You mention trinity and the primacy of love as a value in a thread about faith and think no one will notice the consistency with Christianity? — Hanover

No - I intended that they notice.

My little joke.

A babe uses "mum", understanding who mum is, and yet cannot provide a definition. Definitions are secondary and derivative, not foundational. Use is at the centre of language. — Banno

Yes, I find myself coming back to this a lot.

Definitions are secondary and derivative — Banno

But not non-existent. Not to be painstakingly avoided when trying to communicate.

You just contradicted yourself. If “definitions are” then my work is done.

Take care.

definitions that can be shown beforehand to be correct, — J

What is with the “beforehand” and the “correct”? Banno said “foundational”.

The post asks “what is faith”. So the foundation is a question.

Beforehand, we have no definition.

We will be incorrect as we speak “faith” trying to define it.

Our final understanding of faith will likely be incomplete, contain imprecision, contain error, need further revision.

But we can’t avoid defining faith if we want to distinguish “faith” from other things. (Or use “faith” in a sentence that can be understood.)

Rather than arguing about a word, why not keep looking at the concept, the idea, the thing under discussion, under whatever name or description? — J

Looking at a single concept, an idea, is looking at a word. Words name concepts. So there is no difference between arguing about a word and communicating about a concept.

Now if you want to call that "discovering a definition," I can't stop you, but I think definitions are established by universal agreement within a particular community, not by the sort of ameliorative process I just described. — J

If you don’t want to call what you just did here defining the word “definition” I think you merely handicap our ability to communicate, our ability to share concepts from one mind to another.

We are playing semantics with the definition of “definition” to painstakingly avoid using definitions of words. Ridiculous way of exchanging thought.

OK, I'm completely confused now! Sorry it's gone amiss for you.

.

So there is no difference between arguing about a word and communicating about a concept. — Fire Ologist

I guess if we had any hope of sorting this out, we'd need to start there. My own view is that words and concepts are quite distinct. But we can let it go.

I've not said there are no definitions, just that there are few good ones. We've seen numerous stipulated definitions in this thread. I've argued that they are insufficient. A stipulated definition cannot set out the necessary and sufficient conditions for the use of "faith", and that a better approach is to look at how the word is actually used.

You seem to agree with this, somewhat adamantly.

So I can't quite see what it is you disagree with. There is this:

Words name concepts. — Fire Ologist

Which is muddled. Not all words are nouns, so not all words name something. We do a lot more with words than just name concepts.

But to see this one must stop and look at how words are actually used.

words and concepts are quite distinct — J

But we can let it go. — J

"Concepts" versus "words" versus "whatever content X" (here, "faith"). This is the nub of all philosophy, no?

It is really difficult to step outside of language, and talk about language, using only language to do it. That's the rub of the nub.

(And it's the irony of our disagreement over words.)

This conversation is a close cousin to questions like "do you support a mind-independent reality" and "what are the forms". It's where philosophers end up when talking "what is" anything, such as "metaphysics" as you mentioned above. It's all a convoluted mess with the mind, with thoughts about things, or with language about thoughts about things, and further convoluted when we try to get two people to agree on the language about thoughts about things. It's why so many threads devolve into this same issue - "what can be said clearly, at all, ever, about anything?"

And while having these conversations, to downplay the function and necessity of words having/acquiring/being given their own definitions...seems as vain as many seem to think defining a word is vain.

My point is, we shouldn't try to avoid definitions when addressing questions "what is X". And, we, in fact, can't avoid defining our terms (which is why we shouldn't try).

You, who I am assuming think we don't need so much reliance on definitions to communicate, in reference to "discovering a definition" you said the phrase "universal agreement within a particular community." This is a definition of "definition." Right? It's too late to avoid it. Since we are now talking about my use of "definition" and you want to differ with me, you were forced to draw a clear line, provide a provisional, cursory, placeholder definition of "definition" to show a distinction between your concept of things and mine.

That is all my point is. We define when we speak. If we are to speak, we must define. Once we define, once we have communicated a concept, a definition exists, in the word, out in the world among human beings, written in stone.

We dance around the elephant we keep inviting into the room when we think we are not defining things as we speak about things.

I truly appreciate the patience with me, because I know there are many technical ways you want to use words like "concepts" and "definitions" - but technical according to Aristotle, or Wittgenstein, or Augustine, or Quine, or Dostoevsky?

There is no way to have this conversation briefly.

It's the question of "how do we know." It's "what is truth?" It's "What is meaning?" It's "What is a thing?". Same ultimate issues presented. Words-concepts-communication.

