Coordinative Definition - Objection

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.

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