Two Kinds of "Induction": Important similarities and trivial differences

[merjet]

I don't own The Open Society and Its Enemies , so I borrowed a copy from the library to read Popper's unessential rambling about definitions in Chapter 11. Of course, there are two kinds of definitions -- essentialist being one kind -- but Popper completely "misses the boat" about the second kind. The second kind is ostensive definition. If one can point to what one means by a particular word, then no definition in terms of other words is needed. Popper's "undefined terms" he thinks are so prevalent in science are simply words that are assumed to be already commonly understood, and thus need no further clarification in terms of other words (an essentialist definition).

Popper characterizes an essentialist definition as "left to right" and opposes it to a nominalist definition in science as reading "right to left". This is a distinction without a difference. An essentialist definition is presented "left to right", but it is understood "right to left" by someone seeking understanding of the term defined.

In philosophy defining one's terms is more necessary because key terms used often have very wide application and the different meanings people have for them can vary widely.

[tjohnson]

If one can point to what one means by a particular word, then no definition in terms of other words is needed. Popper's "undefined terms" he thinks are so prevalent in science are simply words that are assumed to be already commonly understood, and thus need no further clarification in terms of other words (an essentialist definition).

Popper characterizes an essentialist definition as "left to right" and opposes it to a nominalist definition in science as reading "right to left". This is a distinction without a difference. An essentialist definition is presented "left to right", but it is understood "right to left" by someone seeking understanding of the term defined.

In philosophy defining one's terms is more necessary because key terms used often have very wide application and the different meanings people have for them can vary widely.

Terms can be considered 'undefined' even if you can't point to anything. A term like 'space' or 'agree' or 'right' and 'wrong'. These and other terms are the basis of ALL communication, including philosophy.

[Daniel Barnes]

I don't own The Open Society and Its Enemies , so I borrowed a copy from the library to read Popper's unessential rambling about definitions in Chapter 11. Of course, there are two kinds of definitions -- essentialist being one kind -- but Popper completely "misses the boat" about the second kind. The second kind is ostensive definition. If one can point to what one means by a particular word, then no definition in terms of other words is needed.

Uh huh. And then how do you resolve disputes over the "true" meanings of words "ostensively"? To use the example from Popper's footnotes to that chapter, I say "puppy" and point to a young dog; you say "puppy" and point to an arrogant young man. Which one is the "true" definition? By what method do you decide?

Recall that Rand says: "The truth or falsehood of all of man's conclusions, inferences, thought and knowledge rests on the truth or falsehood of his definitions."

This seems to be a critical point. But how do you actually do it? It seems to me that the only way for the dialogue to proceed is by mutual agreement as to the meaning i.e. a social convention, the very thing Rand rails against. (Perhaps one might try an appeal to tradition, but I hardly think Rand would concur with that, as it amounts to the same thing over time)

Popper's "undefined terms" he thinks are so prevalent in science are simply words that are assumed to be already commonly understood, and thus need no further clarification in terms of other words (an essentialist definition).

Yes. Words as they are "commonly understood" ie conventions. See my above.

In philosophy defining one's terms is more necessary because key terms used often have very wide application and the different meanings people have for them can vary widely.

Well this of course may be argued that it's "more necessary" or not, but the key point from the Objectivist POV is starting from "true definitions" , that all else "rests on."

How do you do it?

Edited September 25, 2007 by Daniel Barnes

[Daniel Barnes]

Mike:

Whatever words you wish to use for the business of "universal laws" with Popper, the parallels to Objectivist epistemology are as I said.

Now of course we agree. I have already said that the consequences of Objectivist epistemology (despite her intentions) seem to land on the same page as the consequences of Popper's. So it may be that Rand is not alone in the universe after all....;-)

[Roger Bissell]

...I'm not hearing how the rules of "true induction" work, or even what they are.

Could someone state (on the other thread maybe) 1)the basic principle of "true induction" and 2)the rule for drawing a valid inference in "true induction."

