Question I would like to know more about the (supposed) difference between dictionary and philosophical definitions. There is a free access introduction by Norman Swartz on the Internet. Swartz says that dictionary definitions are "reports of common usages". My problem is that dictionaries (try to) explain what words MEAN in common usages. Even if you accept that there is not more to meaning than usage itself, dictionaries seem to report THEIR UNDERSTANDING of usage, which is something quite different from usage. For instance, when dictionaries quote writers who used some word, they never give information on how READERS reacted to that usage. I think that they assume that those quotations somehow prove by themselves the accuracy of the proposed definitions. On the other side, I suppose that philosophers also rely on usage when they try to define the meaning of a term (if they are not stipulating it). Aren't philosophers reporting their (or arguing for a certain) understanding of a word usage?

Accepted:
March 12, 2009

Comments

I think you have a real point here. Standard dictionary definitions don't simply "report" usage. Both philosophical and standard dictionary definitions "explain" (as you put it) or "interpret" (as I might put it) the meanings of words. And both the authors of standard dictionaries and philosophers may be reasonably described as advancing "arguments" for their interpretations. There are, of course, different methods of argument at play in the production of philosophical and standard dictionary definitions; and philosophers and the authors of standard dictionaries interpret words in different ways, in the light of different audiences and different histories. In short, the contexts of usage with which philosophical definitions and standard dictionary definitions are concerned is generally different (though sometimes overlapping). The word, "valid," for example, is used differently and means something different in the contexts of ordinary conversation and the formal language of deductive logic. Commonly people speak of someone making a "valid point," while that usage would be incoherent in the philosophical context of deductive logic. Words like "essence," "nature," "intuition," "form," and "substance" also mean something quite different in philosophical contexts from the contexts of ordinary language. Often the difference in meaning/usage has to do with the history of theory that has built up in the philosophical community that has elaborated the meaning of certain words. The weight of that history pushes usage in directions that diverge from common usage. Note, in this regard, that even the meaning and use of the word "definition" is likely to be different in philosophical and ordinary contexts. But since philosophy has affected and continues to affect common usage (and common usage has affected and continues to affect philosophy) the usages are in many cases not entirely unrelated, and we should not expect that they will be entirely unrelated.