Ontdef1. What is a definition?

Discussion

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What is the definition of definition

What can count as a definition? To clarify the concept, start with a definition of definition.

Dictionary.com states, “A definition is a formal and concise statement of the meaning of a word or phrase or the specification of the essential properties of something, or of the criteria which uniquely identify it.”

The word “definition” comes from Latin, Middle English, and Old French.

Given this understanding of definition requires us to give a concise statement of the meaning of the word “jazz.” This can be accomplished by a specification of the essential properties of jazz if it has any, and the criteria for identifying it and setting its boundaries.

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The Greek student of Plato, Aristotle, writes about word usage and definitions that might prove useful at the opening of his work "Categories" when he introduces the terms "equivocal" and "univocal."

“Things are said to be named equivocally when, though they have a common name, the definition corresponding with the name differs for each. Thus, a real man and a figure in a picture can both lay claim to the name "animal"; yet these are equivocally so named, for, though they have a common name, the definition corresponding with the name differs for each. For should any one define in what sense each is an animal, his definition in the one case will be appropriate to that case only .

On the other hand, things are said to be named univocally which have both the name and the definition answering to the name in common. A man and an ox are both 'animal,' and these are univocally so named, inasmuch as not only the name, but also the definition, is the same in both cases: for if a man should state in what sense each is an animal, the statement in the one case would be identical with that in the other.” (bold and bold italic not in original)

➢ Is the use of the word "jazz" equivocal or univocal?

It will depend upon who you ask and what their view is regarding the nature, or lack of it, of jazz. If the many sub-genres labeled jazz do not all have the same 'definition,' as Aristotle puts it in his "Categories," then the word "jazz" is being used equivocally.

➢ How could the word "jazz" be used univocally?

Following Aristotle's example, he claims the definition of animal applies equally to both humans and oxen 🐂. Aristotle says that the definition is the same for both because if someone states "in what sense" both humans and oxen are animals, the "statements" for each would be identical.

Let us assess and evaluate whether this is true. We can define animal using YourDictionary.com as “a member of the kingdom Animalia, and typically characterized by a multicellular body, specialized sense organs, voluntary movement, responses to factors in the environment and the ability to acquire and digest food.” When we check to see if both humans and oxen meet all of these conditions, we discover that the vast majority of typical living members meet them.

Still, some curiosities remain. Take a male human named Fred in a coma. Since he might very well eventually come out of his coma and continue with a average life afterward, we judge him—even during his coma—to remain a human being. We even consider dead human beings to remain as human beings. We even go so far as to think that decomposed parts leftover from old corpses are human parts. The same goes for Fred's animality properties while either in a coma or even dead. We say, "There lies Fred, a dead human animal." And yet, coma Fred or dead Fred don't continue to meet many items on the animal list any longer. Neither coma Fred, nor dead Fred, have voluntary movement. Both fail to respond to the environment. Neither can acquire food. Even if we try to take advantage of the phrase "has the ability" to do X, it surely remains unclear whether Fred still has this ability if he never comes out of the coma and we know dead Fred has no such ability.

Perhaps we might say, once an animal, always an animal, but this is not true either. The head of a fox cut off in a car accident was part of an animal and used to be an animal, but it is no longer an animal by just being a head.

Even if we weaken the animality conditions to something like has or had the potential to satisfy each item on the list, there remain problems. Consider a tiger born paralyzed. It does not have the potential even for voluntary movement, yet we still judge it as an animal nevertheless.

These considerations reveal that we need a better definition for an animal such as this one from The American Heritage Dictionary of Medicine (2018): “In scientific usage, a multicellular organism that is usually mobile, whose cells are not encased in a rigid cell wall (distinguishing it from plants and fungi) and which derives energy solely from the consumption of other organisms (distinguishing it from plants).”

Or, perhaps an even better definition from Wikipedia: "Animal": “Animals are multicellular eukaryotic organisms that form the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and grow from a hollow sphere of cells, the blastula, during embryonic development.”

The reason both are better is that each applies to Coma Fred and even Dead Fred since Fred is a multicellular eukaryotic organism that requires oxygen (when alive), his cells do not have rigid walls, he derives energy from consumption (when active), and he was grown out of a blastula during embryonic development.

Aristotle (384-322 BC) then was correct. The same definition for animal applies equally to humans and oxen, so that the word "animal" applied to both is a univocal usage.

How could it be discovered that the genus word "jazz" with a uniform definition applies equally to all of the sub-genres of jazz such as big band swing, cool jazz, Bebop, soul jazz, or free jazz so that we are using the word "jazz" univocally? One way would be to develop a list of properties and characteristics, like in the definition for an animal, for jazz that we understand to hold for each of the sub-genres. Can we find such a definition?