(PS: i've amended the term for Objectivist induction slightly to "true induction" rather than just induction, as there still seems to be some lingering confusion. Hume's remains "enumerative generalisation")

A rather detailed and clear analysis of the procedure of generalization is given by the Scholastic Duns Scotus (In. I. Sent. dis, iii., Q. iv, 9), but I don't have time to reproduce it here. Instead, here is the method of induction as recognized by J. S. Mill:

(1) Preliminary observation of facts, (2) supposition as to their cause (what you call "imagination," I take it), (3) verification of our supposition, (4) explanation, and (5) application of the established law.

Mill called this method "deductive," yet it is clear that it is only in the final step, the application of the general law to the facts, that the method is in any sense or aspect "deductive."

As for "rules" of induction, I've already stated them, but here they are again, as Peikoff states them in Induction in Physics and Philosophy: (1) valid concept-formation, (2) reduction of concepts and propositions to a base in observed reality, (3) Mills Methods of Agreement and Difference, and (4) integration of one's inductive conclusion with other, established knowledge. (Use of mathematics, where measurement and experimentation is necessary, is a fifth principle of induction.)

As for drawing valid inferences by "true induction," that is a matter of some disagreement, even among Aristotelian logicians. Peikoff speaks of inductive inference from observations to generalizations, but it is inference only in the very general sense that it is a kind of inverse process to that of deduction, which is inferential. Also, there are some steps of the inductive process that do involve deductive inference, not from some to all, but in ruling out alternative explanations and in applying the explanation to other facts.

Coffey and Joseph are a gold mine of insight on this topic, as is Peikoff in his two sets of lectures on induction.

And with that, I'm out of time for this discussion until sometime next week. In the meantime, don't go jumping to any unwarranted conclusions! (But then, how would you know what those might be? :-)

REB

[Dragonfly]

Uh huh. And then how do you resolve disputes over the "true" meanings of words "ostensively"? To use the example from Popper's footnotes to that chapter, I say "puppy" and point to a young dog; you say "puppy" and point to an arrogant young man. Which one is the "true" definition? By what method do you decide?

And if you point at a young dog and say "that is a puppy", how do you know what it means? You just point out one particular dog, so "puppy" could mean "young dog" (when is it no longer a puppy?), just "dog" or a particular breed of dog, or "mammal" or "animal" etc. So how can you define "puppy" without using other terms?

Edited September 25, 2007 by Dragonfly

[Ellen Stuttle]

I don't own The Open Society and Its Enemies , so I borrowed a copy from the library to read Popper's unessential rambling about definitions in Chapter 11. Of course, there are two kinds of definitions -- essentialist being one kind -- but Popper completely "misses the boat" about the second kind. The second kind is ostensive definition. If one can point to what one means by a particular word, then no definition in terms of other words is needed. Popper's "undefined terms" he thinks are so prevalent in science are simply words that are assumed to be already commonly understood, and thus need no further clarification in terms of other words (an essentialist definition).

Popper characterizes an essentialist definition as "left to right" and opposes it to a nominalist definition in science as reading "right to left". This is a distinction without a difference. An essentialist definition is presented "left to right", but it is understood "right to left" by someone seeking understanding of the term defined.

In philosophy defining one's terms is more necessary because key terms used often have very wide application and the different meanings people have for them can vary widely.

I don't yet have The Open Society and Its Enemies, so I haven't yet seen the multiple footnotes which I gather adorn the text of Chapter 11. I've only read the essay version available on the web. But from that I don't agree either that what he's talking about with the second kind could be summarized as ostensive definition or that his distinction about how definition proceeds in science is "a distinction without a difference."

I can give you an example of what I understand him to be talking about re scientific definitions. I immediately thought of this as illustrative of his point when I first read the essay as given on the web.

Back in the mid-'70s, when I was working at Lippincott as an editor of books for young readers, one of the books I "edited" (for which, in this case, substitute "largely ghost-wrote") was a book using the clever idea of trying to introduce youngsters of about mid-to-late-gradeschool age to various scientific notions through the medium of simple magic tricks illustrating these notions. The author of the book, though clever at coming up with ideas, wasn't good at exposition, so I ended up re-writing all the science parts and some of the parts explaing how to do the tricks.