And I don't expect you to just say "wow - I never thought of it that way." We started with "what is faith' and ended up with "what do any words do?"

I have no problem saying our words give our concepts definition, and I seek that definition. That's the unspeakable elephant I dance with.

I've not said there are no definitions, just that there are few good ones. — Banno

I have to infer this by your manner saying "I've not said no," but if you are saying "there are definitions," then we agree perfectly.
And if you are saying there are few good definitions, then we also agree (and would be agreeing with Plato's Socrates as well. Precious few.)

A stipulated definition cannot set out the necessary and sufficient conditions for the use of "faith" — Banno

Ok, but must we abandon all hope for any small piece of the essence of "faith", abandon all hope for some small portion of some of those conditions that are necessarily tied to "faith"?

a better approach is to look at how the word is actually used. — Banno

That, to me, is a method for defining. It doesn't avoid a resulting definition for faith. You can avoid saying it provides a definition, but that, to me, is like doing all of the math for a complex equation, but refusing to write down the resulting answer. We are solving for X, mapping uses, but never just stating what, therefore, X is.

Not all words are nouns, so not all words name something. — Banno

Yes, and no.

Obviously there are many parts of speech besides nouns. And words like "yes" function uniquely from the basic parts of speech. I'm not talking about grammar.

When we speak, we speak about. Right? Speaking is always speaking about. We never speak (qua speaking) without speaking about some other thing.

There is the word, but, if it is a word, there also what the word is about, what the word is being used for (to use your/Witts vernacular).

Like a name. A use of "Banno" is something about you. A use of "use" is something about something else.

When I say "yes" I am doing something - it's not a noun, and there is no normal naming. But if someone else can't tell what I am doing when I say "yes", they still know what "yes" is about. They have to know what "yes" is about to be confused or satisfied with my use. "Yes" names or points to a particular use-function or meaning. If they ask "Do you want vanilla or chocolate?" and I just say "Yes", they might be confused, because they know how "yes" is normally used, and in response to "vanilla OR chocolate", a simple "Yes" names or points in a direction that does not account for the "or". Unless there was a bag full of random Strawberry or Mango ice creams, and a second bag full of vanilla or chocolate ice creams, and the person asking the question wanted to see if I want to risk a strawberry or mango surprise, or a vanilla or chocolate surprise - then "yes" to "vanilla or chocolate" makes perfect sense. But all along, "yes" pointed to or named the function of "agreement", all along, "yes" was about something. (If words have meanings/defintitions/dare-I-say-essences.)

Here is a better example. If you listen to a song sung in some language foreign to you, you might love the sound of the singer's voice, and hear the rhyme of the syllables, but none of those "words" can even be called "words" - none of the lyrics are about anything to you. It might actually be jibberish, and no language at all. But, as soon as I find what the words are about, as soon as I see how they have been used to point out something else, I can name similar words in English that might express the same meaning of the song. Translation is possible because all words name, all words point to, all words are about.

As usual, we are talking past each other.

How can you speak about anything of substance on this forum without delineating distinctions? How is any delineation not some form of definition? And now, once you admit to defining, why persist in raising "cannot set out the necessary and sufficient conditions" as if you aren't defining your terms all of the time anyway?

I know you think a person of faith, acting on their faith qua faith, is not being rational, and that faith qua faith can be used to support heinous evil. All of that may be true, but then, why would you think you have not defined something of the "rational" and given some border and color to "evil"? If one challenges your commentary, you resort to "you shouldn't define terms".

Why would you think you understand other's uses of faith if faith is something you have no use for?

You need to say more to defend your position AND/OR to deconstruct mine. You just snipe. You can do better, I think.

Take care.

First, we do not need to have at hand the essence of some thing in order to talk about it. See the "mum" example given previously. We use words with great success without knowing the essence of whatever it is they stand for. Demonstrably, since we can talk about faith wiothout agreeing on the essence of faith.

Thinking we can't use words unless we first fix their essence is muddle-headed.

Second, we can of course delineate and describe the way a word is used. I did as much using ChatGPT for "faith" a few pages back. We do not, in our usual conversations, use "faith" to mean corned beef, for example. But in other less usual circumstances, we might. So tow things: words do have ordinary uses about which we can chat, and words can nevertheless be use din all sorts of odd ways.

And here again, it is the use that is... useful.

Third, we do far more than just speak about... we command, question, name, promise... Unless you want to use the term in a very odd way, not all words are about; what's "and" about? Or "Hello"? or an expletive? Or your "yes"? Such words do not name anything, but instead do something. "Yes" does not pointed to or named the function of "agreement" (whatever that is); it is to agree.

