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Settling definitions is often seen as a central tool for clarifying concepts, and answering ‘What is X?’ questions. Examples might be ‘What is knowledge?’, ‘What is a work of art?’ or ‘What is a dog?’. A common way of answering such questions is by formulating necessary and sufficient conditions for a thing to be of a certain sort. It is this form of real definition that is of concern here.
1 Hanfling, Oswald (ed), Philosophical Aesthetics (Oxford and Milton Keynes: Blackwell and Open University, 1992), Essay 1, pp. 1–40.Google Scholar
2 I do not include lexical definitions as what might be going on here because such definition are not usually give in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, but rather by the use of a synonym or synonyms for the definiendum; this may amount to a description, but it rarely purports to unearth the essence of the thing to which the concept defined refers. A lexical definition merely records how a word is used and, constrained by some notion of the limits of correctness, recommends that this be followed as a guide to how it should be used.
3 This has been so in metaphysics generally and in philosophy of science in particular. See, for example, Ellis, Brian, Scientific Essentialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), and of course many other recent works.Google Scholar
4 I'd like to thank Constantine Sandis for his comments on a draft of this essay.