Distinction-drawing
from 350 BCE Aristotle's standard opening move; central to analytic practice from the 1900s
Notice that one word has been carrying two jobs, separate them, and watch the disagreement turn out to be two people agreeing about different things.
- Active
- from 350 BCE
- Where
- Athens, later Oxford
- Status
- In use
- Tradition
- Analytic tools
What it is
Drawing a distinction means showing that a single term has been doing more than one job, and that once the jobs are separated the problem changes shape or disappears.
It is the most characteristic move in analytic philosophy and the easiest to abuse. A good distinction tracks a difference that was already doing work; a bad one is invented to escape an objection.
How it works
Locate the term the disagreement turns on. Find two cases where it applies and where what is being claimed differs. Name the two senses. Restate the original dispute using the names. Check whether the dispute survives.
The last step is the test of whether the distinction earned its place. If both parties still disagree after the restatement, the distinction was real but not the issue; if they now agree, it was.
The moves, in order
- Locate the term the dispute turns on
- Find two cases where it applies and the claim differs
- Name the two senses
- Restate the dispute using the names
- See whether the dispute survives the restatement
The procedure
Proposition The lease's promise of free water was never a promise of unlimited water.
- The lease says water is supplied free. The tenant reads this as unmetered and unlimited; the landlord reads it as at no charge but subject to the existing allocation.
- Free is doing two jobs. In one sense it means unpriced — nothing is billed. In the other it means unconstrained — no limit is imposed.
- Call these free-of-charge and free-of-limit. They come apart routinely: a public library book is free of charge and not free of limit.
- Restated: the tenant claims the lease promised free-of-limit water, the landlord claims it promised free-of-charge water.
- The lease elsewhere refers to the property's allocation under the irrigation scheme, which is a limit and would be meaningless if the promise had been free-of-limit.
Therefore The promise was free-of-charge, and the two parties had been agreeing that water is free while meaning different things by it.
The dispute did not survive the restatement, which is what shows the distinction was the real issue rather than a technicality introduced to win.
What it is good for
Disputes that have gone on too long, contract interpretation, and any argument where both parties seem obviously right. A long-running disagreement between reasonable people is very often two senses of one word.
Where it fails
It is the standard tool of evasion. Faced with a counterexample, an author can distinguish two senses of the key term, put the counterexample in one and the thesis in the other, and continue — and nothing about the form of the move shows whether the distinction was real or manufactured for the occasion.
The test is whether the distinction does work elsewhere. A distinction that applies only to the case that prompted it is almost certainly ad hoc, and this is the standard complaint against a great deal of analytic philosophy.
Common misconceptions
That more distinctions mean more rigour. Past a point they mean the opposite — a proliferation of senses is usually a sign that the original term was doing something the analysis has not captured.
Where it came from
Aristotle opens discussion after discussion by observing that a term is said in many ways, and the catalogue of those ways is a large part of the Metaphysics.
What became of it
The signature move of Oxford philosophy in the 1950s, and the thing the discipline is most often mocked for.
Lasting influence
Nearly every philosophical vocabulary item is a distinction that stuck: type and token, sense and reference, doing and allowing, de re and de dicto, use and mention.
Why it still matters
The most frequently performed operation in philosophy, and a genuinely useful thing to be able to do in a meeting.
Put another way
Discovering that two people arguing about the bank have been standing on different ones.
Texts
J. L. Austin, A Plea for Excuses
Both a demonstration of the method and its best defence — the argument that ordinary language has already drawn the distinctions worth having.
Where to start
Next time a discussion goes in circles, ask which word both sides are using. It is very often one word doing two jobs.
The surprising bit
The move most associated with philosophical hair-splitting is also the fastest way to end a real dispute, and the difference between those two uses is entirely a matter of whether the distinction was already there.
In their own words
Being is said in many ways
Who held it
the Oxford school
Connections
- Relies on
- Diairesis
- Influenced
- Conceptual analysis, Explication
- Parallel to
- Diairesis
The verdict
Indispensable, unfalsifiable, and only as good as the honesty of the person drawing it.