Forth, I do not think that persons of faith are all of them irrational. What I have argued is that faith can bring about irrationality. Here it is again: when a belief is under duress, one can reconsider or one can double down. Faith can be characterised as doubling down when one ought reconsider.

Fifth, written a reply such as this exemplifies the law of diminishing returns. I'm not getting much out of your repeatedly misunderstanding what I write. Hence, perhaps, what you interpret as sniping.

It's often more difficult to come up with definitions for notions other than substance (things), since such concepts will always inhere in something else. For instance, one never had a "fast motion" without some thing moving, or "red" without there being something (light, a ball, etc.) that is red. More general principles will tend to be harder to define because they can be analogously predicated under many aspects.

So, for instance, one set of definitions in this thread has focused on faith as the persistence of belief (or even "belief without evidence," although I find the latter sort of ridiculous). But the persistence of beliefs is arguably just one thing that results from faith. St. Paul's dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus is often considered to be a quintessential example of an event defined by faith, but if fact this event involves him abandoning most of his most firmly held beliefs—beliefs that he has been up to that moment willing to fight and risk his life for.

On the flip side, the radical skeptic is also persistent in their beliefs. No evidence can move them from their skepticism, and yet this immobility is because they lack faith in anything.

The mistake here might be akin to claiming that flight is defined by the flapping of wings. While the two go together, there can be flight without flapping or flapping without flight.

Other definitions in this thread seem to use "faith" more akin to trust. People "have faith" in airplanes, doctors, etc. But this is perhaps more a sort of trust in people and institutions, as opposed to the deeper uses of "faith." Again, we might suppose there is a relationship here of the sort where faith entails a sort of trust, is not reducible to trust.

Faith, when discussed as a theological virtue, at least suggests this. It suggests fortitude in assent to the illumination of faith (perseverance and immobility), and it suggests trust, but goes beyond either of these.

I'm not getting much out of your repeatedly misunderstanding what I write. — Banno

I appreciate the organized response. The numbered paragraphs.

But I’m forced to mostly respond on your terms again. Because you don’t make many direct connections to what I actually said.

First, we do not need to have at hand the essence of some thing in order to talk about it. See the "mum" example given previously. We use words with great success without knowing the essence of whatever it is they stand for. Demonstrably, since we can talk about faith wiothout agreeing on the essence of faith.

Thinking we can't use words unless we first fix their essence is muddle-headed. — Banno

“we do not need to have at hand the essence of some thing in order to talk about it.”

You keep placing the essence or definition prior to the thing, or the word about that thing. You also said:

“Thinking we can't use words unless we first fix their essence is muddle-headed.”

“Unless we first”. I didn’t say that. I’m not giving any priority among the word, or its definition/essence, or the “some thing” the word is about.

I think your causal type prioritization of the pieces, that you think comes from me, is your own doing, it’s how you think, not me. And I can see how that would distort my meaning. I don’t drink the Wittegensteinian cool-aid, as thirstily.

I’m just saying words about things have definitions.

Words-about things-defined.
Definitions-of words-name things/concepts.
Things-defined-in words.

It is precisely the inability to place one of these as prior to the others that demands we can’t avoid defining things, if we want to actually communicate, actually deliver a concept, in words, to another. Definitions emerge as words distinguish things and distinguish themselves in use.

So you aren’t addressing what I said. You are recharacterizing with new elements, adding concepts to what I’m saying and in so doing, not seeing the essence of what I’m saying.

“We use words with great success without knowing the essence of whatever it is they stand for. Demonstrably, since we can talk about faith wiothout agreeing on the essence of faith.”

Ok, maybe, but just because we can do these things, this doesn’t address what I am saying either.

Just because we can identify words to use without “knowing” definitions doesn’t mean definitions aren’t there. So this is, to me, is a non-sequitur, or a fallacious argument. It doesn’t mean that we should have have to avoid defining our terms in a discussion that asks “what is X”.

But with “great” success? I disagree anyway. As is demonstrable in our inability to really communicate.

“we can talk about faith without agreeing on the essence of faith.”

I agree with this clause. We don’t need the whole essence or complete definition. But not with great success. And we can go through your “uses of faith” exercise or my hash out the essential elements exercise to confirm actual “success” as you say.

But overall, I disagree with your analysis quoted above. And I showed you specifically how I disagreed.

The following two mistakes are muddling your assessment of my meaning: 1 attaching some sort of causal priority to definitions/essences, (I don’t) and 2 thinking I am saying we need the full definition with all necessary sufficient conditions, or without it we have no definition at all. (never meant that either) These are features of how you think “essence” or “definition” is being used, but is not how I have used them.

