Just out of interest … this word gets bandied about a lot, mainly by evolution opponents hereabouts. They seem to use it when a word with multiple meanings is used. The accusation tends not to be withdrawn even when the intended meaning is unequivocally clarified – a bizarre situation where someone commits to a meaning and is still equivocating!
A typical definition is “The use of ambiguous language to conceal the truth or to avoid committing oneself”. There is a veiled hint of dishonesty – making an honest mistake with alternative definitions of a word is not strictly equivocation as defined there. That is, it is not merely ‘using ambiguous language’, still less ‘confusing two definitions of one word’, but purposefully being vague or misleading. But the use of the word rarely seems appropriate to me in the contexts in which it is used – generally, even the charge of ambiguity is unjustified, let alone nefarious motive. Numerous derails are provoked when one party says ‘you are equivocating’ and the other says ‘no I’m not’. I almost invariably find myself siding with (or being) the ‘no I’m not’ party (or, for self-referential funzies, “maybe I am, maybe I’m not”!).
Is this a quirk of American English (Americans forming the majority of opponents in these discussions)? Or is it a meme that has been unconsciously passed from one to another among the evolution-skeptical fraternity? Or something else?
Allan,
I’d say the latter.
I’m USAmerican (Hi, Gregory!) all the way down to my Hoosier roots, but I understand “equivocate” the way you do.
Here’s the entry on the fallacy of equivocation from http://www.fallacyfiles.org:
I don’t know how or why equivocation comes up particularly or more often with respect to evolution. It’s everywhere: because of polysemy it’s a quite common fallacy, and it’s often unintentional.
Someone suggested that William might be incorrectly assuming that everything equivocal is the result of equivocation. Perhaps he doesn’t understand that something can be equivocal simply by virtue of being ambiguous, even when there is no intent to deceive and hence no equivocation.
William’s English is quite non-standard — take his use of “arbit” as a verb, for example.
[Edited to add the “and hence no equivocation” part.]
I’m not so sure about the “unconsciously” bit.
I’m pretty sure that I saw this argument in use by creationists 20 years ago on talk.origins.
Those opposing evolution, or not, typically misunderstand, misconstrue, or misrepresent evolution or its supporters due to malice, lack of understanding, genuine confusion, or sundry other reasons.
I hope that I have made myself clear.
Glen Davidson
Evolution has many different meanings,. So does fitness.
There’s obvious room for equivocation.
In the context of debate or discussion, I’ve always assumed it referred to the fallacy. So if someone said “you are equivocating with the word X” they meant I was using the word X in one sense in one part of my argument and in a different sense in another.
It’s an all too real problem in many debates. Classic candidates are “information” and “evolve”.
Oh, and “design”. So not surprising it dogs the kind of debates we have here!
But it never occurred to me that people simply meant “ambiguous” or “has more than one meaning”. As I tend to be a stickler for operational definition, my instinct is to refine my definition still further. Usually to be accused of “quibbling” or “arguing by definition”!
Yes, there is. That’s why it is important to define terms carefully in the context of the argument and not “equivocate” by changing definitions in mid stream.
When it is unequivocally clarified, it shows the incoherence of Darwinian theory.
I probably was the one that bandied the notion of equivocation about the most and then I saw other ID authors begin to pick up on it thereafter.
The problem is it’s not just the writers but the listeners usage of various notions such as:
1. fit — medical dictionaries have different definitions. Fit in population genetics (reproductive success) is not the same as fit as in “well being”. A sterile individual can be physically fit!
2. selection — usually means selected with purpose, but that is certainly NOT what happens with systems not having intentions
3. natural — claims that it’s natural when it’s not is double speak. What is Darwin’s fantasized mode of evolution is not reality, therefore certainly not natural, but the false advertising is continually accepted. One of the fundamental problems is Darwinian theory insinuates it is possible to select toward evolution of non-existent traits (like complex protein cascades). Fantasy is equivocated with reality by using the word “natural”. If I used the phrase, “Darwin’s Speculated Selection”, rather than “Natural Selection”, that would be more accurate. Otherwise one is equivocating fantasy with reality.
4. survival of fittest — fittest among siblings but not necessarily descendants vs. ancestors. There could be survival of fittest among siblings and cousins where all the children of the parents are defective, hence it’s not really survival of the fittest in the sense of inevitable improvement. Hence, as I point out, the “fitness” scores could keep sustaining or improving according to population genetic definitions all the while reductive evolution is trashing functionality.
5. selectively for– a trait may be favored for this generation after it exists but not necessarily for generations in the deep past when the trait didn’t exist in the first place (like complex interactome cascades). It equivocates selection for existing traits with selection for non-existent traits.
