“Love your neighbour” is also not specific. Very many good things aren’t. It’s ok. You don’t have to play chess at all until you discuss interventions.
Meaningful claims don’t have to be specific; they just have to be able to be substantiated by a nonzero number of specific examples. Here’s how I imagine this conversation:
Chris: Love your neighbor!
Liron: Can you give me an example of a time in your life where that exhortation was relevant?
Chris: Sure. People in my apartment complex like to smoke cigarettes in the courtyard and the smoke wafts up to my window. It’s actually a nonsmoking complex, so I could complain to management and get them to stop, but I understand the relaxing feeling of a good smoke, so I let them be.
Liron: Ah I see, that was pretty accommodating of you.
Chris: Yeah, and I felt love in my heart for my fellow man when I did that.
Liron: Cool beans. Thanks for helping me understand what kind of scenarios you mean for your exhortation to “love your neighbor” to map to.
It’s mapping a river system to a drop. Just because something is technically possible and topologically feasible doesn’t make it a sensible thing to do.
I’m not saying “mapping a big category to a single example is what it’s all about”. I’m saying that it’s a sanity check. Like why wouldn’t you be able to do that? Yet sometimes you can’t, and it’s cause for alarm.
“Love your neighbour” is also not specific. Very many good things aren’t. It’s ok. You don’t have to play chess at all until you discuss interventions.
Meaningful claims don’t have to be specific; they just have to be able to be substantiated by a nonzero number of specific examples. Here’s how I imagine this conversation:
Chris: Love your neighbor!
Liron: Can you give me an example of a time in your life where that exhortation was relevant?
Chris: Sure. People in my apartment complex like to smoke cigarettes in the courtyard and the smoke wafts up to my window. It’s actually a nonsmoking complex, so I could complain to management and get them to stop, but I understand the relaxing feeling of a good smoke, so I let them be.
Liron: Ah I see, that was pretty accommodating of you.
Chris: Yeah, and I felt love in my heart for my fellow man when I did that.
Liron: Cool beans. Thanks for helping me understand what kind of scenarios you mean for your exhortation to “love your neighbor” to map to.
It’s mapping a river system to a drop. Just because something is technically possible and topologically feasible doesn’t make it a sensible thing to do.
I’m not saying “mapping a big category to a single example is what it’s all about”. I’m saying that it’s a sanity check. Like why wouldn’t you be able to do that? Yet sometimes you can’t, and it’s cause for alarm.