Some of the other things you say deserve attention, particularly your dismissive comments on the aboutness of all words, but what do you think of the above first?

concepts will always inhere in something else. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Hi Timothy.

I see us all breaking things down into so many parts. “Inhere” could be problematic. Is this a better way of saying “participate in the forms” or my “concepts are always concepts of something”?

More general principles will tend to be harder to define because they can be analogously predicated under many aspects. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But does that mean definitions should be, or even can be, avoided if we want to ensure communication of ideas among people?

While the two go together, there can be flight without flapping or flapping without flight. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Like there might be “faith” with or without “persistence into death” or “persistence into death” with or without faith.

That is the kind of meaning as use issue that arises, begging the pursuit of something even more essential to the notion of “faith”.

You go on to mention “trust” (which I did way back in the thread as well) may be a part of what is faith. And there other aspects.

I don’t think anyone has carved out the noun “faith” which is more like a religious creed, from the act of “having faith in something” which can be more generically had. The more generic “having faith in” can just mean anything from following intuition, to trusting the words of someone else, to believing in some end without seeing the path that will get you there.

But I believe, I have faith in, our ability to define something of the essence of faith. I don’t believe Banno will suffer my resistance to Wittegensteim-speak in avoidance of definitions much longer, but I want to believe Banno could see some of my points.

I also believe, there are long, precise paths we must take to answer questions about meaning, and definition and essence, but if our answers in the end don’t make sense in some simple and naive manner as well, they are astray. We can’t forget the naive question by the time we arrive at the complex answer. We have to be able to answer “what is faith” with “faith is x, y, etc…”. Or why bother “communicating” about it, or why conclude anyone else knows what we know?

Them as I said in previous posts, I cannot make much sense of what you are saying.

I don't understand what you mean by "attaching some sort of causal priority to definitions/essences" nor how you are using "definition".

So back to diminishing returns.

“Unless we first”

“Have at hand…in order to”

These place things in order of some priority. How hard is that to follow?

I keep forgetting you are willfully blind, and blinding, in your rigorous faith in Wittgenstein.

You don’t want to see how you can’t throw away the ladder and communicate.

You don’t want to communicate, just pontificate.

Don’t know how I am using definition? I wish I could define it for you.

So much for successful discussion despite no prior essence ready to hand.

Demonstrable failure to communicate.

Thanks for this. I haven't forgotten you. I'll reply soon.

- :up:

How can you speak about anything of substance on this forum without delineating distinctions? How is any delineation not some form of definition? And now, once you admit to defining, why persist in raising "cannot set out the necessary and sufficient conditions" as if you aren't defining your terms all of the time anyway?

I know you think a person of faith, acting on their faith qua faith, is not being rational, and that faith qua faith can be used to support heinous evil. All of that may be true, but then, why would you think you have not defined something of the "rational" and given some border and color to "evil"? If one challenges your commentary, you resort to "you shouldn't define terms". — Fire Ologist

There are a few posters who engage in a pretty wild form of definition sophistry, and this is how they manage to get away with irrational posts. When someone uses a word, either they know what they mean by the word or they don’t. If they know what they mean by it then they will be able to tell you what they mean by it. If they don’t know what they mean by it then they are talking nonsense by literally saying meaningless things. If they refuse to tell you what they mean by a word but yet continue to pretend to use it, then they lack good faith and will not provide meaningful engagement.

The anti-religious in this thread hold something like the following: <Religious persons are irrational; their irrationality has something to do with ‘faith’; and I don’t have any real sense of what I mean by the word ‘faith’>. So what they are really saying is that religious beliefs are irrational. We may as well just drop the word “faith” since it is a meaningless pejorative in the mouth of the anti-religious. Hence the claim is: <Religious persons are irrational and I can’t say why>, or equivalently, <Religious persons are irrational because faith is irrational, and I can’t say what faith is beyond associating it with irrationality>.

For me that level of muddle and bias is not worth engaging. But suppose we take pity on the anti-religious and give them a lesson in philosophical argumentation. In my thread <here> I point out the difference between an assertion and an argument. “Faith is irrational,” is an assertion, not an argument (and it is by no means a definition). Note too that the inference the anti-religious has in mind is actually this, whether or not they are willing to admit it:

3. Faith is irrational
4. Anything which is based on the irrational is bad
5. Religion is based on faith
6. Therefore, religion is bad

If the anti-religious wants to do philosophy then they have to turn 3 into a conclusion. At present it is an assertion or an unsupported (and controversial) premise. So they at least need a middle term, and one way of doing that would be the following:

1e. All X is irrational
2e. All faith is X
3. Therefore, all faith is irrational

Here is the middle term that Tom was groping at earlier in the thread:

1a. Believing in the absence of sufficient justification is irrational
2a. Faith involves believing in the absence of sufficient justification
3. Therefore, faith is irrational

(See The Oxford Handbook of Religious Epistemology, linked <here>.)

