast majority of those who sound the alarm against radical Islam are not Islamophobes. For their fear of radical Islam and its works is rational.

Other examples that need discussing: white privilege, institutionalized racism, racial profiling. Could one reasonably believe in these three while denying that there is political correctness?

I'd like to go on; maybe later. But now I have to get ready for an 8 K trail run.

Pleonasm

Professor Windbag censured the student's use of 'added bonus' as pleonastic and redundant.

Acronyms, Initialisms, and Truncations: Another Look

I suggested earlier that we think of abbreviations as a genus that splits into three coordinate species: acronyms, initialisms, and truncations with the specific differences as follows:

An acronym is a pronounceable word formed from either the initial letters of two or more words, or from contiguous letters of two or more words. For example, 'laser' is a pronounceable word formed from the initial letters of the following words: light, amplification, stimulated, emission, radiation. And Gestapo is a pronounceable word formed from contiguous letters of the following words: geheime, Staats, Polizei.

An initialism is a string of contiguous letters, unpronounceable as a word or else not in use as a word, but pronounceable as a list of letters, formed from the initial letters of two or more words. For example, 'PBS' is an initialism that abbreviates 'Public Broadcasting System.' 'PBS' cannot be pronounced as a word, but it can be pronounced as a series of letters: Pee, Bee, Ess. 'IT' is an initialism that abbreviates "information technology.' In this case 'IT' is pronounceable as a word, but is not in use as a word. You can say, 'Mary works in Eye-Tee,' but not, 'Mary works in IT.' The same goes for 'ASU' which abbreviates 'Arizona State University.'

A truncation is a term formed from a single word by shortening it. 'App,' for example is a truncation of 'application,' and 'ho' is presumably a truncation of 'whore' (in black idiom). 'Auto' is a truncation of 'automobile,' and 'blog' (noun) of 'weblog.'

Malcolm Chisholm in an e-mail comment objects to my taxonomy, claiming that the classification looks like this:

While my scheme probably has defects of which I am not aware, Dr. Chisholm's scheme is open to objection. He tells us that a truncation is "formed by taking the first part of each word." But then 'laser' and Gestapo are truncations, which can't be right. There is no word of which 'laser' is the truncation as there is a word of which 'hood' is the truncation ('neighborhood'). Chisholm also tells us that an acronym is "formed by taking the first letter of each word." But Gestapo and Stasi are not formed by taking the first letter of each word. Stasi is formed from the first three letters of Staat and the first two letters of Sicherheit. (By the way, the Stasi was much worse than the Gestapo, according to Simon Wiesenthal.) And what about 'sonar'? It takes two letters from 'sound' and one each from 'navigation' and 'ranging.'

What's more, I see no point in making acronym superordinate to pronounceable acronym. That strikes me as a distinction without a difference, i.e., a merely verbal distinction. As I see it, 'pronounceable acronym' is a pleonastic expression. But I will irenically grant that there may be no fact of the matter here and that we can slice this bird in equally acceptable ways. Those who classify the initialism 'SBNR' ('spiritual but not religious') — the initialism that got me on this jag in the first place — as an acronym are free to do so. But I prefer not to since every example of an acronym I can think of is pronounceable.

Perhaps I can appeal to parsimony. My scheme is simpler than Chisholm's. His Porphyric tree sports three branchings; mine only two.

But perhaps I am making some mistake here. What is wrong with my taxonomy if anything is wrong with it? But I'm no linguist; I'm merely a philosopher who thinks it wise to attend carefully to ordinary language while avoiding the aberration known as Ordinary Language philosophy.

Distasteful Slang

I have nothing against slang as such, but there are contexts in which it does not belong. Here is a book by one Fr. Andrew Younan entitled Metaphysics and Natural Theology. One chapter is entitled "Aristotle and the Other Guys." Another "Thomas Aquinas — A Bunch of Stuff." A third "God Stuff."

Disgusting. Either you see why or you don't. I can't argue you out of your low-rent sensibility. In matters of sensibility, argument comes too late.

