Sentences can be loaded. What this means is that they impart implicatures; things that exist outside of the semantic content of the sentence, things that say additional, perhaps alternative information that we gain from the pragmatic context. This is obvious of course, everyone knows that the exact statement of a sentence fails to tell the whole picture. To say a sentence is loaded however suggests that there is something a bit more, something shall we say political about it.
I don't particularly know how to define political. as I'm certainly not referring to things like the government or the state. Instead, when I say political I refer to a certain standing in the space that connects morality and society. If I make a comment that is racially discriminative, said comment can be viewed as political because I am making a moral comment that specifically applies to aspects of society. I think the intertwinement is very important here. For me to say that 'murder is fine' would in most scenarios, not itself be viewed as political. However if one can relate murder to specific aspects of society, then it become a political thing. For example suppose one discovers a statistic that women are more likely to be murdered. The statement of 'murder is fine' could then be viewed as a political comment.
Part of the issue I think is that the pragmatics of the sentence is doing a lot more than before. Previously we take each pragmatics as just saying something in the individual case. Now however, one might take the pragmatics as saying something in a wider, societal sense. I remember around five 7 years ago in one my school classes, I told the class that I trusted my Dad because I thought he was smarter than my Mum. To my surprise members of the class took it as an instance of sexism; they interpreted the pragmatics in the wider sense.
Another incident occurred to me recently, when I engaged in what I took to be a philoshopical discussion about diversity. By expressing scepticism, this was taken by an individual as actively derailing conversation and a symptom of the problem of a lack of diversity. I found this amusing, but frustrating and very much disappointing. I don't want my scepticism to be so political, I want an interesting conversation and a chance to analyse concepts.
Those were just anecdotes anyhow, and I'm going to move onto the more abstract claim. Firstly, to make things political is not obviously a bad thing. Suppose a certain person who embraces racism, makes a racial claim X. If another person then makes the claim X, one might interpret that person also as racist. The issue here really is an inductive problem. We are unable to communicate with individuals to the extent that we can fully understand their reasoning. So we make jumps in reasoning, we add excess information to their pragmatics which lead to the political. For practicality, this can be important. One might even think that for utility purposes and consequences this is good. For if we read things in the political manner, we can develop a means to see opposing claims in a negative light, providing reasons to go against them, even if we don't deny the semantic content of their claims.
This last point is significant because it raises a point that the political can be very much anti rationalism. I like to think a normal philosophy debate as an instance of a rational discussion. I raise points, you raise points, and if something isn't clear, then we ask each other about it. Then we assess the semantic points of each of these claims. Ideally, we minimise the extent to which we rely on pragmatics to infer meaning from the other, we especially don't use pragmatics to jump to generalisations. The problem with the political is that if one embraces it, everything can become very much loaded, and discussion is very difficult. If the moment I express scepticism about diversity, I get called racist, then the argument becomes difficult to develop. How are we to understand concepts such as scepticism when the moment someone considers a counter argument, they get mocked.
Mocking in particular is a strange one. In philosophy, I believe it shouldn't really happen. We want to understand the concepts and ideas behind what we're doing. If one believes an argument fails, just provide the reason for it, simple as that. In the political, this doesn't work. Because things are loaded, individuals generally get put onto different sides. Because the consequences matter so fundamentally, variations of strawmanning are very common. Whatever you do to present your opponent as immoral or stupid. Morally speaking, this is really a classical connundrum because in terms of overall utility, maybe this is a good thing. If we frame any opposition or sceptic as immoral or stupid, then perhaps we reach our goal. We do however seem to violate a number of rights, for example we might be inclined to violate rights for speech, rights for freedom of thought. As an epistemologist, I find the latter somewhat more worrying.
I agree that it is the nature of talk that what we say can have consequences. That we should be careful, and that things can be political. I recently had a discussion with a gaming friend of mine and requested him not to use the word 'gay' when a negative scenario occurred in the game. I recognise that the term is in fact politically loaded, and I think I did a good thing. However I think that one should also be very much open to analysing why it is bad. It doesn't help anyone to simply censor them from speech. We should analyse and look into the argument. What is it that someone is saying? What is the argument in favour of this position?
In the future I hope that these things change. It is important not to judge people too quickly, and I fear the political very much encourages this. It encourages people to label things very quickly as sexist, racist etc because it wants to make salient these features perhaps even in the name of progress. It however really discourages certain aspects of rational discussion. I much rather read things that attempt to minimise the loaded nature of bias. A discussion in a philosophical sphere where we can genuinely discuss ideas and concepts. That's what I want. We just need to find a balance.