Banno has at long last stumbled upon his own rationale:

1b. Obstinacy is irrational
2b. (Religious) faith involves obstinacy
3. Therefore, (Religious) faith is irrational

-

Hopefully this highlights what is actually going on in the thread. It has nothing to do with definitions; it has to do with arguments, namely arguments that the anti-religious prefer to leave unarticulated given their weaknesses. This is what is often at play when someone refuses to say what they mean by a word (and here I am thinking especially of @J, who uses this tactic gratuitously). It is, “If I say what I mean by the term then my argument will be shown weak; therefore I refuse to say what I mean.” Ergo, my first thread: Argument as Transparency.

(The answer to Banno is to <make a distinction with respect to the second premise>.)

If they know what they mean by it then they will be able to tell you what they mean by it. If they don’t know what they mean by it then they are talking nonsense by literally saying meaningless things. If they refuse to tell you what they mean by a word but yet continue to pretend to use it, then they lack good faith and will not provide meaningful engagement. — Leontiskos

Spot on. I appreciate you weighing in. I guess not everything I said is muddled-headed to everyone. (I actually know that, but appreciate your reply.)

I keep thinking Banno is smart enough to display some wisdom, or something interesting, even accidentally, in response to me, so I engage anyway. But, minimal happy accidents, many cliche and tiresome parrots channeling St. Wittgenstein, and maximal frustration strike again.

Banno doesn’t seem to understand he’s being squarely challenged by many around here and he keeps failing to respond. At all.

It is fairly miraculous how all the “muddle” never reflects on him or his methods or his “uses of words.” It’s also quite amazing to me how little self-awareness of his condescension he has, and more importantly, how little awareness of how contradictory he is, like when he “refuses to tell you what [he] means by a word but yet continues to pretend to use it.” Pretend. Like gaming. Spot on.

<Religious persons are irrational because faith is irrational, and I can’t say what faith is beyond associating it with irrationality>. — Leontiskos

I like all of your restatements, but I like this one the best. I like it best because Banno can’t see that this describes the essence of his beliefs on “faith”. All puns intended.

In my thread <here> I point out the difference between an assertion and an argument. — Leontiskos

I remember reading that. I had high hopes it would be instructive for some people. Alas…you must have confused them by using the word “difference” or something, or worse, you offered a definition (God forbid!).

Hopefully this highlights what is actually going on in the thread. It has nothing to do with definitions; it has to do with arguments, — Leontiskos

Yes, you are right. This is why Banno keeps trying to talk past me. I haven’t really gotten to the arguments. I’m just trying to establish trust and grounds for a genuine exchange, where he looks at everything like it’s a linguistic trap, or beneath his dignity as high judge of all muddle.

Banno has at long last stumbled upon his own rationale:

1b. Obstinacy is irrational
2b. (Religious) faith involves obstinacy
3. Therefore, (Religious) faith is irrational — Leontiskos

You are kind enough to use his favored analytic methods. I agree, his necessary connection between faith and obstinacy is the weakness.

I made that point with Galileo. When Galileo was arrested, he was obstinate in his beliefs under strain and duress. So, was he being a man of faith, starting a new religion? Banno dismissively said Galileo recanted. Totally missed the point. That only means Gallileo lost faith then (according to Banno’s use/definition of “faith”). Didn’t address my point, at all, as usual, which was simply that there must be something else, something more specific to faith if we are to distinguish what Gallileo held versus what a faithful person holds.

Or maybe Gallileo really almost was a martyr in Banno’s religion. Fell from grace by recanting.

I would feel like I’m being mean-spirited, but I don’t think my thoughts register in the lofty heights of Banno’s world, up above all of the ladders.

Spot on. I appreciate you weighing in. I guess not everything I said is muddled-headed to everyone. — Fire Ologist

I think your posts are very much on point.

The other bait-and-switch that usually happens in these contexts is that, when you ask someone what they mean by some word they are using, they go on a long diatribe about the complexities of lexicography and linguistic meaning. Lexicography is complex, but we don't need to plumb its depths in order to give an account of what we intend a word within one of our own sentences to mean. Indeed, in response to the lexicography questions earlier in the thread I pointed to Josef Pieper's studies on the words faith and belief, but it turns out no one was genuinely interested in lexicography at all. It's too hard. Better to query ChatGPT and call it a day.

