Thread 24644754

Not sure if this is right for this board but I couldn't think of anywhere else.

Does this definition of a chair work to fix the chair paradox?

"A chair is an object designed to be sat on primarily by one person"

Behold, a chair

Behold, another chair

the devil burrows in semantics and his laughter is paradox

>>24644786
My penis is a chair

my face is your mom's chair, op

>>24644786
>>24644790
I'll try to fix OP's:
>A chair is an object primarily designed to be sat on primarily by one person"
In your cases, those obje ts are not primarily designed to be sat on. Most of the bike's design goes to make it run, and most of the floater's design goes to make it float.

Words don't have definitions, they have use

kek, op btfoed

>>24644825
definitively btfo'd by facts and logic

>>24644825
>>24644829
kek btfo

>>24644825
I think you're getting a lot for free, if you get to define stuff like purpose or intent

>>24644825
>A chair is an object primarily designed to be sat on primarily by one person
wouldn't you also have to add that it has to also fit that function and not just be designed that way? since things can be designed badly, a carpenter can set out to make a chair but ends up with something not resembling a chair at all because he is retarded

>>24644825
So if I make a chair who's primary purpose is decorative, is it not a chair? Is a throne, who's primary purpose is arguably a symbol of power, not a chair?

Is all of philosophy sophistry?

>>24644857
Duh bro it's in the name

>>24644857
Ja. Wittgenstein writes about this. I haven't read him, naturally.

>>24644855
Symbol and usage are different though. A symbol, is well a symbol.
A throne is a chair albeit a fancy one that symbolizes king or someone in power.
Its main usage is sitting primarily by one person so it's a chair.

Read Wittgenstein.

You all accidentally recreated several chapters of Philosophical Investigations.
That's some progress /lit/. Good job.

A chair is:
Something that is made with the intention to be a chair
and actually works like a chair

woooooow

>>24644896
circular definition, how would you define a chair to someone who grew up alone in the jungle and had no concept of a chair

>>24644754 (OP)
>Definition of a Chair

+

>>24644900
>A chair is something that has 4 legs and is designed for sitting by one person...wait that's a horse. nvm
>A chair is something that primarily functions as a place to keep your butt off the ground all the while being used by 1 person. Wait thats a bench.
>A chair is something that is an object created with the purpose of sitting on it by 1 person and which disallows easy usage by more than 1 person, which has 4 legs that touch the ground, a non living entity.
>Well what about those fancy chairs that roll on the ground? Are they not chairs?
This has no end. Read Wittgenstein.

>>24644900
Who the fuck would have a concept of "object primarily designed to be sat on primarily by one person" but not know what a chair is?

>>24644882
Well design and usage are two different things. A throne is primarily designed as a symbol of power rather than furniture. Both purpose and usage are ambiguous anyway, purpose is only known by the Creator and usage by the user. A monkey will not use a chair to sit in. A designer may have other motives than what we expect.

How tight a definition needs to be depends on the consequences around it. Castles in Europe are different to castle in Japan, their definitions would be a bit different but if you built a Japanese castle in Europe is it still a castle? It doesn't really matter since there are no consequences to it.
But if the government decided one day to demolish every building that wasn't a castle then suddenly the definition of a castle is very important and you will need to lock down the definition

You have a chair that was designed with the intention to be sat on by 1 person, and a "chair" that came about by random causes, tornado through a garbage heap style
They look exactly the same
How do you figure out which one is the chair, and which is not?

>>24644754 (OP)
>"A chair is an object designed to be sat on primarily by one person"
>>24644786
>>24644790
Add "on a solid platform". Are we still gucci?

>>24644958
are rollercoaster chairs not chairs?

>>24644958
No, you've just provided me with more words that also need definitions

Who would know what a platform it, but not a chair? What does it mean to sit...

>>24644958
what about chairs in a car?

>>24644917
>Horse
WRONG. They are NOT designed
>Bench
WRONG. They are designed usually to be sat on by 2 or more people

>>24644986
is a horse saddle a chair?

>>24644963
They are seats, it's different
A seat is designed to be sat on but it also needs to come with something that's moving, usually a vehicle of some sort. Seats fall into the wider category of things you sit on but they are not chairs because they are attached to something going at a certain speed and are designed around that idea

Platonism solves this

A chair is a thing that has thinginess, because it reflects the form of the ideal chair

>>24644990
No they are saddles

>>24644993
trvke and /thread

>>24644996
but they are designed to be sat on by one person

>>24644754 (OP)
>>24644786
>>24644790
The clever little arguments about dictionary definitions are so fucking stupid. Dictionaries record how words are actually used, not how they should be used.
Words are shaped by human behaviour, they're not rigid categories invented in a vacuum. Think Wittgenstein said a word's meaning is its use in the language.

>>24644998
They don't have legs, if anything they fall closer into >>24644992 seat territory. A chair also can't be as angular as a saddle before it stops being a chair

>>24645019
>A chair also can't be as angular as a saddle before it stops being a chair
What's the exact specific angle where it stops being a saddle or vice versa?

>>24645019
is a bean bag a chair? if not what is it?

>>24645005
I imagine a party where Wittgenstein stands in the corner muttering "they don't know about language games" while everyone else is arguing about chairs.

>>24644825
all you've done is just shoving the difficulty into defining what it means to be "designed to be sat on"

>>24644786
>>24644790

>>24644918
The point is that you can't use the same word when defining a word, because then the definition becomes a loop, making it useless.

