There is a famous quote from Confucius that made the rounds among political and cultural writers in the 1980's and 1990's, often appearing along side the equally famous one from Lewis Carroll in which Humpty Dumpty proclaims himself words' master. The quote, “If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.”, was used, along with the quote from Carroll, to criticize many of the academic excesses of deconstructionists, poststructuralists, reader response school,  semiotics and related academic absurdities.

As the struggle against academic nonsense has waned, mainly because it was given up and academia declared a lost cause, the quote has seen less use in recent years, but you will still come across it from time to time. And understandably so. It is a good quote, and in the proper context, it is a very valuable one, a sort of antithesis of the Saul Alinsky quotes about which we heard so much during the election. Rather than arguing for obfuscation to win arguments, it is calling for clarity in order to live properly, which obviously has appeal. And, if one can then make the argument that living properly also coincides with his own political perspective, that makes for an even better argument. So I can see why this particular quote would continue to appear.

But at times I wish it wouldn't. Because, while in one way calling for a refreshing clarity of thought and openness in argument, in another it is still granting too much significance to words. Just like Alinsky, or the Humpty Dumpty quote, it is admitting that definition is malleable and that arguments depend, almost entirely on those malleable definitions. In short, it posits an almost entire language-based meaning to arguments, almost denying any reality beyond the linguistic. And, as I argued many times (eg in "Protean Terminology" or "Semantic Games") when we depend on entirely linguistic arguments, forget there is a concrete reality behind them, we get into real trouble. Even if we only make so simple a mistake as placing too much emphasis on terminology, it can lead us to spend time on pointless semantic debates while forgetting the real reason for our arguments. And that is what I want to discuss, the many ways our interaction with words and their definitions lead us astray, and our disturbing tendency to misuse words.

I was reminded of this issue today when I read about the one time controversy (and ongoing dispute) over the reclassification of Stegomyia aegypti to Aedes aegypti . For those unfamiliar with the name, that is the mosquito which transmits yellow fever. As I read about the argument, my first impression was that the debate over nomenclature seemed pointless. Perhaps Stegomyia is a subgenus rather than genus, but as it has a historical usage, why not continue to use it? But, with a bit more thought, I decided in this case, there was a strong argument for the renaming, as taxonomy actually does convey information, and consistent naming allows us to determine quite a bit at a glance.

Which led me to recall the most pointless debate of the past decade, whether Pluto is a planet. The conventional wisdom is that it no longer is, as a rump committee slipped through a vote saying it is not. The only problem being that there is no real definition of what a "planet" is, so I can't figure out how they decided whether or not to include Pluto. They might as well have declared it not a whizzleque or a pump-bumper, as those words have just as much formal definition as planet does. Choosing to call it a "planetoid" or some other term sounds meaningful, but the truth is, saying "Pluto is a planet" tells us very little, so the negation tells us just as little. Which makes the entire debate rather pointless.

Which brings me to the political relevance of this whole topic. Or actually the two, very different, political points. You see, such debates are pointless, as arguing whether or not an item belongs to an ill defined group is futile, except in two circumstances, both with political relevance.

First, when such vague definitions have been given legal power. For instance, the Endangered Species Act. (Cf "Endangered Species", "Environmentalists Versus Evolution", "Once Again, Confused by Our Own Data" and "Moa, Dodos, Sea Turtles and Cows -- Man's Limited Ability to Destroy Species and Change the Environment") This one seems simple enough, if a species is in danger of extinction, then it gains special protection. The problem being, no one has a really firm grasp on what is a species, what is a subspecies, and what is simply a group with unique markings or behaviors. I have mentioned this before, but there are several cases where science is uncertain whether a group of animals constitutes a species or not, but thanks to a vocal lobbying effort, it has been legally declared one, and cost land owners a fortune to protect. In other words, a nebulous definition has been granted the ability to ruin lives, with the definition set, not by any rational process, but by the ability to bend the right politician's ear. It is as if the Pluto argument were granted the power of life and death, or the votes in American Idol were granted influence over the stock market, a very dangerous way to run things.

But worse still is the way in which we define political philosophies. Unfortunately, America suffers from a bizarre dualism, that of political philosophy and political reality. In most of history it has been recognized that political philosophy was a philosophical study which could disregard political niceties and concentrate on absolutes, while political practice required obfuscation, diplomacy and the rest. Unfortunately, as conservative and liberal have become in many eyes synonyms for the two parties, the political philosophies themselves have been tainted by politicking, and we get "big tent" definitions, wherein people refuse to truly delineate their beliefs for fear of excluding potential supporters.