Residual Political Correctness Among Conservatives

Over at NRO, I found this in an otherwise very good column by Charles C. W. Cooke:

I daresay that if I had been in any of the situations that DeBoer describes, I would have walked happily out of the class. Why? Well, because there is simply nothing to be gained from arguing with people who believe that it is reasonable to treat those who use the word “disabled” as we treat those who use the word “n***er” . . . .

Isn't this precious? Cooke shows that he owns a pair of cojones throughout the column but then he gets queasy when it comes to 'nigger.' Why? Would he similarly tip-toe around 'kike' or 'dago'? I doubt it. It is clear that he is aware of the difference between using a word to refer to something and talking about the word. Philosophers call this the use-mention distinction. Call it whatever you like, but observe it.

True: 'Boston' is disyllabic.
False: Boston is disyllabic.
True: Boston is populous.
False: 'Boston' is populous.

Consider the following sentence

Some blacks refer to other blacks using the word 'nigger.'

The sentence is true. Now of course I do not maintain that a sentence's being true justifies its assertive utterance in every situation. The above sentence, although appropriately asserted in the present context where a serious and important point is being made, would not be appropriately asserted in any number of other easily imagined contexts.

But suppose that you take offense at the above sentence. Well, then, you have taken inappropriate and unjustified offense, and your foolishness offends me! Why is my being objectively offended of less significance than your being merely subjectively offended? Your willful stupidity justifies my mockery and derision. One should not give offense without a good reason. But your taking inappropriate offense is not my problem but yours.

In this regard there is no substitute for sound common sense, a commodity which unfortunately is in short supply on the Left. You can test whether you have sound common sense by whether or not you agree with the boring points I make in such entries as the following:

Of 'Blind Review' and Pandora's Box

Of Black Holes and Political Correctness

The White House Beer Summit

Acronyms, Initialisms, and Truncations

Every acronym is an abbreviation, but is every abbreviation an acronym? I just read something in which 'SNBR' was referred to as an acronym. 'SNBR' abbreviates the trendy phrase 'spiritual but not religious.' The phrase is foolish despite its currency, but that is not my present topic.

Call me pedantic, but 'SNBR' is so unlike 'laser,' 'sonar, 'radar,' 'Gestapo,' 'Stasi,' NASA,' and 'NATO,' that it ought not be referred to as an acronym. Call it an initialism. Think of it as a species of the genus, abbreviation, alongside acronyms and truncations.

What is the difference between an acronym and an initialism? Perhaps this: An acronym can be pronounced as a a word, whereas an initialism cannot be pronounced as a word, but only as a list of letters. Consider 'BBC' which abbreviates 'British Broadcasting Company.' One can pronounce, sequentially, the individual letters as Bee-Bee-Cee and thereby communicate something, but the sound you get from pronouncing 'BBC' as a word won't communicate anything except to yourself and your cat. Same goes for 'HTML,' the standard abbreviation for 'hyper text markup language.'

'App' is a truncation, most commonly of 'application' in the sense of 'computer program.' But just last night I saw a TV commercial in which 'app' was used as a truncation of 'appetizer.' I was led to believe that Appleby's serves up great 'apps.'

Acronyms and truncations are both pronounceable as words. What then is the difference between the two especially since acronyms involve truncations of words? For example, the acronym Gestapo derives from the phrase Geheime Staatspolizei which is composed of two words which are then treated as three words each of which is truncated down to its initial two or three letters. Thus: Ge-sta-po.

Perhaps we can say that a truncation involves the shortening of a single word whereas an acronym involves the shortening of two or more words.

'Arizona State University' is abbreviated as 'ASU.' Initialism or acronym? I said above that an initialism cannot be pronounced as a word. But 'ASU' can be so pronounced, and I do sometimes so pronounce it when I am talking to people associated with the university, e.g. 'I'll meet you at Ah-Soo by the fons philosophorum." (As I have said or written to Kid Nemesis.)

So what do we say about this example?

I got some help from this page.

Does any of this matter? Well, it matters if language matters, and it does.