A segment which was causing hassles was one where the subject was "energy." I wanted just a brief definition, one which wouldn't raise too many physicists' eyebrows but didn't utilize formulae or any language more complicated than a gradeschooler could understand. I forget what I tried first. Larry said, more or less, uh, well, but what about potential energy? So he started trying for wording, but I was finding what he thought of too awkward. So he said, "I'll ask Peter [Havas] what he'd suggest."

Peter Havas, Larry's thesis advisor, was a well-respected physicist who had done important work on conserved quantities in relation to Noether's Theorem. If anyone would be able to give a nice succinct definition of "energy," one might think, it would be he. "Vell...," Peter said in his thick Hungarian accent. Followed various musings. "This isn't trivial," he commented. He called in his colleague and good friend Lennie Auerbach, who happened to be around; then Jack Crow, a whizbang experimentalist, joined the definition party; then a few others of the faculty members and grad students who were at school that day.

The discussion, Larry said, became awfully interesting about details of just what "energy," as physicists think of that, "is." No one was completely satisfied with any of the definitions proposed. I forget which one I finally used.

The point is that all of these guys were physicists who used the idea of "energy" in their work, who had no trouble understanding what they were doing when they used "e" in equations, but they couldn't come up between them with a simple one-sentence verbal definition with which they were all happy. "What makes things zing" was about as close as it got.

This illustrates Popper's point that the physicists aren't sitting around trying to get a precision definition on which they expect, immitating Rand, the truth of all their conclusions to rest. They have a good-enough-for-working-purposes idea what they're talking about with their verbal terms. The important issue is the theories and equations and predictions and tests.

Ellen

___

[Brant Gaede]

Energy is motion. Inertia is a stored form of energy.

--Brant

[Alfonso Jones]

It makes the problem more clear. I must respectfully differ - "wind" is not merely a convenient label. There is content there. How can we discuss wind, or the question of whether "does wind displace sand proportional to its speed" in the absence of knowing what we are talking about, at least to know that when one says "wind" they do not mean "sand?"

Wind is not merely a convenient label which might be applied to ANYTHING. So, regrettably, I do not know how we can completely avoid having to have MEANINGS for the words.

Alfonso

If you try to define all your terms you will eventually define in circles. For example, if you define 'wind' as 'movement of air' and then 'air' as 'little bits of matter' and 'matter' as 'something with mass' and 'mass' as 'a property of matter' etc. do you see how it goes on forever? But if I say to you "do you know what I mean by 'wind'?" and you say 'yes' then we can leave that and move on to learning about wind.

My concern is that the ground seems to keep shifting. First we hear that the term "wind" is just a symbol, without content. I object to that - how can we discuss such a nothing? The response comes . . . all we will ever do is talk if we try to define the velocity of the air to the 3rd decimal place before we reach resolution. But that's not what is being suggested either. I suspect that the "wind is just a symbol" may not really be what you mean.

But please understand - I have not read anybody suggesting that we need to define in infinite detail all aspects of something before moving on. This is a straw man. If you think Rand said that (and I am open to correction) please cite the specific place, in context.

Alfonso

[Roger Bissell]

I've always thought of energy as the power or capacity to make something happen. I know, "power" has already been co-opted by physics to refer specifically to the measurement of "work." But schoolkids don't know that -- unless they're very precocious, they understand power as oomph or zing, the ability to make something happen. "Sorry kids, Mommy doesn't have enough energy to play with you today.")

As such, energy is an attribute of entities (including tiny ones such as electrons and large aggregates of tiny ones such as laser beams). I know, entities "don't really exist," they're "just an illusion," the form in which we perceive "energy puffs" or "strings" or whatever, yada-yada-yada. But schoolkids don't know that either!

Schoolkids need concrete illustrations or embodiments of any concepts you are trying to teach them, and if you can't concretize it, you shouldn't be trying to teach it to young people. They don't have a large enough store of hierarchically organized knowledge of the world to allow such abstract, unconcretizable ideas to fit in.

