I would, but right now I’ve got Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana” in my head and I can’t shift it.

Fair enough comrade.

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.

It seems to me that even 'nice' conservatives, don't like to have their world reformatted, so that it becomes more inclusive of those they all often call 'them.'
I don't want to sweep any viewpoint aside so I understand the last paragraph I quoted from you but I do want to challenge 'conservative ideology' 'vigorously,' and defeat it 'totally,' in the minds of as many of our species as possible, so that our species can finally understand that 'gated, secured, ideology driven, privileged, conserved, small communities, is not the way for our species to progress in a VAST universe.
The way forward is as one united planet/species. — universeness

But this just strikes me as unhinged rhetoric. I mean, who are you talking to here? Who are you trying to impress? What do any of these proud declarations on TPF actually achieve?

Indirect realists argued that we can't trust that perception informs us about what the world is like because experience is, at best, representative of the world and its nature. — Michael

If x is representative of y then x by definition informs us about what y is like, no?

Meh! — universeness

That’s fair. I did wonder if I was being too soft there.

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

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.

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.)

Tried it. It was too close to black so it just blended in with the other text.

Thank you for adding more complexity to the problem. :wink:

Your email platform’s classification of the email as spam might be to do with the fact that the domain doesn’t have a DMARC record published, in which case I’ll need to fix that myself rather than getting PlushForums to do it.

Maybe that’s causing the other problems, but it doesn’t account for the fact that people are notified about messages from me but not about those from others.

I guess I could make the links a bit darker.

Thanks. I'll wait a while to see if anyone else has more to say about it, then I'll send an email to support. They usually respond quickly.

I didn't have it turned on for myself. I do now if you want to send another.

I’m currently in Kazakhstan and they’re native here, filling the same niche as their relative, the European starling, does in Europe. They hang about outside where I’m working, demonstrating their impressive mimicry.

Back to the topic: if people can send PMs among themselves to test this, I’d be grateful.

But if this is a problem of delimitation, so may be a rigid application of your thesis? — Baden

Hey that’s not fair!

But you’ve given me an idea for a discussion about wildlife nationalism, something I’ve always found weird.

Definitely sublimated xenophobia.

Send me a test message, I have it enabled — Wayfarer

The members who reported this problem are receiving email notifications for PMs sent by me, but not for those sent by others, so I can’t check if this is a general problem by sending a PM from my own account.

Oh, and by the way, I hate Indian Mynahs — Wayfarer

It’s weird how many Australians have said the same thing since I became a myna-enthusiast. Americans are the same with the European starling. They’re amazing birds, and your hatred is sublimated xenophobia. (I’m half joking, so don’t take offence. Only half though)

Blame the idiots who introduced them.

Thank you for your effort of fixing this bug. I am sure that the problem will be solved soon. — javi2541997

Your optimism is like wind beneath my administrative wings.

So far it's just you two I know about. I might start a thread to ask everyone.

I should point out that TPF runs on a hosted SaaS (software as a service) platform called PlushForums, which I signed up to when I started the site, so I don't have access to the code and I can't fix any bugs. What I'm doing right now is determining what I need to put in an email to PlushForums support, if indeed there is something wrong.

Maybe it's that you and I have a different approach to philosophy. Now that you've started actively participating in discussions again, it seems to me you focus more specific philosophers and works. In those cases, the context of the discussion can take care of a lot of the potential misunderstandings. I came to philosophy with my own understanding of how the world works, the nature of reality, how discussions should proceed. I also came from a profession where, given an audience which is often non-technical, defining terms was very important. — T Clark

On the one hand I somewhat disagree with your characterization of my approach. This discussion is a good example: in the OP I quote Kant, but not because I'm interested in how his position on definitions fits with his philosophy in general; it's just because I happened to be reading that passage in Kant and it made me think about the odd division on this forum between those who want definitions up front and those who don't. In my "Magical powers" discussion it was the same thing: reading something in Nietzsche made me think about the idea of the disenchantment of the Enlightenment, and I explored it in my own way while attempting to synthesize various thinkers.

On the other hand I somewhat agree. I am certainly more interested in approaching philosophical questions through the thinking of great thinkers than I am in formulating my own personal system. I do notice that you tend to personalize the issues, as you have done here, and that is indeed very different from my approach. I'm not saying it's bad or uninteresting; it's just very difficult for me to find a way of engaging with it (although I'm doing okay right now).

