Southern Libya Is A Nice Vacation Destination

I remind Pro he has the burden of proof and must adequately refute all of my objections. Counter-Rebuttals: 1. Everyday Speech Is More Authoritative Than the Dictionary & "Nice Vacation" As A Social Concept Can Only be Objectively Understood According to Its Meaning in Common Parlance A dictionary is jut a reference book. Dictionaries do not decide what things mean they record how people in a society use words. When making a dictionary the writers aim to capture the way words are actually used. If they fall short that does not mean the meaning of the word has been changed by the dictionary, it means the dictionary got it wrong. Common parlance is more authoritative than a dictionary, since even dictionary writers recognize its authority by trying to translate common parlance into written definitions of words. Since "vacation" and "nice" and hence "nice vacation" are essentially social concepts it only makes sense to define them according to their social context, that is to say according to the way people use these words in common parlance. Pro contends the context is impossible to truly define. I disagree. Pro claims that this is only my personal opinion. Again, I disagree. Pro is relying on a false dichotomy between the material world and the social world. Human beings are made up of matter, making all social things we come up with material. Social things just like other things can be observed, measured, and quantified. That's why we have social science. If only one person uses a word a certain way and everybody else a different way we can still say that from a social standpoint it is objectively true that the word means what the vast majority uses it for. Although an individual may use "nice vacation" in a different way that would be a subjective meaning of "nice vacation". It is potentially plausible to say that something is a "nice vacation" objectively in relation to how our society has created these concepts. Since a debate about something subjective wouldn't make sense it stands to reason to anyone participating in a debate to assume it is centered around the term used in an objective context. "Nice vacation" can only have an objective meaning if we are talking about its meaning according to how it has been defined by society, that is to say it is objectively true that something is a "nice vacation" according to how people in society use the phrase. http://www.articlesharer.com... Vacations were taken mostly by elitists in the early 19th century and took off from there. It's definition has evolved and has been shaped. While it is possible that "Vacation" will acquire new meanings in the future society as a whole has one objective meaning for it right now. Social meanings are tricky, because it can be hard to put them into precise words, but they still carry objectivity. A Gaddafi supporter running away to southern Libya can choose to call it a "vacation". However, this is only possible if the Gaddafi supporter is personally defining the word "vacation" in a way other than the common usuage. Most people would not consider "going away to hide" or "fighting" to be a "vacation". It doesn't matter if people who wrote a dictionary thought that was good enough to define as "vacation". The fact remains that the vast majority of people do not and since "vacation" is a social concept the meaning given to it by society weighs more than the meaning given by the dictionary writers. As for "nice", a word overused loses its meaning and human beings are acutely aware of this. Hence even if you went on vacation everywhere in the world before that one and found all of them enjoyable it would be unlikely for you to call everyone of them a "nice vacation", since then there would be no point in using the word "nice". If you said "nice vacation" for any of them it would be to distinguish it in comparison to your other vacations. This has nothing to do with "personal definitions". Whether or not "Southern Libya is a nice vacation destination" for a given person depends on whether or not they experience it as a "nice vacation" according to the socially objective meaning of "nice vacation". A person may call it "nice vacation" based on a more personal meaning but the question is whether the person would call it that if they were using the same definition that is used in everyday speech. As an example, fun is clearly part of the social definition of a "nice vacation", so if a person goes somewhere has absolutely no fun and then calls it "nice vacation" it does not make it a "nice vacation" any more than it would make it a "banana" if they called it a "banana". 2. Pro is making a false dichotomy fallacy. Just because are talking about the present doesn't make everything about the future is non-topical. It means that it must pertain to the present in order to be topical. Just because something is about the future does not mean it can not also be about the present. To illustrate what I'm saying: If you are vacationing somewhere and there's no civil war there but there is elsewhere in the country that fact alone would make you worried. The people there would also be worried and anxious and talking about how it could potentially spread. It doesn't matter if the civil war actually is there now or not. You can't have a nice vacation while you and everyone around you is worried that any moment the civil war could come to them. To put it another way: A civil war does not have to be present at the same time and place that you are present in order to effect your psychology and your psychology is part of the present. 3. Pro contends that Gaddafi no longer has the soldiers to spare to "arrest, imprison or even kill tourists". Even if that's true do the tourists know that? If you didn't know that the anxiety would ruin your vacation. Furthermore while Pro does make a strong case that Gaddafi would have no reason to target tourists the possibility of accidentally harming tourists exists. What if you look similar to a rebel spy or military leader? Or what if Gaddafi thinks the hotel you are staying at is secretly being used to store weapons for the rebels and bombs it?