Personally, I'm glad that your acquaintances arrived at the "zing" idea, but I'm somewhat startled that it took them as much time and effort as it did--though perhaps I shouldn't be; they were academic physicists after all!

REB

[Ellen Stuttle]

Personally, I'm glad that your acquaintances arrived at the "zing" idea [....].

Miscommunication. "What makes things zing" is my paraphrasing. I'll have to dig the book out (it's stashed in a non-easily-accessible place with a bunch of other books from my Lippincott stint) and see what I did end up with. But not tonight.

Ellen

___

Edited September 26, 2007 by Ellen Stuttle

[Roger Bissell]

It makes the problem more clear. I must respectfully differ - "wind" is not merely a convenient label. There is content there. How can we discuss wind, or the question of whether "does wind displace sand proportional to its speed" in the absence of knowing what we are talking about, at least to know that when one says "wind" they do not mean "sand?"

Wind is not merely a convenient label which might be applied to ANYTHING. So, regrettably, I do not know how we can completely avoid having to have MEANINGS for the words.

Alfonso

If you try to define all your terms you will eventually define in circles. For example, if you define 'wind' as 'movement of air' and then 'air' as 'little bits of matter' and 'matter' as 'something with mass' and 'mass' as 'a property of matter' etc. do you see how it goes on forever? But if I say to you "do you know what I mean by 'wind'?" and you say 'yes' then we can leave that and move on to learning about wind.

My concern is that the ground seems to keep shifting. First we hear that the term "wind" is just a symbol, without content. I object to that - how can we discuss such a nothing? The response comes . . . all we will ever do is talk if we try to define the velocity of the air to the 3rd decimal place before we reach resolution. But that's not what is being suggested either. I suspect that the "wind is just a symbol" may not really be what you mean.

But please understand - I have not read anybody suggesting that we need to define in infinite detail all aspects of something before moving on. This is a straw man. If you think Rand said that (and I am open to correction) please cite the specific place, in context.

Alfonso

You're on the right track, Alfonso. It's an entire tribe of straw men. As soon as you face off with one of them, another yells "yoo-hoo" from an adjoining field, and you breathlessly scamper off to try to deal with him. But it never ends, and you never gain your balance. That is what "goes on forever," not the process of defining our concepts. Concept-definition is a finite (though open-ended) process, and there is a reasonably finite number of levels between the first-level concepts we form of concretes and the highest concepts of the categories. (Rand had three or four: entity, attribute, action, and relationship; Aristotle had 10 or so. In either case, once you get to those, you have reached the level of concepts that can only be defined as correlatives of one another.)

Concept-definition is not that difficult, but it does require effort. And it does demand responsibility. That is why some children shut down above the first level or two of concepts and let the meanings of the rest of their words float in approximations. ("Sure, yeah, 'wind,' I know what you mean--like the wind coming down from the mountains or out of my fan or out of some legislator's butt.")(No, I haven't been drinking.) Beware the seduction of discussing ideas on the basis of "yeah, I know what you mean." That is one of the ways that several generations of school kids have been crippled by the Comprachicos in the public schools.

Rand took pains to explain how all concepts are definable in terms of other concepts, except for the most general, axiomatic concepts and those pertaining to our direct sensory experience. For those, we point or wave our arm and say "I mean that." For everything else, we link them together by genus and differentia, like the big diagrams they used to have in biology books (do they still?). But for puppies -- good Lord, who said that? Dragonfly? Daniel? Popper? I give up.

This is getting to be more like the Hall of Mirrors in the Fun House. I think some of us have stayed too long at the fair. As Cartman was wont to say on "South Park," "Screw you guys, I'm goin' home." (Actually, to Seattle for the start of a 5-day jazz band tour.)

REB

[Daniel Barnes]

Alfonso:

My concern is that the ground seems to keep shifting. First we hear that the term "wind" is just a symbol, without content.

