The Word-Concept Fallacy
When I wrote my little booklet dissecting Rosaria Butterfield’s book The Gospel Comes With A House Key,1 one of the criticisms I received quite a bit had to do with methodology. There were, and still are, many people who think that I simply spotted some words in Butterfield’s book that “just so happen” to be embedded in postmodern philosophy and feminist theology. In essence, these critics of my critique were accusing me of committing the word-concept fallacy. If you’re not familiar with it, the word-concept fallacy is committed when an individual confuses a word’s presence or absence with the presence or absence of a particular concept usually attached to that word. When Jehovah’s Witnesses, for instance, state that the Trinity is not a biblical teaching because the Bible does not contain the word “Trinity” anywhere, they are committing the word-concept fallacy. Just as the absence of the word “homosexuality” does not indicate that the concept of homosexuality is absent from the Bible,2 so too the absence of the word “Trinity” does not indicate that the concept of the Trinity is also absent from the Bible.
The same informal fallacy occurs when someone says that the presence of a word indicates that the concept usually attached to that word is present alongside it. In the case of my booklet, I was being accused of finding concepts that weren’t there simply because the language usually used to talk about those concepts can be found in The Gospel Comes With A House Key. Sadly, there are some people for whom this kind of ad hoc3 reasoning is sufficient. They don’t look beyond the claim that the word-concept fallacy has been committed, and examine whether or not the claim is true.
Why is that?
Some Possible Reasons
It’s too easy to say that people buy into criticisms like the one mentioned above simply because they are ignorant or lazy or married to an idea and refuse to be corrected about it. Their acceptance of the unsubstantiated claim could also be due to what is known as the false consensus effect, in which people
…believe that their own opinions, beliefs, and attributes are more common and normative in others than they actually are, and that opinions, beliefs and attributes that others have but they do not share are more indicative of someone's personality in general.4
Communication, in a way, depends on the assumption that there is a shared understanding of the terminology we use with others in conversation, so this isn’t typically a problem. It becomes a problem when it is combined with ignorance of the concepts one claims is present in those shared words, and ignorance of how to differentiate a innocuous use of ideologically loaded terms from an ideological slip of the tongue.
Consider the phrase “Freudian slip.” This is a very specific phrase that is loaded with meaning most people don’t think about when they use it. In Freudian psychoanalysis, “Freudian slips” (or instances of the phenomenon also known as parapraxis) are
…verbal stumblings could reveal forbidden urges – such as sex and swearing – which were usually locked safely within the unconscious mind.5
Note what must be present in order for one to have a “Freudian slip” —
forbidden sexual urges
forbidden anger
forbidden violent urges
a conscious mind
a subconscious mind
an unconscious
Yet, how many accusations of a “Freudian slip” are rooted in these assumptions? I would wager to say not many at all. The phrase has become part and parcel of Western culture and now simply means a verbal slip revealing someone’s true thoughts and feelings. The popular use of the phrase “Freudian slip” shows us that some words and phrases may be loaded with ideological meaning, or may not. What is key, then, is for us to know when we are dealing with a use of language that is seemingly ideological, and when we are dealing with a use of language that is actually ideological.
Social Contexts
The first thing to take note of is the context in which the language under consideration is being used. This is something we all take for granted, so we need to be reminded of it: The meaning of some everyday words can become cryptic when inserted into different social contexts. For instance, I once had a friend tell me that my contribution to a podcast was very helpful, although it would have been better if I didn’t say “You know what I’m saying?” so much, seeing as the question made me seem like I was doubting myself. It was funny to me because I hadn’t considered that there would be people listening to the podcast who are not from America, let alone my place of origin (i.e. the Bronx), who wouldn’t understand my use of language. I didn’t consider our different social contexts would color the interpretation of my language.
Ironically, my friend really didn’t know what I was saying. What he did know, however, was that my language didn’t fit the social context. I was on a podcast teaching about a subject I am very familiar with, so why would I question myself? The incongruity here is what we need to look out for when it comes to paying attention to the language that a particular author is using. Does their language conform to the standard form of conversation in a particular social context? Does it deviate from the norm for seemingly no reason? A writer could deviate from anticipated linguistic norms in order to provoke a response from the reader, or in order to keep his readers interested. If he is deviating from the standard practice and there is no discernible rhetorical or didactic goal, then this is usually an indication that he his use of the language you are otherwise familiar with has specialized meanings derived from other social contexts.
