Topics Language

Question Some definitions can be justified - for example, cats seem to be a discreet category in the real world, and thus a definition of the word cat must adequately describe this category and how its members differ from other things in the world. But when it comes to things like love, justice, government or art, these things are human constructs, and not some discreet entity in the world; so how do we create justified definitions of these terms? How do we decide what true love is, or what true art is, or what true justice or government is? We all have intuitions, but these intuitions change with time and culture, and people tend to bicker about the details. So how are definitions that do not apply to physical phenomena justified?

Accepted:
March 10, 2011

Comments

This is a great question! I would be inclined, however, to probe it a few different ways. First, there are many who are skeptical of the idea that there are true "natural kinds" ("discreet categories") in nature -- rather, species are themselves notoriously difficult to define, and even "within" some given species there is always tremendous variation across individuals, suggesting "fuzzier" categories rather than strict ones. In fact, if anything you might say we're almost more justified in providing definitions for the "human constructs" than for the natural things, because then we can clearly all agree that it's "up to us" how to define the things and dispense with the idea that we're trying to map our terms onto a pre-existing object or world. And further, I might ask why we need to "decide" what true love is etc; what's wrong with (say) realizing and accepting that many people use these words differently, as long as we strive continuously to be clear about our meanings, to recognize (and occaisonaly perhaps reconcile) our competing definitions, etc.? The deeper mystery might be why people (or cultures, or times) use the "same" word (such as "love" or "justice") when they in fact have very different conceptions or definitions ... it woudl be so much clearer if each distinct meaning or definition had its own distinct word! .....

hope that's useful ...