[lit-ideas] Re: Beauty, anyone?

  • From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2007 22:32:43 -0800

John McCreery wrote:


The perverse assumption here is that unless everyone agrees on a
definition there is no definition, or, more broadly that unless
everyone agrees on a judgment there is no ground for any judgment at
all.
This is a perverse assumption if it's meant to apply across the board. Most words, most ordinary words (like 'chair,' 'human,' 'alive, 'dance,' 'word,' and 'book'), lack 'precise' definitions yet there is general agreement about which things, creatures, and activities in the world they denote. We don't begin learning language by learning definitions--to understand what a definition is takes some sophistication. I think though that there has to be fairly widespread (note the imprecision) agreement about whether something is a book or whether someone is dancing in order for the concept book and the concept dance to be of any use. We don't need a 'definition' of 'red' in terms of refracted light, the mechanisms of the eye, and so on in order to pick out redness and to teach others to. We agree, for the most part, about which things are what color. So, perhaps Irene is asking people to follow a will o' the wisp when she asks them to come up with a definition of 'beauty' before she will acknowledge that such a thing, such a property, exists. 'These, and similar things are beautiful,'is one response. 'Why?' Well, now we can talk.
'But it is just a Socratic sophistry to argue that a proposition may not be accepted as plainly true unless the terms in it are defined--let alone "rigorously" defined. "Define your terms" is a regular move for political hecklers, for writers of letters to newspapers, for idle tosspots who argue inconsequentially over their beer; after bedevilling philosophy for centuries, the Socratic argument has found its proper level; let us keep it there.' [Peter Geach, 'Intentionality,' in Logic Matters.] 

My advice is to not accept the hecklers' challenge in the first place.

Robert Paul
Professor of Ewes and Menschen
Mutton College




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