Stipulative definitions.
What are stipulative definitions?
Many topics revolve around defining something contrary or otherwise than the original definition. Much talk about what is meant by what a person is posting can be avoided by expressing what we mean by saying some such word in a stipulative definition manner.
Therefore, stipulative definitions ought to be recognized and expressed clearly in any opening post.
Thoughts?
Many topics revolve around defining something contrary or otherwise than the original definition. Much talk about what is meant by what a person is posting can be avoided by expressing what we mean by saying some such word in a stipulative definition manner.
Therefore, stipulative definitions ought to be recognized and expressed clearly in any opening post.
Thoughts?
Comments (37)
For example. Wittgenstein has a very specific stipulative definition on many things (die Welt, reality, sachlage, sachverhalten, etc.). The fact that he does inspires interest in his philosophy. The same can be said of Heidegger. Therefore, stipulative definitions are the cornerstone of philosophical inquiry.
Would you agree?
But, they attain their meaning by describing the world another way than what is usually attributed by virtue of their stipulative definitions. Is this correct?
So, then the question becomes, what are stipulative definitions at all? It rings of question begging.
So, it's not question begging; but, what then? It seems like to stipulate a definition, one has to know the entirety of the how the ordinary dictionary definition is used in some context. Hence, confusion and ambiguity is often the case when dealing with stipulative definitions.
Thoughts, criticisms, puns welcome.
Is it somewhat metaphysical to talk about where stipulative definitions derive their meaning?
There is also a semantic consideration as well. Ive observed that there is often a sloppy conflation of definition of words and semantics with the argument/concept being discussed or proffered.
Not trying to ride a high horse here, im guilty myself.
Its much more important to try and understand what a person means rather than focus on the specific words they use. This is a problem of the medium I believe. Most of communication is non verbal and so we trade much of our ability to convey our POV for a certain precision and the sweet sweet worldwide connectivity (how else do you get such a huge variety of perspectives so easily and enumerate?). Im not sure the tradeoff is worth it as far as productive discussion goes...shitty quality or none at all?
I agree and think that much confusion or ambiguity would be avoided if people stated their premises and conclusions more clearly by introducing a stipulative definition. I mean to say that it would be more useful if people stated clearly the stipulative definitions they use.
I understand that some people might even be unaware that they are using a definition in a stipulative manner, therefore there's nothing that can be done in that regard other than recognizing that a person is using a stipulative definition and expressing that to the OP or person posting a new topic.
I think the burden should not be on the OP so much as the people responding. You should clarify what someone means before trying to counter-argue or engage with them.
I suppose its the responsibility for all parties, but I observe that people are more careful in their OP than people are to respond to them. They care less about what the person is trying to say and much more about picking out things they can use to bolster thier own pre-existing position or (one that particularly annoys me) to use what they can in the OP to twist the intended topic to one of thier own pet opinions.
Yes; but, a straw man can only be formed based on false assumptions or premises.
Quoting DingoJones
Yes, I hope so too; but, that's not the impression I get when I see religious discussions or posts dedicated to the art of morality.
Quoting DingoJones
I think that often happens with posts about religion. You do see that sort of stuff in topics about the philosophy of language.
Well I imagine things that are very polarised like religion result in more of this poor behaviour we are talking about. It doesnt help that with religion, certain positions are necessarily insulting to the other side.
What do you mean by “art of morality”?
Quality post, btw. I mean by that to say that a person is possessed with a certain conception of morality and they then being or spewing falsely derived synthetic a posteriori conclusions about moral behavior in life.
That's what I think I meant...
Lol, ok well let me see if I get it here..
Sounds like you are saying any given conception of morality results in synthetic a posteriori conclusions about morality. I take it you are a moral relativist of some kind?
I dont see how you get to calling it “art”, am
I being to literal?
Well, I firmly believe that we are infinitely more complex than saying "people only desire pleasure" or "people seek the aversion of pain, and maximize this aversion". Or "people desire or are defamatory because that can't attain power." What do you think, aren't these just brief stipulations on what morality is? Doesn't that strike you as odd?
