Hello, everyone. I'm Stephen West. This is Philosophize This. Patreon.com slash philosophize this,

Philosophical Writing on Substack, it Philosophize This on there as well. I hope you love the show today.

So there's a tactic that's become pretty popular in what some people would call the debate space

of the internet these days. There's a trick someone will do. We're at the very beginning

of the conversation, they'll ask the other person to define the exact thing that they're going

to be talking about that day. They'll sound kind of like this. Just to start out today,

can you please give me your definition of God? Can you give me a definition of abortion or

insurrection or justice, whatever it is that day. And then the other

person will usually take the bait. They try to give their take on it. Maybe they'll say an insurrection

is when a group of people try to overthrow some form of authority out there. Then the other person

will say back to that, well, based on your definition, is a prison riot an insurrection? Then

that's people overthrowing an authority.

If a union fires a manager that's harassed employees, is that an insurrection? How about if my two

kids both kick me in the shins at the exact same time? Is that an insurrection? I mean, if you

can't even define what it is we're supposed to be talking about today, are you even qualified to be

here?

All the while, this person is usually winning points with the crowd that's watching the debate.

I mean, if the other side can't get to the essence of what we're talking about,

then what are we even talking about?

This scene, actually, isn't too far away from something a lot he'll be familiar with from the history of philosophy. There's a guy that used to do something like this, although he did it in good faith and was trying to avoid rhetoric while he did it. His name was Socrates. Remember, he'd go out

into the public square with people shopping and walking around, and he'd ask them to give him a definition

of something like justice. When they gave him this definition, he'd rip it apart, point out all the

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