The Value of Definitions

Today's Wall Street Journal has an editorial titled "Misunderestimating Vladimir" by Bret Stephens.

Ignoring its main content, it includes an aside that interests me. Stephens mentions "the notion that geography no longer matters, the high ground, the warm water ports and everything else that nations have fought over since time immemorial are superfluous in our 21st century world."

As I do with most problems in the world today, I think this notion is rooted in bad philosophy. Outside of talk about borders ("how can we really say where one country starts and the other country ends?"), this comes up in plenty of other contexts. Think extreme linguistic descriptivism: "Languages are defined by their users, how can we say that any particular grammatical usage is an error?" Think of the definition of personhood: "We can't pin down exactly when two gametes have reached 'conception,' so let's just say an embryo can't be a person."

It's positivism mutating into nominalism. It's the lazy idea that, since we can't absolutely define something with absolutely no grey area, there's no point in trying to define it at all.

It's despair, ultimately rooted in a lack of faith. If there's no God (even in the Aristotelian, if not the full Christian conception), there's no final arbiter of truth. There's no standard to conform to. We all make up our own definitions, or we decide that definitions don't matter anyway. And once there are no definitions, reason goes out the window, leaving will and power. You don't have to know a lot about history to know that doesn't end well.

I Don't Believe in Global Warming

I don't not believe in global warming.

A friend posted an article on Facebook earlier today that claimed Tim Cook of Apple told investors who didn't believe in global warming to get rid of their Apple stock. "Screw him," I posted. "I'm holding."

I object to being told to treat a scientific theory as dogma.

Yes, I know what theory means in scientific parlance. It doesn't mean a wild guess. A theory is an interpretation of the data observed. It may be useful, it may fit the data well. But it's always going to be open to refinement, and possibly being overturned. It's never going to graduate to "fact", especially not on the basis of popularity or consensus. I don't care to put my faith in any particular theory.

But anyway, it turns out that's not what Tim Cook said (in spite of what a million internets worth of linkbait headlines insisted). What actually happened was that an investor group was unhappy with some of the environmental initiatives Apple has been working on (including reducing carbon emissions, which is where the tie to global warming comes in). He asked Cook to promise to only make company decisions based on return on investment. That's when he responded "If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock."

I apologize, Mr. Cook. You're absolutely right on that one. If an investor wants to absolutely maximize monetary profits, no matter the cost to the rest of the world, maybe they should get out of Apple stock. Maybe they should get out of the economy in general because they're part of the problem.