READ: Despite what people say, definitions matter

WORKING WITH CONCEPTS

Connell Fanning and Marija Laugalyte

In this series on ‘Working with Concepts’ we are using everyday events to explore how we think with concepts. Very often we use words that are labels for concepts when the content under the heading is actually empty. This is the habit of talking in clichés, unaware that words matter. At some point in our lives we must break this habit of using words without meaning when we are purporting to be thinking with concepts.

Concepts require definition, that is, content under the label of the concept. Often in our daily activities, we find ourselves or others being dismissive or impatient, if not cynical, of definitions. They tend to be seen as dull and delaying getting on with the business at hand. Nevertheless, the usefulness of conceptual definitions can be observed all around in our daily living if we pay attention.

Importance of definitions

The practical importance of definitions in our everyday life is illustrated by two articles in The New York Times.

The first reported on Donald Trump being found liable of sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll and shows how definitions matter differently to the plaintiff and the defendant. The judge gave definitions of ‘rape’, ‘sexual abuse’, and ‘forcible touching’ for the jurors to be able to make their verdict. As reported, these were:

“To find that Mr. Trump raped Ms. Carroll, the jurors needed to believe that it was more likely than not that Mr. Trump engaged in sexual intercourse by physical force. The judge explained that ‘any penetration of the penis into the vaginal opening’ constituted intercourse.

To find that Mr. Trump sexually abused Ms. Carroll, the jurors needed to believe that Mr. Trump subjected Ms. Carroll to sexual contact by physical force. Sexual contact is defined as touching the sexual or other intimate parts of another person, Judge Kaplan said.

Forcible touching, the judge said, ‘includes squeezing, grabbing, pinching, rubbing or other bodily contact that involves the application of some level of pressure to the victim’s sexual or intimate parts.’”

On the basis of the definitions above, Mr. Trump was found liable for $5 million to be paid to Ms. Carroll. That’s the significance of definitions.

The second article from The New York Times relates to a more quotidian matter in reporting a study which found that the use of the word, that is label for a concept, ‘whole grain’ is “murky”, with the result that it is difficult for health specialists to assess how much of the desirable whole grains people consume. The practical implications of fuzzy definitions is as follows:

“Various institutions like the Food and Drug Administration and American Heart Association and industry groups like the Whole Grains Council have different criteria for which foods qualify, the researchers reported. And that lack of a standard definition, along with puzzling labelling on food packaging, makes it challenging for people to assess their consumption accurately”.

Again, we can readily appreciate the practical importance of definitional clarity.

Concept = label + definition

What exactly do we mean by the term ‘concept’? People may be surprised that we ask this, given that it is such a commonly used, and indeed abused, term. Yet it is in its common use that problems lie. Concepts need to be expressed in words, but often our understanding of a concept is casual and even careless and confined to mere ‘labels’ without fully appreciating their full import. Take, for example, ‘leadership’ being a good case in point, being a word that is bandied about every day in business and other walks of life. We invite you to pause and consider what you understand by it and other everyday use of words that relate to concepts, such as ‘loyalty’, ‘equality’, or ‘happiness’.

To apply a concept fully, we need to go deeper than the word or words we employ to signal it to ourselves and others. At the next level down is a definition or summary, which we use as a shorthand way of elaborating on the concept. But a summary of what? And that is the point: it is a summary of all that has gone before, an argument, to get to that place of definition. For that reason alone, we may admit to such statements being inadequate. Nevertheless, more important is that we cannot limit our thinking to the summary, not to mention the word heading it if we are to think properly with concepts.

Think of a concept’s label as being like a physical one tied to the handle of a suitcase, allowing it to be identified immediately, while another label glued to the side states what can be found inside. It is what is inside, of course, that needs to be unpacked to get a full sense of its contents. Similarly, we need to be able to unpack a concept’s content if we are to understand and use it properly.

It is self-evident, that unless we know the content under the label, we cannot think with a concept, indeed we have nothing to think with as we are only talking about an empty box.

Context matters

The concepts we work with are really living entities, or should be regarded as such. They are shaped by our experiences and so are defined differently depending on their context. For example, the label ‘time’ is a frequently used word in all sorts of contexts. And context is the point. They are our ‘frames of reference’.

Take, for example, the context of John Maynard Keynes theorizing about the ‘business economy’. Keynes was having to deal with the fact that there is no standardized unit of ‘economic time’, unlike the standardized units of ‘clock-time’ with which we are most familiar. The later is usually taken for granted as what we mean when we use the word (label) ‘time’. Thus, for his purposes, Keynes had to define a concept of ‘day’ as follows:

“Daily here stands for the shortest interval after which the firm is free to revise its decisions as to how much employment to offer. It is, so to speak, the minimum effective unit of economic time.” (Keynes, The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money: 47, fn 1, 1936.)

On the other hand, were we to be considering the realm of the physical universe, we would need to work with a very different conception of ‘time’, such as the one formulated in terms of the concept of ‘simultaneity’, as was done by Albert Einstein for his theories of relativity.

In our daily living we use the word ‘time’ with all sorts of casual meanings which generally serve our purpose of communicating to others. We even use ‘time’ for ‘space’ when we say to someone “I’ll be there in a minute”, when we mean to say, we are close by.

Exercises for putting content to labels – words matter

We can do simple exercises during our daily living to increase our awareness of words as labels for concepts under which there must be the content with which we think. Doing these exercises will bring to our attention how we are thinking and the extent to which we are engaging in clichés.

Obviously, we can’t do this every time we utter words and neither do we need to do this with all words, words like ‘and’ and ‘but’ (We could usefully, however, pay attention to the difference between them and the impact of this difference on our thinking and on others in conversation. We use ‘buts’ too much as a matter of habit while ignoring their influence). We need to select what words we want to pay attention to. Those words need not be for always, we can do it in the rolling way. The attention does not have to remain on the same words, and we can move attention from word to word once we adopt the attitude of paying attention to the words that matter with our conscious presence. We can cycle through words, build up and get a feel of our thinking, and become more aware of how we are thinking.

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Exercise 2

Would you trust President Donald Trump? Would you trust Boris Johnson? Would you trust any politician?

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The ‘content’ of a concept is more than just a bare dictionary definition that we peruse and pass by, although we might start with that sometimes and incorporate it into our ‘box’ with a label. The ‘content’ of a working concept is more than words, it is a feeling too.

Concepts as we mentioned are to be approached as living entities in our apparatus of thinking. We relate to them as tools requiring improvement as we gain experience in different situations.