Q: Do I have a sufficiently clear idea of what each of the PACS terms mean?
A: At the moment I believe I have a pretty good idea of what these words mean and how to use them in context of this class. The more time we, as a class, spend talking about definitions the more they shape and evolve for me. Although sometimes the more we talk about them the more I can get confused. When I started to apply the PACS to general actions I felt my understanding of these words was sufficient enough to find the relationships within the action. Choosing more specific actions becomes a little more difficult. I think another factor that plays an important part is my knowledge and understanding of the action itself. If I don't understand the philosophy behind planting a tree, for example, how can i say that philosophy is evident in the action?
To prove a theory as fact you have to successfully follow the scientific method. I think choosing actions and as a class finding the PACS relationships together could help us come to a clearer understanding of definitions and find our answer to the big question can all human activities be described and understoof through some combination of the PACS? A question which I can't quite answer at this point.
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The difficulty of the business of definition in relationship to the scientific method is merely that the "factuality" of definitions consists in their lexical performance. In other words, "it is a fact" that, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the basic definition of "red" is "the colour of blood". This is, if the OED's method is correct, pretty much what most speakers of English understand "red" to mean, in its most basic sense. The "fact" is NOT that "red is the colour of blood" but RATHER that in English red means "the colour of blood". This may seem like a fine line, but in the first case what is identified as a fact is what people use a term to mean, in the second what is identified as a fact is the connection between red and "the colour of blood".
"Scientifically", then, all that we would be able to discover as "fact" is WHAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY MEAN BY TERMS. Here, though, we are going beyond that to definitions which are either stipulative or hypothetical/theoretical: they do not express what is the 'common use", but suggest rather what should or could be the meanings of the term.
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