Dude, no-one is saying the word "wind" has no content. We're saying the shades of meaning are unimportant, and we only need a rough idea of the meaning of words in order to construct useful theories. The idea of gaining philosophic precision by debating the meanings of words, while superficially plausible, is a logical error.

Unfortunately its something Rand really believed was possible; that you could -and indeed must - form concepts with "the most rigorous mathematical precision." This, in practice, meant attempting the same level of precision in defining terms.

But uh-oh...words are not numbers. Nothing like the precision of numbers is possible with words. This is because numbers have close to zero content (thus precise), whereas words are content-rich (thus far vaguer). They can't be treated as if they had the same properties. It's the sort of thing Gilbert Ryle would call a category error.

But please understand - I have not read anybody suggesting that we need to define in infinite detail all aspects of something before moving on. This is a straw man. If you think Rand said that (and I am open to correction) please cite the specific place, in context.

To be clear, Rand thought we needed to define our terms precisely, but did not realise that this, if applied consistently, leads to a potentially infinite regress. (Obviously people give up long before that...;-) The point is that even then it doesn't get them anywhere, and diverts everyone's attention away from actual problems into verbalism). On top of the precision issue, there is also the issue of true and false definitions, which is also not logically decideable. These are serious problems, because she claims these are the very things on which "the truth or falsehood of all of man's conclusions, inferences, thought and knowledge rests..."!

I tend to think that Popper's methodological argument is to traditional philosophical verbalist methods (such as Rand's) what Mises' economic calculation argument is to traditional socialist economics. From a distance it still seems at least plausible; then you look closely and it's been neatly chainsawed through at the base.

Edited September 26, 2007 by Daniel Barnes

[Roger Bissell]

Alfonso:

My concern is that the ground seems to keep shifting. First we hear that the term "wind" is just a symbol, without content.

Dude, no-one is saying the word "wind" has no content. We're saying the shades of meaning are unimportant, and we only need a rough idea of the meaning of words in order to construct useful theories. The idea of gaining philosophic precision by debating the meanings of words, while superficially plausible, is a logical error.

Unfortunately its something Rand really believed was possible; that you could -and indeed must - form concepts with "the most rigorous mathematical precision." This, in practice, meant attempting the same level of precision in defining terms.

But uh-oh...words are not numbers. Nothing like the precision of numbers is possible with words. This is because numbers have close to zero content (thus precise), whereas words are content-rich (thus far vaguer). They can't be treated as if they had the same properties. It's the sort of thing Gilbert Ryle would call a category error.

But please understand - I have not read anybody suggesting that we need to define in infinite detail all aspects of something before moving on. This is a straw man. If you think Rand said that (and I am open to correction) please cite the specific place, in context.

To be clear, Rand thought we needed to define our terms precisely, but did not realise that this, if applied consistently, leads to a potentially infinite regress. (Obviously people give up long before that...;-) The point is that even then it doesn't get them anywhere, and diverts everyone's attention away from actual problems into verbalism). On top of the precision issue, there is also the issue of true and false definitions, which is also not logically decideable.

I tend to think that Popper's methodological argument is to traditional philosophical verbalist methods what Mises' economic calculation argument is to traditional socialist economics. From a distance it still seems at least plausible; then you look closely and it's been neatly chainsawed through at the base.

Rand didn't mean that you have to use the equivalent of micrometers or electron microscopes when you define words. She meant that you have to use clear-cut principles that unambiguously link more general and more specific concepts together, and the whole shebang to perceptual reality, in the same way that you have to tie your premises and conclusions together when you do geometry, for instance, or build up more complex algebra formulas from more simple ones. This means simply that you have to keep your mind clear and not allow definitional/conceptual fuzziness to creep in. None of this, "yeah, I sort of know what I mean" business...

REB

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

To be clear, Rand thought we needed to define our terms precisely, but did not realise that this, if applied consistently, leads to a potentially infinite regress. (Obviously people give up long before that...;-)

This is not correct. Here is the statement corrected:

"To be clear, Rand thought we needed to define our terms precisely, and did realise that this, if applied to thinking where no standards of definition are possible, leads to a potentially infinite regress. (Obviously some people never give up...;-)"

Aahh... There. That's better.

