I also didn’t bother following along when he began analyzing the poetry, and skipped to the end, which didn’t seem to be saying very much. Could be I’m missing out, but what I took away from it was that Collingwood is a good one to read on this stuff. (Self-reliance doesn’t imply that you shouldn’t read books, only that you shouldn’t get all your ideas from books.)

I also didn’t bother following along when he began analyzing the poetry, and skipped to the end, which didn’t seem to be saying very much. Could be I’m missing out, but what I took away from it was that Collingwood is a good one to read on this stuff. (Self-reliance doesn’t imply that you shouldn’t read books, only that you shouldn’t get all your ideas from books.) — Jamal

I was thinking after I wrote that last post - Making a definition in poetry is like explaining a joke.

Making a definition in philosophy is (sometimes) like explaining a joke. I think that was kind of the point of the article.

Cool, we’re on page 3. Gotta beat @Banno’s 8 page discussion on definitions from three years ago.

A definition is a statement that specifies the correct use of a term. — Jamal

I disagree. I define a term when I want people to understand the manner in which I am using it. Rarely is the manner in which I am using the term the only manner it should be used.

That’s fine with me Arne. Maybe read the rest of it.

Cool, we’re on page 3. Gotta beat Banno’s 8 page discussion on definitions from three years ago. — Jamal

Well if we're playing top trumps, Ogden and Richards managed 295 pages on a single word. And here is a snippet to function as trailer:—

... we have only to notice that if we speak about defining words we refer to something very different from what is referred to, meant, by 'defining things.' When we define words we take another set of words which may be used with the same referent as the first, ie.,we substitute a symbol which will be better understood in a given situation. With things, on the other hand, no such substitution is involved. A so-called definition of a horse as opposed to the definition of the word 'horse,' is a statement about it enumerating properties by means of which it may be compared with and distinguished from other things. There is thus no rivalry between 'verbal' and 'real' definitions.

It might help resolve the difficulty with the science and engineering brigade, too. And note the use/mention distinction making an early appearance in the history of philosophy.

I was wondering about that distinction when I was writing the OP, whether I should distinguish between necessary and sufficient conditions as criteria for the use of a term and n&s conditions as properties of a thing.

I downloaded that book when you first linked to it. Looks interesting.

...the Banno approach--semi-pointless trouble making. — Baden

I'm so pleased that you noticed.

That lost me... — T Clark

May I ask, why do you think it lost you? I surmise that you didn't think it wrong, as such.

The notion of core meanings with vast penumbras, and of poetry providing knowledge, I think are both problematic.

What I generally do at about this point in the discussion, is bring out the weapon of mass destruction that is The Meaning of Meaning, by Ogden and Richards. It is the definitive text, and to my mind an object lesson in the futility of trying to define a word and thereby divorcing meaning from context.

When I say 'context', I invite you to imagine not just the words around the word in question, but also the armchair around the philosopher and the ever-collapsing political order in which they are necessarily embedded. — unenlightened

I would say, that context provides the most significant aspect of meaning in most cases. But a lot of people don't want to deal with context when discussing meaning because it can be very tricky. So they might prefer to talk about definitions. I like to distinguish between immediate context, and secondary context. Immediate context is the mind of the individual philosopher using the word, the person's thinking. Secondary context is the individual's environment, this would include the armchair.

It is good to recognize this order, because we must go through the perspective of the writer to get to the writer's environment, if we want a proper understanding of what the writer is saying. If I were to take the environment as the primary context, then I would proceed from my own perspective of the environment, and impose my understanding of the environment onto the writer. This could cause a faulty interpretation of meaning, a misunderstanding. Therefore I have to take the writer's words first, as an indication of what the writer is thinking, and then build a perspective of the writer's environment from this, rather than imposing my understanding of the environment onto the writer's words, in order to have a proper understanding of what has been said.

Gotta beat Banno’s 8 page discussion on definitions from three years ago. — Jamal

I'll try to help.

The point of the OP of that thread was a fairly simple one, that definitions do not, in a very important sense, give us meaning.

Look up the definition of a word in the dictionary.

Then look up the definition of each of the words in that definition.

Iterate.

Given that there are a finite number of words in the dictionary, the process will eventually lead to repetition.

If one's goal were to understand a word, one might suppose that one must first understand the words in its definition. But this process is circular.

There must, therefore, be a way of understanding a word that is not given by providing its definition.

