Most of the disagreements I've had in personal relationships have wound up coming down to differences in how we understand words in particular contexts. Sometimes, the actions someone wants you to do (such as getting out of the way of the hospital entrance) is sufficiently clear even if you don't understand *exactly* what they mean by all of their terms (so it would be rude to ask, given the urgency, and given that actionability is what matters), but there's almost never a situation in which answering "what people usually mean by x" would make sense. A slightly more specific utterance such as "what people usually mean by x in y context/region/subculture/discourse" might be more helpful.
The numbered issues are real. The fourth is a special case of what I've independently recognized as the general "it's obvious" argument.
I've been subjected to 1, 2 and 4, and have subjected others to 2 and 3, losing a friend to 3.
About semantic punting, that's similar to what I call "kicking the can down/up", when a solution at the current level of analysis causes serious problems downstream or upstream, in a way that the solution doesn't do what it says it should. For example, locating or composing value in the intrinsic or in the extrinsic; both presume the thing they're trying to resolve, just reintroducing the issue elsewhere.
The article overall mentions real problems, even the last one about ordinary/philo contexts, but it feels obnoxious, grating, and even smug (this is false, I've heard Lance speak).
I'm partly reminded of a journalist who went into a wargaming institute, and in his report for the public, was exasperated at the moral implications of existing in a world where artistic, lovable fun games are part of the same human organism that also uses games for war simulation, and told the audience, like... "we should do something". In his case, it's hardly likely that flower power would end history.
Here, the conclusion pushes for empirical research, an improvement over the journalist. While that would help get to grips with these issues, it would not prescribe better alternatives.
What are you supposed to do when yours or someone else's arguments are insufficient? You willfully ignore them by voluntary will, or by nature's compulsory violence, because thought must halt at the point of zero returns.
You may understate how often the same observations apply in real-world situations. In my work, I have to deal with people saying something is "addictive" or someone is "addicted" all the time, but when pressed they cannot say what they mean by that (other than via a motte-and-bailey retreat to some reasonably concrete other concept like "a tolerance builds up" or "dependence/withdrawal exists" or just "they do it a lot"). This is fairly critical since the word is used as if it were an important observation with substantial implications for the discourse (not unlike in philosophy), but it turns out no one can agree on what it means and those using it cannot say what they mean. At a more everyday level, talk about "freedom" tends to not stand up to a single follow-up question of "freedom to/from what?"
One way to respond is to figure out what the other party is being vague about, which sets you up to say something like "in ordinary usage, term T [means / implies / allows] T`, which is a problem for your thesis because..." While they can still reply that they have already explained what they mean, if your claim about T is reasonable, then reasonable third parties should see such a response by your counter-party as a tacit admission of the weakness of their position.
This can be effective even if the term T is vague on account of our current knowledge being insufficient to settle the matter, as it can lead to unmasking what speculative assumptions are being made (such as that their intuitions are data or that thought experiments yield results, for example.)
We have a chronic systemic problem with our University system. They have to teach the dogma of the day because they are political. Whatever the physics community says are the important issues is what they will teach. Try reading my article where I'm trying to get an email out to Barbara Corcoran.
People frequently fall into the trap of expecting and then assuming that concepts must have singular & consistent delineations in all contexts.
Huemer appears to do this for "seems" as well as in several parts of his critiques of attempts at defining "seems"... in 1.2 he conflates two meanings of "disposition" and in 1.4 he conflates two meanings of "probability". Subtract those problematic parts and I think we can roughly say that something "seems" to a person to be some way when their appreciation of the circumstances has them disposed to think that it is likely to be that way (even if it's not what they would like to be true or if they think it has a low propensity for being true). This description wouldn't hold together when a higher level of conceptual resolution is required, but nor would any other.
As to the legitimacy of deferring to ordinary conceptions of a notion... I wouldn't regard it as improper in and of itself, so long as you're not trying to shirk the implications. But you have to adopt it warts and all. If the ordinary notion means that your claim or position doesn't converge on anything sensible in a narrower or different context where it needs to... too bad.
In this case, is there any situation where "seems" would present a material ambiguity given the breadth of Huemer's position? If, knowing practically nothing about unicorns or rabbits, I see a rabbit and some combination of cognitive biases and misfiring neurons (and/or literally anything else that leaves me unsuspecting) results in me having the impression that what I'm seeing is what people mean by "unicorn"... then it "seems" to me that it's a "unicorn". I suspect that Huemer would agree, which would make me believing the rabbit to be a unicorn a "justified" belief by his logic. And then the issue is not so much with what "seems" connotes but with "justified" (and possibly also with "defeaters").
Good article. This may be only tangentially related, but it reminded me of a debate I saw on Miles K. Donahue’s YouTube channel between Dr. Bogardus and Dr. Bettcher on what the term “woman” means, specifically their disagreement over how we should analyze “folk” concepts. If someone appeals to “what people ordinarily mean,” but then turns fuzzy ordinary usage into a rigid theoretical concept, it becomes unclear whether they are analyzing ordinary meaning or replacing it with a revisionary reconstruction. I'm interested in digging into the practice of conceptual analysis further, as something about it seems strange to me.
I recommend looking outside of philosophy if you want to learn anything usefull for analysis of use and meaning. Philosophy fails when it doesnt assimilate population science because it doesnt even make contact with the target domain.
