Quote Originally Posted by M.L. View Post
it seems that it would be extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to build a body of doctrine which would be impossible to misuse. It is hard to think of a concept which hasn't been misinterpreted, misrepresented, misused, or even abused at one time or another.
I propose that misuse of doctrine is not quite as significant a problem as abuse of it. Instantiating the apparent truth of the Bentham quotation in M.L.'s signature block, I propose two ways that doctrine is abused:

1. Unthinking application of doctrinal "school solutions" to solve operational problems I do not mean problems at the operational level of war. I do mean problems we encounter while trying to conduct any operation(the second definition for operation found in my earlier post of J Pub 1-02 definitions). Doctrine is a guide to help one formulate a solution for problems, not a canned set of solutions.

2. Trying to be too fine-grained when defining doctrinal terminology. In Chapter 3 of the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle cautions the reader as follows:
Quote Originally Posted by Aristotle
We must not expect more precision than the subject-matter admits. . . . Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clearness as the subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussions, any more than in all the products of the crafts. . . . We must be content, then, in speaking of such subjects and with such premisses to indicate the truth roughly and in outline, and in speaking about things which are only for the most part true and with premisses of the same kind to reach conclusions that are no better. In the same spirit, therefore, should each type of statement be received; for it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs.
Expecting doctrine to provide an all-inclusive list of necessary and sufficient conditions for the correct application of any given term is actually a variation on the first instance of abuse, one which I would describe as solving problems by definition. This often works just fine in mathematics and theoretical physics, but not so well when we are contemplating the actions of those finitely rational creatures with feet of clay that we call human beings.