If there were to be one, i wouldn't reply; That'd put @Jamal over.

Anyway, with the next post this thread will be of equal length to my thread.

The point is that a definition is an abstract object. — frank

Definitions are objects? I don't understand what that might mean.

all definitions are sets — frank

Do you mean that all definitions specify sets? But we can define lists and multisets and so on, which are not sets...

And you are not a set, yet (Frank=def the person to whom this post is a reply) perhaps defines you; and elephants are not sets - they are elephants.

Which brings us back to the difference between real and nominal definitions...

And where does that go?

Here's a definition of the set G: G=df{Frank, the North Pole, electrotherapy}. These items form a set, but perhaps not in virtue of having some universal which is exclusive to just them.

The idea that a definition always, or ought always, specify some set by family, genus and species is problematic.

Would universals fair any better? It's not obvious that they would.

Yeah, that was what I was wondering. There isn't one direction to go in, but multiple paths. My apologies, I've lost he thread here. It gets very complex very quickly.

In ancient logic the idea was that a definition picks out something. A bachelor is, by definition, a person, and male and not married, or holding a first degree from a university. The idea is to give the necessary an sufficient conditions. But that word, "necessary", was defined much more clearly by Kripke and subsequent logicians. The necessary a posteriori, and so on.

Alternately, one common notion is that a definition is a shortcut, replacing a longish definition with a shorter defined term: "unmarried male" with "bachelor". But of course it's not true that we can substitute the one term for the other in all cases salva veritate.

There's definitions of singular terms - also called definite descriptions, which again force a reconsideration of what it is to be necessary and sufficient.

I was tempted to go into real and nominal definitions. Supposedly the one tells us what a thing is, while the other tells us how to use a certain word, but perhaps that the distinction cannot be usably maintained.

Think I need more coffee.

Thank you for your efforts in getting us to page eight. :grin: — Jamal

A pleasure, and the least I could do after you saved Heidegger’s Downfall from the dumpster. Some more semi-pointless trouble making should easily get this to ten pages.

Normal Form
We've got this far without setting out the structure of definitions. Let's fix that.

Any statement can be put into what logicians call Normal Form. Since implication can be defined in terms of "and" and "or", a statement can be written as a sequence of predications linked by "^" (and) and "v" (or). This is called normal form

So any definition can be put in terms of a series of disjunctions and conjunctions.

The tree fern I often used as an example died. Damn pity.

It was neither a tree nor a fern. I, and most other folk, cannot give you a definition, a set of words that set out the differences between the tree fern and a tree, or a fern, and yet if I go to Cool Climate Natives and ask for a tree fern they will give me what I am after.

An infant knows who mum is, but could not provide a definite description.

Being unable to provide a set of synonyms for a term on demand is not indicative of a lack of capacity to use the term correctly.

So is "the chap who wrote Hamlet" a definition of Shakespeare?

If identity statements are true, then they are necessarily true.

So not all definitions are identity statements?

@Jamal,

Why bother with Kant. It's confused waffle. Quine and Kripke provide firmer and more fertile ground.

But to go there, we need to differentiate various sorts of definition, and differing ways to refer. That'd get you past page eight.

The National Gallery of Australia has commissioned an independent review of a major upcoming exhibition of artworks from the APY (Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara) Lands, following explosive allegations in The Australian.

The gallery said it was launching a review into the provenance and creation of works in its forthcoming exhibition Ngura Pulka - Epic Country after it was alleged that non-Indigenous arts workers painted parts of works by Aboriginal artists. — APY studios deny 'whitewashing' allegations as National Gallery launches investigation

It's illegal for non-indigenous people to pass their works off as indigenous, but indigenous people can make whatever they like and call it indigenous. — frank

Yep. That's not what was happening here.



Try https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-11/nga-launches-independent-review-into-apy-artwork/102207680

It's called "dots for dollars." — frank

Actually it was this specific incident that was the topic. Provenance and authorship are not the same as tradition, but are part of the story of an artwork. Of course a piece need not tell a story, but it is part of a story, one that sets the piece in a social context, one way or the other. Part of the story now for those pieces is that non-indigenous art was passed off as indigenous work. That has de facto devalued the work.

I don't know. Sometimes it works. — Jamal

Art uses the root "ar-", as in articulate, armour, arm, article... "to fit together". Artisans and artists fit stuff together. Artisans work with metals and stone and paint, artists with the more refined stuff of the muses - history, poetry, comedy, tragedy, music, dancing, astronomy. Hence Bachelor of Arts.