Filed under: Language Matters

On the Use and Mention of Cartoons and Other Images

I had a new thought this morning, new for me anyway. It occurred to me that the familiar use-mention distinction can and should be applied to images, including cartoons. I recently posted a pornographic Charlie Hebdo cartoon that mocks in the most vile manner imaginable the Christian Trinity. A reader suggested that I merely link to it. But I wanted people to see how vile these nihilistic Charlie Hebdo porno-punks are and why it is a mistake to stand up for free speech by lying down with them, and with other perpetual adolescents of their ilk. Those who march under the banner Je Suis Charlie (I am Charlie) are not so much defending free speech as advertising their sad lack of understanding as to why it is accorded the status of a right.

So it occurred to me that the use-mention distinction familiar to philosophers could be applied to a situation like this. To illustrate the distinction, consider the sentences

'Nigger' is disyllabic.
The use of 'nigger,' like the use of 'kike' is highly offensive.
Niggers and kikes are often at one another's throats.

In the first two sentences, 'nigger' and 'kike' are mentioned, not used; in the third sentence, 'nigger' and 'kike' are used, not mentioned.

Please note that nowhere in this post do I use 'nigger' or 'kike.'

I chose these examples to explain the use-mention distinction in order to maintain the parallel between offensive words and offensive pictures.

Suppose someone asserts the first two sentences but not the third. No reasonable person could take offense at what the person says. For what he would be saying is true. But someone who asserts the third sentence could be reasonably taken to have said something offensive.

Jerry Coyne concludes a know-nothing response to a review by Alvin Plantinga of a book by Philip Kitcher with this graphic:

Coyne added a caption: AL-vinnn! Those of a certain age will understand the caption from the old Christmas song by the fictitious group, Alvin and the Chipmunks, from 1958. ( A real period piece complete with a reference to a hula hoop.)

Here's my point. Coyne uses the image to the left to mock Plantinga whereas I merely display it, or if you will, mention it (in an extended sense of 'mention') in order to say something about the image itself, namely, that it is used by the benighted Coyne to mock Plantinga and his views.

No one could reasonably take offense at my reproduction of the image in the context of the serious points I am making.

Likewise, no one could reasonably take offense at my reproduction of the following graphic which I display here, not to mock the man Muslims consider to be a messenger of the god they call Allah, but simply to display the sort of image they find offensive, and that I too find offensive, inasmuch as it mocks religion, a thing not to be mocked, even if the religion in question is what Schopenhauer calls "the saddest and poorest form of theism."

By the way, journalists should know better than to refer to Muhammad as 'The Prophet.' Or do they also refer to Jesus as 'The Savior' or 'Our Lord' or 'Son of God'?

Ready now? This is what CNN wouldn't show you. Hardly one of the more offensive of the cartoons. They wouldn't show it lest Muslims take offense.

My point, again, is that merely showing what some benighted people take offense at is not to engage in mockery or derision or any other objectively offensive behavior.

‘Contemporary Liberals’

When I pound on liberals, it is contemporary liberals who I have on my chopping block, not classical liberals or liberals from circa 1960. Call the latter paleo-liberals or old-time liberals. My brand of conservatism incorporates the best of their views. My conservatism is distinctively American; it is not of the 'throne and altar' variety.

But 'contemporary liberal' is ambiguous. It could refer to an old-time liberal with respect to some or all of the issues who just happens to flourish in the present, or it could refer to one who espouses contemporary liberalism, that species of aberrant political ideology increasingly indistinguishable from, and ever on the slouch toward, hard leftism.

I mean 'contemporary liberal' in the second sense. Accordingly, 'contemporary' in 'contemporary liberal' as I use the phrase modifies the liberalism of the liberal and not the liberal. The cynosure of my disapprobation is contemporary liberalism or progressivism or leftism. Finer distinctions can be made as needed. And no one outdoes the philosopher when it comes to drawing distinctions. For one of his mottoes is:

Distinguo ergo sum.

‘Islamophobia’ and ‘Hoplophobia’

My argument against the use of these terms is simple and straighforward. A phobia, by definition, is an irrational fear. (Every phobia is a fear, but not every fear is a phobia, because not every fear is irrational.) Therefore, one who calls a critic of the doctrines of Islam or of the practices of its adherents an Islamophobe is implying that the critic is in the grip of an irrational fear, and therefore irrational. This amounts to a refusal to confront and engage the content of his assertions and arguments.

