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on Definitions

Upon reading a recent blog of mine, my colleague, one David Labedz, Esq., commented that my argument hinged upon a specific definition I had not provided, and that, at the time, seemed a valid enough point. He had recently also shown me a posting by a friend of his, titled "Is Jazz Dead?" Upon this, too, he had made the criticism that, by failing to define terms, the author sets himself up for difficulty, as readers approach it each with their own set of definitions, inevitably leading to disagreement. His initial response, in fact, was simply "What is Jazz? What is Dead*?" This was, as I recall, a reference to something, possibly Vonnegut, an exchange something like:

"I challenge you to say one unequivocally true thing."

"G-d is Love."

"What is G-d? What is Love?"

I doubted that many would catch what he was referencing, having only heard it myself from he himself only a few days prior, but I was prepared to believe he ran in a literate pack, the mediocre quality of the piece under discussion notwithstanding.

Today (well, yesterday: I write late), it finally occured to me what had bothered me about all this. Asking someone to define their terms is an infinitely regressive argument: for every definition you provide, the elements of the definition could just as easily be required to be defined as well. Like the infinitely regressive "why?" or the Socratic Method, taken too far it will deconstruct one's knowledge completely. On the one hand, this is great for illustrating the nature of knowledge, humbling people or coming up with catchy zen-sounding s**t like "The only knowledge is in knowing that you know nothing." On the other hand, it's not really that helpful if you're trying to have any kind of real conversation. If every time someone tries to say something, you respond by questioning their assumptions recursively, you're not really going to end up winning any arguments, you're going to end up having your friends and neighbors voting to have you drink hemlock. Essentially, by the high standards of these kind of rhetorical moebius strips, nothing is knowable, and nothing is definable, at least, not within the conceptive realm of this universe. But there's no point in having words like know and define if they don't refer to anything; thus we have to redefine define to mean something useful, something non-infinitely regressive. Until that happens, next time someone tells you to define your terms, tell them to go quiftlyxrup themselves, and refuse to tell them what that means.

What's more, in regards to the argument that people's differing definitions will result in them disagreeing, I have two rebuttals, A: So? and B: Good. It is inevitable that people, each having unique experiences and consequential associations, will disagree, often stridently; this is manifestly a good thing: collisions between hydrogen-ion opinions fuse into helium truth. If everyone in a room is in complete agreement, there aren't enough people in the room; if everyone on Earth is of one mind, they're Wrong Wrong Wrongity Wrong Wrong Wrong (incidentally, it's been observed that when a word is repeated over and over, it starts to lose meaning and become just some weird sounds; if the present work is to be believed, that's a good thing). Truth can, in my opinion, best be approached by a plurality of perspectives collectively. This is borne out quantitatively by studies showing the tendency of larger groups to arrive at more accurate answers: asked to guess the quantity blank, individuals within a group of people may guess way more or way less, but the larger the group, the more the "way mores" and "way lesses" will cancel each other out in the average of the responses: the collective of different experiences will result in a more accurate answer than any one person could provide. Aristotle actually pointed this out; he has his moments. I was unable to find a study online demonstrating this phenomenon, but only because I was the only one looking: if there were more of us, each looking according to how we each thought best, we could easily find a proof of my point somewhere.

Bottom line, Internet: One, my roommate ******** loves definitions. Two, at some point, someone must have up'n told Socrates: "Hey, I got a question for you: why don't you get a ******** job?!?" Three: democracy is good, and if you don't agree with me, awesome.

*This question was doubly impossible to answer; first, for the reason articulated above, and second, because "dead" in this context seems to refer to popularity, or something else that is socially constructed: in other words, you can't ask someone to define "dead" in this context, because what is dead is whatever has been collectively defined as such (if everyone says Jazz is dead, it is). This is similar to my definition of "cool:" cool is whatever people say is cool, weighted somewhat towards the opinions of people whom are themselves cool. This is of course only my definition, which is obviously wrong: since something is cool if people, especially cool people, say it is such, since I am by all standards extremely uncool (if for no other reason than having writen a lengthy meta-argument about what is cool), by my own definition of cool, my own definition of cool is incorrect: since I'm uncool, my definition of cool must be wrong.
It's best to let others handle whether or not you're cool; stick to being lucky. Being lucky is the flipside of being cool: you're cool if others consider you cool, you're lucky if you consider yourself lucky. Given the nonstop torrent of rude s**t the average person thinks they have to endure, they'd have to be pretty lucky to still consider themselves lucky after all that.