I'm with psyc on this one. We study a lot of things, like consciousness, or intelligence, or life, because we don't have a convenient definition of them, becaus

I'm with psyc on this one. We study a lot of things, like consciousness, or intelligence, or life, because we don't have a convenient definition of them, because we want to know what they are. Instead we set up broad conceptual parameters that capture the right kinds of problems, the kind that, when solved, would bridge us from our current state of knowledge to a definition. That's the real work, and some people who have this real work in mind pursue the problem in an open-ended way, that's the right shape of open-ended to fit the type of problem being considered. And then they get scolded for not having started with a definition.