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If a being does not have its definition, then it can also have its definition, then it would be different from itself.

Are there two beings here? In order to be different, they must be different beings... Or is it that as soon as I suppose the being did not have its definition, I was supposing a contradiction, not introducing a new being.

Thanking you in advance

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  • i think you need to think about these things programically for example being is a primitive all definitions leading to it are it's refrences and all of these refrences are variables wich can change depends on the context for example you say human is a being human is a refrence to the primitive being and human is a variable that means other variables change it but nothing changes being.
    – Bardeen
    Commented Nov 2, 2017 at 20:44
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    It is hard to understand what you are asking. Congruence can be defined in terms of similarity or in terms of motion, it does not mean that we have two different notions of congruence. One can describe "water" by paradigmatic examples, or one can give a chemical definition, again this does not mean two different "waters". It is not even clear if by "being" you mean a creature or Being as an abstraction.
    – Conifold
    Commented Nov 2, 2017 at 20:45
  • I'm not asking how a thing can have multiple definitions or how different people might view it in different ways. I'm asking, what is wrong with the english sentence I've spoken? Is it a contradiction? Is it true? Is it false? Is it impossible? Are there 2 beings involved? Are there 2 definitions involved? Because there are 2 definitions involved, does that mean there are 2 beings involved? A being is just any existent thing in this case.
    – Rob Hv
    Commented Nov 3, 2017 at 6:14
  • What is "a being" ? We define concepts and not individuals (objects).
    – Mauro ALLEGRANZA
    Commented Nov 3, 2017 at 7:04
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    "Triangle has two sides" is false under the standard definition of triangle, but this is quite different from "triangle is different from itself" because it went from not having a definition to having it around the time of Pythagoreans. Are you asking about something like inconsistent definitions?
    – Conifold
    Commented Nov 3, 2017 at 18:34

2 Answers 2

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From an ordinary operational semantics, that I see you, or do not see you, does not change you, it changes me.

My understanding of phenomenon X is an aspect of myself and does not affect the phenomenon, except to the extent I interfere with it in order to get the necessary information to make the understanding. Even then, whether the result is to understand, or not, is not relevant to the thing understood.

So the definition is an aspect of the relation between the describer and the thing described, and does not properly belong to the object as an attribute. There is not a different 'me' each time someone else comes to understand me in a different way.

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  • I'm not asking how a thing can have multiple definitions or how different people might view it in different ways. I'm asking, what is wrong with the english sentence I've spoken? Is it a contradiction? Is it true? Is it false? Is it impossible? Are there 2 beings involved? Are there 2 definitions involved? Because there are 2 definitions involved, does that mean there are 2 beings involved? A being is just any existent thing in this case.
    – Rob Hv
    Commented Nov 3, 2017 at 6:14
  • Just because you say something has something that does not mean that the thing it has is a part of itself, or that adding or removing that thing would change the being. No, there is one being, and two different states of the person doing the defining.
    – user9166
    Commented Nov 3, 2017 at 18:38
  • Are you asking whether the being is different for knowing its own definition? (Having a definition does not involve your knowing it.) And are you assuming the being is extra-temporal and cannot take on multiple states? Yes, a being that knows its own definition would logically be different from one that does not. But if time is involved, there is again, no problem with two states of the same being.
    – user9166
    Commented Nov 3, 2017 at 18:42
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You might have lighted on what's commonly called Moore's 'paradox of analysis' (after GE Moore). The paradox centres on definitions.

Let's take a triangle as a thing to be defined. It is standard to assume that what we want from a definition is that it be correct and also informative. Suppose you don't know what a triangle is (just bear with me !). I might say :

'A triangle is a three-sided plane figure with three internal angles'.

That's correct enough. It also tells you something; it is informative.

But now a problem sneaks in. If the definition is right, then (1) 'triangle' and (2)'three-sided plane figure with three internal angles' pick out the same concept. They refer to exactly the same thing. If that's so, however, we should be able to interchange the expressions - whenever one expression (1) is appropriate to use then so expression (2). This proves awkward for informativeness, however, because if we switch (1) for (2) in :

'A triangle (1) is a (2) three-sided plane figure with three internal angles'

we get :

'A triangle is a triangle'.

This is completely uninformative. To preserve informativeness we seem stuck with saying that (1) and (2) are not interchangeable. If they are not, then we get what may be your idea that the definition has 'introduced a new being' or said another way that a triangle 'is different from itself'.

I've tried to be helpful here. If I've misunderstood your problem, then I apologise. I don't btw know how best to deal with Moore's paradox of analysis. Perhaps we just have to accept it and it can't be punctured. Most philosophers are unwilling to leave it at that; and they may well be right. But I've said all I can.

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  • @Rob Hv. You have a new answer to your question.
    – Geoffrey Thomas ♦
    Commented Feb 4, 2018 at 15:24

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