Now this seems quite obvious; and yet so many begin their discussion with "let's first define our terms". — Banno

There was also @Mikie's thread, to which I contributed this:

I have a friend who refuses to eat kale because of the bullshit surrounding the supposed superfood. I have explained to him that just as the bullshit is not a reason to eat kale, it is not a reason not to eat kale. It's irrelevant to the decision to eat kale. — Banno

Like kale, definitions might have a place on the plate, with the right accompaniments and in the right quantity.

Like kale, definitions might have a place on the plate, with the right accompaniments and in the right quantity. — Banno

:up:

why do you think it lost you — Banno

Because poetry wasn't the subject of the discussion. Because figuring out the language is part of the experience of poetry. Because providing definitions would, in many cases, distract from the experience of the poetry. Because poetry works on a different part of the mind than philosophy or prose. Because ambiguity in poetry is a feature while in philosophy its a bug. Because I'm not interested in the subject in relation to poetry.

Ah, so "lost" as in lost interested, not "lost" as in lost track.


If I have it right, McGuiggan claims that Collingwood differentiates the language of poetry from that of science with the claim that scientific words have nice clean edges whereas poets use words that are fuzzy or pliable around the edges; but despite this a poet still aims at clarity.

This all smells a bit of the semiotic notion that words stand for things; or at least that clarity is obtained in terms of "species" and "genus". So "For Collingwood, the reason for this difference is not skin-deep: it’s because concepts in poetry have soft, porous edges. They bleed into one another: when you talk about death, you are always also, even if to a minimal extent, talking about countless other things."

I suspect a different account might be had. The poem is a showing, not a saying.

But even that can be undermined, and so might be wrong:

What are you trying to say? When you asked
me that I closed my laptop, offended. Why? It never mattered what
I said. — Will Harris

It never mattered what I said. and we are back to the Derangement of Epitaphs.

Because figuring out the language is part of the experience of poetry. Because providing definitions would, in many cases, distract from the experience of the poetry. — T Clark

I believe this is the point, or part of it. There is a kind of clarity that doesn’t depend on definitions. Poetry much more than prose aims for precision. Unlike prose, good poetry doesn’t settle for the handy phrase or for common imagery. Its metaphors are bespoke, not off the rack. Clichés are to be avoided because they do our thinking for us (and imagining, feeling, etc), or they shut out thinking; and the same could be said of some up-front definitions in philosophy.

I think this is a good insight but as I say I have not yet bothered to follow the article’s substantive argument, which is in the poetry analysis (I presume).

The point of the OP of that thread was a fairly simple one, that definitions do not, in a very important sense, give us meaning. — Banno

Yes, but I think many in this discussion would say that it doesn't follow from this, from the circularity of definition and the primacy of use, that one should avoid beginning their discussions with "let's first define our terms". This is because in defining terms they merely want to remove ambiguity, direct the discussion to what they're interested in, etc., rather than supplying exhaustive criteria or an ultimate ground.

I just realized I left something out. I love dictionaries, thesauruses, lists of rhyming words, etymologies. I love definitions. I like to take a word I think I understand and see if I can write a useful definition. It's harder than it should be but satisfying when you come up with a good one. My favorite; egregious - conspicuously bad. I don't remember where I got that.

Definitions are not some formalistic, regimented requirement of mechanical language. They are something to play with, juggle, kick down the street.

Clichés are to be avoided because they do our thinking for us (and imagining, feeling, etc), or they shut out thinking; — Jamal

:up:

They are default bot as generic soul of a tribe.

The poem is a showing, not a saying. — Banno

Somewhere I picked up the theory that paintings exist to teach us how to see the world in a new way. Maybe poems are like that, telling us where to look, how to look, at no-longer-so-ordinary things.

They are something to play with, juggle, kick down the street. — T Clark

:up:

Definitions are [ serious ] poems.

Here’s a definition:

Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth — Adorno, Minima Moralia

I’ll do my best to interpret this gnomic utterance. Magic, the ancient practice involving the supernatural, attends to the particularity of things in terms of spirits and demons, believing or pretending that there really are such entities, which can be invoked or defended against with incantations. This is untrue. There are no spirits and demons.

Art was the means by which magic was performed, with fetishes, amulets, symbolic carvings and decorations, and also ritual music and dance. But art did not decline along with the decline of magic rituals and beliefs; and now, in invoking and manipulating the spirits of things in its works—in bringing out the meaning of things in their interconnectedness and in their irreducible particularity, in treating things as spiritual rather than as specimens for scientific study—art continues to perform magic but liberated from the need to claim that there are supernatural entities or that it has the power to influence nature and events.

