Quote, Misquote, and Steelman

I am having a fascinating discussion with Fallible Father on the existence and importance of God and our understanding of God. My next main post should come out soon, but this post is kind of a ‘side’ post to our main discussion and is about another subject entirely: the importance of quotes. Of accurately quoting your opponent.

Or, to put it a bit differently, the importance of ‘steelmanning’, and how quotes play into that issue.

He wrote:

I must state, rather bluntly, that this is false. I made no attempt to quote you at this point, I merely attempted to distill and summarize the points I felt you were making. What I said was, “I would like to reiterate the points I believe you are making. This ensures that if I have misunderstood, that can be corrected. Without doing so, my statements may be applied by others to what they understood your points to be, not what I understood them to be.”

It would seem my attempt to reiterate your argument fell short on this point. If only one of my five fell short, I would say that means your writing was clear and well articulated, so well done. I will attempt to respond to the clarified argument, as presented in your last post.

As a matter of housekeeping, and efficiency, moving forward, I will try to keep quotes from our posts to a minimum; they are readily linked to and available to read. I will always try to summarize, or condense, for two reasons: it is easier to read, and if I misinterpret, you can correct the record, as you did.

Now, I believe that several parts of this are excellent, but the conclusion is backwards. I believe, and am prepared to argue, that the conclusion should have been the exact opposite. I would propose something like,

“As a matter of truth, accuracy, and presenting my best argument forward, I am going to keep summarising and condensing to a minimum and present direct quotes from my opponent whenever possible, in context, along with links to his post and the overall argument.”

I am afraid that, for the most part, what we call ‘summarising and condensing’ is best called ‘misquoting’, ‘straw-manning’, ‘equivocation’, or some other nasty word. Let’s take an example. Suppose some random deity were to say,

 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever.

Amen.

Romans 1:18-25

and I was to ‘summarise’ this by saying, “It is important that we honour God”. Well, it is rather true that we are to honour God, but is that even a remotely accurate ‘summary’ of Paul’s (inspired) argument here?

It is perfectly true that we can’t just data dump our opponent’s whole argument into the middle of our post. It would be unreadable if nothing else. But what I have found, in my over fifty years of arguing, debating, and doing public speaking, is that what we call ‘summarising’ and ‘condensing’ often falls into the following traps:

1) By leaving out key details in a summary, we trap ourselves/our audience into missing whole sections of the argument.

Take the passage from Romans, above. Paul makes a dozen or so points, beginning with a discussion of the wrath of God, including who it is directed at, why it is directed at them, what happened to them as a result of their actions, etc. etc. If our opponent was making some claim about Christianity and evolution, our summary of ‘honour God’ would completely miss his point.

2) By using our own words in a summary or condensation, we shift the argument away from what our opponent is arguing into something that they are not arguing, thus we end up arguing against something they don’t even believe. Wasting our ammunition, as it were.

Let me give an example. Suppose I were to say:

I believe that marriage is a permanent, covenantal, sexual relationship between a man and a woman for the purpose of producing offspring.

And my opponent was to ‘summarise’ this by saying, 

“Von is against gay marriage.” 

He might, then, be tempted to argue ‘In favour’ of gay marriage… giving reasons why a given local government might think it best to ‘allow’ gays to marry, how it fits into basic contract law, how it affects social security, etc.

All of those arguments would be wasted in any discussion with me because I am not ‘against gay marriage’… I don’t think it can exist. I think it is even more impossible than cows jumping over the moon. No matter what bill is passed, no matter what court judgement is handed down, I don’t think that two men can ever be married to each other. The thing isn’t possible. It doesn’t and can’t and will never exist.

To argue against my position, you would not have to argue that it is a ‘good’ thing, but a ‘possible’ thing. You would have to deal with issues of definition and existence, not pros and cons.

3) By using our own words in a summary or condensation, we fail to present our best and strongest case.

If your goal is to confuse your opponent and/or the audience and/or score rhetorical tricks, then anything goes. But if we are trying to actually reason well and come at the truth, then weakening our own case hurts everyone in the room.

I was listening to a discussion on ‘liberalism vs conservatism’ on Triggernometry. And the ‘liberal’ (by which was largely meant classical liberal, not modern progressive) was dealing with the ‘liberals go quick, conservatives go slow’ description of the difference between the two camps; and he presented several issues where he and the conservative both agreed that the liberals ‘got it right’. And he was saying ‘So it would have been a bad thing to go slow!’. 

I was rather amused (in a sad way) because no one in the discussion caught on to the huge hole in his argument: what about the areas that we get wrong?! Sure, in hindsight, you see an issue and, years after everyone has stopped arguing about it, you can say ‘See, this side was right, we should have adopted their view right away!” But you can’t argue “We should adopt all new ideas right away,”  unless you are willing to argue, “All new ideas are right.” Which, of course, no one would do.

In this case the problem wasn’t a false summary, it was… something else, I forget the name… special pleading? But my point was because the liberal (and the conservative… and the host!!) didn’t present the best argument of the conservative side, didn’t even see the weakness of the case the liberal was presenting, the liberal didn’t argue his best case. He left me, at least, shaking my head and thinking of how weak the liberal case must be. He gave me no argument at all in favour of liberalism because he gave no argument against the actual conservative case. He presented a strawman, not a steelman, of his opponent’s position, and I wasn’t impressed when he knocked it down.

Conclusion

My goal would be almost the opposite of what Fallible Father sets out to do. My goal would be, whenever possible, to respond to my opponent using their own words, directly quoted and with a link to the original post. To realise and state that whenever I summarise, condense, restate, or reformulate his argument, I am almost certainly either getting it wrong… or I am getting it righter than my opponent gets it.

One can, indeed one must, occasionally use the infamous saying ‘So what you’re saying is…”, but you must always realise that, no, he isn’t saying that. Or he didn’t intend to say that. Or he didn’t know he was saying that. What he said was… what he said. His actual words.

And if it is the former (‘no, he isn’t saying that’) then you are being dishonest and unhelpful. He didn’t say that, and so you are not only lying, you are weakening your own case and presenting yourself as a fool, an idiot, and/or a liar. As Jordan Peterson showed.

If he isn’t intending to say that, or didn’t know he was saying that, then you will need to provide the bridge between what he did say, and what it ‘really means’. And be prepared to die on that bridge. Or at the very least fight to defend it. Which will involve… quoting his actual words and showing how what they ‘really mean’ is… whatever you are saying.

Links

Morality, the chosen definition matters a lot