I shall here only say this much: The meaning of a word has many
aspects -- and the grounds for calling something by a word I shall
call an aspect of the meaning of this word. (If someone wants to
distinguish here between criteria and meaning, I need not quarrel
with him about the meaning of 'meaning'.)

Reflexion on the grounds for calling things by words is a type
of conceptual investigation. How is such investigation conducted?
Here a warning is in place. The aim of the type of investigation, of
which I am speaking, is not to 'uncover' the existing meaning (or
aspect of meaning) of some word or expression, veiled as it were
behind the bewildering complexities of common usage. The idea
of the philosopher as a searcher of meanings should not be coupled
with an idea or postulate that the searched entities actually are
there -- awaiting the vision of the philosopher. If this picture of the
philosopher's pursuit were accurate, then a conceptual investiga-
tion would, for all I can see, be an empirical inquiry into the actual
use of language or the meaning of expressions.

Philosophic reflexion on the grounds for calling a thing 'x' is
challenged in situations, when the grounds have not been fixed,
when there is no settled opinion as to what the grounds are. The
concept still remains to be moulded and therewith its logical con-
nexions with other concepts to be established. The words and expres-
sions, the use of which bewilder the philosopher, are so to speak
in search of a meaning.

I would not wish to maintain that the only fruitful way of dealing
with the problems here is to mould the unmoulded meanings, to
make fixed and sharp that which ordinary usage leaves loose and
undetermined. It has seemed to me, however, that conceptual
inquiries, which take the form of a moulding or shaping of concepts,
are particularly suited for the treatment of problems in ethics and
some related branches of philosophy (aesthetics, political philo-
sophy).

Am I saying that such inquiries aim at stipulative definitions
and other proposals concerning the use of language? And is it in
the 'stipulative' nature of their results that the affinity of these
inquiries to 'normative' ethics consists?

I do not know exactly, how to answer the questions. To say
that conceptual investigations sometimes end in stipulative defini-
tions may be true -- in some peculiar sense of 'stipulative' and in a
broad and loose sense of 'definition'. But to say thus would be on

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