ABSTRACT
I begin this chapter with a discussion of definitions, which is the main theme of my comments, because I believe that a major factor retarding progress in our field-and almost every intellectual field today-has been the use of sloppy, careless, or subjective definitions. Every chapter in this book suffers, to a lesser or greater degree, from this problem. I am not denying that considerable progress has been made in the areas covered by these chapters-an issue I discuss later. Rather, I argue that poor defini-tions (and in some cases, a complete lack of definitions) undermine progress. This is because instead of fulfilling their proper function-the promotion of cognitive clarity-they sow cognitive confusion.
