Poll: Definition or Theory?
Back to school! Here's a multiple guess exam. Good luck!
We can argue about the right answers (if any) and this issues raised in the subsequent discussion.
Instructions
For each of the statements given, indicate if you think it is a theory or a definition. There is no third option, fence sitters shall be spat out. If I give a third option you'll all pick it and the poll will be boring. If you want to moan about that, do so loudly.
There's lots of interesting questions I could have asked but didn't think of, of course. I don't have time to do a really nice job of this. Many of the questions revolve around consciousness, but that's just because it's a preoccupation of mine. Feel free to add interesting cases.
We can argue about the right answers (if any) and this issues raised in the subsequent discussion.
Instructions
For each of the statements given, indicate if you think it is a theory or a definition. There is no third option, fence sitters shall be spat out. If I give a third option you'll all pick it and the poll will be boring. If you want to moan about that, do so loudly.
There's lots of interesting questions I could have asked but didn't think of, of course. I don't have time to do a really nice job of this. Many of the questions revolve around consciousness, but that's just because it's a preoccupation of mine. Feel free to add interesting cases.
Comments (27)
Amazing work. :up:
This was the only one I wasn't torn over when I voted.
But I'm torn over it now.
The association of numbers with different states of consciousness seems definitional, but the ordering of them seems theoretical.
I can't see any "definition" or "theory" in all that. You must look up these words in a standard dictionary.
Could have been a lot better, but thank you! The results so far are fascinating.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting fdrake
That's interesting. I thought it was perhaps the most straightforwardly definitional one.
I'm surprised the sentience one is unanimous so far. And I'm surprised some of the others are split nearly half each. Very interesting.
Quoting fdrake
Hadn't thought of that. :up:
Quoting Harry Hindu
Inevitably! Go ahead. Maybe we should also have a theory of definition and theory as well.
Quoting 180 Proof
:up: Did you do the poll?
Quoting TheMadFool
Sure. You can still give a glib summary of a theory in a sentence, no?
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Consulting a dictionary is never bad advice. Thank you. :)
I wouldn't've thought of it if last week's work wasn't ball deep in dealing with operationalised scales.
Yes.
A sentence, to my knowledge, doesn't have a word limit. The convention seems to be to keep it short or rather short enough to understand. True, you could put down an entire theory in the form of a single sentence but that sentence would be very long indeed. You would've won as it were, proven that a sentence can be a theory, but only on a technicality.
Definitions, on the other hand, are usually expressible in a sentence because the concepts involved are fewer.
A definition describes what something is. A theory describes why something is.
A definition is used for identification while a theory is used for prediction.
That seems quite good to me. With regard to consciousness it works well. Some definitions (but not others) of consciousness are completely neutral as to which objects can have it. It takes a theory to then predict which things can have experiences and which things cannot.
I just looked at the results and there is a lot of disagreement on many of the questions. It shows just how complex the relationship between theories and definitions are. We use and need definitions to construct theories. However, the developments in theories alter our construction of theories. I am aware of this difficulty in my own threads on the self, evil. I think that what was also so interesting was that a few months ago a thread was started by @T Clark on what is consciousness? What became apparent was that how the many users on this site write about consciousness and have different meanings of the term, and how these are linked to our understanding of consciousness itself.
No. In this sense, consciousness has been defined as not being limited to which objects have it prior to any theories being posited. What this actually means is a bit vague and a better definition would be needed in order to test it with theories. It seems to me that you need a definition first to then be able to posit a viable theory as to why consciousness is that way - not being limited to which objects have it.
When looking at ideas it is almost like peeling back layers and meanings. For example, today I was just reading @"Josh's entry on page 5 of my evil thread, in which he wrote about personal construct theories and I realised how important that is in contrast to metaphysics of good and evil, and seen from that angle, the definitions would be so different from, say a Kantian approach. So, when we begin looking at terms and theories, sometimes it seems to me that it is like trying to dig up the earth and it could go on and on forever.
Yes, I think that's right. I was very struck by how divided the responses are. There's only one where everyone agrees. It seems, however, that people do recognise an intuitive difference between theory and definition, even if, with some concepts/ideas they are perhaps difficult or impossible to separate completely.
I'd be interested in @Pfhorrest and @Banno's views, and anyone else's.
Philosophy itself is an interesting case. I could have put as one of the sentences: "Philosophy is not theoretical" Definition or theory? I guess 'definition' can be further subdivided into a number of categories. As can 'theory'.
This is a really good idea. Upvote. I didn't vote because too many of them were "neither of the above" for me. Now I'm thinking about questions I could put in a poll like this one. Let's see:
True or false:
Mine was; the sentence should be a definition, if it unambiguously equates a word with an object or process or otherwise sets out how a word is typically to be used, I'll call it a definition. If it's doing anything else, I'll call it a theory.
There was a lot of ambiguity in which was which for me; as I didn't know how to draw a line between setting out a typical use of words and setting out a connection/claim between a word (like sentience) and a property (integrated information). I imagine in general there isn't one - at least, the latter can do the former.
"Call those oogyboogles which exceed the blimblam threshold pumps".
Same here.
Words don't have intrinsic meaning they have common usages. You will need to define Theory and Definition.
i.e. Theory in science means something very different compared to the every day use of the world (even in Philosophy).
In a more general note, all definitions rely on theory. (Paul Hoyningen Philosophy of Science)
Quoting bert1
50 % theory; 50 % A draw, as I expected in this one.
Quoting bert1
Well, I thought it was a definition but some users think otherwise!