But the issue here for me is: how does my famous-philosopher-centric approach to philosophy lead me to think the problem with "fruitless discussions" that "never make any progress toward actually dealing with any interesting philosophical issues" is an excessive focus on definitions? Conversely, how does your own approach to philosophy, based on a rich personal history that has allowed you to develop your own unique and coherent philosophy, lead you to think that the problem is actually not enough definition at the start of these discussions? After all, what is right for engineering may be wrong for philosophy.

I think of it a bit like this: in software engineering it may be impossible to accurately estimate the duration of a project if that project is to build something brand new, whereas the construction of yet another e-commerce website or chat application, or in a different field, yet another fan-type cable-stayed bridge--these may be far easier to estimate, because there are standards and precedents and reasonably certain expectations. Where am I going with this? I think I want to say that the latter is the definition-centric one and the former is more like philosophy, where "planning is guessing". That is, in philosophy and innovation, things have to be kept open to a significant degree; or to put it differently, we have to realize that things just are open.

I think I use the writings of philosophers differently than some others on the forum do. I use them to test my understanding. If I find someone whose ideas resonate with mine, they can help me refine and extend my understanding. That's why Collingwood and Lao Tzu are so important to me. I've always disliked Kant, but more recently I've found that some of his ideas are similar to those of Lao Tzu. His somewhat different approach has been interesting. I think maybe the discussions I start, and often those I join, are more free form and are not tied down to specific works and philosophers. I often avoid those more specific discussions because I don't know enough to participate usefully. — T Clark

As I say, I don't think my discussions are tied down to the works of philosophers. In both of the examples I mentioned, nobody else needed to know anything more about the philosophers beyond the quotations, because I was not exploring the wider thought of those thinkers (not that there's anything wrong with that).

This is all very puzzling.

Thanks.

To be extra certain I've sent you both PMs. Check your email inboxes. Then we can progress to the next step if necessary.

Can you folks please confirm the following:

1. You do not receive email notifications for private messages, but you do receive them for other things (mentions etc.)

2. You have checked the box in your preferences for "Email when I receive private messages"

Thanks

The difference between a definition and a stipulative definition is somewhat collapsible if you stipulate you are referring to X "in its common use" or "according to its dictionary definition" to avoid the impression that your argument rests on a particular interpretation that might be unfamiliar to the reader. And if, to the contrary it does, you stipulate that interpretation. — Baden

According to the way I've put things in the OP, the former is the type of definition necessitated by X's ambiguity, where X is what I referred to as an equivocal term--and I conceded that these definitions are often required to begin a debate--and the latter is stipulative definition proper, which I also admitted was a good thing, whether to define a technical usage or to restrict the discussion to a specific avenue (although I may not have made it so explicit).

The other kind of definition I said was just fine was the kind that we aim for in a discussion, what I called explicative definition. I'm not actually sure if my taxonomy stands up to scrutiny--e.g., maybe all beginning definitions are stipulations--but it was at least the stipulated usage I was trying to adhere to in the OP.

Both seem potentially helpful avenues towards discussion. In the process of explanation, is definition any more than a tool to increase clarity and discursive efficiency such that what and when you define need not be based on any general precept but simply what you want to do in the conversation? — Baden

I am coming round to regretting the clickbait title of this discussion. However, I still feel like defending the thesis: A definition of a philosophical concept might be required at the beginning of a discussion only in the case that the term is equivocal [or a stipulative definition is required].

There is more to be said here but I need to think about it.

A conservative doesn't look back throughout history and try to turn back the clock after thousands of years, right? That's not conservatism — Tom Storm

I’m probably taking this out of context and I haven’t read your debate with schop, but…

The distinction that’s usually made is between conservatives and reactionaries, where the latter want to turn the clock back, or at least say they do, appealing to past glory. The interesting thing, and I think you were saying something similar, is that reactionaries can be radical. The Nazis are the best example. And the thing to notice about that is that the German conservatives went along with them, even though they thought them extreme and ridiculous. Disappointed leftists rightfully blame the German communists for ignoring the threat of the Nazis and persisting in their refusal to ally with the social democrats while the Nazis swept to power, but we shouldn’t let the conservatives off the hook either.

