Objection
The problem is that coordinative definitions seem to beg the question. Since they are defined in conventional, non-empirical terms, it is difficult to see how they can resolve empirical questions. It would seem that the result of using coordinative definitions is simply to shift the problem of the geometric description of the world, for example, into a need to explain the mysterious "isomorphic coincidences" between the conventions given by the definitions and the structure of the physical world. Even in the simple case of defining "the geodesic between two points" as the empirical phrase "a ray of light in a vacuum", the correspondence between mathematical and empirical is left unexplained.
Read more about this topic: Coordinative Definition
Famous quotes containing the word objection:
“It is obvious that all sense has gone out of modern marriage: which is, however, no objection to marriage but to modernity.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“How dare I read Washington’s campaigns, when I have not answered the letters of my own correspondents? Is not that a just objection to much of our reading? It is a pusillanimous desertion of our work to gaze after our neighbours. It is peeping.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)