LANGUAGE AND DEFINITIONS

On our day to day activities, we usually reason by using language, manipulating

propositions in a logical or informative spirit. The formal patterns of correct reasoning can all be
conveyed through ordinary language, but then so can a lot of other things. In fact, language is used
in many different ways, some of which are irrelevant to any attempt to provide reasons for what is
commonly believed.

What is language?
- A method of human communication either spoken or written, consisting of the use of words
in a structured and conventional way.
- Important in the study of arguments because people can use words to try to persuade or
dissuade, sometimes without changing the meaning of the words use.

I. LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS

It is helpful to identify at least three (3) distinct uses of language:

1. Informative use of language involves an effort to communicate some content which
presumes that the content of what is being communicated is actually true, so it will be the
central focus in the study of logic.

Example:
There are approximately 20,000 homicides in the United States each year, with
handguns being the most frequently used instrument of death.

**The cognitive meaning of a sentence is the information conveyed by the sentence.

Words such as approximately, 20,000, and homicides help give (1) its cognitive
meaning.

2. Expressive use of language, on the other hand, intends only to vent some feeling, or
perhaps to evoke some feeling from other people. Although such uses dont convey any
information, it serves as an important function in everyday life, since how we feel
sometimes matters as much as or more than we hold to be true.

Example:
The number of murders per year in America is now so high that youve got to have
a death wish to walk the streets, day or night. Every lunatic and every thug carries
a heater, just waiting to blow you away.

** The emotive force of a sentence is the emotion the sentence expresses or tends to elicit.
Words and phrases such as death wish, lunatic, thug, and blow away contribute
heavily to the emotive force of (2).

3. Directive use of language aim to cause or to prevent some overt action by a human agent.
The point is to make someone perform a particular action. This is a significant linguistic
function, too, but like the expressive use, it doesnt always relate logically to truths of our
beliefs.

Example:
That conduct is utterly disgusting!
**This expresses an attitude, seeks to direct behavior and probably reports a fact.

Note:
The intended use in a particular instance often depends more on the specific context and
tone of voice than it does on the grammatical form or vocabulary of what is said.
Example:
Im hungry (physiological condition/express a feeling/request to someone)
 Statement (1) is designed primarily to provide information, whereas statement (2) is
designed, at least in part, to express feelings or elicit an emotional response and for
statement (3) is to direct or guide.

II. EMOTIVE LANGUAGE, NEUTRAL LANGUAGE, AND DISPUTES

1. Emotive Language
- Word and phrases meant to evoke an emotional response. Emotive language is
designed to tell you the facts while influencing you to adopt the author's opinion.

2. Neutral language
- Words used to convey beliefs but may also have an impact on the attitudes of the
listeners.

Example:
(Non-emotively)
The men were killed.

Another person in the bar was injured by the man's glass.

Mr Smith was attacked by Mr Jones for two minutes.

(Emotively)
The victims were executed in cold blood.

An innocent bystander suffered facial injuries when the thug launched his glass
across the bar.

For what seemed a lifetime, Mr Smith was subjected to a vicious, cowardly assault
by the unemployed, steroid-pumped monster.

III. DISPUTES AND AMBIGUITY

Ambiguous or vague language often interferes with clear thinking which might result to
dispute. A word is ambiguous if it has more than one meaning and dispute means verbal
disagreement, argument or debate arising only as a result of linguistic misunderstanding.
Example
He lies in this grave.
**The word lies might mean tells a falsehood or is prostrate on a horizontal surface.
To uncover and resolve verbal disagreements, ambiguity must be identified, clarified and
distinguished.
Three (3) categories:
1. Obviously Genuine Dispute
- There is NO AMBIGUITY present and the disputers DO DISAGREE, either in attitude
or in belief.

Example: If Mayas favorite subject is management and Hiras is Logic.

**It is a dispute of thoughts. This type of dispute can be not be resolved.

2. Merely Verbal Dispute

- There is AMBIGUITY present but can be resolved by coming to agreement about
same word or phrase to be understood. (NO DISAGREEMENT)

Example: Martha says: She has bought a new car.

McDuffie says: The car Martha has bought is not new
**The word "new" has two different meanings: recently purchased and this year's model.

