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Notes -
So, Im not offering a particular theory of language here. I agree that people that people do successfully make up words sometimes, and I agree that we can "understand in practice" how to follow Scotts recipe - my objection is that Scott advances a particular theory of why the observed successful definitions work, and proposes a particular way of generalising them - his recipe - based on that theory. But the theory is false, and the recipe nonsensical when taken literally. This is a problem, not because I cant follow it the non-literal way, but because I now have no reason to. I mean, you yourself go on about how following it in practice requires a gatekept set of predicates that we dont touch - thats nowhere in the instructions, and certainly everyone who didnt like Scott telling them "Your concept is up for grabs" would point their ears there (independently of your points about personal freedom). That wont be the only time you get problems.
Im not really familiar with this, but I dont think its relevant to our case. If I try to transfer that to language, I get extensional and intensional equivalence classes for predicates - but if I have two words, and I tell you that one was defined as intensionally equal to "is a boiled egg", and one was defined as extensionally equal to "is a boiled egg", then I dont think you have any way of figuring out which is which, except for oblique contexts, which bring us back to modal logic.
Why would I need such a problem? Its just supposed the give an example of something Scott cited as a "fact based on which to make categorisations" being open to the kind of dispute he thinks only categorisations are.
Why would the ministry of fishing say that whales are fish, instead of saying that as far as theyre concerned, theyre mammals, but theyll catch them anyway?
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