| | You call a "puppy" a small dog. I call a "puppy" an arrogant young man. You say I have a false definition of "puppy". I say *you* have a false definition of "puppy". How do you decide? (Both be pointed to in reality)
Now, before you say "context" or something, I've deliberately picked a glaring example to start with that captures the problem clearly.
No you haven't—you've picked an example that has absolutely nothing to do with the problem you've stated. This isn't an issue of two possible definitions for the same concept; this is just a case of a word which denotes two distinct concepts.
Let me now move to less trivial one. You say the US government is a "democracy" . I define "democracy" as Saddam Hussein's. How do you decide who has the "true" definition? (Then a third person - say Ralph Nader - shows up and says *neither* is a "true" democracy! He has a different definition again)
Now this is a valid example. But there's still no issue here. Governments like the U.S., governments like Iraq, and governments like Ralph Nader's dreams are all valid and distinct concepts, and it doesn't matter (leaving aside questions of etymology) which one we label as “democracy.” All that matters is that when we're arguing about democracy, we use the label “democracy” to refer to the same concept (and hence have identical or at least compatible definitions for that label).
Now, if we don't agree on which concept we want to refer to with “democracy,” what do we do? We examine our definitions. We examine the constituent concepts of our respective concepts of “democracy” until we reach a point where we can agree, and try to build a common concept from there. Sure, it's a hassle, and nowhere near as entertaining as actually forming propositions, but really, what kind of useful propositions are you going to be able to make about “democracy” if you don't agree on what the word means?
And of course, this leads into your second point.
First, once you have started asking for definitions from your opponent to confirm he has the right grasp of the terms, *where do you stop*?
Wherever you need to. As I said above, the goal of discussing definitions isn't to reach some kind of intrinsically “true” definition, but to reach a common definition that lets each of the participants in the discussion know what everybody else is talking about. If you're trying to find a common root on which to build a common definition, you stop when you find agreement.
Now, Rand talks about “first-order” concepts, which are concepts most efficiently defined ostensively rather than verbally. When you reach a first-order concept, it is no longer necessary to keep stating definitions, since you can just say “By ‘table’ I mean this!” while pointing at a frog*.
I don't necessarily agree with Rand that everyone will be able to treat the same concepts as “first-order,” but I do think that, because good concepts and hence good definitions are founded in aspects of reality, the participants in a debate will just about always be able to find some aspect of reality for which they share a common concept and then build from there.
(In fact, if you want to talk about “true” and “false” concepts, that might be a good way of telling what concepts are “true”—those which, when examined, can be reduced to facts of reality instead of leading into an infinite regression of words.)
*It works even better if you point at a table.
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