This is bad for a number of reasons. First, because it leads to many senseless debates over whether or not X is a conservative, when each debater applies his own definition without telling anyone what it might be, leading to arguments which make sense only to each participant. Second, and more significant, by refusing to define the term, we leave it up to others to do it. In some cases that means our opponents tell the public what we believe, which is never a good thing. In other cases, the more extreme members of our movement, unafraid of offending, end up providing it. Or, if neither extremists nor oppositions members come up with a definition, then the "PR" wing of the party will step in and produce a lukewarm, middle of the road definition intended to offend no one. In either of the last two cases, it rarely ends up being what we would want for a definition*. Especially as, in either case, political decisions tend to overcome philosophical ones, and we end up either with "inclusive" definitions intended to open the door to the widest audience, or extreme ideological definitions intended to shift the party in the direction of a specific faction. While the second may sometimes actually result in accurate definitions, as good, thorough definitions tend to be absolute, and thus "extreme" in political terms, more often than not, the extremists providing ideological definitions tend to lack philosophical consistency, and thus still produce inconsistent definitions.

And, in the end, that is the real problem, many times we become too fixated on words and not enough on ideas. We vote for "conservatives", but lack a firm grasp of what that means. When the same term can describe Pat Buchanan, William Buckley, Bobby Jindall, Thomas Sowell, George Will, George Bush (either one), John McCain, Sarah Palin, Walter Williams and me, then the term has lost all meaning and we are fighting over words rather than ideas. I once began a post on the logical fallacy of the excluded middle (which I may yet finish, as it is a significant error as well), but what we have here is the opposite. In our desire to create an all-inclusive political spectrum we have so broadly defined our terms that they have lost all meaning. They do not even server to divide a rationally defined spectrum. If they simply mean right or left of a defined mid-point, then they would arguably be of some use, but they don't even server that purpose. There are many supposed conservatives, such as some "paleo-cons", who espouse views almost identical to the left wing of the liberals (love of unions, protectionism, isolationism, acceptance of government intervention, etc**), except for rhetoric, it would be nearly impossible to differentiate supposed conservatives from liberals. Which means, ratehr than even broad, if somewhat useful terms,  were are left with simple labels without meaning. And yet, we still spend far too much time and effort fighting over these terms, allow the terms to figure in our decisions, and otherwise act as if they meant something.

And that is the path to serious mistakes.

===============================================

* I confess to having at times engaged in defining what is or is not conservative, but only because the conservatives themselves so often refuse to clearly define the term, or else because the ones defining the term do so in such idiosyncratic ways. As I explain in "Contradictory Beliefs and Practices", I define conservative as advocating minimal government and individual rights as any other definition leaves freedom off the political spectrum, or else places it as a compromise between two types of tyranny ("The Political Spectrum") neither of which is a viable philosophy. And so, though I wish others would have already defined the terms, I find I have to define the term, and choose to do so in the only way that produces a workable political spectrum.

** See "Misplaced Blame and A Power Play", "Remember I Predicted It", "Beware Populist Deception", Please Stop Calling Them Conservatives", "A Passing Thought", "The Political Spectrum", "The Best Historical Example", "Rethinking the Scopes Trial", "Many Types of Conservatives", "Term in Search of a Definition", "I'm Sorry, Mr. Buchanan", "Buchanan and Obama", "A Question for "Paleo-Conservatives"", "Right on One Issue is not Enough", "I Am a Conservative, But..." and "Pat Buchanan Becomes Putin's Lord Haw Haw".

===============================================

POSTSCRIPT

This post was started quite some time ago, though I only completed it recently. Thus there were a few statements that seemed a bit anachronistic, such as references to recent mentions of Saul Alinsky. I have tried to change these to sound more current, but I may have missed some. If so, please forgive me the anachronism. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to alter old posts to hide their age.

In addition, since I began this, quite some time ago, the same topic has occurred to me in other forms, with the result that I wrote posts based on very similar premises such as "The Most Misleading Word", "Luxury and Necessity" and "Misunderstanding Arbitrary Definitions". Still, this was different enough, and the topic is significant enough, that I felt it worthwhile to complete this post.