Annoyance comments on How to Not Lose an Argument - Less Wrong

109 Post author: Yvain 19 March 2009 01:07AM

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Comment author: thomblake 19 March 2009 02:53:03PM 6 points [-]

When Wittgenstein wrote his Tractatus, this was basically his only point. If you clearly define your terms, thereby unambiguously fixing the referents for your propositions, then all disagreement will disappear.

In later works, he realized that there are a lot of things we do with language other than relating propositions, that you use language before you get definitions, and that things are generally a bit more complicated than he used to think.

Comment author: Annoyance 21 March 2009 03:27:17PM 2 points [-]

that you use language before you get definitions

Ah, but that's simply untrue. We use language before we get explicit definitions. The implicit definitions are a necessary precursor for language use.

Comment author: Jack 19 September 2009 01:21:18AM 3 points [-]

Maybe. But the point is that implicit definitions are never clearly defined. Indeed, they are hardly definitions- more like an incomplete sense of in what circumstances the use of the word is appropriate.