Postscript to "Cruddy Concepts...."

I realized that there is a somewhat compelling but bad objection to what I was saying that's worth answering. One might easily take my suggestion to speak in favor of political correctness norms. And then one might advance the following Cynical Argument:

(1) Your view requires us to endorse political correctness norms.

(2) Political correctness norms are dumb.

(3) So, your view is false.

I like the Cynical Argument in a certain way, although I'll be picky. I think (2) is on the right track. It strikes me as right to say that political correctness norms are dumb. But I only say "on the right track", because, strictly speaking, it's the enforcement of political correctness norms that is dumb, not the norms themselves, which are presumably just propositions, and propositions can't really be dumb. Propositions are just abstract objects. Assertions of propositions can be dumb. And so can imperatives that have such propositions as their contents. But the propositions themselves are distinct, and we shouldn't transfer properties of speech acts to propositions. This is certainly not the worst problem with the argument, but it's not irrelevant. The argument is invalid because of this mistake. (2) doesn't entail (3) because an assertion of a proposition can be dumb and hence it can seem correct to say that the "proposition itself" is dumb even though the proposition is true. For example, asserting 2 + 2 = 4 is dumb.

I mainly don't like the Cynical Argument because (1) is false. My view says that there are certain concepts that are cruddy because they don't accurately represent the world. But, as I said all along, while I think the non-cruddy concepts are better because they represent more accurately, and I think it's worth thinking in terms of them when the differences are relevant, I certainly don't say that we should start using crush*** in ordinary talk because it's more precise. That would be dumb, because it's a waste of words to speak that way, and there are circumstances in which the fineness of crush*** is irrelevant. This is why (1) is false. Political correctness is based on a correct idea, but it's dumb. The correct idea is that certain concepts don't represent the world with a high degree of accuracy, and it's bad to neglect the nuances when they're important, and to base norms on ignorance of the nuances. It's dumb because it's usually a waste of words to use the more nuanced concept. But it's not dumb to see the differences. That's smart. And it's even smarter to see the differences in weird cases, like the case of crushes. And that's all that I was suggesting. So, the Cynical Argument can't be pressed against me.