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The Case for Rescuing Tainted Words

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https://evolution-institute.org/article/...ted-words/

EXCERPT: [...] The E-word wasn’t tainted for Prevention Scientists; it was merely unfamiliar. But the E-word [evolution] is tainted in other sectors of academic and public life. So are other words such as group selection, sociobiology, and evolutionary psychology. All of these words had face-value definitions when they were first coined (sociobiology is the study of social behavior from a biological perspective, evolutionary psychology is the study of psychology from an evolutionary perspective…) but then they acquired a negative valence for one reason or another, leading to an ethical dilemma similar to the one that I have outlined for Prevention Science.

I would like to argue that in all cases, it is important to rescue tainted words by restoring their face value definitions. If they have acquired negative valences, it is important to understand why. Past confusions and injustices need to be resolved and avoided in the future. Rescuing tainted words might be hard work and perhaps their use must be avoided on occasion to avoid excessive short-term costs, but permanently avoiding tainted words and coining new terms with the same face value definitions is not ethically acceptable.

Before considering scientific tainted words, let’s do an ethical warm-up with family names.....




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