6. Selection leads to improvement of a species — cherry picking. Selection can trash a species’ functionality by fixating harmful traits and eliminating other species. Dawkins weasel makes people think cumulative selection is the primary mode and consequence of a selection environment and generalizes a non-representative outcome to be representative. It substitutes fantasy for reality by using the word “natural” to describe Darwinian fantasies unhinged from reality.
As I pointed out, survival of the fittest destroys not just some functionality in a species line but entire genomes by exterminating species lines. Added to this is elimination and trashing by random events. Random extinction is also NATURAL. Elimination of species by means of natural elimination — that is clearly the most observed mode of substantive evolution today. That is what natural looks like in reality. The only place it works differently is in the imagination of Darwinists who equivocate Darwinian fantasies with physical facts.
7. Possible equivocated as probable. Selection might remotely create a feature, doesn’t mean it did!
Evolutionary theory is fundamentally built on lots of equivocations and ambiguous definitions. I already pointed even Lewontin and Wagner said out fitness is hard to define. Not so hard for a few isolated cases like pesticide and antibiotic resistance, but not in general.
When I argue with Darwinists, they say I don’t understand. I understand how it has to work in order to perform as advertised, but it can even work in principle.
No. Evolutionary theory, particularly Darwinian evolution, is built on confused thinking. The typical response when valid criticism are put forward is “you don’t understand.” I understand. I just laid out several of ambiguities and confusion factors of evolution theory, and none of them have been adequately responded to.
Your hope is misplaced. You can start by stating what “survival of the fittest” means. By fit do you mean functional or reproductive success (not the same thing). By survival of the fittest do you mean survival between siblings and cousins or the heritable traits between ancestors and descendants. Oh, and that even assumes a species line exists in the first place where survival can happen — and there is no guarantee of that.
But this is true, Sal. You don’t. You say that evolutionary theory is incoherent, and prove it by giving an incoherent account of evolutionary theory!
The problem is not with the theory but with your incoherent account.
If you read a word like “fit” in an evolutionary context as meaning what it does in a medical context, then of course the evolutionary passage will be incoherent. Because “fit” in an evolutionary context means something different from what it does in a medical context.
So to untangle the mess of evolutionary theory you have there, the first thing you need to understand is that the word “fit” does not mean “medically fit” when we are talking about evolution.
Nor does “selection” in as in “natural selection” mean “selected with purpose”. It refers to variation in heritable reproductive success.
“survival of the fittest” is simply a way of expressing that – that variants who are best able to reproduce in the current environment will leave the most offspring.
And selection always applies to the current environment. We can infer that some trait must have been been reproductively advantageous in the past, but we cannot deduce that from the observation that it is, or is not, in the present. For instance our GULO gene does nothing for us, but the fact that it does something useful for other lineages strongly suggested that it once did the same for us in the past. And probably that when it broke, we lived in an environment in which it did not confer a great advantage (e.g. one with abundant fruit).
The fact that most lineages go instinct is simply not a rebuttal of Darwinian evolution. In fact, you’d predict that most lineages would, given that the environment is constantly changing, and adaptation is a slow and uncertain process.
And selection does not lead to “improvement” of species – it leads to adaptation. Whether you call the adaptation an improvement or not is subjective. For instance, human intelligence may ultimately prove to be maladaptive, and result in our own extinction. But it’s a neat thing to have, all the same.
No, you haven’t. All you have shown is that while it is a beautifully elegant and simple theory, it remains all too easy to misunderstand.
Sal,
It ought to embarrass you that most of us know ten times as much about ID as you know about evolutionary theory.
Don’t blame me for the abuse of language and double speak by evolutionists. They should use the phrase “reproductively successful”. Is that so hard? They should use the phrase “outcome” rather than “selection”? But of course, if the word, “outcome” is used, we realize Darwinian evolution is vacuous theory saying nothing more than “what happens is what happens”.
Evolutionists are the ones who claims billions of years of evolutionary optimization leads to complex functionality. But all that can be absolutely inferred from evolutionary definitions of “fit” is that “fit” makes more babies!
Clearly humans make less offspring than bacteria, yet they are much more functionally complex. Evolutionists equivocated the notion of optimization of reproductive success with degree of complexity. By such contorted reasoning humans are not “fit” because they are differentially less successful than bacteria and likely will be since they make less offspring and require a more delicate environment.
Yet evolutionists still insist the complexity of humans resulted from reproductive success which says little to nothing of the level of complexity change from generation to generation. Thus the evolutionary definition of “fit’ is irrelevant at best, misleading to wrong at worst.