Suppose we cannot find such a definition for jazz that applies equally to all of the sub-genres called jazz? Would it be wrong if the term "jazz" was equivocal? Why?

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What makes for faulty definitions?

Form problems or Content problems cause faulty definitions.

FORM Problems for Definitions:

One cannot merely enumerate a complete list of something when defining it, as Socrates (470-399 BC) objected to in the Euthyphro at 6d: “Piety is doing what I am doing now” as well as in the Meno at 74c–d. Socrates insists that merely citing an example or a list of examples (rather than giving a general formula or description) is inadequate. He has many reasons in his favor for maintaining this view.

First, there are practical objections to enumerative attempts at definition. Often trying to list all the instances of the definiendum (what is to be defined) is going to be impractical or unworkable. One cannot list all of the even numbers. Nor can one practically list all of the aunts in the universe. You might miss the ones on Mars.

Much worse than the impracticability of enumerative definitions is that too often such a list has nothing to say about why all items are instances of the definiendum (what is to be defined).

➢ What are the reasons why each enumerated item exists in the itemized list, i.e., the purported definiens (what does the defining)?

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A complete enumeration of all instances is not sufficient

It is possible to have a complete enumeration of instances of something and yet still not have a definition that specifies what is represented. There can be two or more logically distinct definitions, incompatible with one another, but each having equivalent classes of instances. Philosophers to prove this point use the example of a creature with a heart versus a creature with a kidney where they assume that the extensional classes could be identical. However, hearts and kidneys are different, so need different definitions, not just a list or enumeration of instances.

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A complete enumeration of all instances is not necessary

Besides the fact that many times a complete list of instances is not possible or practical, it often is the case that a full list of cases is not necessary. For example, it is possible to know the definition of something without producing a complete enumeration of all of its representatives. One can understand what a dog is without enumerating every actual dog or even just types of dogs.

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CONTENT Problems for definitions:

Broadness and narrowness problems

The most common problem that Socrates finds with the content of a definition (although not, as we will see, the only kind) is that the proposal fails to pick out the right things. A definition may be formally correct but still go wrong if it does not capture the suitable class of instances. The description may be too broad because it gives a necessary but not a sufficient condition, e.g., defining “brother” as “sibling.” It can be too narrow because it provides a sufficient but not a necessary condition.

Worse yet, a proposed definition may be both too broad and too narrow; it may admit instances that it should exclude and exclude cases that it should accept. An example would be defining “sister” as “unmarried sibling.” This condition is neither sufficient for being a sister (it includes some brothers we should exclude) nor necessary for being a sister (it excludes married sisters).

Better definitions supply an explanation of the phenomenon under question. A good goal for any attempted definition of jazz would be if it could supply a reason for why something is or is not in the jazz universe. See Ontdef3: The Galactic Model for Defining Jazz that purports to provide an explanatory model for better understanding the nature and dynamics of jazz, and a powerful explanation determining the status of jazz genres and their positions relative to each other, both their value and significance.

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What is required to understand something?

In summary, understanding is a psychological process that occurs when one can successfully think about and apply appropriate concepts regarding the thing to be understood. One succeeds in understanding something to various degrees relative to actions and goals. If one can correctly answer questions about the subject matter trying to be understood or if one can use this understanding and appropriate concepts to manipulate the environment to achieve particular goals.

For example, one successfully understand jazz if one can correctly answer questions about jazz, or as a jazz musician, you know jazz when you can play it and not some other kind of music. Musicians can accomplish both of these without knowing everything there is to know about jazz.

CONCLUSION: One can successfully understand something, including jazz, without having to know everything there is to know about it.

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Knowing how versus knowing that

First introduced by British philosopher Gilbert Ryle, philosophers often distinguish between knowing HOW versus knowing THAT. This distinction also applies to understanding. The jazz musician understands WHAT jazz is, even if she claims NOT capable defining it. She knows when she is playing jazz that she is, and when she is not, that she is not. (If we leave aside “borderline” cases.) So the jazz musician understands HOW to play jazz and also understands THAT she is playing jazz when doing so. (techne vs. a kind of self-knowledge).

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What does it take to understand jazz?

Applying these lessons to our goals in the philosophy of jazz, what shall we anticipate as a model of successfully understanding jazz, and what makes some music qualify as jazz? The investigation of the mechanic’s understanding of how to fix the car only required his recognition of some key features that enabled him to achieve particular and relevant goals, as in getting the motor running and you off to work. It did not require him to know how to forge steel even though there was steel forging involved in the project.

