• OhNoMoreLemmy@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    You might want to look at Wittgenstein.

    In his early work he went hard on this approach, and insisted that “hey philosophy is dumb”, just agree on the definitions and then chase through the implications.

    In his later work he realised that this is impossible. Words have contextual meaning that is revealed by their usage and you can’t nail down full and complete definitions in advance.

    What you’re talking about absolutely can and will never work. We have tried it and seen it fail.

    • iiGxC@slrpnk.net
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      2 months ago

      The general point is that the “what is a woman” question is still word games rather than an honest attempt at finding truth and understanding

    • LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Yes exactly. “What is a chair?” These semantic boundaries may seem annoying and pedantic to explore at first, but can be pretty interesting once examined especially at a neurolinguistic level.