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Esar comments on 37 Ways That Words Can Be Wrong - Less Wrong
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I don't understand this one. If you changed the word's definition, wouldn't the argument just then be unsound (though valid)? Argument-by-definition doesn't have a lot going for it, but I don't think this is a problem. Reading the linked article hasn't cleared things up for me. Can anyone explain what's meant here?
I think that's basically the point - the argument is technically valid, but it is wrong, and you got there by using "human" wrong in the first place.
Socrates is clearly human, and the definition on hand is "bipedal, featherless, and mortal". If Socrates is mortal, then he is susceptible to hemlock. When Socrates takes hemlock and survives, you can't change the definition of "human" to "bipedal, featherless, not mortal". You're still using the word "human" wrong.
What's telling here is that you don't say "Socrates is not human" because you already know he is. If you do go down that route, even though your arguments are correct the conclusion will be intuitively wrong - just another valid but incorrect argument. There are undefined characteristics regarding what it is to be human which carry significantly more weight than the definition itself, and instead of encapsulating them in the definition you've tried to ignore them - tried to make reality fit your definition rather than the other way around.
Well, the problem with the argument 'Socrates is human, humans are immortal, therefore Socrates is immortal' is that the second premise is false. Is it because the word 'human' is used wrongly in the argument? I don't see how. If the problem is that my definition of 'human' is wrong, this still seems to be just a problem of having false beliefs about the world, not an incorrect use of language.