PhilosophyOfJazz.net promises to achieve a partial understanding (there is rarely a full understanding of anything) of central topics and issues arising when characterizing jazz. If we find correct answers to questions about jazz, and especially how to justify and articulate them, then this achieves an understanding of jazz.

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What makes a good definition?

Definitions are characterizations or requirements for what something must be like to fall under that definition or set of conditions or properties. All definitions strive to delimit all and only the objects that are those types of items falling within the meaning and not to exclude or include anything that should not be included or excluded as one of these types of things.

A definition specifies a set of identity conditions for something to be of that type of thing. When these set of conditions or properties specified in a description are met, a successful definition excludes all objects that people judge not of the type and includes what evaluators concur are of the type.

Consider a classically used philosophical definition of a human bachelor as any unmarried adult male. This is a relatively well-established and accepted as a correct definition. Few people, when hearing this definition for bachelor, would believe that it is a poor definition. However, consider a complex possible counter-example.

Suppose that Hilda, an unmarried adult human person, was assigned a female gender at birth. Hilda is transgender and believes himself to be of the male gender persuasion. Suppose that Hilda has an out of the ordinary genitalia and also a non-typical chromosomal count of XXY. A transgender person is one "whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond to that person’s biological sex assigned at birth.

➢ Is Hilda a bachelor or not?

This is a borderline case that requires we make decisions and evaluations; it does not establish the unacceptability of the above definition for a bachelor. No one on this basis (or any other) would claim that the Hilda situation proves that we should define bachelor as either male or female adult unmarried humans. The question is whether we wish to judge that Hilda qualifies as male and not anything about whether we ought to include maleness in the definition of bachelor.

Similarly, if a definition for jazz could be established to critic's relative satisfaction, then the existence of new problematic cases, by themselves, do not necessarily mitigate against the correctness of that definition for jazz, any more than Hilda's case mitigates against including male in the description for a bachelor.

CONCLUSION: Borderline cases by themselves do not necessarily show that a definition is defective.

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Kingsbury and McKeown-Green on definitions

In their challenging paper criticizing disjunctive style definitions, philosophers Justine Kingsbury and Jonathan McKeown-Green take seriously the need for definitions to at least sometimes be about things and not just about concepts, as expressed in the next two quotations from their paper, "Definitions: Does Disjunction Mean Dysfunction?." (Their paper is also available at Researchgate.net).

“It is things, not expression or concepts, whose definition interests us.” (bold not in original)

“By definition, we mean a statement that purports to tell us what it takes for something to be a thing of a certain kind.” (bold not in original)

Kingsbury and McKeown-Green list four factors that often characterize important features had by useful and appropriate definitions.

1. Extensionally Adequate definitions cite a condition that is met by all and only things of the kind being defined.
2. Criterial Adequacy is the condition in virtue of which those things being defined count as things of that kind.
3. Conjunctiveness occurs when conditions are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for the definition's objects.
4. Motivationally Adequate definitions contain descriptions of well-established practices that explain why it is reasonable for one to be interested in whether a thing meets the proposed condition or why there is a recognized category of things that satisfy that condition.

While the authors don't claim that we must meet all four definitional criteria for a useful definition, nevertheless, they believe any proposed definition that fails to meet any of their criteria provide a reason for claiming definitional inadequacy.

“We suspect, though, that if a definition lacks one or more of these features, there is a corresponding respect in which we find that definition problematic.” (bold not in original)

Interestingly, jazz unquestionably meets the fourth criteria of being motivationally adequate. To justify this claim, let us look at the author's discussion of when a definition can fail such adequacy. The authors provide an unmotivated definition that nevertheless meets their first three criteria for providential definitions.

“A heagly thing is any thing that is both heavy and ugly. This definition has the first two features on our list, extensional adequacy and criterial adequacy, since we are entitled to categorize things in idiosyncratic ways and make use of those categories. Our definition also has the third feature: it is conjunctive. (bold not in original)

Unfortunately, the heagly definition lacks motivational adequacy because, according to the authors, “it is gratuitous: there is no obvious reason for regarding all heavy, ugly things as tokens of a special type of thing. We can gloss our discontent about this by noting that this definition is motivationally inadequate. (bold not in original)

Jazz definitions shall never have this problem of being motivationally inadequate because there are well-established exemplars of actual cases of jazz, and any definition of jazz shall always satisfy these requirements for being motivationally adequate. The reasons for this are straightforward. In jazz, there are “well established practices” that “explains why it is reasonable for one to be interested in whether a thing meets [a] proposed criteria,” and there already is “a recognized category of things which satisfy that condition.” Furthermore, there are already well-recognized categories of things that satisfy whatever might be what any proposed condition or set of conditions is trying to pick out. Suppose any proposed jazz definition was to deny or reject all music performed by Duke Ellington or by Thelonious Monk as not qualifying as jazz since it did not satisfy the proposed definition. In that case, we already know that such a definition has failed to define jazz.