3. Apparently Verbal but Really Genuine

 - There is AMBIGUITY present and the disputers DISAGREE either in attitude or
in belief.
Example: Sam: Dont ask your professor about it. You should use your own judgment.
Susan: I will use my own judgment, and in my judgment, I should ask my professor.
**In this example the word judgment is used in two different meanings. Sam is using the
word judgment in the sense of matter in discussion whereas Susan is using it in the sense
of asking the professor not.

IV. DEFINITIONS AND THEIR USES

What is a definition?
- A definition is any group of words or symbols designed to explain the meaning of some
other word or symbol. Good definitions are those which advance communication and
understanding, while bad definitions are those which hinder or at least fail to advance
communication or understanding. Even a bad definition is still a definition, and over the
course of debates you may find more bad definitions than good ones.

All definitions are made up of two parts, the definiendum and the definiens. The
definiendum is whatever word, symbol, or group of words is being defined; the defiens,
then, is whatever words are being used to do the defining. Thus, in the statement a
definition is a group of words or symbols designed to explain the meaning of some other
word or symbol, the definiendum is a definition and the definiens is everything else.

a. Stipulative Definition
- Meaning is assigned to some symbol. It is not a report and cannot be true or false.
Its a proposal, resolution, request, or instruction to use the definiendum to mean
what is meant by the definiens.

Example
I suggest using apatheist to refer to people who disbelieve in gods (atheists), but who
also dont really care about whether any gods exist or not (that is to say, they are
apathetic about the question).

b. Lexical Definition
- Report the meaning that the definiendum already has and which therefore can be
correct or incorrect.

Example
Atheist: one who disbelieves in or denies the existence of God or gods.
Atheist: one who knows that God exists, but is in denial for some reason.

**The first is a correct definition in the lexical sense because it does accurately describe
how the term atheist is used in a wide variety of contexts. The second, however, is an
incorrect definition in the lexical sense you wont find it in any dictionaries and you wont
find it used anywhere except in narrow circles of evangelical Christians. Rather than a
lexical definition, this more properly an example of a persuasive definition.

c. Precising Definition
- Go beyond ordinary usage in such a way as to eliminate troublesome uncertainty
regarding borderline cases. Its definiendum has an existing meaning, but that
meaning is vague. What is added to achieve precision is partly a matter of
stipulation.

Example
Legal circles
 **In laws we can find all sorts of words which are necessarily vague and that vagueness
can hinder a courts ability to apply the law. Thus, courts will use precising definitions
according to which a word is said to mean something for the purposes of that law, but not
necessarily any other law, let alone general, lexical usage. A good example of this would
be the meaning of the word person. Corporations are treated as persons for the purpose of
some laws (like those on speech) but not others (like those on voting).

d. Theoretical Definition
- Seek to formulate a theoretically adequate or scientifically useful description of the
objects to which the term applies.
- The reason such definitions are called theoretical is because the definitions
themselves attempt to construct a theory about the nature of the thing in question.
Thus, a theoretical definition of justice is not simply an attempt to point out what
justice is or report on how people happen to use the word, but instead an attempt to
create a theory which argues for a particular conception of justice.

Example
Discussion about the nature of love any attempt to define love in a way that includes
all actual instances of love while excluding all instances that arent really love would
be a theoretical definition. .

e. Persuasive Definition
- Seek to influence attitudes or stir the emotions, using language expressively rather
than informatively.

Example
Atheist: one who disbelieves in or denies the existence of God or gods.
Atheist: one who knows that God exists, but is in denial for some reason.

**The first is a genuine lexical definition because it clarifies how the word atheist
is used; the second, however, attempts to influence peoples perception of atheists.
The definition here is replete with emotionally charged language, especially for the
normal target audience of evangelical Christians. Notice the sole focus on God
rather than the more general God or gods and the insistence that atheists perversely
deny something that they know and which others know that they know.

Persuasive definitions are probably most common in political debates people frequently
define key terms in ways that make their opponents look as bad as possible. Thus opponents
of abortion will define the practice as murder, which makes supporters of abortion choice look like
murderers. Libertarians will define taxation as a form of theft, thus making supporters of at least
some sort of government taxation look like thieves, not to mention the government itself.