Adorno quotes his own definition in his lecture course, An Introduction to Dialectics, to illustrate the difference between a “vulgar” definition and a good, philosophical one, his own being an example of the latter, of course. His point is that his definition is only meaningful to someone who is responsive to art and who is able to understand it. Thus he is explicating a concept, allowing it to unfold in a meaning-full context. In a sense, then, whether an explicative definition comes at the start or concludes a work or discussion is irrelevant. Similarly, we can make arguments by beginning with a statement of the conclusion—indeed I think this is the clearest and most common way of presenting arguments in philosophy.

Over the course of a few lectures he argues against the dependence on definitions in philosophy, and one of his arguments is pretty much the same as @Banno’s, about the circularity of definition and the primacy of use (in Adorno’s terms, the life of the concepts), although in Adorno’s case it’s wielded to show that Hegelian dialectics is the best philosophy for explicating the truth of concepts. The aim is something like allowing concepts to speak rather than imposing others on them.

Every concept is indeed internally dynamic, and the task is somehow to do justice to this dynamic character. And here it is often enough language itself that will have to furnish the canon for the appropriate use of concepts. — Adorno, An Introduction to Dialectics

That is to say, it’s in the use of a term that we can understand the meaning of concepts, not primarily by definitions. I guess this is about what we should expect definitions to do: should they help us think new thoughts or should they keep our thoughts on the rails?

My only complaint here would be if Adorno - and i am happy to have him copying my ideas - were to restrict magic to art.

Here's some more magic. I go to the local and hand over a piece of paper and they give me a long black. Or I and a few hundred others all turn up at the same time at the Corner Hotel, walk into a room with a sticky floor, and Larkin Poe play us some music - their just happening to turn up here and now, having come from the other side of the world. Or that I get to plant whatever flowers I like in my front garden, but you do not.

There doesn't seem to be any etymological relation between spelling and casting spells, but there ought be.

Certain sounds and certain marks on paper structure the world around us; and I do not mean that in the bland way of idealism. This piece of paper counts as money, this coordination of behaviours is a concert, this piece of ground is my property. These all happen because we take recursive stipulation seriously.

paintings exist to teach us how to see the world in a new way. — plaque flag

And as soon as you stipulate that, I want an artwork that doesn't teach you to see the world anew.

The very act of stipulating the rule enables its breaking.

And as soon as you stipulate that, I want an artwork that doesn't teach you to see the world anew. — Banno

:up:

Sure. So now we bring in Hegel and talk about an unstable system of semantic norms (bag of memes) that always tumbles forward and yet upward as it gains complexity.

But art did not decline along with the decline of magic rituals and beliefs; and now, in invoking and manipulating the spirits of things in its works—in bringing out the meaning of things in their interconnectedness and in their irreducible particularity, in treating things as spiritual rather than as specimens for scientific study—art continues to perform magic but liberated from the need to claim that there are supernatural entities or that it has the power to influence nature and events. — Jamal

:up:

I must invoke Bordieu and maybe Berger though. Identity metaphors. Subtle sigils. Didactic art, concretely instilling the latest virtue. 'True' class is taste, conspicuous sublimated consumption. Maybe commodity fetishism ? Or fetishism of the appropriate consumption style ?

Perhaps its magic (art's) is trapped in a flaming circle. We keep artists from confusing the engineers who keep the air conditioning running the cathedral museum. (I love art, just to be clear.)

Similarly, we can make arguments by beginning with a statement of the conclusion—indeed I think this is the clearest and most common way of presenting arguments in philosophy. — Jamal

:up:

It's cast forward into the future as result, organizing what logically precedes but chronologically follows it.

That is to say, it’s in the use of a term that we can understand the meaning of concepts, not primarily by definitions. — Jamal

I think we can look to how bots learn. (?) Structuralism was/is right. The meaning of an individual concept is never strictly and luminously present before some inner eye. Sentences are tools that have their meaning in the context of a lifeworld. We understand that a hammer is for driving nails. We can understand the what-for of a claim in this or that context in the same way. [ I could be wrong, but goodish style demands I punch out declarations. ]

The hermeneutic circle ( implicit in the above and letting concepts speak) is (I claim) just hanging around in a world (the world of baseball, the world of mathematics, the world of Heidegger scholarship) and picking up how and why various phrases are picked up and swung.

Adorno means it almost literally though, whereas the ideas of commodity fetishism and social practice as magic are metaphorical.

Good points though.

These all happen because we take recursive stipulation seriously. — Banno

That’s quite interesting. Recursive how?

Adorno means it almost literally though, — Jamal

As if casting a spell will actually raise the dead ? Or make it rain ?

In the sense that the same practice carried on without that lie.

In the sense that the same practice carried on without that lie. — Jamal

Perhaps the dead are still raised, but it's only 'internally' ? Metaphorically.