Michael

[Daniel Barnes]

Roger:

This means simply that you have to keep your mind clear and not allow definitional/conceptual fuzziness to creep in. None of this, "yeah, I sort of know what I mean" business...

Actually, it turns out that on analysis moving much beyond "yeah, I sort of know what you mean" actually makes matters worse, and so long as people agree on the meaning of the words, further definition is demonstrably pointless. We should try and use words as precisely as we can, but not try to make them more precise than they are. Certainly nothing like the mathematical comparisons Rand regularly invokes.

Look, I know it seems totally counter-intuitive, Roger, and flies in the face of deeply held traditional beliefs, both Objectivist and otherwise on the subject. But to me it's just another case of a vast, beautiful theory being destroyed by a single, ugly fact.

[Daniel Barnes]

Mike:

This is not correct. Here is the statement corrected:

"To be clear, Rand thought we needed to define our terms precisely, and did realise that this, if applied to thinking where no standards of definition are possible, leads to a potentially infinite regress. (Obviously some people never give up...;-)"

Aahh... There. That's better.

Haven't you learned by now that you can't make problems vanish by just playing with words?

[Dragonfly]

Rand took pains to explain how all concepts are definable in terms of other concepts, except for the most general, axiomatic concepts and those pertaining to our direct sensory experience. For those, we point or wave our arm and say "I mean that."

Yeah, that is what we call "hand waving".

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly,

You mean you never used the word "that" while pointing at something to explain what you mean?

That's the basis of knowledge. The starting point.

Have you ever been to another country where you do not speak the language and there is no translator near? Pointing is all you can do. It works perfectly in a jam, too (although that form of communication, pointing and grunting, is a bit limited—but it will get you a hamburger or to a bathroom if you need to go).

Michael

[Dragonfly]

You mean you never used the word "that" while pointing at something to explain what you mean?

I don't define anything by pointing at something, I just point out one particular object. If I want to buy in a foreign country where I don't speak the language (which won't happen) a kitten, I may point at one particular kitten and indicate I want to buy that<point, point>"thing". But what can I define by merely pointing at it? A kitten? A cat? A young castrated cat? An Abyssinian? A mammal? A male mammal? A young mammal? A young male mammal? An animal? A pet? What is the "true" meaning of the definition given by <point, point>? Any particular object that I point out may be a particular instance of many, more or less related, but different concepts.

[Alfonso Jones]

Dragonfly,

You mean you never used the word "that" while pointing at something to explain what you mean?

That's the basis of knowledge. The starting point.

Have you ever been to another country where you do not speak the language and there is no translator near? Pointing is all you can do. It works perfectly in a jam, too (although that form of communication, pointing and grunting, is a bit limited—but it will get you a hamburger or to a bathroom if you need to go).

Michael

He probably used "that" while pointing "over there."

And in many cases, that is sufficient precision of speaking to meet the operational communication needs of the moment.

Alfonso

[BaalChatzaf]

You mean you never used the word "that" while pointing at something to explain what you mean?

I don't define anything by pointing at something, I just point out one particular object. If I want to buy in a foreign country where I don't speak the language (which won't happen) a kitten, I may point at one particular kitten and indicate I want to buy that<point, point>"thing". But what can I define by merely pointing at it? A kitten? A cat? A young castrated cat? An Abyssinian? A mammal? A male mammal? A young mammal? A young male mammal? An animal? A pet? What is the "true" meaning of the definition given by <point, point>? Any particular object that I point out may be a particular instance of many, more or less related, but different concepts.

Definition of genera starts with pointing at particulars and giving them names. That is how babies learn to talk. Human babies are geniuses (except for the very few who are born or become brainially damaged). All infants learn genera somewhere in their second year and it starts with pointing. They become more sophisticated with the passage of time. The number of new specific and general words learned by a youngster after (say) the age of two increases remarkably.