Whcih probably amounts to, while they are artisans, what we do is art.

you can probably imagine a better example — Jamal

An article I am reading, from the AAP review, has as its topic differentiating rationality from normativity (probably paywalled). It commences with an extended exposition on the way both terms have been used historically, going on to deny that rationality is identical to normativity. Given that the topic is the use of these terms, the article could hardly avoid going in to some detail, offering this up for critique. It would be silly if the article instead stipulated, ("make it clear exactly what I intend the meaning of specific words are for the purposes of that particular discussion" — ) rationality and normativity and then claimed "look, they are different", refusing to have anything to do with further discussion of their use. Such a process closes of any criticism - "youa re just using the word differently"

...you're just calling into question the very project of trying to understand Being and Time. — Jamal

Well, yes, indeed. It's that same point of methodology. Dare I say that part of the reason the Germans are considered difficult is their stipulations close off criticism; their terms construct a linguistic bubble for themselves, separated from the rest of us; not unlike the artists and the artisans mentioned above.

And of courser that's not a process peculiar to the Germans. Talk of qualia does something similar, as does formal logic, private language, and so on.

So there is a methodological choice here, after constructing one's bubble, between choosing to live inside it, and trying to open it up.

And Davidson's On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme fits here, as a demonstration that such bubbles can never be wholly discrete, independent.

All this is saying is that perhaps there are better ways to articulate such things - and that's the place of philosophy; fixing the plumbing.

WHy? From what little I've seen he seems to fall into the same problems.

The question then is what more is involved, and what Adorno's definition shows us.

Is a headpiece, of feathers and gum, prepared with care for one's own use in a ritual dance, a piece of art? It fits into an important narrative, with robust meaning, yet it is embedded in magic, not yet removed from the lie of being true. Each of the men prepare their own - they are not specialised artists.

So here perhaps we have a failed definition that regardless extends our understanding of art and of definitions...

Page 6.

Personally I wouldn't mind if we used 'existence' for 'Dasein,' or something like that. — plaque flag

The analysis of existence that followed from the work of Frege and Russell is to my eye far better than that given by the Germans. I would not be happy to have it befuddled in this way.

Isn't English crammed with imports though ? — plaque flag

The point is that words with a history are less suspect than those invented in the comfort of one's armchair.

EDIT: actually you did say that the definition of art I gave might be useful. — Jamal

I had a brief chat with an economist yesterday about art. There is an amusing fiasco emerging in Australia's art business in which it seems that white fellas have been "guiding" indigenous artists so that they produce more saleable work...

The conversation yesterday was about how this ruins the story of a piece; and the implicaiton was that art objects carry with them a narrative, and that it is largely this narrative that determines the value of the piece.

Your comments had me puzzling over the difference between an artist and an artisan. I had thought of this previously as a difference in the narrative, but if one takes your definition, there is something of ritual involved as well - magic involving ritual.

Unfinished musings.

Fair question. I'm a fan of Austin, who's method involves the close and detailed analysis of the terms of our language, the "tools of trade"; I use that sort of analysis in my own considerations, having the OED and various etymological dictionaries at hand. This is quite a different process to mere stipulation, seeking an understanding of the historical development of terms and their interrelationship. Rather than closing the conversation off, this approach invites further commentary and comparison.

But it doesn't go down well in a forum. such as this, where if any attention is paid at all it's in order to point out how irrelevant it is.

A term such as Dasein is stipulated. It's what folk now call a term of art, a neologism, having no history, or rather not relating to any etymology, imported into English with a vast baggage. It's no good to reject the use of Dasein, so one might look to the use; but notice that the place the word is mostly used is in discussions of what it means... These are grounds for suspicion.

I gave the example above of using a definition at the commencement of an argument. That's not problematic, indeed it is setting up the furthering of the discussion by admitting the limitations of context, and so inviting critique.

But I came to that conclusion through consideration of Wittgenstein's meaning as use; the (meaning of the) concept is the way it is used. We check understanding of a concept by checking that it is used as expected.

One form of reification is thinking that some set of synonyms - the definition - can set out the whole of the use of a concept, as if it were setting it in bricks and mortar. Something like this perhaps sits behind the belief in the efficacy of definitions in settling a difference of opinion.

It's rarely that simple.

