Regarding Chris, I think he is more right than you understand. There indeed are no planets. There are only some people, who, given some pictures, say “it’s a planet!”. And Chris himself has a brain that is able to collect all the “it’s a planet” sounds and cluster them into a single bucket. And it is sometimes useful for Chris to predict whether, for a given picture, Betsy or Adam would say “planet”.
Regarding “planet”, it is of course and arbitrary definition. The measurements of curvature and density and orbit of an object are real things. But the definition of “planet” is only useful to the extent that it is a quick way to say “object with density X, curvature Y and orbit Z”. “Usefulness” is a very low bar. There is nothing particularly natural about the choice of X Y Z, and those choices aren’t equally useful for everyone. Even if your choice of X Y Z has a high score in some clustering metric, it is still arbitrary.
There is also an issue where you provide explicit definitions, when language doesn’t quite work like that. I.e. “dishonesty” isn’t “intention to miscalibrate”, it is “the actions that would make Alice say ‘Bob is dishonest’”. It’s good to try to describe what those actions are, but it’s important not to confuse that description with the meaning of the word.
Also, I don’t think either of your definitions is “fuzzy”. For “honesty”, I either intend to miscalibrate the recipient or I don’t (of course, intention isn’t quite binary, but I don’t think that’s a problem either). You are defining the word in terms of my internal brain state, so the main reason it feels fuzzy to you is because you can’t read my mind. Likewise, if there is a card hidden in a closed box, the “redness” of that card is not fuzzy, you simply don’t know whether the card is or isn’t red.
it doesn’t follow that all statements in terms of those definitions are false.
Indeed. I don’t think anyone said anything about any statements being false though?
Also, I’m aware that Chris is an intentional strawman, so took a more charitable view of him, to compensate. The point is that Betsy’s perspective is not without issues, as I assume OP to believe.
Regarding Chris, I think he is more right than you understand. There indeed are no planets. There are only some people, who, given some pictures, say “it’s a planet!”. And Chris himself has a brain that is able to collect all the “it’s a planet” sounds and cluster them into a single bucket. And it is sometimes useful for Chris to predict whether, for a given picture, Betsy or Adam would say “planet”.
Regarding “planet”, it is of course and arbitrary definition. The measurements of curvature and density and orbit of an object are real things. But the definition of “planet” is only useful to the extent that it is a quick way to say “object with density X, curvature Y and orbit Z”. “Usefulness” is a very low bar. There is nothing particularly natural about the choice of X Y Z, and those choices aren’t equally useful for everyone. Even if your choice of X Y Z has a high score in some clustering metric, it is still arbitrary.
There is also an issue where you provide explicit definitions, when language doesn’t quite work like that. I.e. “dishonesty” isn’t “intention to miscalibrate”, it is “the actions that would make Alice say ‘Bob is dishonest’”. It’s good to try to describe what those actions are, but it’s important not to confuse that description with the meaning of the word.
Also, I don’t think either of your definitions is “fuzzy”. For “honesty”, I either intend to miscalibrate the recipient or I don’t (of course, intention isn’t quite binary, but I don’t think that’s a problem either). You are defining the word in terms of my internal brain state, so the main reason it feels fuzzy to you is because you can’t read my mind. Likewise, if there is a card hidden in a closed box, the “redness” of that card is not fuzzy, you simply don’t know whether the card is or isn’t red.
Even if humans are using arbitrary definitions. it doesn’t follow that all statements in terms of those definitions are false.
Indeed. I don’t think anyone said anything about any statements being false though?
Also, I’m aware that Chris is an intentional strawman, so took a more charitable view of him, to compensate. The point is that Betsy’s perspective is not without issues, as I assume OP to believe.
“There indeed are no planets”