DOYLC

We often use terms without fully thinking out how we are using them - particularly if abstraction is involved.  The other day I was looking at a data modeling tool, and asked a colleague "What did you put into the definition?".  It suddenly occurred to me that I was not talking about the content of the definition, but about the definition field into which I could type the content. After thinking about it some more, I realized that the definition field is a container which we are free to use as we want (at least in the tool I was working with).  So an immediate question is, how do we want to structure what goes into this field (e.g. with section headings) and what metadata about the definition do we want to put in (e.g. what person last updated it)?   Of course, the more sophisticated tools have these separate elements of the definition more explicitly segregated.  The "definition" is a set of smaller containers inside a bigger container. Perhaps this might ...

In Part I of this series (http://definitionsinsemantics.blogspot.com/2011/11/how-is-definition-different-from.html), we explored explanation defined as "bringing a mind to an understanding of a topic".   There is, however, another form of explanation, of which Aristotle said "We believe ourselves to know a thing when we are acquainted with its cause" (Posterior Analytics, II C. II para 1). One way to provide this kind of explanation is by arguing from the cause to the effect.  Traditionally this involved using syllogisms where the cause was in the major premiss and the effect was in the conclusion.  E.g. All ellipses show a pattern of positions X; the orbit of Mars shows a pattern of positions X; therefore the orbit of Mars is an ellipse. This form of explanation is very satifying, and it might seem natural to try to incorporate it into definitions.  However, there are reasons not to do so.  First, the above form requires putting the concept to be defined i...