A bad definition, by contrast closes debate, it says "we will be using the definition this way, so don't point out any flaws in doing so" — Isaac

A footnote, that doing this at the start of a specific argument is agreeable. "Here's what I mean, and this is what follows".

Someone else who wants to make this thread all about me. :grin:

On the bright side, doing so should get us past 8 pages. :rofl:

SO the definition of Art that gave yesterday works by urging one to re-think what is involved in the concept of art. No doubt it has some impact when one comes across it embedded in its original context, but to my eye last night it seemed to be using too closed a notion of art; I was focused on the ritual that is involved in casting an incantation, comparing that with the ritual involved in performatives.

But overwhelmingly I agree that ".. it’s in the use of term that we can understand the meaning of concepts, not primarily by definitions", and indeed I've taken this further, suggesting elsewhere that the notion of a concept is a reification of the use of the term at issue; that all there is to a concept is the use of the associated words.

You and banno apparently don't like the fact I think definitions are important. — T Clark

It seems to me that you have entirely missed what was being argued.

Taking a concept and analysing it is most of the work of philosophy.

Stipulating a definition and insisting that it not be questioned mitigates against such conceptual analysis.

I gather you disagree with one or both of these.

Is that so?

Then Banno stuck his nose in in his usual smug, bullshit, lazy way. He pretends he's involved but he doesn't put any effort in. — T Clark

Goodness.

Which of my replies to you has pissed you off so?

...where does that leave us? — Janus

Presumably, and hopefully, doing some decent conceptual analysis. You know, philosophising.

It's a bit of a puzzle to me that folk do not understand this. The 40% who answered "I'm not OK with it" are in the wrong place.

Any argument will have its grounding assumptions or premises. — Janus

Again, questioning those assumptions is basic to doing philosophy.

Alternately, how the question is framed often is the issue. Folk are prone to uncritical acceptance of a naive or pre-philosophical position.


It might help if you provide instances of such transgressions. But then again, that's off-topic. If you have complaints about my posts, the best approach is to let me know at the time, or pass them to the mods. Bitching about them, off-topic, in this thread is a bit shallow.

https://www.livescience.com/11010-death-experiences-linked-oxygen-deprivation.html
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-lack-of-oxygen-cause-me-to-see-stars-in-my-eyes-even-when-theyre-openhttps://slate.com/news-and-politics/2002/10/what-s-the-deal-with-the-bright-light-you-see-before-dying.html
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-near-death-experiences-reveal-about-the-brain/
https://www.salon.com/2017/02/04/a-new-study-explores-some-of-the-most-common-myths-about-this-uncommon-experience_partner/

And so on.

Some meat for the bones of the OP:

fragments of consciousness
A thread about Zizek and Chalmers.

Nice.

I don't see that these two are not incompatible.

Of course, the other way to write a dictionary is on historical principles; as an account of the development of the language over time.

But it's a big dictionary.

Kale, again. Despite being surrounded by bullshit, both literal and figurative, kale can have a place on the plate. Just wash it first.

There's more ways to view the world than mere Peircean semiotics. (Thumb nose, sniffle, pull shirt)

When the retina is deprived of oxygen, it fails to send a signal to the brain, which is interpreted as white light.

Hypoxia mistaken for ontology.

Beliefs are truth-functional though, and art in the service of false beliefs is thereby a lie. — Jamal

It's more like one of the the hoi polloi, not the chair, attempting to adjourn the meeting. They can say the words but the words are, so to speak, a lie.

Sometimes, often, I want to examine the substance and details of a particular position. Getting into arguments about the meaning of words can make that impossible — T Clark

Getting into arguments about the meaning of words is examining the substance and details of a particular position.

good point. So if we are to get to page five I’ll either have to say that art was never spiritual or that adjourning a meeting is a lie.

So I’ll go for the latter. But modify it slightly to say that performatives are not truth-functional, they are not either true nor false - much like art. Semi-pointless troublemaking, of course.

doesn’t adjourning a meeting require spirits and Demons, or at least ghosts in the machine? It’s not like turning off a tap; nothing physical happens - not until folk get up to leave, but thats the consequence of the incantation, not the implementation.

so I must be one of the untrue Scotsmen who do not understand art. Teach me; how else can naming a ship be distinguished from magic, other than by their being seperate instances of the same thing?

I suspect Adorno wants to grant a special status to art that I might deny.

all the proper observances must be met for the incantation to work. Sure.

I mean it literally. You cast the spell: “ I name this ship the SS Quagmire”; and the world is changed!

apparently: