Tactical ambiguity
From EvoWiki
1. Intentionally not clarifying what military/policy response will result if another government takes a particular action. The term is usually used in discussions of U.S. policy towards China and Taiwan. In order to stop Taiwan from openly declaring independence, the U.S. refuses to say that it will defend Taiwan if China attacks. In order to stop China from attacking Taiwan, the U.S. refuses to say that it won't respond to China with overwhelming force. This policy has successfully kept the peace for many presidential administrations.
In order to speak clearly, the Bush administration has used a dual approach -- the US tolerates no Chinese military actions on Taiwan and the US does not support and even is against "Taiwan independence." These two pillars constitute "strategic clarity." As for when, how, and with what to defend Taiwan from China's military threat, the US has retained ambiguity on the tactical level. This is "tactical ambiguity." source
2. In discussions of Intelligent Design, the refusal to clarify terms that an author is using in importantly different ways. For example, both irreducible complexity and specified complexity have an "observational" definition, which can theoretically be applied by anyone to determine whether or not a system exhibits the property whether or not they think the system is evolvable, and a "tautological" definition, wherein unevolvability is part of the definition. A common tactic in ID argumentation, whether they realize it or not, is to switch between the two definitions, e.g.:
- IDist: Everyone agrees that systems with multiple required parts are common in biology. Therefore, IC is common in biology and this is evidence for ID.
- ID skeptic: But systems with multiple required parts can and have originated by evolution, here are some examples.
- IDist: If the system evolved, then clearly it wasn't irreducibly complex in the first place. Thus the argument that IC is evidence for ID remains untouched.
Since this switcheroo is not recognized often enough, ID criticisms tend to split between "IC/SC exist in biology, but can evolve despite what IDists say," or "IC/SC would be a problem if found in biology, but they aren't." It makes the critics sound like they can't get their story straight. Both statements are true, but on different assumed definitions of IC or SC. Achieving this degree of confusion via tactical ambiguity is one of several dubious successes of intelligent design.
