Ostensive definition as a prototype of real definition
pp. 95-105
in: Roberto Poli (ed), Consciousness, knowledge, and truth, Berlin, Springer, 1993Abstract
The contention of this paper is to defend the so-called real definition as a perfectly commonsensical procedure, free of that aura of a mystery which some authors impute to it. Those authors, following Tadeusz Kotarbiński (1929, 1966) who developed some philosophical ideas of Leśniewski (1991), used to claim that only nominal definitions are genuine ones, and to charge the theory of real definitions with an alleged metaphysical committment.
