Less Wrong is a blog sponsored by Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute: a research group devoted mostly to issues in AI development aimed at increasing human intelligence. While many posts center on those issues, the folks over there frequently consider ideas about rationality and reasoning. Essentially, hardcore Bayesianism rules the roost, and there seems to be an instinctive impulse towards formalism that is perhaps not as widely shared among likely readers of RAIL. That said, at times they hit on ideas and ways of seeing things that are fascinating and useful to consider.
One of those ideas is that of a “semantic stopsign“, the mark of which is “failure to consider the obvious next question.” As the examples make clear, the upshot of this is someone’s tendency to over-rely on a particular answer to tough questions, to rely on it as something like a conversational deus ex machina. If, for instance, I am willing to question the ability of any institution to solve social problems but seem mysteriously unable to apply the same scrutiny to “god” or “liberal democracy” or “the free market”, then those things are, for me, semantic stopsigns. When a chain of discursive reasoning brings me to my stopsign I simply stop asking critical questions, automatically satisfied that nothing further need be said.
Semantic stopsigns seem to me to be a familiar phenomenon, but one I’ve not seen discussed very much or labeled with that sort of precision before. One wonders what a list of common semantic stopsigns would look like, and more importantly, what argumentative strategies one might use to circumvent them.
RAIL 
A list of semantic stop signs is interesting to consider, but even more so a map showing how they structure public thought. Taken together, they would reveal a structure that partly accounts for the movement and evolution of ideas–i.e., would reveal the inadequacy of the consequences themselves to shape discourse. It seems to me the counter-move is simply to ask the obvious next question. Isn’t this sort of the idea of a “political platform” or a manifesto? It is in some sense taken for granted that arguments as stand-alone instruments are to be weighted according to a larger scheme. If one advocates cutting taxes, it is implied that he should advocate restraint in spending (give or take something), though nothing internal to a debate on taxes FORCES him to even address the other question.
There’s actually really good work on how certain words and phrases work as “code words” for certain positions, ideas, or issues in political discourse and in effect wind up structuring it in ways that force participants into various dialectical postures that they might not otherwise have taken. Olson and Goodnight, and Craig and Tracy all come to mind as folks who would very likely be good to read on that subject, but I’m sure readers who are more conversant with recent research in the field of rhetoric than I would give better advice than I can on that score.
That said I don’t think the notion of a semantic stopsign the LW guys are using is the same thing as the system of political code words. I gather that system of code words would be a better candidate to do more the sort of discourse-structuring work that you’re asserting that semantic stopsigns might do. Semantic stopsigns seem to me to be more useful in showing where a person’s willingness to be critical end and their prejudices or biases begin. The practical question then becomes what to do when you hit that wall.
I don’t know, Steve. I think it’s possible that certain political code words can work as semantic stop signs, especially if they’re imbued with deep ideological investments. Ideologies are dependent on the very immutability of certain crystalizing terms that help to cohere a belief system. Interrogating the term equates with interrogating the ideology that defines reality for the person wielding the term as a stop sign. The result is what Sharon Crowley calls “ideologic” – an increasingly popular form of logic driven by a consistency of values and emotions, and all but ignoring contradictory empirical proof.
In the political arena, the same crystalization can be used to tap into the psychological need in the audience to maintain the coherence of their belief systems. Thus words like “God” and “Patriot” convey implied arguments – even if utterly unclear and unexamined ones – and serve as convenient cues for the audience in the process of identification with a particular candidate/party.
I’m intrigued by the concept, because I think it also plays into the inferred justification (a concept I’m borrowing from new work in social psychology) that we see in much of the rhetoric of the Right’s more entrenched camps. In fact, I might bring this into my presentation at RSA on the rhetoric of “birthers” and “deathers” whose arguments operate on ideologics that are driven more by the need to reinforce existing beliefs (and prejudices) than about actually engaging in debate about the issue. Such arguments are not inviting critical inquiry, and cannot be understood from the perspective of rational liberalism.
Oh I agree with you Kristen. I suspect that lying underneath the phenomenon of the semantic stopsign are multiple phenomena, some of which you describe really well and others too, among which might be things like unexamined prejudices or an unwillingness to think things through. All I was saying in my response to Patrick was that I doubt that the Less Wrong folks are thinking of semantic stopsigns in this way. I see no reason why there couldn’t be a kind of overlapping of concepts here.
Your reference to ideologic put me in mind of Baron’s article on belief overkill. I wrote a short piece on it here last month (it will be under discussions). I think there may be an interesting connection there to explore between the two ideas.
I also got to thinking that about how someone might defend their use of code words or semantic stopsigns. Might a speaker not say “I give these arguments all the time. My usual audience doesn’t need to hear them over and over again, and neither do my enemies. Everyone who knows me knows my positions and knows what I mean by what I say. So why can’t I just use ‘God’ or ‘Freedom’ or ‘Patriot’ in public discourse and let people fill in the blanks? Why should I be compelled to rehearse my reasoning every single time I speak about these things?”
I think I know what I would say in response but since you are working on this I should probably let you go first. 🙂