{"id":801,"date":"2009-05-20T13:16:01","date_gmt":"2009-05-20T20:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/?p=801"},"modified":"2009-05-27T20:25:58","modified_gmt":"2009-05-28T03:25:58","slug":"argumentum-ad-verecundiam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/argumentum-ad-verecundiam\/","title":{"rendered":"argumentum ad verecundiam [\u00c3\u02dc1]"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can empathize with the very human habit of imposing<\/em> boundaries upon experience, and subsequent desire to appeal to these boundaries for all manner of quacksalvery. I recently found myself defending the case that (1) words can have meaning without having clear boundaries- that is, boundaries are not a necessary condition for two people to use the same word understandably between one another; and (2) that many meaningful words lacking clear boundaries do, in fact, exist. I brought forward the example ‘game’; the debate was born in the term ‘religion’.<\/p>\n

“[…] how is the concept of a game bounded? What still counts as a game and what no longer does? Can you give the boundary? No. You can draw<\/em> one; for none has so far ever been drawn. (But that never troubled you before when you used the word “game”.)”<\/p>\n

“One might say that the concept ‘game’ is a concept with blurred edges.<\/p>\n

– But is a blurred concept a concept at all?<\/p>\n

Is an indistinct photograph a picture of a person at all? Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn’t the indistinct one often exactly what we need?<\/p>\n

= Frege compares a concept to an area and says that an area with vague boundaries cannot be called an area at all. This presumably means that we cannot do anything with it.<\/p>\n

But is it senseless to say: “Stand roughly there”? Suppose that I were standing with someone in a city square and said that. As I say it I do not draw any kind of boundary, but perhaps point with my hand – as if I were indicating a particular spot<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

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I can empathize with the very human habit of imposing boundaries upon experience, and subsequent desire to appeal to these boundaries for all manner of quacksalvery. I recently found myself defending the case that (1) words can have meaning without having clear boundaries- that is, boundaries are not a necessary condition for two people to … Continue reading argumentum ad verecundiam [\u00c3\u02dc1]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-divisions"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":803,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions\/803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}