Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Not-Quite-Science Forum Semantics, Etymology, Syntactics, Etc.

Just to clarify:
The above question (in red), from the previous post, is about "spirit," and it's nature.
*_*

My goal was to point out that there are words used that have wildly varying definitions on a personal basis, yet these words still are functional in language because we focus on the consequence or manifestation of the word (not it's definition) in our daily lives.

In addition to words such as spirit, joy would also be an example.

Each person might have a different definition of what brings them joy, but when a person is joyful or enjoying something, that manifestation is universally understood.

Perhaps usage of these words could benefit from a different kind of definition (a meta-definition) that focused on consequences of a word/concept, rather than particulars of a subjective experience.

As an example, one might define "Creation" by what it motivates people to be interested in, rather than the details of how or when Creation happened.

Meta-definitions? Well, as I said, that was my goal; but I sure liked the logic behind the integration of those two aspects of "spirit" in that last paragraph quoted in the previous post.



~SA