There is no coherence in connecting reproductive success with ever more complicated chemical rituals needed to reproduce. If anything, there is advantage of simplicity, and you’ve suggested optimization of making more offspring necessarily indicates increase in complexity of reproduction and function. Where is the logic in saying that making more offspring will lead to a more complicated chemical ritual where more things can go wrong? Worse, multicellular creatures don’t make more offspring than unicellular ones, so Darwinian theory is illogical on those grounds as well.
stcordova,
‘Fit’ is shorter. And it has some connection with the original formulation of ‘survival of the fittest’ (originally from Spencer: “survival of the best fitted“, which is less ambiguous, although some dickhead could always say it was a statement about snugness or wardrobes … ). I suspect ‘fit’ did not have it’s health connotations in 1859. And ‘reproductively successful’ doesn’t cover the whole of it either.
It really isn’t confusing, you have shown that you appreciate the distinction, so why are you continuing to complain about “equivocation” (Sal-dictionary version)? Do people routinely use one term when they mean the other? Do they make it unclear which they mean? Do they make arguments starting with one meaning and flipping to the other?
The word ‘selection’ has a history and a context. Wallace didn’t like it, though he framed his criticism in rather oleagenous manner!. He recognised that it had the power to confuse due to its connotations of ‘agency’. It was he who urged Spencer’s phrase instead. But both caught on, and no-one is about to change now. Again, you have a fair idea of what it means, so I really don’t see any legitimacy in invoking ‘equivocation’ – either the straight English word or the Fallacy – in relation to it.
stcordova,
No they didn’t! They didn’t conflate them either, which is what you might really mean. The English language! The poor, poor English language!
Humans and bacteria do not exploit the same ecological niche.
Sal,
I strongly recommend that you buy Futuyma’s Evolution textbook and read it cover to cover. It might take you 4-6 months to finish depending on your workload but you’d have a solid unbiased foundation from which to criticize evolution.
RodW:
Seconded!
Thirded. You are incoherent, Sal. Evolution will survive semantic quibbles, because it happens despite what people say about it.
Am I the only one who finds the following chain of events amusing?
Step 1) we get accused of equivocation by an IDist because of how we are using a term.
Step 2) to clarify the issue, we ask for how the IDist is defining the term.
Step 3) we get accused of invoking Darwinian Debating Device #7: the Definition Deficiency Disorder.
“Intelligence” and “design” are my most-noticed examples of equivocation. Discussions that do not begin with defining of terms are destined to descend into dialogues of the deaf.
Maybe one day someone could come up with a meaningful definition of “intelligence”.
What ever it is, I am pretty sure that it will not include the words “Barry” or “Arrington”.
Guano here I come.
And the word dear to us all: ‘Information’.
Just about all the discussions/rants over at UD can be pinned down to the fact that no-one there has the vaguest notion of how to define it. (Does a mountain contain information ?)
Its probably a reasonable problem, but UD take the next step and make grand claims about ‘conservation of information’, ‘creation of information’, etc etc.
Larry Moran has a piece up on Kirk Durston, the reigning prince of ID information theory.
I can’t believe the difficulty people are having with the difference between ambiguous and equivocal.
Hang on, let me see if there’s a fallacy of ambiguity.
http://www.philosophypages.com/lg/e06c.htm
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ambiguit.html
Googling “Equivocation evolution” turns up no end of ‘Creation ministries’ style hits. It seems to be part of the basic attack toolkit. Don’t know what its Anti-Darwinian Debating Device number might be. Or try “equivocation uncommon descent” for a real feast.
Information, Random, Natural, Selection, Fit, Fitter, Fittest, Species, Tree, Artificial, Explosion, Design, Drift, Evolution, Moral, Success, Succession, Survival, Function, Theory … all these words are henceforth banned from all debate, for reasons of equivocation.
Let this my will be done, (signed) Le Grand Fromage 23rd July 2015.
The last man standing as far as I can see.
Allan Miller,
… also Code, Allele, Locus, Meaning, Energy, Selfish, Gene, Entropy, Law … all possible meanings shall henceforth be assigned a number, for clarity.
#1.3 #5.3 #78.1 #2.2 #66.5
I win. (Glossary to follow).
Excellent Idea!
oops, idea needs to go. Too close to intelligence.
Mung,
Not bad, but just having Erik do his Vulcan mind-meld and tell us what everybody means is faster. Possibly cheaper too.
I can’t believe the difficulty people are having with the difference between ambiguity and vagueness.
Oh?
Your mistake.
Thanks, Neil, you saved me a lot of words which would have gone un-comprehended anyways. 🙂
hotshoe_,
William is probably looking at “niche” far too broadly, as in the “the same geographical region”. If that were what we meant by “niche”, he might have had a point.