RationalWiki:Articles for deletion/Motte and bailey doctrine

Motte and bailey doctrine | Result: Deleted

Motte and bailey doctrine (edit|talk|history|protect|delete|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Delete

1. "terrible article about a bad neologism for "equivocation" that has any currency almost nowhere Aneris ✻ (talk) 23:23, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
2. All these obscure, new fallacies could be collected in one article, but do not merit their own stubs.---Mona- (talk) 23:27, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

   Scott Alexander/Slate Star Codex, where they would be in the list of local neologisms that no sensible person wants to write. Google ""motte and bailey" -site:slatestarcodex.com" and you'll find nothing except articles on actual castles - David Gerard (talk) 00:30, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

3. Aneris realising how shit his own terrible articles are? Excellent! - David Gerard (talk) 00:30, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
   1. Reason given: Nicolas Shakel explained: "Some people have spoken of a Motte and Bailey Doctrine as being a fallacy and others of it being a matter of strategic equivocation. Strictly speaking, neither is correct". Sokal: "these texts are often ambiguous and can be read in at least two distinct ways". An equivocation by contrast is a fairly limited trick, "different meanings of a word". Anyway, it's redefined now, made falsely identical, so this doublicate should be deleted from your wiki. — Aneris ✻ (talk) 13:57, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
4. Wēāŝēīōīď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 13:30, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
5. I was on the fence about this one for a while. Then something occurred to me: The biggest problem is not the rebranding of garden variety equivocation, it's the introduction of the word 'doctrine' in the coinage. Adding 'doctrine' creates the false impression that this is formal aspect of the point being argued, dictated from above. Pointing out a bad argument would be laudable, but introducing this coinage also includes an attempt at straw manning, pretending that there's some formal endorsement of that poor argumentation inherent in that person's standpoint. So, in essence, 'Motte and Bailey Doctrine' is a dishonest rhetorical technique masquerading as unmaking a dishonest rhetorical technique. At best, it should be a footnote on equivocation. Queex_{chthonic murmurings} 12:49, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Keep

1. So it's a junior synonym to equivocation. I get that. It's also a frequently encountered form of equivocation. The Sokal quote was a worthwhile example as well. - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 05:41, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

   Perhaps, but this is still a neologism of no currency. Its presence here is only as propaganda for the LessWrongsphere. "Bait and switch" is closer to a term with any currency - David Gerard (talk) 10:11, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

   Given that we have an article on that Alexander guy, why not stick all of the LW neologisms there?

2. I don't see a problem with this page; sure, it's a neologism that's not often used, but I like it! I don't oppose merge & redirect, either. Certainly the lead paragraphs and perhaps the examples are worth keeping somewhere. Carpetsmoker (talk) 14:13, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
3. Someone directed my attention to this. Not sure you'll be interested in what I have to say but as the originator of the idea I'd like to mention a couple of things. Contrary to the definition with which you start your entry, a Motte and Bailey Doctrine is not a kind of equivocation *at all*. A doctrine is a body of propositions, not an argument. The whole point of my describing a Motte and Bailey Doctrine was to describe a distinctive kind of corruption that a *doctrine* (or theory, or belief system etc.) may fall into--not to describe a kind of fallacy. (For some reason, you cut off your quotation of me at exactly the point I give the description of the doctrine, leaving only the description of the castle. Perhaps that is part of the reason that the discussion on this page is not about Motte and Bailey Doctrines but confined to a way they can be exploited, namely, equivocation.) What is both clever and bad about a Motte and Bailey Doctrine is that once such once a doctrine is in place, it offers extensive opportunities for deceitful trickery in argument, of which equivocation is only one. But again, part of the point of the description is to identify the root of that trickery in the structure of the doctrine. This is why it is no defence to the diagnosis to say that one particular interlocutor has not promulgated both Motte and Bailey. That would be a defence if they were accused of a fallacy, but no defence if they are accused of making use of this corrupt structure. Of course, people have picked up the term and applied it both to the doctrines and to the argumentative trickery. Nevertheless, the central idea is all about the structure of doctrines, belief systems, theories etc and how, if set up in this way, they are the ground and opportunity for argumentative trickery, not the trickery itself. I tried to give a memorable name to the particular kind of intellectual cheating that a Motte and Bailey Doctrine is, but the cheating itself is messy, which is why it required 7 or 8 paragraphs to lay out the idea on the practical ethics blog and in the original paper in Metaphilosophy. And that takes me to my second point, which is that, quite independently of whatever you want to do with my idea, you should certainly take on board for your policy David Stove's point (in ‘What is Wrong with Our Thoughts?’) that there are indefinitely many ways of cheating intellectually and for most there is no simple way to put one’s finger on how the cheat is effected. There is just the hard work of describing the species in detail. It seems to me that the tenor of your conversation on this page is wanting to wrap things up in tidy bundles. His point is precisely that a great deal of what goes wrong with our thoughts can't be wrapped up like that. n. shackel

Merge/redirect

1. Add a single paragraph subsection to the Equivocation page, plus redirect. CorruptUser (talk) 01:43, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
2. As my goat entry says: Create an article on bait-and-switch and merge not only motte and bailey, but also milk before meat into it. Just an idea. ScepticWombat (talk) 03:23, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

