Term: Definitions
Typical definition example: a statement of the exact meaning of a word, especially in a dictionary.
Wikipedia example: a definition is a statement of the meaning of a term
Proposed Definition: A voluntary limitation on the usage of a term
Intro: I've been thinking about the definition of "definition" is for a long time. It's hard because there's two things that seem to be true about definitions:
- People can learn the meaning of words from their definition, and therefore avoid misusing it
- Definitions can never capture exactly the way a population uses a term
Justification: I believe the way to fix this contradiction is to recognize that a definition can't be forced on anyone, it has to be a voluntary choice someone makes to limit what a word could potentially mean. If two different groups use a word to mean different things, then neither group is wrong, they both are using the word to mean what they want it to. But if those groups want to communicate effectively with each other, they need to agree to limit what the word will mean. Also, a definition is something different than a description, they have different goals.
We could compare a definition to a technology standard like USB. It would be easier for every company to make a connector for their device that just did whatever they needed it to do, fit where it needed to go, and cost as little as possible. But if we want our devices to be able to interact easily it makes sense to force ourselves to adopt a standard. The USB standard dictates the limits of how the communication will work and everyone voluntarily agrees to work within those limits.
In scientific and technical fields these kinds of strict limitations can be very important. In other areas they're less important or possibly even impossible. For example, if everyone uses the word "happiness" slightly differently and perhaps no one is even entirely sure of what their own meaning are to using the word in different situations, then it's nearly impossible to agree on definition. However if some people recognize this problem, and voluntarily limit the way they use the term that choice can spread. If the limitation they impose on themselves turns out to be useful - it allows more clarity without giving up too many options, then it can spread more easily. Eventually a definition might be popular enough that we might even want to say that someone who uses the word in a different way is using it incorrectly. I don't believe this is true, they've learned the word the way we all do, by associating it with certain experiences and meanings. The difference is that they haven't chosen to limit themselves to a compatible usage. In these cases being able to clearly state what the limitations are is really the only way to allow a person to make a rational choice on whether to adopt them or not. That's what I'm trying to do here, take concepts that have complicated meanings and offer a limited usage of them that captures the core of the meaning, discards some (hopefully) unnecessary flourishes and ends up with a definition that will be give people a useful choice if they want to adopt it. In some cases it's just clarifying a couple unstated assumptions, in others it might be a suggestion to significantly change the way the definition works to make it much more useful.
It's also important to keep in mind that a definition isn't a description. If I asked what a car is, a decent description is "a vehicle with four wheels, an engine and four seats", but that's not a good definition. It doesn't include things like electric cars (which have motors and not engines) or any car that has a different number of seats or even wheels. Descriptions seem to try and capture the most common examples and then allow similarities to those examples to capture the entire set, they work from the inside out, While definitions are more important at the edge cases of a set, the less common examples where mistakes can be made. A definition of a car might be something like "a vehicle to designed primarily to transport some or all members of a family." Of course, this would assumes that we have a decent definition of "family" as well, one that's fairly flexible, it debatable if that's the right choice or not. We could say "transport one or several people", but I think that in reality different kinds of cars might actually be designed to transport members of families, so that would be a better definition. If we accept these two examples, the description works because it captures immediate and common traits, while the definition works because it captures the underlying logic that drives the creation of the set of things.
Another interesting feature of definitions is that any definition is dependent on the meaning or definitions of the words that are used in it, and sometimes those meaning can be difficult to define in a useful way. Which makes sense, a definition is an attempt to limit a word's meaning in a useful way, which isn't easy. Eventually we might want to ask what's at the root of all these definitions? Ultimately I believe that all meaning comes from feeling of rewards - pleasure or avoidance of pain. These feelings are layered on top of our experiences of the world and give us a way to rank and organize experiences. They allow us to remember things that are important and learn tasks by correlating actions with rewards. Layer upon complex layer of correlations and predictions and associations with different expected rewards are built up, and some of those associations are words with meanings. This is a very personal process dependent on each person's experiences. Some words might have relatively straightforward meanings and the experiences people share are common and it's easy to make a useful definition. Other words might have a wide variety of personal experiences and meanings built up around them, and it might be nearly impossible to limit them in a way that's widely useful.
Can meaning be reduced to simple feeling or rewards and their associations? Try to imagine if from birth we were incapable of feeling pain or pleasure, nothing was good or bad, we just experienced everything without that additional layer. How would we learning anything or how would anything come to be associated with any meaning? Every sight and sound would be equal because there'd be no reason to prefer one over the other and without some system of preferences I don't believe we could ever develop any meaning, and certainly not the complex layered meanings of language.