It is fairly miraculous how all the “muddle” never reflects on him or his methods or his “uses of words.” It’s also quite amazing to me how little self-awareness of his condescension he has, and more importantly, how little awareness of how contradictory he is, like when he “refuses to tell you what [he] means by a word but yet continues to pretend to use it.” Pretend. Like gaming. Spot on. — Fire Ologist

:up:

I made that point with Galileo. When Galileo was arrested, he was obstinate in his beliefs under strain and duress. So, was he being a man of faith, starting a new religion? Banno dismissively said Galileo recanted. Totally missed the point. That only means Gallileo lost faith then (according to Banno’s use/definition of “faith”). Didn’t address my point, at all, as usual, which was simply that there must be something else, something more specific to faith if we are to distinguish what Gallileo held versus what a faithful person holds. — Fire Ologist

Yes, your point was clear and salutary. Obstinacy is an accidental property of faith, and certainly not a necessary feature. A case like Galileo shows this.

Sometimes when people utterly fail to provide arguments for their claims, it is because they view the issue as moot or unworthy of serious effort. That is likely what is happening in this thread with respect to the anti-religious posters. "Religion is irrational. Everyone knows it. Arguments are unnecessary." Of course these posters tend to do the same thing in other threads as well, but the problem is especially pronounced here.

This is unfortunate given the fact that our age is more faith-based than any previous age, and if our age does not figure out how to navigate the issue of faith/belief/testimony our societies will collapse. Most of the central disagreements in our age have only to do with the question of which authority is trustworthy. Such disagreements include things like politics, religion, medicine, history, ethics, etc. Ironically, the issue of faith in artificial intelligence and LLMs like ChatGPT is perhaps the most acute case. The most recent blowup due to different trusted authorities took place around the Covid-19 pandemic.

It's all a convoluted mess with the mind, with thoughts about things, or with language about thoughts about things, and further convoluted when we try to get two people to agree on the language about thoughts about things. It's why so many threads devolve into this same issue - "what can be said clearly, at all, ever, about anything?" — Fire Ologist

Welcome to philosophy!

you were forced to draw a clear line, provide a provisional, cursory, placeholder definition of "definition" to show a distinction between your concept of things and mine.

That is all my point is. — Fire Ologist

Then we're in accord. This is what I mean by "stipulating a definition for the purposes of discussion."

We dance around the elephant we keep inviting into the room when we think we are not defining things as we speak about things. — Fire Ologist

Well, this isn't quite so simple. Usually, when people talk about defining something, I think they have in mind more like a dictionary definition, an agreed-upon use of a word which makes it correct. But you've said, and I agree, that "stipulating a definition for the purposes of discussion" isn't like that. It's more like drawing a temporary distinction in terms so that two people can converse intelligently. I'm not sure what's elephantine here.

It's the question of "how do we know." It's "what is truth?" It's "What is meaning?" It's "What is a thing?". Same ultimate issues presented. Words-concepts-communication. — Fire Ologist

Just a suggestion: In a sense, you're right that all these Big Questions refer to, and hinge upon, each other, but by linking them up like this, they become so flabbergasting that it's hard to know where to start. It makes it sound as if you have to address them all, and all at once, in order to get any philosophical work done. In my experience, picking smaller, more tractable questions works better. You arrive at the big ones anyway, but the path is clearer.

That is all my point is. We define when we speak. If we are to speak, we must define. Once we define, once we have communicated a concept, a definition exists, in the word, out in the world among human beings, written in stone.

We dance around the elephant we keep inviting into the room when we think we are not defining things as we speak about things. — Fire Ologist

Well, this isn't quite so simple. Usually, when people talk about defining something, I think they have in mind more like a dictionary definition, an agreed-upon use of a word which makes it correct. But you've said, and I agree, that "stipulating a definition for the purposes of discussion" isn't like that. It's more like drawing a temporary distinction in terms so that two people can converse intelligently. I'm not sure what's elephantine here. — J

I think @Fire Ologist is correct in claiming that the issue is not stipulation:

What I'm calling the "wrangle" begins when someone tries to claim that the stipulation is correct. — J

I would clarify that the wrangle as we are now wrangling here, begins when someone tries to claim there are stipulations at all. — Fire Ologist

Word meaning is not actually stipulated, in the sense that meaning is determined by the speaker. What is necessary in terminological disagreements are not stipulative definitions, but rather provisional definitions or semantic narrowing or nominal definitions.

