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We've seen that sloppy or misleading use of ordinary language can seriously
limit our ability to create and communicate correct reasoning. As philosopher John
Locke pointed out three centuries ago, the achievement of human knowledge is often
hampered by the use of words without fixed signification. Needless controversy is
sometimes produced and perpetuated by an unacknowledged ambiguity in the
application of key terms. We can distinguish disputes of three sorts:
We can save a lot of time, sharpen our reasoning abilities, and communicate with each
other more effectively if we watch for disagreements about the meaning of words and
try to resolve them whenever we can.
Kinds of Definition
A lexical definition simply reports the way in which a term is already used
within a language community. The goal here is to inform someone else of the
accepted meaning of the term, so the definition is more or less correct depending upon
the accuracy with which it captures that usage. In these pages, my definitions of
technical terms of logic are lexical because they are intended to inform you about the
way in which these terms are actually employed within the discipline of logic.
At the other extreme, a stipulative definition freely assigns meaning to a
completely new term, creating a usage that had never previously existed. Since the
goal in this case is to propose the adoption of shared use of a novel term, there are no
existing standards against which to compare it, and the definition is always correct
(though it might fail to win acceptance if it turns out to be inapt or useless). If I now
decree that we will henceforth refer to Presidential speeches delivered in French as
"glorsherfs," I have made a (probably pointless) stipulative definition.
A rather large and especially useful portion of our active vocabularies is taken up
by general terms, words or phrases that stand for whole groups of individual things
sharing a common attribute. But there are two distinct ways of thinking about the
meaning of any such term.
Clearly, these two kinds of meaning are closely interrelated. We usually suppose
that the intension of a concept or term determines its extension, that we decide
whether or not each newly-encountered piece of furniture belongs among the chairs
by seeing whether or not it has the relevant features. Thus, as the intension of a
general term increases, by specifying with greater detail those features that a thing
must have in order for it to apply, the term's extension tends to decrease, since fewer
items now qualify for its application.
But there seem to be some important terms for which denotative definition is
entirely impossible. The phrase "my grandchildren" makes perfect sense, for example,
but since it presently has no extension, there is no way to indicate its membership by
enumeration, example, or ostension. In order to define terms of this sort at all, and in
order more conveniently to define general terms of every variety, we naturally rely
upon the second mode of definition.
Copi and Cohen list five rules by means of which to evaluate the success of
connotative definitions by genus and differentia:
1. Focus on essential features. Although the things to which a term applies may
share many distinctive properties, not all of them equally indicate its true
nature. Thus, for example, a definition of "human beings" as "featherless
bipeds" isn't very illuminating, even if does pick out the right individuals. A
good definition tries to point out the features that are essential to the
designation of things as members of the relevant group.
2. Avoid circularity. Since a circular definition uses the term being defined as
part of its own definition, it can't provide any useful information; either the
audience already understands the meaning of the term, or it cannot understand
the explanation that includes that term. Thus, for example, there isn't much
point in defining "cordless 'phone" as "a telephone that has no cord."
3. Capture the correct extension. A good definition will apply to exactly the
same things as the term being defined, no more and no less. There are several
ways to go wrong. Consider alternative definitions of "bird":
o "warm-blooded animal" is too broad, since that would include horses,
dogs, and aardvarks along with birds.
o "feathered egg-laying animal" is too narrow, since it excludes those
birds who happen to be male. and
o "small flying animal" is both too broad and too narrow, since it
includes bats (which aren't birds) and excludes ostriches (which are).