“It is part of our practice to notice certain things and to group them in certain ways. Sometimes our ways of classifying things depend on their appearance; sometimes, they depend on their function; sometimes they depend on our community's evolving ideas about how reality itself is organized. But ultimately, many of the ways we categorize things are due to our own or our community's entrenched and evolving classificatory practices. To a first approximation, a definition of jazz ought to count something as jazz if and only if the community regards it as jazz. (bold not in original)

But herein lies a significant problem. Does the jazz community consider acid jazz, smooth jazz, or free jazz as jazz?

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Are jazz definitions realist or identificatory practices definitions?

Kingsbury and McKeown-Green distinguish between two fundamental background assumptions/approaches/methodologies when concerned with definitions. A realist definition presumes the existence of natural kinds existing independently of any community's perceptions of these kinds. On the other hand, definitions assuming a definition of a community's classificatory practices are less realistic. Such definitions can easily change over time with both the earlier and the later definitions being correct because it was the community's classification practices that changed. Natural kinds, at least typically, never change over time. They are stable ontological types.

Rinzler's Onion model for tracking what counts as jazz uses community's standards and collective judgments regarding perceived objects in the jazz universe making it that his approach is based on classificatory practices of the jazz community.

The Galactic model for defining jazz, on the other hand, is a realist style methodology and definitional type. It tracks how independently existing and utilized musical features of HSI (hybridization, syncopation, and improvisation) influence the development and perceptions of jazz itself and explains why the jazz community and its perceptions and judgments are affected and can change over time.

Kingsbury and McKeown-Green hold the quite reasonable position that any definition of jazz should not rule out what the vast majority of the jazz community accept as jazz so that both types of definitional approaches can be complementary and desirable.

“Ultimately, many of the ways we categorize things are due to our own or our community's entrenched and evolving classificatory practices. We have, for instance, a practice of grouping certain things together and calling them jazz. Unsurprisingly, we sometimes take an interest in what it takes to be a thing of one of these practice-mandated kinds. What, we might ask, is jazz? Hence, we offer definitions which are adequate to the extent that they satisfactorily describe the stuff picked out by the relevant community's relevant identificatory practices. To a first approximation, a definition of jazz ought to count something as jazz if and only if the community regards it as jazz.” (bold and bold italic not in original)

Kingsbury and McKeown-Green reflect upon relationships between conceptual analysis and possible world thought experiments concerning jazz in an earlier paper.

“We indulge in conceptual analysis when we reflect fairly systematically on some notion—like rules, moral agency, jazz, or infinity—which forms part of some human practice. Systematic reflection means, roughly, deciding which possible scenarios are scenarios in which we have something to which the notion applies, which possible scenarios are ones in which the notion is not applicable, and which scenarios are ones in which it is indeterminate. Thus, we distinguish cases of jazz from cases of non-jazz and both from borderline cases.” (bold and bold italic not in original)

“Although any complete analysis of a concept has to be a statement of necessary and sufficient conditions for its application—a definition, if you like—it might not be a definition of the sort one would naturally wish for. For a start, we should not be surprised if some of the rules we implicitly follow when classifying things as jazz or non-jazz, right or wrong, art or non-art, water or non-water, are horrendously complicated and gerrymandered. It would be marvelous if the quest for a conceptual analysis often terminated in a more or less pithy statement of necessary and sufficient conditions like Grice's candidate for a definition of awe: ‘a mixture of fear and admiration.' Unfortunately, however, our informal, everyday classificatory practices evolve over time in response to changing circumstances and are not subject to careful review by the philosophy department or the Crown Law Office. The question of whether to include a particular musical event among the jazz may well depend on vagaries: what were the journalists working for Downbeat Magazine most interested in during the late '50s? What kinds of music did most of the jazz players from the thirties move on to when the big bands disbanded? Perhaps the best definition of the concept JAZZ will be a motley disjunction of conditions.” (bold and bold italic not in original)

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Are jazz classifications "horrendously complicated and gerrymandered"?

