A lexicon of words that mean trouble

 I need a specific kind of lectionary of usage. I’m thinking of terms that mean philosophical trouble.

The words brain and mind are examples. Brain gets us into an enormously complicated topic, but it’s relatively benign philosophically. Mind, on the other hand, is a source of confusion, mischief and grief.

You would have a good start to the kind of lectionary I’m talking about with a list of words that describe so-called “mental” states and activities: intentions, memories, instincts and their kin.

J.L. Austin used to start his philosophical inquiries with a dictionary. That’s still good advice.

But my experience is that dictionaries tend to let me down precisely on these philosophically notorious words. General dictionaries tend to define one word in terms of another, which is fine for general usage. But the distinctions philosophers have made are lost.

Dictionaries of usage are sometimes more helpful. Fowler’s article on “essence and substance” is helpful.

 

The essence of a triangle is three straight lines meeting at three angles.

 

Butter is a substance.

 

With those two examples, you can see why we could conduct scientific experiments on butter and why it would make no sense to start collecting empirical data on triangles.

But if the idea occurred to you to compare a troublesome word — essence — with a less troublesome word — gist — you’d be disappointed.

What’s the difference between a term that is philosophically dangerous and one that’s not? Scholars with backgrounds as varied as chemistry and psychology have written about the problem of consciousness, which might be the most dangerous word of our times. As my fried Christopher often reminds me, awareness avoids at least some of the problems that make consciousness a swamp. Why is that so?

Austin proposed that philosophers do research — a novel idea.

Admittedly, the idea of collecting definitions of notoriously hard-to-define terms (like philosophy) is perverse. But collecting specimens of usage would be interesting.

• Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Second Edition; Oxford University Press, 1965.