When you know you're arguing semantics

[written by chronomax who writes here]

You've probably heard it before: arguing from semantics. If you don't know what that means (semantics, that is), it's essentially the definition and meaning of a word. So what's wrong about arguing semantics? Well, the whole point that you're not really arguing.

To argue or debate is to take a stance on a subject logically- empirically. I'm not really the best at talking on the differences between reason, logic, empiricism, etc. but basically it's this: arguing that freedom should be more valued than safety means that the reasons why are fixated. If you can show empirically that the death penalty is morally right, it means that logic leads to that conclusion. However, semantics doesn't do that. Semantics doesn't care about any of that, but it does matter about words.

Words are merely a way for me to pass one idea to you. We do so by symbols called letters and sounds called phonetics. They are then defined and given meaning so that grouped together, it better explains what you want to convey. However, the problem is that there is no objective definition- there are dozens of meanings for the word "set" and words are different from Oxford to Webster. So a lot of the times, we can use a word like a variable.

Urlyp means that I feel sad. For now on, you can relate the emotion of sadness to Urlyp. That's very important when you argue semantics.

Today, second day of school for me, I had a round about forty-minute open argument on using love and hate in literature. The teacher argued that you can't love something that can't convey the same emotion towards you, while me and another person said otherwise. There's a lot I can't talk about just because of how much we went in to depth (the discussion on society with "Lord of the Flies" was awesome). Here's one of my arguments that I came up with probably because I was constantly referencing and making allegories to science while I lugged a college textbook around.

• You can love a human
• Humans love
• You can love a dog
• Dogs love
• You can't love a mosquito
• Mosquitoes can't love
• It take an advanced brain to love
• Love is reliant on the brain
• The brain is reliant on neurons, chemicals, and electricity
• Love is quantifiable
• Love is reliant upon only one person
• Love does not require another person
• You can love as long as you have an advanced brain

Yeah. Said all of that right in class. It was lovely.

The problem here is that she said that it wouldn't be love. Simple as that, and that's where the problem is. She wasn't arguing about love and I wasn't arguing about love. The teacher was saying that you can't feel [an emotion related to extreme liking with another sentient being] with another sentient being. I was saying that you could feel [an extreme liking conveyed from a sentient being] without another sentient being. Substitute what's in the brackets- our definitions- with the word love, and you understand why we weren't arguing about love.

We were arguing semantics, and arguing semantics is not debate.