Although such definitions might be constructed in a manner to look like lexical definitions, they
typically violate all of the rules needed for a definition to be lexical. They use, for example,
emotionally charged language and are frequently negative rather than positive. Accepting
persuasive definitions as if they were lexical is often the first step towards conceding an argument
before it has even begun.

V. THE STRUCTURE OF DEFINITIONS: EXTENSION AND INTENSION

Intension and extension is correlative words that indicate the reference of a term or
concept: intension indicates the internal content of a term or concept that constitutes its
formal definition; and extension indicates its range of applicability by naming the
particular objects that it denotes. For instance, the intension of ship as a substantive is
vehicle for conveyance on water, whereas its extension embraces such things as cargo
 ships, passenger ships, battleships, and sailing ships. The distinction between intension and
extension is not the same as that between connotation and denotation.

1. Intentional definition
-It is made of qualities or attributes that the term connotes, and connotes means to
suggest or imply in addition to the dictionary definition. So an intentional meaning
is one that has an implied meaning to the word. An example will be the word Dog,
which consists of attributes including four legs, canines, and barking. Is also known
as the intension or connotation of a term, which can also be related to sense.

2. Extensional definition
- It is made of the members of the class that the term denotes, and denotes means
to signify directly or refer to specifically. An example will be the word Dog again
but will refer to Dogs themselves and all dogs in the universe. Also known as the
extension or denotation, which can be also related to reference.

Example
"Bachelor" is "Unmarried man".
**This definition is valid because being an unmarried man is both a necessary
condition and a sufficient condition for being a bachelor. It is necessary because
one cannot be a bachelor without being an unmarried man, and it is sufficient
because any unmarried man is a bachelor.
**This is the opposite approach to the extensional definition, which defines by
listing everything that falls under that definition. An extensional definition
of bachelor would be a listing of all the unmarried men in the world.
Intentional definitions are best used when something has a clearly defined set of
properties, and they work well for terms that have too many referents to list in an
extensional definition. It is impossible to give an extensional definition for a term with
an infinite set of referents, but an intentional one can often be stated concisely. There are
infinitely many even numbers, impossible to list, but the term "even numbers" can be
defined easily by saying that even numbers are integer multiples of two.

VI. DEFINITION BY GENUS AND DIFFERENCES

- Known also as analytical definitions or by its Latin name, definitions per genus et
differentiam.

Per genus et differentiam

- A kind of definition. It consists of the genus (the kind or family) of thing to which
the defined thing belongs, and the differentia (the distinguishing feature which
marks it off from other members of the same family). Aristotle defined "man" as
"a rational animal". Thus man belongs to the kinds of thing termed animals, but is
distinguished from other animals by being rational.

1. Definitions should avoid circularity.

-To define a horse as 'a member of the species equus' would convey no information
whatsoever. For this reason, Locke adds that a definition of a term must not consist
of terms which are synonymous with it. This error is known as circulus in
definiendo. Note, however, that it is acceptable to define two relative terms in
respect of each other. Clearly, we cannot define 'antecedent' without using the
term 'consequent', nor conversely.

2. The definition must not be too wide or too narrow.

- It must be applicable to everything to which the defined term, and to no other
objects.
3. The definition must not be obscure.
- The purpose of a definition is to explain the meaning of a term which may be
obscure or difficult, by the use of terms that are commonly understood and whose
meaning is clear. The violation of this rule is known by the Latin term obscurum
per obscurius. However, sometimes scientific and philosophical terms are difficult
to define without obscurity.

4. A definition should not be negative where it can be positive.

- We should not define 'wisdom' as the absence of folly, or a healthy thing as
whatever is not sick. Sometimes this is unavoidable, however. We cannot define
a point except as 'something with no parts', nor blindness except as 'the absence
of sight in a creature that is normally sighted'.

References:
1. (Copi, 1982, pp 165-169; Joyce, 1926)
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensional_and_intensional_definitions
3. http://wps.prenhall.com/wps/media/objects/5909/6050951/MyLogicLab_
ebook/MLL_Copi_13e_Ch03/0136141390_Ch03_02.pdf

SUBMITTED BY:

MADJACO, SUZANNE L.