I noticed that my children and grandchildren were learning five to ten new words a day and these included specific names, general names (i.e. concepts), adjectives, adverbs and verbs. To learn the names of actions (i.e. verbs) one most see the action or do it one's self. On top of this kids pick up the grammatical rules of their hearth language at the same time. For them it is as natural as breathing. That is why a youngster has no problem being multilingual. In a multilingual environment kids pick up two or three languages with no more trouble than it takes to learn one language.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[BaalChatzaf]

I've always thought of energy as the power or capacity to make something happen. I know, "power" has already been co-opted by physics to refer specifically to the measurement of "work." But school kids don't know that -- unless they're very precocious, they understand power as oomph or zing, the ability to make something happen. "Sorry kids, Mommy doesn't have enough energy to play with you today.")

Words such as "energy", "work" and "power" are co-opted only in that they are given precise quantitative meanings in very clear contexts. In fact they have an associated mathematical expression which most general words either do not have or never acquire.

For your edification:

Force is the time rate of change of momentum

Work is Force multiplied by Distance and is a scalar (non directed) quantity. In the more general context of advanced mechanics and quantum theory, energy is a quantity that is conserved in various interactions. So is momentum. Energy has replaced Force as the central concept in advanced physics. For a brief description and history of this important term see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy.

Power is Work (or Energy) per unit Time, i.e. the rate at which energy is applied or expended.

And so on.

It took thousands of years to reach this degree of precision and most of this precision has been formulated or acquired in the past 400 years. That should no be surprising. The mathematics required for the task was invented around that time for the main purpose of quantifying force, work and motion. Newton did the major work in this regard.

Some times the scientific use of a term retains the flavor of the term as it was used in a non-scientific context, sometimes it doesn't. For example we have a crude notion of heat and temperature (we know what relative hot and cold is from experience). However the precise meanings for heat and temperature make them quite distinct terms. Heat is a form of energy transmitted by particulate motion. In the old days, the natural philosophers believed heat was a kind of fluid which as not a totally absurd belief at the time. We know know heat is the energy of motion of particles or the square of the amplitudes of the electric and magnetic waves. The intuitive meaning of a term as used scientifically, usually is incorrect in the scientific context.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[tjohnson]

So much arguing [sigh], why don't you people TRY it? Try defining 'object' .

object; a tangible and visible entity (now I will define 'entity')

entity; that which is perceived or known or inferred to have its own distinct existence (now 'existence')

existence; the state or fact of existing (now 'fact')

fact; a piece of information about circumstances that exist or events that have occurred (piece)

piece; a portion of a natural object (notice 'object' has reappeared)

portion; something determined in relation to something that includes it

something; a thing of some kind

thing; any attribute or quality considered as having its own existence

attribute; a construct whereby objects or individuals can be distinguished (so again 'object' appears)

Can you see that this process goes nowhere? Our language is built upon our EXPERIENCE and we all have experienced an 'object' or 'existence' or 'energy', etc. If Alien was a being from another planet where there is no matter he might have difficulty understanding what we mean by 'something', for example, but if you are from planet Earth you should have no trouble.

[BaalChatzaf]

So much arguing [sigh], why don't you people TRY it? Try defining 'object' .

object; a tangible and visible entity (now I will define 'entity')

entity; that which is perceived or known or inferred to have its own distinct existence (now 'existence')

existence; the state or fact of existing (now 'fact')

fact; a piece of information about circumstances that exist or events that have occurred (piece)

piece; a portion of a natural object (notice 'object' has reappeared)

portion; something determined in relation to something that includes it

something; a thing of some kind

thing; any attribute or quality considered as having its own existence

attribute; a construct whereby objects or individuals can be distinguished (so again 'object' appears)

Can you see that this process goes nowhere? Our language is built upon our EXPERIENCE and we all have experienced an 'object' or 'existence' or 'energy', etc. If Alien was a being from another planet where there is no matter he might have difficulty understanding what we mean by 'something', for example, but if you are from planet Earth you should have no trouble.

It has been know since the time of Aristotle (at least) that definitions have to stop somewhere. This is hardly news.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited September 26, 2007 by BaalChatzaf