First, past applications of a term need not yield necessary and sufficient criteria for applying it: 'marriage' (like 'citizen') may be extended to new cases without thereby changing its meaning (Mercier 2001).
Past applications of a term need not yield necessary and sufficient criteria for applying it: 'marriage', like 'citizen', may be extended to new cases without thereby changing its meaning (Mercier 2001).
Distribution, also called Distribution Of Terms, in syllogistics, the application of a term of a proposition to the entire class that the term denotes.
Logic, for example, is a set of practices and therefore a language, perfectly in order as it stands; what counts in logic as a correct application of a term or a permissible inference, therefore, depends only on what logicians do.
For the Mohists, an assertion is the application of a term to something.
There is a limited range, albeit rather wide, of appropriate standards for the application of a term.
A handy tool in the search for precise definitions is the specification of necessary and/or sufficient conditions for the application of a term, the use of a concept, or the occurrence of some phenomenon or event.
It is just one instance of the general truth that standards for the application of a term vary within a wide but non-arbitrary range as determined by various features of the conversational context.
It strikes me that, quite often, this involves the application of a term taken from the natural realm to something which rather belongs to the technological realm (i.e. things produced by us), and vice versa.
Just as linguists can construct a grammar for your language on the basis of your judgments about the acceptability of particular sentences, you can construct an analysis of the meaning you associate with an expression on the basis of your application of a term to hypothetical cases.
Thus, appellation came to mean the present correct application of a term (William of Sherwood, p. 74), which could be ampliated, or even restricted by, say, the apposition of an adjective: 'white man' appellates only white men, not all even presently existing men.
