[lit-ideas] Re: Beauty, anyone?

  • From: Andy Amago <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2007 01:50:01 -0500 (GMT-05:00)

Ask anyone in the legal community or any insurance company how important terms 
are.  They have actual pages of definitions in their contracts and policies, 
and they don't call it heckling.  Entire briefs are written over meanings of 
words.  For everyone else, beauty is like pornography, we know it when we see 
it.




-----Original Message-----
>From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
>Sent: Feb 21, 2007 1:32 AM
>To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Beauty, anyone?
>
>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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