Tendentious Terminology in Ethics

Ethical theorists may sometimes engage in "persuasive definition": re-defining an evocative phrase for their own purposes, in a way that their opponent will reasonably regard as inaccurate and unfair.  Two examples that always annoy me are "treating someone as a mere means" and the "separateness of persons".  Opponents of consequentialism all too often trot out these phrases to indicate deep flaws in consequentialism. But it only works for them if they first redefine these terms to mean something that has nothing to do with the literal meaning of treating someone as a mere means or the separateness of persons.  You might as well redefine "terrorist" to denote adherents of the opposing views, and then complain that your opponents are all terrorists.  It's dishonest rhetoric, and ought to be avoided.  In this post, I'll explain my two examples, and why I consider them so misleading.  Others are welcome to comment with other examples -- especially any that you think consequentialists may be guilty of!

Treating someone as a mere means (rather than as an end in themselves) would violate the moral datum that each person has final (non-instrumental) value.  That sure would seem a straightforward moral blunder.  But Kantians redefine the phrase to instead mean something like acting upon someone without their consent.  Of course, it's fine to try to argue for the view that acting upon someone without their consent is incompatible with according them final value.  But such an argument is obviously going to be incredibly contestable, and so it will be question-begging in the worst sort of way to rely upon such a conclusion without argument in stating one's basic objection to other views.  What's in dispute is not whether it's okay to treat people as "mere means" (nobody endorses that!), but whether acting upon someone without their consent has this further feature (or is otherwise seriously objectionable).

Compare: Utilitarians, in counting each person's welfare equally, will claim that they are very obviously treating each person as an end in themselves and nobody merely as a means.  To literally be a mere means one would have to be excluded from moral consideration entirely, and again, it's just very obvious that utilitarians do not do this.  It's dishonest to use terminology that implies otherwise.  So it's dishonest to characterize utilitarianism as a view on which anyone may be treated as a "mere means". If you think it's objectionable to allow agents to act upon others without their consent, then just say that. Utilitarians will agree that this latter is indeed a feature of their view, and we can then argue about whether that's a problem or not.  But if you accuse them of treating people as mere means, they should simply reply, "We do no such thing."  And if you then clarify, "By that I just mean this other thing," they may reply, "Okay, terrorist."

The separateness of persons objection. One would clearly fail to appreciate the separate value of individual persons if one were to treat them as fungible, or replaceable without regret, like money.  And it's possible to imagine a (what I call "token-monist") form of utilitarianism that did this: that ascribed value most fundamentally to welfare in the aggregate, and saw each individual person as a constitutive means to this end.  But utilitarianism need not take this objectionable form.  It can instead ascribe intrinsic value to each being's welfare separately.  In so doing, it very obviously acknowledges the separate value of distinct individuals, and does not treat people as wholly interchangeable or replaceable without (pro tanto) regret.

So, to accuse utilitarianism of essentially disrespecting the "separateness of persons", one must redefine this latter term to mean something else.  Terrorist that you are, you may pick out some property of utilitarianism you find objectionable -- be it the violation of an individual's rights for another's greater gain, or allowing a multitude of minor interests to together outweigh a single larger interest -- and stipulate that this feature is what you mean by "neglecting the separateness of persons".  But it would be much clearer to use transparent, uncontested terminology to identify the feature of the view that you object to, and from there explain what you find objectionable about the identified feature.  At least, that strikes me as a better move than dishonestly implying that utilitarianism treats people as fungible.

Put another way: You can already object to rights violations or aggregation in those very terms.  What is gained by additionally describing what you here object to as "neglecting the separateness of persons?"   Answer: unearned rhetorical force, based on dishonestly tarring your opponent with a different, more clearly objectionable feature (that their view does not in fact possess).

Proviso: Of course, my complaint does not apply to anyone who explicitly argues that their targeted feature entails the further property of objectionably disrespecting the separateness of persons. If you can earn the rhetorical force, that's great!  I'm here just objecting to the (far more common) lazy invocation of these phrases to do rhetorical work without the slightest attempt to rebut the available utilitarian responses.  In particular, I argue that such rhetoric cannot be defended via stipulation that you "just mean" the uncontested feature.  To earn the right to use contested terminology, you should show that the uncontested features of the target view surprisingly entail some further (contested) property which warrants the emotional response evoked by the contested terminology. In sum: You have to earn it.

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That's my rant over.  What examples of tendentious terminology in ethics do you find especially aggravating?