I don’t see that we can get away from conceptual analysis so easily. There are a whole lot of cases where we make commitments to particular doctrines, beliefs, promises and so forth, as expressed in words.
Law is all about using articulated definitions and natural-language rules to decide disputes. And we find ourselves using terms like “cause” and “knowledge” all the time in law. Such terms also show up in daily life—if I tell somebody I will do the best I can, it’s rather important to me that I understand how they’re likely to understand that phrase, and what sort of concepts that will or won’t call to mind.
Certainly, different people are going to use terms differently, and even the same person will use them differently in different circumstances. But if I’m on a jury and somebody asks me whether the defendant had actual knowledge of the crime, and then asks me to justify my answer, I need something to fall back on other than “I put all the facts into my brain and the the neuron for ‘yes’ was more active than the one for ‘no’.”
In the Republic, Socrates isn’t arguing ‘justice’ just because he feels like showing off—he needs to explain, on the one hand, why challenging tradition isn’t the kind of injustice that people should be killed for—and on the other hand, why his pupils shouldn’t overthrow the government for personal gain. Is there a better tool than definition and conceptual analysis for this social purpose?
Sure, definitions are often imperfect for capturing what I mean by a given term—but I don’t have anything better to use, and I think it would be a decent use of somebody’s time to think hard about which definitions seem to pick out useful sets in ways that don’t conflict too violently with how I previously was using the word. And It’s also a good use of somebody’s time to figure out where the sticky bits are with a definition and how we might refine the definition to do the right thing in that messy corner case. I do actually sometimes have to use imprecise terms precisely and consistently and pointing out that brains don’t work that way doesn’t remove the real social need.
You seem to be confusing definitions and concepts. Definitions are our best verbal description of our concepts, but they are not concepts. I think this is best thought of as an example of a map-territory confusion.
Also, many fields, especially your example of legal language, purposely limit meanings of their definitions for the purpose of greater precision and clarity, but more generally even definitions are fuzzy around the edges, though less so than concepts.
I don’t see that we can get away from conceptual analysis so easily. There are a whole lot of cases where we make commitments to particular doctrines, beliefs, promises and so forth, as expressed in words.
Law is all about using articulated definitions and natural-language rules to decide disputes. And we find ourselves using terms like “cause” and “knowledge” all the time in law. Such terms also show up in daily life—if I tell somebody I will do the best I can, it’s rather important to me that I understand how they’re likely to understand that phrase, and what sort of concepts that will or won’t call to mind.
Certainly, different people are going to use terms differently, and even the same person will use them differently in different circumstances. But if I’m on a jury and somebody asks me whether the defendant had actual knowledge of the crime, and then asks me to justify my answer, I need something to fall back on other than “I put all the facts into my brain and the the neuron for ‘yes’ was more active than the one for ‘no’.”
In the Republic, Socrates isn’t arguing ‘justice’ just because he feels like showing off—he needs to explain, on the one hand, why challenging tradition isn’t the kind of injustice that people should be killed for—and on the other hand, why his pupils shouldn’t overthrow the government for personal gain. Is there a better tool than definition and conceptual analysis for this social purpose?
Sure, definitions are often imperfect for capturing what I mean by a given term—but I don’t have anything better to use, and I think it would be a decent use of somebody’s time to think hard about which definitions seem to pick out useful sets in ways that don’t conflict too violently with how I previously was using the word. And It’s also a good use of somebody’s time to figure out where the sticky bits are with a definition and how we might refine the definition to do the right thing in that messy corner case. I do actually sometimes have to use imprecise terms precisely and consistently and pointing out that brains don’t work that way doesn’t remove the real social need.
You seem to be confusing definitions and concepts. Definitions are our best verbal description of our concepts, but they are not concepts. I think this is best thought of as an example of a map-territory confusion.
Also, many fields, especially your example of legal language, purposely limit meanings of their definitions for the purpose of greater precision and clarity, but more generally even definitions are fuzzy around the edges, though less so than concepts.