>the chair paradox
what?

>>24645394
>if my chair is so comfy then why does my butt hurt

>>24645396
assrape

>>24645023
Even with all the differences between certain little angles or designs what stands common amongst most chairs is that the plane you are sitting your ass on is mostly flat regardless of it's shape. A saddle isn't by any means a flat plane it's angular and kinda goes down alongside the horse's body, it's like sitting in a halfway cut tire and callig that a chair. It can't be because it's not within a flat plane and even functionally the saddle operates under completely different logic as that of a chair due to the equine element of the equation
>>24645029
It's not a chair but it serves the same purpose. It has no legs nor flat plane to sit your ass on but all the other conditions for a chair are met. Bean bags are bean bags
Now..m are beach chairs chairs? You lay down and don't really sit on it most of the time but it is still called a chair, it's functional similarity is shady at best. It might be a specialized chair but the differences seem a bit too drastic

>>24645373
Right, but using 5 other words that just means the same. That's all good...

My original point was to point out how this is circular and dumb.

>>24645553
>It's not a chair
How do you know?
What principled reason is there to think a "beanbag chair" is not a chair

I got a chair out in my garden that is just a big natural rock

>>24645597
love big naturals

Everybody knows what a chair is despite taxonomic differences. There are chairs that have no shared traits with other chairs (i.e. a rounded base instead of legs, no back or arm rest, etc.) yet are still easily identifiable as chairs. Hence, there is simply some kind of inherent "chair-ness" that is intuitively grasped by the knowing faculty of the mind.

while we argue about chairs jews are mutilating little boy penises

Is it not a case of chairs being well-defined, but then modernist designers had to come along and be quirky?

Truth is that chairs are a mere fabricate of capitalist society. Sitting per se doesn't require chairs. Still capitalism induced in everyone the need to sit specifically on chairs

>>24645591
I literally stated why it moves away from chairdom into chairlessness. It has no chair like traits it only shares the chair's function

is this a chair? does the frame count as legs?

>>24644754 (OP)
READ THE SCREENSHOTS ITT>>24644904
>>24644908
>>24644912

>>24645615
>inherent "chair-ness" that is intuitively grasped

My explanation is that it's because humans are trained in how to use language

>>24645702
I literally called it a beanbag chair
Do you think I'm using language incorrectly? How can we figure out who of us is right?¨

(I peered into the Platonic realm, btw. Beanbags are a pale shadow of the idealized form of chair.)

>>24645712
No because you're not meant to sit on it statically you're meant to go yipee hoo yipee hooray yey wooo yeahhhh at high altitudes. It's also too big and chairs have to be somewhat compact to fit in a room. Swinging chairs are the closest but they are still chairs

>>24646003
>It's also too big and chairs have to be somewhat compact to fit in a room
what about a really big chair for a big robot?

>>24645005
Used to be true. Now words are shaped by government and corporate policy and we have to deal with the abuse.
There ought to be both kinds of dictionary.

A chair is that which in the mind of honest men is held to be a chair.

>>24646352
once you find an honest man ill be happy to take his opinion

>>24644754 (OP)
Your description also would work for a penis.

>>24644754 (OP)
There are chairs that seat multiple people thoughever
And chair is variable because it's just a word and depends on a persons sense of it and usage, which can be as broad as communication allows (another person gets it). And this successful communication can exist alongside word usage disagreements. Like what exactly counts as a chair or not. Which is not a matter of communication, usually, but taxonomical preferences

>>24646003
is a rocking chair still a chair?

>>24646322
Govt can coin a word but if the people didn’t repeat it, it would die. The real shaper of language is daily use, not policy.

>>24644861
>what no pussy does t>>24644860

ah you get it

>>24647168
>if the people
the internet has made this gate obsolete as social dynamics can and are faked or baited regularly now.

>>24647219
Unless people actually keep using a word in real conversation, it dies. English is not Latin, it’s a living language and, like all such, is continuously changing.

>>24644825
Are these floor pillows chairs, then? They're primarily designed to be sat on by one person.

>>24647241
forgot pic

Here's what the 1989 Oxford English Dictionary says:
>A seat for one person (always implying more or less of comfort and ease); now the common name for the movable four-legged seat with a rest for the back, which constitutes, in many forms of rudeness or elegance, an ordinary article of household furniture, and is also used in gardens or wherever it is usual to sit.

>>24645590
I don't know what you're talking about, nobody used synonyms in their definitions

you'll know when you see one
it's all in the chairness

>>24647283
clunky

>>24647554
it’s a dictionary definition, the point isn’t style.

>>24644900
All definitions are ultimately circular and self referential. It's just a matter of how wide the circle is.

e.g. If you were to answer the question, "What is a chair?" you could give the google definition of "a separate seat for one person, typically with a back and four legs." But this leads to the follow up question of "What then, is a seat?" To which google defines it as "a thing made or used for sitting on, such as a chair or stool." You can replace chair/seat with as many synonyms as you like, but ultimately, it's all referring to the same thing.

>>24645615
If it has no back rest it's a stool not a chair

>>24644754 (OP)
A chair is what people generally agree to call a chair

>>24648321
Well what do people agree on then? Seems like no one here actually agrees what constitutes a chair.

>>24644917
I'd argue benches are subsets of chairs.