All of these are really stipulations of an idealized concept of "morality".
What do you think?
Unfortunately Im not sure what you are asking my opinion on here.
Do you intend those quoted portions as false moral axioms?
It doesnt seem odd to me for people to make attempts to come up with ways of thinking about morality or moral structures.
Im not sure any morality isnt intended to be idealized. Aren’t morals always intended as ideal?
Yes, morality is much more complex than creating simple statements that a utilitarian calculus of morality could accept.
Quoting DingoJones
Well, I hope they are. Since most moral statements seem to be subject to being either true or false if they are moral propositions. Therefore, true morality is subject to be ideal because they are not as simple as simple statements about it.
I prefer to think of morals as inconsistent or consistent rather than true/false. Its not about what moral position someone has, but rather how they arrived there. True morality cannot exist without a basic principal of consistency, it must abhor hypocracy and the double standard or it has no validity, it is meaningless otherwise. Consistency is One of the traits from which we get an objective moral standard.
What is that objective moral standard if not an idealized perception of it? It's almost some noumena that we can only observe.
I guess it depends on what you mean by idealised...to me that seems like an unnecessary layer you are adding there...
By idealized I mean that they exist the in the sphere of imagination/thought/mind; but, can become realities in the world.
Ah, I see. Yea, like any set of rules.
Yes, rules are bad. But some are common that we seem to live by them. So, we take these rules to be true, which they are in a majority of cases, but sometimes we need to reevaluate as 'good'. This place is like one.
I didnt say rules are bad, I just meant that ethical rules are like any other rules.
I dont understand “this place is like one”...?
I dont think we take rules to be “true”, I think we agree to follow them or not. They are a tool.
A tool of what? What do you mean by tool here?
I mean tool in a general sense. Something useful or enabling of any given task.
Ethics/morality are tools for us to get along with each other, to create well functioning societies/interactions and I would say in some sense to service our ownnhuman dignity, although I admit the last one is rather nebulous and perhaps idiosyncratic.
Thoughts?
I recently saw a sign advertising a philosophy club. It advertised philosophy terms of lots of (to me) annoying questions about the meaning of various common, important terms. What is truth? What is knowledge? And so on. Of course I also love these questions. If they are sincerely suffered, they actually urge one to usefully clarify the questions and even find good-enough answers to them.
How does this relate to what is quoted? There is tendency to 'answer' the wrong question, where the words of the question are reinterpreted so that the answer is no longer life-relevant. Profound questions are debased to opportunities to demonstrate cleverness. An industry of gossip about gossip about gossip is born. Meanwhile the real questions continue to be suffered and tentatively answered by words and deeds by everyone, most of whom never found the gossip industry relevant in the first place. And then some of us have a love/hate relationship with this gossip. We pan for gold in a muddy creek, having cataloged many shapes of pyrite, and therefore aware of how little gold there is in the torrent of gossip.
*By gossip I just mean talking always about what some famous person said about what some other famous person said about what some other famous person said in this or that jargon. This isn't always bad, but it can degenerate into a tedious game.
Yes, this is framing the question about how to do ambiguity, vagueness, and other misinterpretations occur. If logical tules would work strictly on human behavior, then what en be said then?
That's a tough imaginary situation. If logical rules strictly applied to human behavior, then we'd no longer be talking about humans as I understand them. If we remove the ambiguity from language, we are left with something like math or chess. And we could no longer say anything profound or silly.
I agree. And also with the part about human dignity. Can we really get along very well without it? I'd put it near the center.
Depends on what we mean by human dignity. Ill confess I do not have a clear idea of what I myself meant by it. Concerning morals and ethics, I think of human dignity in terms of something like honour, a principal or set of principals that we sort of cherish for their own sake or for our own sake but this has its own problems, it is an inherantly selfish act to maintain principalsor set of principals.