Is the problem the arguing, or the arguing endlessly? In science, there is little need to argue about definitions because Someone Somewhere has settled the issue, often by stipulation. In philosophy, there is no Someone Somewhere who convenientyl does this for you. Philosophy deals with non-empirical questions (or it would be science), which means it deals with concepts, and since we access concepts with words, it deals with definitions. So the criticism that philosophers shouldn’t argue definitions is tantamount to criticising philosophy for being philosophy. Uless the problem was the “endlessly”.
using one’s own intuitions as strong evidence about how the external world works.
Who does that? (ETA: at least for the past one hundred years) None of your examples work that way. Questions like “what is knowledge” and “what is the right thing to do” are not about the EW.
The problem is “arguing” as compared to “investigating”.
If there’s a disagreement about how human minds implement certain ideas, then it’s more productive to do experimental psychology than to discuss it abstractly, for the usual scientific reasons: nailing it down to a prediction makes sure that the idea in question is actually coherent, and also there are a lot of potential pitfalls when humans try to use their own brains to examine their own brains.
Though on the other hand, coming up with good experiments for this stuff is really tricky. As Suryc mentions above, you can’t just ask people what they mean by “intentional” or whatever, you’ll get garbage results. Just like how if you ask somebody with no linguistics knowledge to explain English grammar to you you’ll get nonsense back, even if that person is quite capable at actually writing in English.
Also: Who says that concepts are non-empirical? Doesn’t it come down to something like a scientific investigation into the operations of the human brain?
Is the problem the arguing, or the arguing endlessly? In science, there is little need to argue about definitions because Someone Somewhere has settled the issue, often by stipulation. In philosophy, there is no Someone Somewhere who convenientyl does this for you. Philosophy deals with non-empirical questions (or it would be science), which means it deals with concepts, and since we access concepts with words, it deals with definitions. So the criticism that philosophers shouldn’t argue definitions is tantamount to criticising philosophy for being philosophy. Uless the problem was the “endlessly”.
Who does that? (ETA: at least for the past one hundred years) None of your examples work that way. Questions like “what is knowledge” and “what is the right thing to do” are not about the EW.
The problem is “arguing” as compared to “investigating”.
If there’s a disagreement about how human minds implement certain ideas, then it’s more productive to do experimental psychology than to discuss it abstractly, for the usual scientific reasons: nailing it down to a prediction makes sure that the idea in question is actually coherent, and also there are a lot of potential pitfalls when humans try to use their own brains to examine their own brains.
Though on the other hand, coming up with good experiments for this stuff is really tricky. As Suryc mentions above, you can’t just ask people what they mean by “intentional” or whatever, you’ll get garbage results. Just like how if you ask somebody with no linguistics knowledge to explain English grammar to you you’ll get nonsense back, even if that person is quite capable at actually writing in English.
Also: Who says that concepts are non-empirical? Doesn’t it come down to something like a scientific investigation into the operations of the human brain?
Not with current technology.