Well, we know jazz classifications are not simple. If there were such simple classifications available for characterizing jazz, there would have been less controversy over the past contentious one hundred years. As is well known, it would not be unfair to claim that every new jazz style has met with resistance and complaints from prior jazz establishments. Swing was not Dixieland; Bebop wasn't Swing; Free Jazz wasn't Jazz; Jazz-Rock fusion didn't meet neo-traditionalist's perceptions for jazz, and so forth.

Surprisingly, it is unclear whether jazz classifications are or are not gerrymandered. If all musical forms with the label jazz are, in fact, jazz, then how could this be gerrymandered? Gerrymandering happens only when disparate and unrelated components are strung together as a (typically political) unit to achieve particular purposes by having this specific grouping.

Because gerrymandering has negative connotations because of deliberate manipulations of (political) boundaries, these carry over when describing possible jazz groupings. Embedded in the concept of gerrymandering is the inappropriateness of manipulating the political district to achieve particular advantage(s).

➢ Has this happened to jazz as an overall 'district' or style of music?

If such jazz gerrymandering has taken place, who did the redistricting, and what were the (political) advantage(s) for having so included some sub-genre of jazz that shouldn't 'really' belong in this group? Does including acid jazz in the market for jazz records increase acid jazz CD sales because it purportedly falls within the borders of jazz as a more general category that allegedly includes acid jazz as a sub-category of jazz? Hardly.

Therefore, it is likely that the use of the term "gerrymandering" is too fraught with inappropriate connotations and should not be so applied when analyzing the structure of jazz genres in relationships of appropriateness and genus/species groupings. The negative connotations of gerrymandering forces a prejudice on the question of the relationships between jazz sub-genres. Thus, the term is begging the question in favor of the position that the connections between sub-genres of jazz are arbitrary and unmitigated as opposed to there being a coherent explanation for jazz inclusions and exclusions.

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Conceptual analysis requires reflections on possible cases and scenarios, as espoused by Frank Cameron Jackson (b. 1943), as well as by Justine Kingsbury (b. 1975) and the late Jonathan McKeown-Green (1935–2015).

“Since completed analyses need not yield satisfying, quotable sound-bites, conceptual analysis must not be identified with what Stephen Stich calls the 'method of proposing definitions and hunting for intuitive counterexamples’ (Stich 1993, 354). To be sure, a fun way to elicit intuitive judgements about whether a concept (JAZZ, for instance) applies to a possible case or not is to entertain a definition of it and search for counter-examples. However, conceptual analysis, as Jackson understands it, is the process of reflecting on possible cases and this need not, though it may consist in auditioning, testing, refining, rejecting and replacing definitions.” (bold not in original)

“Our reply: We don't always need a complete analysis of a concept in order to learn something worthwhile about it from the business of analysing it. Failure to net the necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of some concept to a circumstance need not spell a failure to learn more about the application of the concept. It might still be of interest to uncover, as we have done in the case of knowledge, necessary but insufficient, or sufficient but unnecessary, conditions for its application, and we should not regard the unavailability of even provisional definitions of some concept as a sign that we are getting nowhere with the analysis of it.” (bold not in original)

And Kingsbury and McKeown-Green rightfully conclude that even incomplete conceptual analysis that does not provide a finished set of all necessary and sufficient conditions remains valuable to scientists, philosophers, and theorists because of the insights partial studies provide.

“In sum, conceptual analysis, regarded as the probing of our intuitions about the application of some notion in various possible scenarios, is alive and well: it makes unobtrusive contributions to scientific, philosophical, and ordinary reasoning. It pays dividends even when it does not converge on an exceptionless criterion of application for a concept.” (bold not in original)

These considerations are highly relevant to the investigation into a conceptual analysis of jazz, especially regarding its definition. We know there are many poor and inadequate definitions of jazz. For examples, see Ontdef4. Unhelpful definitions of jazz and also What Are Not Sufficient Conditions For Playing Jazz. Nevertheless, as Kingsbury and McKeown-Green are quick to point out, such failures are no reason to stop searching for superior, even if incomplete, conceptions and definitions for jazz. For example, finding a sufficient condition for jazz is a major theoretical accomplishment as established at Ontdef3. "A sufficient condition for playing jazz."

The authors Kingsbury and McKeown-Green find some disjunctive styles of definition problematic and unacceptable whenever it is true that what we define has a more unitary and coherent nature or form.

“Opponents of this sort of approach feel that artworks are being represented here as a less unified kind than they surely are. That seems like a problem if we think that art is a robust, well-motivated category, grounded in reality or in our practice.” (bold not in original)

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