This is not to say that there are no people with an irrational fear of Muslims or of Islam. But by the same token there are people with an irrational fear of firearms.

Suppose a defender of gun rights were to label anyone and everyone a hoplophobe who in any way argues for more gun control. Would you, dear liberal, object? I am sure you would. You would point out that a phobia is an irrational fear, and that your fear is quite rational. You would say that you fear the consequences of more and more guns in the hands of more and more people, some of them mentally unstable, some of them criminally inclined, some of them just careless.

You, dear liberal, would insist that your claims and arguments deserve to be confronted and engaged and not dismissed. You would be offended if a conservative or a libertarian were to dismiss you as a hoplophobe thereby implying that you are beneath the level of rational discourse.

So now, dear liberal, you perhaps understand why you ought to avoid 'Islamophobia' and its variants except in those few instances where they are legitimately applied.

Discussion of a Putative Counterexample to My Terrorism Definition

From a reader (the same one as yesterday):

I think the two distinctions you make are the right ones to make. I doubt that the four necessary conditions in your definition of 'terrorism' are jointly sufficient, but I'm not too concerned about that. [And I didn't claim that they are jointly sufficient, only that they are individually necessary.] I was hoping for a good practical definition and this is as good as I've seen (and better than the ones I offered). If the State Department were to adopt this definition, they would have a good, functional definition that got nearly every case right. It's too bad that you and I both know the State Department as currently staffed and run would never do anything so sane!

BV: Here is the State Department definition:

Title 22, Chapter 38 of the United States Code (regarding the Department of State) contains a definition of terrorism in its requirement that annual country reports on terrorism be submitted by the Secretary of State to Congress every year. It reads:

"[T]he term 'terrorism' means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents".^[53]

That is fairly close to what I said, though I wasn't aware of this definition until just now. I didn't mention premeditation, but that pretty much goes without saying. There are plenty of spur-of-the-moment crimes of passion, but how many spur-of-the-moment terrorist acts of passion are there? But three of my points are covered.

Here's my attempt at a counterexample. Suppose we are in Nazi Germany and suppose further that the Nazi state was not a legitimate one. Thus, in Germany during Nazi rule, there was no legitimate state. I am part of a German underground agency working to overthrow Hitler's regime because I and my agency recognize the Nazis as illegitimate and murderous. My agency is clearly not a state, so I think it meets condition three. My agency and I have a political goal: the overthrowing of the Nazi regime and the establishment of a legitimate government. So, condition one is met.

The other two conditions might be a little harder to meet. Suppose I know that Hitler is to give a speech at a rally, flanked by many high ranking Nazis. My agency has found a way to get myself and a few others into the crowd, but we know the Nazis thoroughly check a crowd for guns. Luckily, agent X is an ace explosive maker, and can make explosives out of things that not even the Nazis would suspect. Agent X equips us all with highly explosive cigarette lighters. We want to kill as many of the Nazi brass as we can and this may be the best shot we have. Given the circumstances, we do not have the option of discriminating between the "combatant" Nazis and the civilians who may have just come out of curiosity. We decide it is better to risk killing a civilians who are too close than not take the opportunity. Thus, we seem to meet condition two.

The question is whether this counts as an act of sabotage against the Nazis. It certainly involves the killing or maiming of other human beings. And, you might think that sabotage involves acts against legitimate entities, and the Nazis are not legitimate. It seems to me to be more than mere sabotage. But I think someone could reasonably disagree with me about that. If I'm right, then it appears that I'm a terrorist unless we come up with more conditions.

BV: Let us suppose that you count as a terrorist by my definition. Would that be a problem? My definition says nothing about whether terrorism is good or bad, morally permissible or impermissible. It merely states what it is. The original question was whether it is true that most terrorists, at the present time, are Muslims. To answer that question we need a definition of 'terrorist.' On the basis of my definition I would say that, yes, most terrorists today are Muslims. My concern was merely to define the phenomenon. I leave open whether some terrorist acts are morally permissible.

