What do we call a person who keeps switching his stance on a topic during a discussion involving various sentences. What I mean is the speaker rejects something while accepting it indirectly. "Inconsistent" seems really close in a general sense. But he rejects it directly and again accepts it indirectly ( and I don't know he realizes that or not) again and again during a discussion.
I want it to have a neutral connotation as the person seems to be confused with his own ideas yet claiming to be right but we never know what are his intentions. Also it would be nice have a "politically correct" word for this.
I am not able to phrase the exact sentence because it is from another language and I need an English word for this activity/person. So every one is welcome to edit the question and add appropriate example sentences.
Best Answer
Someone who rejects a position and accepts it in the next breath, even if only indirectly, and fails to acknowledge a change of heart, is inconsistent. If they keep alternating stances again and again then they’re still inconsistent. We could say they’re hopelessly inconsistent or serially inconsistent; seriously inconsistent too, but serially is more to the point.
If that person firmly believes what they say and does not realise their inconsistency at all we’ll have to leave it at that. But if they are aware of the mere possibility of inconsistency and keep doing it then such person may be a bullshitter in the sense Princeton Professor Harry G. Frankfurt defined in On Bullshit (Princeton University Press, 2005). Here’s from a review at Amazon.com