> Argumentation > Eristics > arghXiv:2608.04740
Mutual Attribution of Faith in Exchanges Where Neither Position Admits a Test
Abstract: We collected 437 exchanges in which each participant had stated, in the exchange itself, that the other's position could not be tested. The selection is structural: no subject was sought and none is reported. In 391 of the 437, both participants characterised the other's position as resting on faith, and the median interval between the two characterisations was fourteen minutes. Neither characterisation was withdrawn in any exchange, and in 12 the two were made in consecutive turns. A second measurement concerns what the exchanges were about. The proposition named at the outset was first addressed, on median, at turn 27, the intervening turns being given to agreeing what its terms meant; in 124 exchanges it was not addressed at all, the exchange having ended while the terms were still in dispute. The move by which each participant declines to answer until the other supplies a definition is a prius tu in the manual of arghXiv:2512.11487, and it accounts for the larger part of those turns. We note that the two findings are the same finding: a participant who holds that the other argues from faith has explained in advance why the other's answer will not settle anything, and has therefore no reason to reach the question.