The Constitutional term "war"

[Douglas Edlin]

Ok, last one from me on this thread (I hope).  From the perspective of 
interpretive semantics, the crux of the difficulty lies in thinking that 
by defining the referent of justice better (utility, retribution, 
equality, etc.), we will understand the concept of justice better.  On 
the interpretive semantic account, the point is that we disagree 
pervasively and fundamentally about what justice is, what it means. 
Defining the referent better won't advance the ball for someone who 
simply does not understand the concept of justice to be captured by a 
utilitarian calculus (or whatever).  We need to think about the 
relationship between language and concepts differently (at least for 
interpretive concepts that don't submit well to reference theories of 
meaning).

Mary's and Eugene's posts demonstrate that the same may well be true for 
war.  Think of a possible criterial semantic understanding of "war" in 
the U.S. constitutional context:  "The Congress shall have power . . . 
to declare war . . ."  One account could be that the definitive 
criterion for "war-ness" is a congressional declaration.  Does this mean 
that a war cannot exist, in constitutional terms, unless Congress has 
declared it?  Was the military intervention in Korea a war or a "police 
action"?  When did WWII begin?  People disagree about all of these.  The 
criterial semantic view is deceptively unhelpful in resolving these 
contests over conceptual meaning.  But that is no reason for us to stop 
thinking and talking about what war is and what it means to us.

Doug

Sean Wilson wrote:

> ... I doubt any more so than any other commonly used non-analytic term. 
> Obviously there are degrees to which clarity exists in utterances of any 
> kind. The example of "justice" is a good example of a term that 
> anthropologically "signs" different families of concepts and either 
> references a simple confusion on the part of its user (not realizing 
> that what is meant has not yet been said) or simply needs further 
> clarification as to its referent (utility? retribution? equality?).  So 
> what I am saying is this: "war" is more determinate than the term 
> "justice." War is probably as determinate as the term "speech" or 
> "taking." Though these labels are difficult, they are not 
> "indeterminate" in the sense of gibberish, vacuity ("do good" "do 
> justice") or meaninglessness ("being both green and red at the same 
> time"). To the contrary, they "sign" a cognitive structure that has an 
> overall order to the clutter of possible references. It is the job of 
> the philosophers, I think, to make sense out of the clutter.  
>  
> Regards. 
> 
> */Mary Dudziak <mdudziak at law.usc.edu>/* wrote:
> 
>     Just an historical aside, in light of the original question of the
>     constitutional meaning of "war". 
>     A while ago I posted a question on this list & the legal history
>     list:  "when was World War II?"  The answers were all over the map. 
>     This helps to show that even if the term "war" can be narrowed down,
>     and even if we're talking about a formally declared war as opposed
>     to slipperier ones like Vietnam (when did it begin??) or the "war on
>     terror,"  "war" is indeterminate and difficult to pluck out amid an
>     ongoing environment of global conflict.
> 
> 
> 
> Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
> Penn State University
> http://ludwig.squarespace.com/home/
> 
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-- 
Douglas E. Edlin
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
Dickinson College
P.O. Box 1773
Carlisle, Pennsylvania 17013
717.245.1388