   Those aren't the same thing. Wèàšèìòìď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 19:33, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

3. I like SW's idea. FuzzyCatPotato!™ (talk/stalk) 15:10, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
4. It belongs somewhere, if not on a page that includes that Scott Alexander guy then some page where these obscure fallacies are aggregated. What page doesn't especially concern me since we can use redirect for various appropriate pages.---Mona- (talk) 20:50, 28 November 2015 (UTC)
5. To the extent that this needs to stay at all, merge it into the equivocation article with a redirect. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 13:17, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Goat

1. i like the concept behind this - "spout bullshit, retreat to vague statements when challenged, Return to spouting bullshit when they leave", but it feels like this has a different name to cover it. --"Paravant" ^{Talk & Contribs} 23:42, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

   In rhetoric, this has been called "equivocation" for a long time. It is possible the particular subspecies needs a name, but this is unlikely to be it - David Gerard (talk) 00:31, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

   As indicated by my edits, I think that motte and bailey (m&b) bears more than a passing resemblance to bait-and-switch (b&s), a far more common term (though it doesn't have an RW article yet). While some of the examples are of equivocation as well, the point is that m&b/b&s doesn't necessarily involve equivocation, but simply a switch from one argument to another. Of the existing RW articles, I'd say it falls somewhere in between equivocation, moving the goalposts and milk before meat (mbm). Personally, I'd prefer a bait-and-switch article (since it also encompasses all kinds of sleazy business practices) and merging m&b and mbm into it as specific variants. ScepticWombat (talk) 03:21, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

   We definitely could do with a good article on bait and switch - David Gerard (talk) 10:11, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

   Not a bait-and-switch, either, Wikipedia, Urban Dict. What you are doing is called rationalisation. David Gerard has redefined the term to mean "equivocation" (falsely, see above), made it identical and this is of course a good reason to delete it. I think you should pull it through and kill it off, and document once more the postmodernist bent here (also see: DG: "cut out cite to Sokal's non-use" confusing explanation with naming). — Aneris ✻ (talk) 14:22, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

   Note the above comment is a good example of "spout bullshit, retreat to vague statements when challenged, Return to spouting bullshit when they leave" but without being "motte and bailey" in the SSC usage - David Gerard (talk) 15:15, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

   Whatever man. Cutting out an earlier description and redefining the terms, on a wiki, with everything documented en detail, is far from "vague". I pointed you to the direct quotations from Sokal and Shakel, which were already in the original article, to begin with. You are free to reject what these people say, but then say so. — Aneris ✻ (talk) 17:06, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

   Hmmm, why am I suddenly reminded of argumentum ad dictionarium...?

   Anyway, consulting Merriam-Webster yields a wider use of b&s, i.e. "2: the ploy of offering a person something desirable to gain favor (as political support) then thwarting expectations with something less desirable" and Wiktionary has a similar extended meaning: "2. (by extension) Any similar deceptive behavior, especially in politics and romantic relationships". Oh, and we also need to keep in mind that dictionaries are descriptive not prescriptive and are thus tricky to use as a clinching argument (especially since the obscure m&b term doesn't even figure in any of these dictionaries in the first place...).

   I'm pretty sure I've encountered the wider notion of bait-and-switch elsewhere where it was used to indicate not simply its original meaning of fraudulent advertising, but other instances where an audience or a person is cynically tempted with one thing only to see it replaced by a less desirable alternative when convenient by the one making the initial offer. That seems to me to be the same mechanism at work in the more obscure motte and bailey doctrine too (cynically retreating to the motte when the bailey can't be defended or, conversely, moving into the more pleasant bailey when not pressed too hard). As b&s seems to be a far more well-known concept than m&b, I'd prefer to make the latter a section in an article on the former. Of course, if you think that the meanings of b&s and m&b are completely at odds, feel free to argue why (so far you've provided links, but little in terms of explanations). ScepticWombat (talk) 21:25, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

   Like it is with fallacies and similar figures, everything seems broadly mapped out. There are now fallacies for special subsets of strawmans (hollow man, weak man/nutpicking) and there are special terms for rhetorical tricks where the meaning or some other hidden property changes (hidden behind the words or labels, e.g. mental representations). The bait-and-switch would be a form where something desirable to the addressee is promoted, which then gets replaced once the addressee has swallowed it. This might be a case with Scientology and their religious compatiblity claim, which gradually is revealed to be false. I.e. the "attractive", easy version is front and visible first. The motte and bailey, already by metaphor, is about promoting the eccentric version (not necessary attractive one) because this is what proponents actually believe and want to spread. What is similar is that something is switched out, as in the equivocation, but the tactics and circumstances seem inverse. I have to stress that I have no objection to delete it, though. — Aneris ✻ (talk) 04:26, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

   Come to think of it, I wouldn't object to merging nutpicking into association fallacy as a subsection either, so... ScepticWombat (talk) 07:19, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

   There could be a meta article that describes the switching out of some property, with child-sections for (1) bait-and-switch, (2) motte-and-bailey doctrine and (3) equivocation. Another meta article would describe a family of fallacies such as nut-picking (weak-man), hollow man and straw man. They are also paired that way in Aikin's paper. — Aneris ✻ (talk) 19:41, 28 November 2015 (UTC)