I’m sure you could come up with a self consistent definition, but who says it would be “correct” (whatever that means)? If I define chair as an atom with 1 proton in the nucleus, that’s a pretty clear definition with little room for edge cases, but it’s also completely absurd.
You could also define “woman” by listing out everyone you feel counts as a woman, and that would technically be self consistent, but again, that’d be absurd. It’s all completely arbitrary, so why should I or anyone else care about that definition? Same goes for any hypothetical 20 page definition.
That’s exactly my point? Why is the definition being asked for if, as you say, it doesn’t matter and you don’t care. They’re being asked to fulfil a task which, even if fulfilled, will be ignored. That to me is a bad argument.
I can’t speak for the person you were responding to, but I would do that as a first-hand demonstration of the flaws of their thinking. I could just say “you’re wrong and here’s why”, but I think it’s a lot more persuasive if I get them to go down that path and figure it out themselves.
I’m sure you could come up with a self consistent definition, but who says it would be “correct” (whatever that means)? If I define chair as an atom with 1 proton in the nucleus, that’s a pretty clear definition with little room for edge cases, but it’s also completely absurd.
You could also define “woman” by listing out everyone you feel counts as a woman, and that would technically be self consistent, but again, that’d be absurd. It’s all completely arbitrary, so why should I or anyone else care about that definition? Same goes for any hypothetical 20 page definition.
That’s exactly my point? Why is the definition being asked for if, as you say, it doesn’t matter and you don’t care. They’re being asked to fulfil a task which, even if fulfilled, will be ignored. That to me is a bad argument.
I can’t speak for the person you were responding to, but I would do that as a first-hand demonstration of the flaws of their thinking. I could just say “you’re wrong and here’s why”, but I think it’s a lot more persuasive if I get them to go down that path and figure it out themselves.