This cutoff point, he thinks, can only be specified as a matter of convention, but this conventional element does not threaten the objectivity of diagnoses.
True, "star" is a concept with partly conventional boundaries; however, that the concept "star" has conventional elements does not make it a matter of convention that "star" applies to something (and thus merely a matter of making a world version).
"It's a matter of convention," he said, adding, "you make the simplest choice".
But it is a matter of convention, the physics is the same.
His most famous claim in this connection is that much of science is a matter of convention.
For a single particle, its inclusion in the expression for energy might seem to be a matter of convention: it appears as an arbitrary constant of integration.
He argued that one could never tell, because one could not logically separate the physics involved from the mathematics, so any choice would be a matter of convention.
Traffic signs, for example, form a minilanguage, it being a matter of convention that [hazard] means "hazard ahead" in some countries.
As a matter of convention, average IQ has been defined as 100, with the distribution calibrated – again, purely by convention – to a standard deviation of 15.
Of course, this is merely a matter of convention; there is no law or rule to prevent Sanders from rejecting questions or from setting conditions for their asking.
