I think that in the discussion of film and definitions, there has been
some talking at cross-purposes. What we do in everyday discourse is quite
different than what we do as philosophers, and it is one thing to be able
to identify x when it is encountered, and quite another to be able to say
something insightful about x; I doubt definitions are *necessary* in either
case, but they can certainly be illuminating in the latter case, even when
not entirely successful--I, for one, have benefitted a great deal in
thinking about and discussing various serious attempts to offer definitions
of art, even though I think such efforts will never succeed in producing
necessary and sufficient conditions for something's being a work of art. I
also suspect that there have been a number of different conceptions of what
it is to form a definition, and this hasn't helped things. The meanings of
terms can be defined with respect to use, extension, or intension, and can
be articulated in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, genealogy,
prototypes, and so on. Philosophical definitions are usually aimed at
specifying the conditions for a concept's proper application (philosophers
aren't usually much interested in words so much as what the words are taken
to refer to; some take it that words refer to objects, actions, events,
etc., while others take it that they refer to concepts). But it's really a
very complicated mess, so none of us should be too confident of our own
positions (which isn't to say that we shouldn't adopt any). My original
entry into the discussion was with respect to Wittgenstein's deflationary
approach, one with which I am often sympathetic, but which I think is too
often used as a cudgel on others attempting to do valuable conceptual
analysis.
Jeff
Jeff Dean
[log in to unmask]
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|