definitionism
nounEtymology From definition + -ism.
1
Human sciences, Philosophy, Sciences The school of thought that for a theory to be properly explained it is necessary that all concepts used by the theory be well-defined.
- 1992, William R. LaFleur, Liquid Life: Abortion and Buddhism in Japan, Princeton University Press, page 15, Quoted in 2015, Adam C. Pelser, Robert C. Roberts, 18: Religious value and moral psychology, Tobias Brosch, David Sander (editors), Handbook of Value, Oxford University Press, page 388, Instead of logic chopping and the unconnected neat boxes produced by definitionism, ritual provides activities that fuse a wide variety of things that seem otherwise unrelated.
- Some philosophers have not given up on definitionism.2006, Jack S. Crumley II, A Brief Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind, Rowman & Littlefield, page 152:
1 more example
- Perhaps definitionism does not work for all complex concepts.2007, Karen Neander, “Biological Approaches to Mental Representation”, in Mohan Matthan, Christopher Stephens, editors, Philosophy of Biology, North-Holland: Elsevier, page 561:
- Synonyms
- classical theory of concepts
- Derived terms
- social definitionism
- Related terms
- epistemology, ostensive definition, rationalism