Most of the disagreements I've had in personal relationships have wound up coming down to differences in how we understand words in particular contexts. Sometimes, the actions someone wants you to do (such as getting out of the way of the hospital entrance) is sufficiently clear even if you don't understand *exactly* what they mean by all of their terms (so it would be rude to ask, given the urgency, and given that actionability is what matters), but there's almost never a situation in which answering "what people usually mean by x" would make sense. A slightly more specific utterance such as "what people usually mean by x in y context/region/subculture/discourse" might be more helpful.
The numbered issues are real. The fourth is a special case of what I've independently recognized as the general "it's obvious" argument.
I've been subjected to 1, 2 and 4, and have subjected others to 2 and 3, losing a friend to 3.
About semantic punting, that's similar to what I call "kicking the can down/up", when a solution at the current level of analysis causes serious problems downstream or upstream, in a way that the solution doesn't do what it says it should. For example, locating or composing value in the intrinsic or in the extrinsic; both presume the thing they're trying to resolve, just reintroducing the issue elsewhere.
The article overall mentions real problems, even the last one about ordinary/philo contexts, but it feels obnoxious, grating, and even smug (this is false, I've heard Lance speak).
I'm partly reminded of a journalist who went into a wargaming institute, and in his report for the public, was exasperated at the moral implications of existing in a world where artistic, lovable fun games are part of the same human organism that also uses games for war simulation, and told the audience, like... "we should do something". In his case, it's hardly likely that flower power would end history.
Here, the conclusion pushes for empirical research, an improvement over the journalist. While that would help get to grips with these issues, it would not prescribe better alternatives.
What are you supposed to do when yours or someone else's arguments are insufficient? You willfully ignore them by voluntary will, or by nature's compulsory violence, because thought must halt at the point of zero returns.
You may understate how often the same observations apply in real-world situations. In my work, I have to deal with people saying something is "addictive" or someone is "addicted" all the time, but when pressed they cannot say what they mean by that (other than via a motte-and-bailey retreat to some reasonably concrete other concept like "a tolerance builds up" or "dependence/withdrawal exists" or just "they do it a lot"). This is fairly critical since the word is used as if it were an important observation with substantial implications for the discourse (not unlike in philosophy), but it turns out no one can agree on what it means and those using it cannot say what they mean. At a more everyday level, talk about "freedom" tends to not stand up to a single follow-up question of "freedom to/from what?"
One way to respond is to figure out what the other party is being vague about, which sets you up to say something like "in ordinary usage, term T [means / implies / allows] T`, which is a problem for your thesis because..." While they can still reply that they have already explained what they mean, if your claim about T is reasonable, then reasonable third parties should see such a response by your counter-party as a tacit admission of the weakness of their position.
This can be effective even if the term T is vague on account of our current knowledge being insufficient to settle the matter, as it can lead to unmasking what speculative assumptions are being made (such as that their intuitions are data or that thought experiments yield results, for example.)
We have a chronic systemic problem with our University system. They have to teach the dogma of the day because they are political. Whatever the physics community says are the important issues is what they will teach. Try reading my article where I'm trying to get an email out to Barbara Corcoran.
People frequently fall into the trap of expecting and then assuming that concepts must have singular & consistent delineations in all contexts.
Huemer appears to do this for "seems" as well as in several parts of his critiques of attempts at defining "seems"... in 1.2 he conflates two meanings of "disposition" and in 1.4 he conflates two meanings of "probability". Subtract those problematic parts and I think we can roughly say that something "seems" to a person to be some way when their appreciation of the circumstances has them disposed to think that it is likely to be that way (even if it's not what they would like to be true or if they think it has a low propensity for being true). This description wouldn't hold together when a higher level of conceptual resolution is required, but nor would any other.
As to the legitimacy of deferring to ordinary conceptions of a notion... I wouldn't regard it as improper in and of itself, so long as you're not trying to shirk the implications. But you have to adopt it warts and all. If the ordinary notion means that your claim or position doesn't converge on anything sensible in a narrower or different context where it needs to... too bad.
In this case, is there any situation where "seems" would present a material ambiguity given the breadth of Huemer's position? If, knowing practically nothing about unicorns or rabbits, I see a rabbit and some combination of cognitive biases and misfiring neurons (and/or literally anything else that leaves me unsuspecting) results in me having the impression that what I'm seeing is what people mean by "unicorn"... then it "seems" to me that it's a "unicorn". I suspect that Huemer would agree, which would make me believing the rabbit to be a unicorn a "justified" belief by his logic. And then the issue is not so much with what "seems" connotes but with "justified" (and possibly also with "defeaters").
Good article. This may be only tangentially related, but it reminded me of a debate I saw on Miles K. Donahue’s YouTube channel between Dr. Bogardus and Dr. Bettcher on what the term “woman” means, specifically their disagreement over how we should analyze “folk” concepts. If someone appeals to “what people ordinarily mean,” but then turns fuzzy ordinary usage into a rigid theoretical concept, it becomes unclear whether they are analyzing ordinary meaning or replacing it with a revisionary reconstruction. I'm interested in digging into the practice of conceptual analysis further, as something about it seems strange to me.
I recommend looking outside of philosophy if you want to learn anything usefull for analysis of use and meaning. Philosophy fails when it doesnt assimilate population science because it doesnt even make contact with the target domain.