One of the issues that has come up in recent days is the fallacious misuse of definitions that beg questions at stake. Accordingly, I think it advisable to headline a comment from the Nihilism thread and give an example from origins issues:
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KF, 262: >>Aleta (attn BA, LH, ES & WJM):
While a lot else happened, this is important:
[A, 227:] A definition, as a stipulation within a logical system, can’t be in error because we are just declaring that it is what it is.
Definitions, even in formal systems, can beg questions (etc. of course) and become dubious as a result.
The fallacy of begging the question in an explicit definition or a definition by discussion or a definition by principle/criterion (as with the old verificationist view) is just that, a fallacy. No true Scotsman will X is a simple case in point.
{NB: At 163, I gave an example from Logical Positivism:
. . . what I primarily had in mind is the case of Logical Positivism and its attempt to overthrow the credibility of metaphysics (which includes ontology), ethics etc.
As Wikipedia almost coyly summarises with an I have a secret introduction:
Logical positivists’ verifiability principle—that only statements about the world that are empirically verifiable or logically necessary are cognitively meaningful—cast theology, metaphysics, and evaluative judgements, such as ethics and aesthetics, as cognitively meaningless “pseudostatements” that were but emotively meaningful.[1] {–> this of course redefined “meaningful” in ways that begged big questions and in the end proved to be self-referentially incoherent . . . } The verificationist program’s fundamental suppositions had varying formulations, which evolved from the 1920s to 1950s into the milder version logical empiricism.[2] Yet all three of verificationism’s shared basic suppositions—verifiability criterion, analytic/synthetic distinction, and observation/theory gap[3]—were by the 1960s found irreparably untenable, signaling the demise of verificationism and, with it, of the entire movement launched by logical positivism.[4]
Why did it collapse?
In the end, as the assertion was self-referential and could not pass its own test. It was self-referentially incoherent and self-falsifying.}
A more serious context is where definition is not arbitrary game-playing in a sand-box but should seek to accurately describe reality in some relevant facet. Plato’s dialogues often pivot on such, e.g. what is justice?
In other words it is patently not an error to highlight cases where definitions must seek to precisely, coherently, accurately and materially completely describe an aspect of reality. Which is itself not to be question-beggingly equated to the physical, material world.
In short, the fallacy of the question-begging, often ideologically loaded and sometimes invidiously accusatory definition must be recognised and addressed. Yet another first steps in reasoning issue for UD.
DEFINITION:
The fallacy of the question-begging definition –> presentation of a definition as a part of an argument that embeds or directly implies — without adequate justification — a conclusion that is reasonably open to question or dispute, often thereby suppressing or seeking to disqualify, mischaracterise or lock out relevant views, arguments or concerns of one side of a matter in dispute. Such may be by way of manipulatively stipulative and/or persuasive [re-]definitions that are loaded. {Cf discussion of straight vs spin here.}
A case very relevant to origins science education is found in the US National Science Teachers Association Board statement of July 2000 . . . which I understand came about through a million dollar project:
The principal product of science is knowledge in the form of naturalistic concepts and the laws and theories related to those concepts . . . .
[[S]cience, along with its methods, explanations and generalizations, must be the sole focus of instruction in science classes to the exclusion of all non-scientific or pseudoscientific methods, explanations, generalizations and products . . . .
Although no single universal step-by-step scientific method captures the complexity of doing science, a number of shared values and perspectives characterize a scientific approach to understanding nature. Among these are a demand for naturalistic explanations supported by empirical evidence that are, at least in principle, testable against the natural world. Other shared elements include observations, rational argument, inference, skepticism, peer review and replicability of work . . . .
Science, by definition, is limited to naturalistic methods and explanations and, as such, is precluded from using supernatural elements in the production of scientific knowledge. [[NSTA, Board of Directors, July 2000. Emphases added.]
See how many ways there are loaded definitions that beg huge questions, impose agendas by ideological dominance, invidiously mischaracterise those who don’t toe the party-line and even hint at menace?
Definition –> [even in formal, logical contexts] is not immune to error.
Genuinely self-evident truth, by contrast, once clearly understood, will remain true, seen as true once one understands, and so seen as true by necessity on pain of absurdity on attempted denial. One may indeed reject such, but at the cost of clinging to absurdities.>>
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Another straight-thinking issue. END