The difference lies in imposition. To stipulate a word's meaning to an interlocutor is to impose that sense of the word upon them. Instead we must seek our interlocutor's agreement, especially in the case of word-meaning. Specifying the sense of a word with a provisional definition or a narrowing of the semantic range provides this necessary room for agreement from the interlocutor. If two people are using a word in entirely different ways, then they are not successfully communicating, and the word should be dropped altogether (and replaced by the two different compositional definitions).

When you give an argument in an OP you have a responsibility to convey your meaning. You are free to use definitions which are idiosyncratic, but that will naturally lead to less engagement with the OP (because others will be less likely to agree/consent to idiosyncratic word use). It will also lead to the critique that you are using words wrongly, and this would be a just critique. A philosophy forum cannot function at all if the participants do not use words carefully and correctly.

In any case, @Fire Ologist is correct when he implies that each time we use a word we leverage a definition. A definition is what a word means, and every instance of every word has a meaning. At the abstraction of the language-group the meaning of a word is best captured by lexicography and dictionaries. At the level of the individual who speaks a sentence, the meaning of the word derives from her. This doesn't mean that her sentence is unrelated to lexicography or dictionaries or the language group, but the primary meaning comes from her and her appropriation of such linguistic realities. If we really want to know what she means by a word, then we ask her. If we cannot ask her then we will make do with more abstract approaches. But words do not exist primarily in some Platonic realm, or in dictionaries. They exist foremost on the tongues of speakers, and it is the speaker who must be queried in the first place. They may answer the query with idiosyncratic usage, and we may walk away after deciding that communication with such a person would be unduly burdensome, but it nevertheless remains the fact that the meaning of a word is found in the person who speaks it.

(The person who stipulates an idiosyncratic meaning is transgressing a convention, and it is burdensome to constantly distinguish the idiosyncratic meaning of their phonemes from the conventional phoneme meanings. All the same, in this case their meaning is not accessible via the conventions, and it still comes from the speaker. The normal and proper case occurs when there is a speaker who uses the language correctly, i.e. according to convention, and yet at the same time we understand the semantic shape to be completed and colored by their own personality and intellect—which is why familiarity with a speaker aids one in understanding their meaning, even when that meaning is not idiosyncratic.)

I appreciate the response and dialogue.

Usually, when people talk about defining something, I think they have in mind more like a dictionary definition, an agreed-upon use of a word which makes it correct. But you've said, and I agree, that "stipulating a definition for the purposes of discussion" isn't like that. It's more like drawing a temporary distinction in terms so that two people can converse intelligently. I'm not sure what's elephantine here. — J

I agree when discussing “truth” or “reality” or “faith” - a dictionary won’t do. I agree about what stipulated definitions are, namely, never to be simply judged “correct.” They are tools to facilitate or maybe start a conversation.

But I also think a few other things, particularly when the conversation is directly asking for something that a definition would address - like, a “what is faith” conversation.

Banno said when people use the word “faith” they don’t normally say “corned beef” as well. Without saying it, Banno shows what I think, and that is, there must be something incorrect about relating “faith” with “corned beef” in normal uses if these terms. Just plain incorrect (according to me, not to Banno - I dont know what Banno actually thinks). It’s a false fact that faith involves corned beef (actually I think it can be a Kosher meat, so we might squeeze corned beef into a way too long conversation about faith, so pretend Banno said “socks”’instead of corned beef.)

Likewise, and we can continue to debate this, in my view, we are not going to get away from a discussion about what faith is, without addressing “trust” (another can of worms), and I think “knowledge and belief” (cans mounting, stipulations begging for entry). And in the end, we are not simply “drawing a temporary distinction in terms so that two people can converse intelligently,” but we are conversing itself for reason, and doing so to identify bright lines like where faith ends and corned beef and socks begin. We may never say of our definition “it is finished and it is correct” but we can say “Faith has at least something to do with trust and belief in someone or something - and it would be incorrect to exclude trust and belief when considering ‘what is faith’.”

So while I don’t disagree with what you are saying, I don’t think you’ve said enough, or as much as I am saying.

I still believe I am seeing bright lines between identifiably distinct things that are worth noting in a conversation as clearly as I see them, as in “faith always involves trust, among other things.” That’s correct to me. It’s not all faith involves so I have no reason to celebrate. But it’s my first bright line in the neighborhood of faith, and a beginning to the correct definition of faith.

It makes it sound as if you have to address them all, and all at once, in order to get any philosophical work done. — J

This is precisely where I am in my philosophic growth. I currently believe the only way to discuss epistemology is to also discuss metaphysics (which includes language use) while expressly admitting your ontology (which includes physics).