Of course, I consider Muslim terrorism unspeakably evil, from the beheading of Christians, including Christian children, to the attack on Charlie Hebdo, even though I consider the Hebdo crew to be moral scum who misuse, egregiously, the right to free speech, thereby confusing liberty with license. This is why it is is so wrong and indeed moronic for people to stand up for free speech by saying Je suis Charlie. Do they really mean to identify with those people? The way to stand up for free speech is by courageously but responsibly exercising one's right to free speech by speaking the truth, not by behaving in the manner of the adolescent punk who makes an idol of his own vacuous subjectivity and thinks he is entitled to inflict on the world every manifestation of his punkish vacuity.

If someone brings up all the violent drug cartel members in Mexico and Central and South America who 'terrorize' people, assassinate judges, bribe politicians and law enforcement agents, and so on, the answer is that they don't satisfy my first condition inasmuch as they are members of organized crime, not terrorists: they are not in pursuit of a political objective. It is not as if they aim to set up something like a narco-caliphate. They do not, like Muslim terrorists, seek to assume the burdens of governance in an attempt to bring about what they would consider to be a well-regulated social and political order in which human beings will flourish by their definition of flourishing. They attack existing states, but only because those states impede their criminal activities. See Mexican Drug Cartels are not Terrorists.

As for sabotage, I was suggesting that sabotage is not terrorism because terrorist acts are directed against persons primarily, while acts of sabotage are not directed against persons except indirectly. If Ed Abbey urinates into the gas tank of a Caterpillar tractor and manages to disable it, that will affect people but only indirectly. (But what about tree-spiking?) So I would not call you and your cohorts saboteurs.

You are not a terrorist by my definition because you are not indiscriminate in your attack on people: you are not trying to kill noncombatants. What you are doing comes under collateral damage.

The question of Double Effect comes up here as well. See my Israel, Hamas and the Doctrine of Double Effect.

Rethinking and Second Thoughts

To rethink one's position is not necessarily to abandon, question, or revise it. One can rethink without having second thoughts.

Islam is not Islam!

Jeff Hodges just now apprised me of a post of his featuring the following bumpersticker:

My take is as follows.

Just as tautological sentences can be used to express non-tautological propositions, contradictory sentences can be used to express non-contradictory propositions.

Consider 'It is what it is.' What the words mean is not what the speaker means in uttering the words. Sentence meaning and speaker's meaning come apart. The speaker does not literally mean that things are what they are — for what the hell else could they be? Not what they are? What the speaker means is that (certain) things can't be changed and so must be accepted with resignation. Your dead-end job for example. 'It is what it is.'

There are many examples of the use of tautological sentences to express non-tautological propositions. 'What will be, will be' is an example, as is 'Beer is beer.' When Ayn Rand proclaimed that Existence exists! she did not mean to assert the tautological proposition that each existing thing exists; she was ineptly employing a tautological sentence to express a non-tautological and not uncontroversial thesis of metaphysical realism according to which what exists exists independently of any mind, finite or infinite.

Similarly here except that a contradictory form of words is being employed to convey a non-contradictory thought. But what is the thought, the Fregean Gedanke, the proposition? Perhaps this: Islam is not the religion of peace. Since Islam is supposed to be the religion of peace, to say that Islam has nothing to do with Islam is to say that Islam has nothing to do with peace, i.e., that Islam is not the religion of peace, or not a religion of peace. Since one meaning of 'Islam' is peace, the saying equivocates on 'Islam.' Thus the proposition expressed is: Islam has nothing to do with peace. This proposition, whether true or false, is non-contradictory unlike the form of words used to express it.

Here is another possible reading. Given that many believe that Islam is terroristic, someone who says that Islam has nothing to do with Islam is attempting to convey the non-contradictory thought that real Islam is not terroristic.

Such a person, far from expressing a contradiction, would be equivocating on 'Islam,' and in effect distinguishing between real Islam and hijacked Islam, or between Islam and Islamism.

More Mischief with ‘By Definition’

A reader sends me this sentence for analysis:

I have argued that that which exists at no location or at no point in time, by definition exists never and nowhere, which is by definition not existing.

'Nowhere' means 'at no place' and 'never' means 'at no time.' By definition. So far, so good. Now suppose it is true that whatever exists exists in space and time. Could this be true by definition? Of course not! One cannot settle substantive metaphysical questions by framing definitions.

Extended post on this topic here.