Defining and Differentiating�(Tanımlama ve Farklılaştırma)
Terms are Where it all Starts
(Her Şey Terimlerle Başlar)
Ön Notlar
Outline
Introduction and Workout
1. Necessary and Sufficient Conditions
2. Family Resemblance
Exc. A Brief Note on Kuhn
Comparison
Conclusion
To Define or not to Define
Not two people understand the same thing from a term.
The meanings we attribute to terms not only clarifies what we think but also who we are and what we try to do.
To Define or not to Define
[The] human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. (Weber, 2004)
State is the law and law is the state. (Penahi, ND)
Definition
The best definition is short, precise, and “Johnny on the spot”.
There are generally two parts in social sciences: The core, and the quality. Core is mandatory, quality is optional (necessary?).
Can You Define Democracy?
The Common Pitfall
“Perusing innumerable definitions, one discovers that democracy has became an altar on which everyone hangs his or her favorite ex voto. Almost all normatively desirable aspects of political, and sometimes even of social and economic, life are credited as intrinsic to democracy: representation, accountability, equality, participation, justice, dignity, rationality, security, freedom, …, the list goes on.” (Przeworski, 1999, p. 24)
Some Dictionary Definitions
Google:
A system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.
Cambridge:
The belief in freedom and equality between people, or a system of government based on this belief, in which power is either held by elected representatives or directly by the people themselves.
Some Dictionary Definitions
Oxford Learner’s Dictionary:
A system of government in which the people of a country can vote to elect their representatives.
Merriam Webster:
A form of government in which people choose leaders by voting.
… and Some Academic Definitions
A regime is democratic to the degree that political relations between the state and its citizens feature broad, equal, protected, mutually binding consultation. (Tilly, 2007, p.59)
… [T]he democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote. (Schumpeter, 1994, p. 269)
Democracy provides opportunities for; 1) effective participation, 2) equality in voting, 3) gaining enlightened understanding, 4) exercising final control over the agenda, and 5) inclusion of adults. (Dahl, 1998, p. 38)
In Comparison…
COMMONALITIES
(A System of) Government
Elections
Representatives (?)
DIFFERENCES
Everything else
Necessary and Sufficient Conditions
SUFFICIENT CONDITION
X is all that’s needed for A to cause B.
NECESSARY CONDITION
A cannot cause B unless Y is present.
Necessary and Sufficient Conditions
Necessary and Sufficient Conditions
‘Elections is the core (common among all definitions), hence is a sufficient condition.’
Equal vote, equal relations between the state and the citizens, equally and highly competent citizens in decision making, universal suffrage, accountability, respect to human rights… Are necessary conditions for this or that type of democracy, but nothing more than that.
Necessary and Sufficient Conditions
(Generally) necessary conditions better be, but sufficient conditions are mandatory for the concept to be – i.e. all necessary conditions without the sufficient condition(s) cannot form the concept.
If there’s everything you’d like (and even more) but elections (like total economic and social equality among citizens, the chance to follow-up political decisions, respect to human dignity…), there’s no democracy.
Some Sample Definitions
Sovereign: Sovereign is he who decides on the exception (Schmitt, 2005)
State: The hierarchic and bureaucratic structure which is limited only by the constitution, that monopolized use of force, printing money, and regulating social life within certain borders. (Penahi)
Democracy: The degenerated form of oligarchy which, then, will be degenerated into tyranny. (Plato)
A Step Further
A Better World Is Possible
Family Resemblances
“Instead of pointing out something common to all that we call language, I’m saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common in virtue of which we use the same word for all a but there are many different kinds of affinity between them …
… We see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and crisscrossing: similarities in the large and in the small …
… I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than “family resemblances”; for the various resemblances between members of a family a build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, and so on and so forth a overlap and criss-cross in the same way.” (Wittgenstein, 2009, pp. 35-36)
A Self-Note on Wittgenstein
“Perhaps this book will be understood only by someone who has himself already had the thoughts that are expressed in it – or at least similar thoughts. Its purpose would be achieved if it gave pleasure to one person who read and understood it.” (Wittgenstein, 1962)
Family Resemblances at Work
There are four systems with three features each:
1- ABC
2- BCD
3- CDE
4- DEF
Are 1 and 4 same type of political systems or not?
Umberto Eco and Fascism
“Fascism became an all-purpose term because one can eliminate from a fascist regime one or more features, and it will still be recognizable as fascist. Take away imperialism from fascism and you still have Franco and Salazar. Take away colonialism and you still have the Balkan fascism of the Ustashes. Add to the Italian fascism a radical anti-capitalism (which never much fascinated Mussolini) and you have Ezra Pound. Add a cult of Celtic mythology and the Grail mysticism (completely alien to official fascism) and you have one of the most respected fascist gurus, Julius Evola.
But in spite of this fuzziness, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.” (Eco, 1995)
Where Family Resemblances Matter?
Fuzziness
“What does democracy mean? Alas, you soon learn that the term is used in a staggering number of ways. Wisely, you decide to ignore this hopeless variety of definitions, for your task is more specific: to design a set of rules and principles, a constitution, that will determine how the association’s decisions are to be made. And your constitution must be in conformity with one elementary principle: that all the members are to be treated (under the constitution) as if they were equally qualified to participate in the process of making decisions about the policies the association will pursue. Whatever may be the case on other matters, then, in governing this association all members are to be considered as politically equal.” (Dahl, 1998, p. 38)
Unexplainableship*
… like that “other and greater theme” in Elgar’s Enigma Variations, silently “runs through and over the whole.” (Haffner, 2003)
A society is more than the sum of each and every individual.
* The aim is to make the word “meaningful” but not understandable – a sample of “fuzziness”.
And More…
There can be / there is some similarity among everything.
“Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.”��Galileo Galilei
Family Resemblances and Precision
Not everything can be made measurable, yet our lack of ability to measure doesn’t (necessarily) mean that something is not measurable.
The core needs to be “measurable” for it to be a reliable and/or useable unit/concept/phenomenon.
A Bold Step Further
“… a conceptual structure is constituted by a grouping in similarity classes of the objects referred to by the concepts. The grouping is not determined by necessary and sufficient conditions, on the contrary, the objects in a similarity class bear no more than a family resemblance to each other. Hence, there are no restrictions on which characteristics that can be used when judging objects as similar or dissimilar.” (Andersen, 2000)
Kuhn Simplified
Definitions matter not only with explaining what something is, but also with showing what it is not.
Kuhn’s argument is closer to life: Definition is not made solely by the unit/concept/phenomenon at hand, but also with the other units/concepts/phenomena directly or indirectly related to it.
Kuhn Simplified
“Government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
Abraham Lincoln
Albeit it is used widely in defining and/or explaining democracy, Lincoln doesn’t explain what democracy is but he contrasts it to aristocracy.
Shortcomings of the Two Approaches
Necessary and Sufficient Conditions
Family Resemblance
In Conclusion
All good arguments start with good definitions.
Consistency starts with making a good definition and sticking to it. Inconsistency not only lowers but removes the validity of any argument.
Natural scientific method holds precision over fuzziness, hence necessary and sufficient conditions win against family resemblance.
Lest the discussion/argument is (wholly) philosophical, it’s better to stick to finding sufficient conditions.
Works Cited