Some other vague concepts people disagree on: ‘cause,’ ‘intelligence,’ ‘mental state,’ and so on.
I am a little suspicious of projects to ‘exorcise’ vague concepts from scientific discourse. I think scientists are engaged in a healthy enough enterprise that eventually they will be able to sort out the uselessly vague concepts from the ‘vague because they haven’t been adequately understood and defined yet’.
Some other vague concepts people disagree on: ‘cause,’ ‘intelligence,’ ‘mental state,’ and so on.
I am a little suspicious of projects to ‘exorcise’ vague concepts from scientific discourse. I think scientists are engaged in a healthy enough enterprise that eventually they will be able to sort out the uselessly vague concepts from the ‘vague because they haven’t been adequately understood and defined yet’.