Verbal Rigidity & Lack of Substitution
In order to narrow things down some more, we not only spot the “out-of-placeness” of the language in question, but also observe the frequency with which it is used and, importantly, whether or not the speaker in question uses substitutes for the out-of-place language. Consider the case of the doctrine of the Trinity. Given the seriousness and complexity of the doctrine of the Trinity, Christians have several key words that are used with rigidity lest we fall into one theological heresy or another. For instance, when we talk about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, we say that these three are not beings but persons, individual subsistences, or hypostases. Substituting some other word — e.g. being, or personality — is very uncommon and, in truth, frowned upon because of the possible misunderstandings that such substitutions can facilitate. Verbal rigidity of this sort in one’s out-of-place use of otherwise known words, phrases, assertions, and so on further indicates that the speaker in question is using that language in a specialized manner.
Natural communication often involves the fluid substitution of one word for another. Ideologically and/or doctrinally grounded language use, however, exhibits a greater rigidity and resistance to substitution. The speaker is using a concept that is specialized and, therefore, has to be preserved as such via the rigid use of an informally or formally approved set of words, phrases, and sentences.
Word Clusters
The question you may be asking, then, is how one determines if there is such a set. Firstly, we need to note that there is always a set of formally or informally approved words we can use in reference to one object or another, one belief or another, one doctrine or another. The existence of thesauruses demonstrates this beyond the shadow of a doubt. Secondly, we need to look at the language in question and see if it consistently is found in a cluster of other words used with about the same rigidity. Word clusters of this kind show us how to understand the communicator’s message, since the words are interrelated but are socio-contextually out-of-place. The out-of-placeness of these interrelated words, which show up with a recognizable rigidity, indicate that the source and grounding of their meaning is found elsewhere.
Comparing & Contrasting
This is where familiarity with ideologies, philosophies, cultural movements, etc comes into play. We now are fairly certain that the author we are reading subscribes to some set of beliefs, some ideology, that is not being spoken about directly. If we are familiar with, for instance, contemporary articulations of the heresy of modalism,6 then we will know that there are certain terms they always use in place of traditional orthodox language regarding God. For instance, modalists do not say that there are three persons who constitute the One True God; rather, they say that the Father and Son and Holy Spirit are three manifestations of the one divine person.7 If a person professes to be a Christian, one who believes in the teaching of the Bible regarding the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, but they identify the divine persons as manifestations of the one true God, then they likely have a modalist doctrine of God.
While we can’t be experts on every ideology, heresy, and cultural movement, we can read individual resources that help us get a grasp of the basic terminology and concepts used by the proponents of those ideologies, heresies, and cultural movements. Having an understanding of the general outlines of them will help you know how these proponents tie together their main concepts with rigidly used words, phrases, and sentences, and so allow you to think critically about what you’re reading, give it an informed analysis, and exercise wisdom in determining whether an individual “just so happens” to be using language that sounds like it comes from some deviant theology or ideology, or if they are truly committed to a deviant theology or ideology and, therefore, ought to be warned against.
—h.
This is a common argument today against the use of Scripture to condemn homosexuality as a sin. The argument is fallacious in many regards, of course, but this is one of the more obvious reasons as to why it is fallacious.
Latin, trans. to/for this. Ad hoc reasoning is reasoning that takes place on the spot, providing an off-the-cuff response to an argument or claim made by one’s interlocutor. The point is to rescue one’s position or belief from the criticism leveled against it, which is why it is also known as the “making stuff up” fallacy and “ad hoc rescue.” For more on the ad hoc rescue, see this article.
Nickerson, Charlotte. “How False Consensus Effect Influences the Way We Think About Others,” Simply Psychology, Jan 12, 2022, https://www.simplypsychology.org/false-consensus-effect.html.
Gorvett, Zaria. “What Freudian slips really reveal about your mind,” BBC, July 7, 2016, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160706-what-freudian-slips-really-reveal-about-your-mind.
See Slick, Matt. “Modalism,” Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry, April 30, 2008, https://carm.org/heresies/modalism/.
Many assert that the one divine person is Jesus. See “Jesus Only Movement,” Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry, https://carm.org/dictionary/jesus-only-movement/.