Six Features of Discursive Rationality According to Mostafa Malekian

3) Our speech must not have equivocation (īhām). Equivocation means that a statement has two or three meanings, and I have intended one of those two or three meanings, while you might infer another meaning. "Ambiguity" (ibhām) differs from "equivocation" (īhām). Equivocation means my speech is such that it has two meanings. When I say "very" or "little," it has no more than one meaning; rather, that single meaning itself is ambiguous. But sometimes speech is not ambiguous, but equivocal; that is, it has equivocation. 4) In discourse, one must speak about the subject of the discourse, not about other things. When the subject of my lecture is rationality, if I speak about anything other than rationality, even if it is the most profound and valuable speech, I lack discursive rationality; for I was supposed to speak about rationality. They ask, what is your opinion on X? That person speaks about everything except X. In our country as well, when someone—from politicians to people in the street and bazaar, and even scholars—is asked, "What is your opinion on X?" the meaning is that you are only forbidden to speak about X, and you are permitted to speak about anything else. When you have a specific question, they speak about everything except that subject. Such speech, however correct, solid, and defensible it may be, is speech that lacks rationality. 5) Speech must be neither more elaborate than what is sufficient for the purpose, nor more concise than that. 6) Discourse requires that one always bear in mind that they are expressing their own opinion. There is a great difference between reporting the world and stating one's opinions about the world. Suppose I look at a light and see that it is red. I can speak in two ways: one is to say, "The color of this light is red"; the other is to say, "The color of this light appears red to me." What is the difference? The first proposition is a claim about the world; but the second proposition is a claim about my perception of the world. In the second proposition, I have not said the world is this way; I have said, in my opinion, the world is this way. The requirement of discursive rationality is that, in practice—whether explicitly or implicitly—we arrive at the point that we are not knowers of what has been and what will be. We do not know the structure, nature, and function of the world. We can say that, in our opinion, the world is this way. This requirement is a type of rationality; for if we speak in any other way, we have made a claim that is beyond our capacity, and such a claim is a claim to playing God; a claim that no human being can make.