Theory of Definition Arthur Pap Philosophy of Science, Vol. 31, No. 1. (Jan., 1964), pp. 49-54. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8248%28196401%2931%3A1%3C49%3ATOD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-U Philosophy of Science is currently published by The University of Chicago Press.
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THEORY OF DEFINITION* ARTHUR PAP Definitions can be classified from (at least) two different points of view. We can ask what sort of statements definitions are, how they are to be justified, and what purpose they serve in the process of acquiring scientific knowledge. For lack of a simpler word, let us call a classification of definitions from this point of view epistemological. We can also distinguish different forms of definition; and a classification from this point of view is naturally called formal. Epistemological classiJication. The question is often raised and discussed whether a definition can be true or false, or whether it is just an arbitrary stipulation to use a word in a certain way. The obvious answer is that some of the statements that are, in everyday life, and in science, called "definitions" are merely stipulative and others are not. By just looking at the sequence of words, however, one cannot tell whether one is confronted with a stipulation or with a proposition, i.e., something that can be called true or false. For example: "A spinster is an unmarried woman older than 25." This would be a stipulative definition if it amounted to the proposal, "Let us use the word 'spinster' as an abbreviation for 'unmarried woman older than 25'." One can accept or reject a proposal; but since to make a proposal is not to assert anything, the question of truth or falsehood is inappropriate. But the same statement may be meant as a report of the actual usage of the word "spinster": English-speaking people apply the word ec spinster" to women of the described sort and to no other objects. In that case the definition is a proposition, and then it is appropriate to ask whether it is true or false. The first distinction, then, is that between (linguistic) proposals and propositions. Propositional definitions, in turn, can be classified from two important points of view: they may be empirical propositions, or they may be analytic propositions. And they may be about words (verbal usage) or about objects referred to by words, or they may analyze concepts expressed by words. An empirical proposition is a proposition whose truth or falsehood can only be determined by experience (in the broadest sense of
