Words & Concepts
It is a systematic method of communication between humans through sound or visual media, usually made arbitrarily.
What is Language?
These concepts involve tangible entities in space and time, like tables and chairs, that are directly observable with the unaided senses.
What are Empirical concepts?
This defect occurs when a word has multiple distinct, mutually exclusive definitions across different contexts.
What is Ambiguity?
This type of definition provides specific examples or physically points directly to instances of the concept.
What is an Ostensive definition?
According to Wittgenstein's later philosophy, the meaning of a word is determined strictly by its active use within this specific, shared social context.
What is a Language-Game?
These represent mental ideas and intellectual constructs signified by words, consisting of thoughts rather than physical letters.
What are Concepts?
Concepts that refer to imaginary beings that do not exist in reality, such as unicorns or mermaids, belong to this classification.
What are Fictitious concepts?
Words like "adolescence" or "reasonable doubt" suffer from this defect because they lack a clear boundary or criterion for inclusion in their extension.
What is Vagueness?
This definition type outlines conventional dictionary usage within a standard language community.
What is a Reportive (or Lexical) definition?
Using the example of "games," Wittgenstein argued against the idea of a single essential trait, suggesting instead that concepts are connected through overlapping similarities known by this two-word phrase.
What is Family Resemblance?
According to British empiricist John Locke, humans invented general terms to group particulars that share common characteristics through this mental process
What is Abstraction?
Malleability and magnetism are examples of this concept type, which only reveals its traits once a specific operation or test is performed.
What are Dispositional concepts?
This logical fallacy occurs when a speaker unconsciously shifts between different meanings of the same word within a single passage or argument
What is Equivocation?
This type proposes a specialized, unique meaning for a term within a particular discipline, such as coining new terms in science.
What is a Stipulative definition?
This early philosophical movement, supported by Bertrand Russell, emerged as a reaction against extreme metaphysical realism and advocated for an ideal language governed by logic
What is Logical Atomism?
"President of the United States" is an example of this specific type of term, which uses multiple words to collectively express a single concept.
What is a Complex Term?
Numbers and perfect geometric shapes are purely abstract creations of the mind classified as this type of concept.
What are Analytic concepts?
A definition that mistakenly includes non-members—such as defining a bird as "an animal that flies," which includes bats—fails Rule 1 of analytic definitions for being this.
What is Too Broad?
Invented by P.W. Bridgman, this definition type anchors theoretical concepts by specifying them strictly in terms of performable procedures or tests.
What is an Operational definition?
In his early work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein formulated this theory, stating that propositional constituents must correspond directly to facts in reality
What is the Picture Theory of Meaning (PTM)?
This concept analysis category identifies the specific individual members or instances that belong to a concept's domain (e.g., dogs and cats for the concept "animal").
What is Extension?
When an entity's empirical status is uncertain, this specific test dictates that multiple observers in a community must be able to independently verify it.
What is the Inter-subjectivity test?
Defining an "alien" simply as a "foreigner" violates Rule 2 of analytic definitions because it relies on this specific error.
What is a Circular Definition? (or What is Circularity?)
Inside an analytic definition's definiens, this term refers to the broader class to which a species belongs (e.g., "Animals" is this to the species "Mammal").
What is a Genus?
In his later work, Wittgenstein fundamentally redefined philosophy not as a dogmatic theoretical system, but as this specific type of activity intended to dissolve grammatical confusions and bring peace to the intellect.
What is a Therapeutic Activity?