Is Philosophy a Bunch of Semantic Quibbling? Defining things themselves and words

Someone once asked the difference between definitions of words and definitions of things themselves-he thought there was none. In other words, the questions 'What is a 'dog'?' and 'What is a dog?' are identical in that which they ask.

Surely this person is mistaken: for between the two, only the first asks about the meaning of the word 'dog' itself; and hence that question opens the door to a whole other semantic theories of meaning, those concerning words and the propositions. Take the other question, the second. Could we say that a dog itself is subject to semantic theory? That would be incoherent.  The word 'dog' might be subject to that, but not dogs themselves, for they are not linguistic entities.


This is an important difference. For when we ask what justice, goodness, God, deity, or whatever else is, we neither ask how the words 'justice', 'goodness' 'God' nor 'deity' are used, nor do we ask what those words mean. We are asking about things themselves. Thus, appeals to dictionaries are irrelevant, as are appeals to how we use some one word. Thus, Socrates' question to Euthyphro (What is piety?) could not have been answered with an appeal to a Greek dictionary, even if there were one. Philosophy is harder than that: We define things themselves; and in no way does this practice reduce to 'semantic quibbling', for the very nature of things themselves is paramount to proper philosophical speculation, since, after all, it is the very nature of those things we seek to understand.

That said, philosophy should also not be construed as armchair speculation with no real consequences. When we ask questions, say, about the good, we ask so that we might live well. Thus, philosophy has great practical and political consequence.