What is. (Metaphysics)
How it is to me. (Epistemology)
Whether it is. (Ontology)
They all beg each other, answer each other, and each cannot be asked without asking each other.

This is way off topic but your sense of where I am coming from was right on. It is flabbergasting, but unfortunately, I think it’s the only way forward, and it is the reason philosophy is stuck (since the 1800s), and is why all of these threads meander back to these same questions.

We back into the starting gate unless we behave more like a mystic (much to the chagrin of the modern scientist.). I, unfortunately, have concluded that we scientists must treat the absurd and the paradoxical, the impossible to say, as if physical objects, if we are to say or simply know one thing.

I’m way off towards Pluto at this point. Makes one long for a simple conversation about “faith”.

But words do not exist primarily in some Platonic realm, or in dictionaries. They exist foremost on the tongues of speakers, and it is the speaker who must be queried in the first place. They may answer the query with idiosyncratic usage, and we may walk away after deciding that communication with such a person would be unduly burdensome, but it nevertheless remains the fact that the meaning of a word is found in the person who speaks it. — Leontiskos

Yes.
Some may say this justifies meaning as use, but that would misinterpret what you expressly said. No need for interpretation.

“the meaning of a word is found in the person who speaks it.”

And to the listener who listens, the meaning can then be received and reworded. So that meaning, words and persons, are all distinct objects immediately present when language is…happening.

If you are interested in my responses, please, as a common courtesy, link my name in your posts.

Otherwise, enjoy Leon's company.

Demonstrable failure to communicate. — Fire Ologist

Yep.

So while I don’t disagree with what you are saying, I don’t think you’ve said enough, or as much as I am saying. — Fire Ologist

That's fair. I could easily have added something about how even a stipulated or tentative definition is going to have to exhibit certain features, if there's to be any point to it. Which features, exactly? Lots of dispute about this. We probably want to include something that will prevent talking about "socks" as part of a discussion of what faith is. In other words, some criterion of relevance. But, apart from the obviously absurd cases, this is a lot harder than it looks.

I'll try to come back to this . . .

this is a lot harder than it looks.

I'll try to come back to this . . . — J

Telling ya… The rub of all philosophy. How can we say something about anything.

I don’t have the time, energy, brains or education to do it, but it’s never going away, from me, or human nature. The desire the know. Why is there something?

some criterion of relevance. — J

Setting some criteria of relevance, to me, is a sibling to just saying there is such a thing as a definition.

A lot of this conversation is bedevilled by the absence of any relationship with what used to be known as revealed truth. @Hanover's posts a few pages back touch on it, immediately shot down by@Banno as 'theological meanderings'. It is an article of Banno's faith than anything like religious faith has no place at the table of philosophical discourse. Yet without it, one is condemned to the sisyphean repitition of circular arguments.

In respect of 'why is there anything?', the question naturally arises in a culture which originally accepted the fact of divine creation. In the absence of divine creation, an alternative account is sought, presumably grounded in science. But that always seems to face an aporia of its own which is not surprising, as natural science presumes nature without needing to explain it. There are kinds of 'why' questions that science won't even ask, let alone seek an answer for.

Buddhism offers an alternative, as it starts not with the question 'why is there anything?' but 'why is there suffering?' - usually followed by a catalogue of the kinds of suffering which seem unavoidable for all of us, such as old age, illness and death, the loss of what one cherishes, being united with what one dislikes, and so forth. It then proceeds to analyse the deep psycho-physiological processes which give rise to the human condition, under the rubric of 'suffering and its cause'. But it still requires faith - faith that there is a cause, that it is something that can be understood, that release from it is a real possibility. But the salient point is, Buddhism still contains a kernel in religious revelation, insight into another realm of being, which I think is essential if faith is to have any meaning other than sentimentality or wishful thinking.

It is an article of Banno's faith than anything like religious faith has no place at the table of philosophical discourse — Wayfarer

:blush:

Almost. I've writ about it at some length. What's philosophically illegitimate is dependence on divine writ.

And yes, the fora do much resemble the plight of Sisyphus.

Why is there something? — Fire Ologist

Well, not anything isn't something that can be, right? :)

If you are interested in my responses, please, as a common courtesy, link my name in your posts. — Banno

First, I didn’t think you could understand me, so why bother.

Second, There are fifty things prior to my posts with Leon that you didn’t respond to. Linking your name is no use, is meaningless, towards any interest in obtaining an honest response from you.

Third, Seems muddle-headed for you expect courtesy from me.