Ostensive Definitions
I hope this won’t be too technical or boring (too late), but after playing with the ideas presented here regarding the definition of faith-based categories and reading Jim West’s interesting analysis, I can’t help but wonder why this method of explaining objects is so abused. For this brief post, objects should refer to ideas, concepts and physical “things” like chairs and tables. In the past, a particular method of defining things, whether chairs, water or virtue, was to describe the nature of the object or its essence. This was difficult, if not impossible, for some objects. In order to define an object in this way, the object had to pass an “every and only” test. This means that every object we were attempting to define must have had this particular characteristic. As if this weren’t difficult enough, you also had to be sure that *only* the object you were attempting to define had this characteristic. If it didn’t pass this two part test, you definition was too general or incomplete. It, however, is still a worthwhile exercise to get you closer to defining your object. We don’t really use this method much these days. Instead, we rely on ostensive definitions. This, in a nutshell, is defining an object by referring to examples of it (in techie speak, its referrent).
In the current discussion there is an attempt to create categories for a particular concept. The challenge is this concept hasn’t been fully defined. Of course, when you attempt to ask a question, in this case “build some categories for this concept”, and the concept hasn’t been defined, you get all sorts of interesting answers. Yes, I am going somewhere. In this case, Jim attempts to define “faith-based scholarship” through ostension. He quite easily states that “faith-based scholarship” *is* apologetics. Jim gives us the defintion of this concept through an example. In this case, his example is yet another concept, but nevermind that for now. The challenge I think we have when using this method for defining complex ideas or concepts is that there is a temptation to simply use an example we prefer. In other words, ostensive defintion turns into something like “what I prefer this to mean” , rather than what it might really mean. In this case, Jim, I think, falls victim to this. It is a simple matter to prove whether this is so by falling back to our “old” methods. I’ll leave that as an exercise to the reader, but we can seek quickly that Jim’s assessment fails quite spectacularly when given the “every and only” test.
I like ostensive defintions, but we, too often, seem to abuse this method when certain concepts demand the rigorous analysis the “old” mechanism provides.
Here’s my comment on Jim’s blog:
I see a branch or segment of faith-based scholarship that may be identified by Jim’s definition, but certainly not all faith-based scholarly enterprises fall into this category.
Unfortunately, we still have not agreed to what “faith-based” itself means. It seems to me that until we have defined the nature of the term, we will simply create generalizations based on our variety of experiences. Saying faith-based scholarship *is* apologetics is, perhaps, a step, but it only points to a possible example. It doesn’t get us any closer to what it (faith-based scholarship) *is*. This is why I don’t agree that it is a complete picture.
