4.7 Boundaries of effective definitions

“Many of our difficulties,” notes the English writer and critic GK Chesterton, “arise because we confuse the words" unclear "and" indefinable. " When one or another spiritual fact is called indefinable, we immediately see something vague, vague, like a cloud. But we sin here even against common sense. What cannot be determined is originally primary. Our hands and feet, our bowls and spoons - this is what is indefinable. Uncertainly indisputable. Our neighbor is indefinable because he is too real. ”

A similar idea was expressed earlier by the French mathematician and philosopher B. Pascal: an attempt to determine what is understandable and obvious will only darken it.

Definition is an excellent tool against the vagueness of our concepts and reasoning. When using it is necessary, as in the case of any other means, to feel and comply with the measure.

First of all, it is impossible to determine absolutely everything, just as it is impossible to prove everything. The definition reduces the unknown to the known, no more. It always assumes that there are things known without any definition or explanation, clear in themselves and not requiring further clarification with the help of something even more obvious.

“Unclear” and “indefinable,” as Chesterton correctly noted, are not at all the same thing. Just the clearest, “self-explanatory and obvious,” according to Pascal, needs the least definition, and often simply does not allow it.

Definitions operate in a rather narrow range. On the one hand, it is limited to what is recognized as obvious and does not need special clarification, reduction to something more well-known and obvious. On the other hand, the field of successful application of definitions is limited to what remains to be insufficiently studied and understood in order to give it an accurate description.

Attempting to determine that which is not yet ripe for determination can only create a deceptive appearance of clarity.

It is known that the most rigorous definitions are found in the sciences dealing with abstract objects. It is easy to determine, say, a square, a cone, a perfect or an odd number. Definitions of concrete, real-life things taken in all the variety of their inherent properties are hardly given.

It would seem that it could be simpler than such an elementary particle as an electron. And, nevertheless, although not so much time has passed since its opening, it has already been given dozens of different definitions. The process of deepening knowledge of even a simple electron is, in essence, endless. And each of the stages of this process corresponds to its own definition of an electron. Geometric or arithmetic definitions related to abstract objects have remained unchanged for thousands of years.

Hegel once paid attention to this side of the matter. And she really is important. In different areas of knowledge, the definition possibilities are different. For example, it is impossible to demand from such ethics, which study the complex phenomena of morality, such rigid and precise definitions as from mathematics.

The definition of what is connected with a person, the properties of his personality, and the characteristics of behavior is generally of particular difficulty. Take, for example, such a human trait as intelligence. We do not hesitate to rate some people as “truly intelligent”, others are denied this quality. Our assessment takes into account the level of education of a person, his general culture, but not only. It relies on a complex set of properties of the person himself, on our subjective feelings, and it is not easy to summarize in a general definition. Writer D. Granin speaks well of this: “... intelligence is a purely Russian concept. In foreign dictionaries, the word "intellectual" has in brackets - "Russian." It is Russian for them, as well as the word "publicity" now. To define intelligence, to formulate what it is, in my opinion, so far no one has been able to. There is a sense of intelligence, like a sense of decency. I believe that the intelligentsia is the color of a nation, the color of a nation. I have met non-intelligent people among scholars, even large ones, and I know wonderful intellectuals among the workers. This concept for me is not class, not official, not educational qualification, it is outside all these formal categories, another is some kind of spiritual concept, which is combined in something with the concept of decency, independence, although these are different things.

... In inhuman conditions, intelligence, spirituality helped not to fall into the moral abyss, to survive not at the expense of others, not to be humanized. What is not peculiar to the intellectual - we all understand. He can not be a man acting against conscience, dishonest, chauvinist, boor, possessor. There are some frames. But this, of course, is not a definition. ”

There is no doubt that definitions are important. But it still does not follow from this that the more definitions are introduced, the more accurate our reasoning becomes.

The art of definition is precisely in order to use definitions when required by the substance of the matter. In this case, it is necessary to refer to those forms of definitions that are most relevant in a particular situation. In one case, an explicit generic definition may be useful, in the other - contextual, in the third - a definition by pointing to the subject of interest, etc.

Stubbornly demanding accurate and, moreover, popular genus-specific definitions everywhere and everywhere, means PS to reckon with real circumstances and to be rigid.

In one fire management manual there was the following definition: “A vessel having the shape of a bucket with the inscription“ AM. ved. "and intended to extinguish fires, called fire bucket." The desire to determine everything that catches your eye and that, perhaps, does not need any definitions, at best generates, as in this example, banality. In science, as in any other field, the definition is not valuable in itself. It should be the natural outcome and the logical conclusion of the previous process of studying the subject. To sum up at some initial stages of this process is the same as counting chickens before the arrival of autumn.