I see the basic driving idea in conservatism to be the preservation of the existing power and class structures, with which the economic status quo goes hand in hand. — Janus

Yes, only that's been labelled neoliberal.
There is - or there was - a brand of conservative who fits that image, but then adds anotherr dimension in the form of the obligations that go with privilege. — Vera Mont

I think the point is that the preservation of hierarchy and power is central in both versions of conservatism. I said the same thing as Janus earlier in the discussion:

For me, if there is a core of conservatism it’s a basic suspicion of Utopianism and of the idea of the “perfectibility of man”; a resultant pragmatic attitude to politics that aims to maintain a harmonious community in which change happens only slowly and organically on the basis of experience rather than on the basis of doctrines and principles. Of course, this is to represent it in its best light, according to its self-image, and I can also describe it differently: a pragmatic attitude to politics that aims to maintain traditional hierarchies and relations of power, which are regarded as natural. — Jamal

Here I am not describing two kinds of conservatism; I’m describing the same thing in two different ways. What Janus termed the “preservation of the existing power and class structures” not only characterizes neoliberal conservatism (if indeed this is even conservatism), but pretty much all conservatism. The function of social harmony, resistance to change, and the preservation of tradition is the maintenance of the status quo.

(By the way Vera, I’m not assuming you don’t agree with this or don’t understand it; I just think it’s interesting to explore)

The nice stuff like philanthropy, charity, a concern for the poor and unfortunate, and the idea that privilege entails responsibility (nobless oblige)—these are not separate from or in opposition to the preservation of hierarchy and power. Rather, they are the same thing. They are how traditional conservatism operates.

To care for the poor and unfortunate, to reduce conflicts between the classes, to reduce the abuse of servants and workers by their masters and managers—this is what a person wants if they care about people and about the stability of society while at the same time also believing that hierarchy is natural and that progress towards a more egalitarian society is potentially dangerous and destructive.

The way I think about it is in terms of the personal relationship between a benevolent aristocrat and his valet, his personal male servant. One example is the relationship between Frodo and Sam in The Lord of the Rings, which incidentally reveals better than anything just how very conservative, but also humane and warm-hearted, Tolkien was—and light-years away from anything like a neoliberal conservatism. The relationship is one of love and respect, but there is never any question of who is the senior partner: Sam’s role is to serve his master. The crux is that everyone should know their place, while this does not (according to the conservative) necessarily mean that the workers, servants, peasants and so on are abused and disrespected.

It seems to me that people want to make a distinction between nice conservatism and nasty conservatism. My view in a nutshell is that the nice version, precisely in its niceness, functions to curtail freedom and protect power.

Whether this is a bad thing or not is the key ideological difference: conservatives do not believe it is possible, advisable, or ethical to attempt to wipe out hierarchy on the basis of principles of egalitarianism. Others, like me, do.

However, I still think we have a lot to learn from intelligent, “nice” conservatism, and its arguments might be seen to have gained a lot of power since the disastrous and violent attempts at radical change in the twentieth century. So I do think the concerns of traditional conservatism have to be faced up to rather than swept aside.

Interesting post, and maybe I’ll reply properly tomorrow, but for now I’ll just mention that thanks to the Aeon article that @Wayfarer linked to above, I’ve downloaded Collingwood’s Essay on Philosophical Method. I’ve read bits of his work before and always liked him.

Sure.

They might be cases of equivocal terms, which I agreed often ought to be defined.

I don't think God is such a concept, but capitalism, yeah I see that.

democratic — universeness

:down:

monarchistic — universeness

:up:

Thanks!

Was it not possible to go for a 'suspension style' cooling off period? — universeness

It was possible, but that’s not what I chose to do. What I saw of his posts did not make me think a suspension would be the better choice.

I banned @Nickolasgaspar for refusing moderation following a request that he refrain from attacking people personally.

:up:

Damn, that’s what I was reaching for. Forgot it was Father Ted.

I hope you don't mind if I jump in here, even though I'm not a mathematician and haven't really done any mathematics for thirty years.

My view is that there might be such a thing as a non-math brain, but it's rarer than people think. It's a bit like music: lots of people say "I'm tone deaf" but in my experience with some coaxing and a little light training they can learn to sing in tune, identify intervals and so on. In both cases it goes back to a bad education.

I did mathematics in my engineering degree but haven't used it since, hence I can't do it any more. Like music, it demands constant practice to stay on the horse, and without that it becomes very difficult to get back on.

I guess these are common observations or even platitudes, but I think they're importantly true.

One thing I can't do well is games, like chess and poker. I don't think there's something about my brain that caused me to turn out like this, more like a psychological thing, a neurosis or whatever. Similarly, telling oneself and others that one is borderline innumerate might just reinforce a psychological block that stands in the way of your mathematical genius.

I also advocate for getting rid of old bad traditions and backwards cultural norms. — universeness

Hear hear! Down with bad things!

I think (?) inferentialism would say yes, but of course we have to think of all possible inferences involving 'define.' — plaque flag

Is that what inferentialism entails? That's a bummer.

You're in danger of forcing me to read Brandom.