Fortunately we do have the ability to feel good and bad about experiences and predict what those experiences will be like in the future and therefore attach meaning to things like sights and sounds. That complex organic creation of meaning allows us to have language, but it also means that language is the result of individual experiences. Sometimes though, if we want to improve the clarity and efficiency of communication we can limit ourselves to a specific definition, and by doing that maybe over time actually change what the words mean to us.
We could compare a definition to a technology standard like USB. It would be easier for every company to make a connector for their device that just did whatever they needed it to do, fit where it needed to go, and cost as little as possible. But if we want our devices to be able to interact easily it makes sense to force ourselves to adopt a standard. The USB standard dictates the limits of how the communication will work and everyone voluntarily agrees to work within those limits.
In scientific and technical fields these kinds of strict limitations can be very important. In other areas they're less important or possibly even impossible. For example, if everyone uses the word "happiness" slightly differently and perhaps no one is even entirely sure of what their own meaning are to using the word in different situations, then it's nearly impossible to agree on definition. However if some people recognize this problem, and voluntarily limit the way they use the term that choice can spread. If the limitation they impose on themselves turns out to be useful - it allows more clarity without giving up too many options, then it can spread more easily. Eventually a definition might be popular enough that we might even want to say that someone who uses the word in a different way is using it incorrectly. I don't believe this is true, they've learned the word the way we all do, by associating it with certain experiences and meanings. The difference is that they haven't chosen to limit themselves to a compatible usage. In these cases being able to clearly state what the limitations are is really the only way to allow a person to make a rational choice on whether to adopt them or not. That's what I'm trying to do here, take concepts that have complicated meanings and offer a limited usage of them that captures the core of the meaning, discards some (hopefully) unnecessary flourishes and ends up with a definition that will be give people a useful choice if they want to adopt it. In some cases it's just clarifying a couple unstated assumptions, in others it might be a suggestion to significantly change the way the definition works to make it much more useful.
It's also important to keep in mind that a definition isn't a description. If I asked what a car is, a decent description is "a vehicle with four wheels, an engine and four seats", but that's not a good definition. It doesn't include things like electric cars (which have motors and not engines) or any car that has a different number of seats or even wheels. Descriptions seem to try and capture the most common examples and then allow similarities to those examples to capture the entire set, they work from the inside out, While definitions are more important at the edge cases of a set, the less common examples where mistakes can be made. A definition of a car might be something like "a vehicle to designed primarily to transport some or all members of a family." Of course, this would assumes that we have a decent definition of "family" as well, one that's fairly flexible, it debatable if that's the right choice or not. We could say "transport one or several people", but I think that in reality different kinds of cars might actually be designed to transport members of families, so that would be a better definition. If we accept these two examples, the description works because it captures immediate and common traits, while the definition works because it captures the underlying logic that drives the creation of the set of things.
Another interesting feature of definitions is that any definition is dependent on the meaning or definitions of the words that are used in it, and sometimes those meaning can be difficult to define in a useful way. Which makes sense, a definition is an attempt to limit a word's meaning in a useful way, which isn't easy. Eventually we might want to ask what's at the root of all these definitions? Ultimately I believe that all meaning comes from feeling of rewards - pleasure or avoidance of pain. These feelings are layered on top of our experiences of the world and give us a way to rank and organize experiences. They allow us to remember things that are important and learn tasks by correlating actions with rewards. Layer upon complex layer of correlations and predictions and associations with different expected rewards are built up, and some of those associations are words with meanings. This is a very personal process dependent on each person's experiences. Some words might have relatively straightforward meanings and the experiences people share are common and it's easy to make a useful definition. Other words might have a wide variety of personal experiences and meanings built up around them, and it might be nearly impossible to limit them in a way that's widely useful.
Can meaning be reduced to simple feeling or rewards and their associations? Try to imagine if from birth we were incapable of feeling pain or pleasure, nothing was good or bad, we just experienced everything without that additional layer. How would we learning anything or how would anything come to be associated with any meaning? Every sight and sound would be equal because there'd be no reason to prefer one over the other and without some system of preferences I don't believe we could ever develop any meaning, and certainly not the complex layered meanings of language.
Fortunately we do have the ability to feel good and bad about experiences and predict what those experiences will be like in the future and therefore attach meaning to things like sights and sounds. That complex organic creation of meaning allows us to have language, but it also means that language is the result of individual experiences. Sometimes though, if we want to improve the clarity and efficiency of communication we can limit ourselves to a specific definition, and by doing that maybe over time actually change what the words mean to us.