Mad Hatter
Head Pigeon
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2009
- Messages
- 1,087
- MBTI Type
- INTP
- Enneagram
- -1w
- Instinctual Variant
- sp/sx
We're generally not doing this just to annoy you, but rather because we insist on having a common language defined before any meaningful discussion can occur.
This. Most times we don't do it to annoy, we actually want to make things clear before proceeding, so we don't get caught in traps or assign you to arguments that are not yours.
Setting the definitions is necessary so that discussing doesn't become a guessing game - but I can understand how annoying it is if it doesn't move beyond that. Once terms have been found that have been agreed upon, it's bad debating style to go back and try to re-define them just to suit one's argument.
And of course vagueness can be exploited (i.e. implying something that wasn't there, but which is semantically possible - as has been said before). It's common rhetoric strategy, which can find a leverage point on many levels. The logic is one of them, the semantics/phrasing of it is another.