[Corpora-List] What is corpora and what is not?

[Angus Grieve-Smith]

On 10/8/2012 9:24 PM, Laurence Anthony wrote:
> Nevertheless, scientists are careful to use terms in a very clear and
> precise way. Otherwise, they cannot communicate with each other.

     People successfully communicated for millenia before anyone came up 
with a definition of anything.  People have been failing to communicate 
for as long as there has been language, including during the hundreds of 
years since the first word was defined.  Definitions can help 
communication, but they're not necessary for it.


>   "There is no precise definition of what separates the living from the
> non-living."
>
> Maybe this is true in biology but I'm sure there is in other cases.
> For example, most doctors and governments have a very precise
> definition of whether or not a person is living or non-living. They
> need it before deciding if we should bury the person or not!

     You might like this podcast:

http://www.radiolab.org/2009/jul/27/


> Perhaps some people on this list would tell doctors that they are just
> being silly and wasting everybody's time discussing whether somebody
> is alive or dead. Perhaps the advice would be, "it's not important
> whether somebody is "alive" or "dead"... it doesn't matter... it's a
> silly discussion... the only important thing is the properties of the
> person... are they moving... are they talking. Based on this, we can
> decide whether or not to bury them."
>
> And the doctor would reply, "OK, what properties do we need to look
> at? And, what values do we assign to 'alive' and what properties do we
> assign to 'dead'?
>
> Isn't that a definition?

     You can decide whether or not to bury someone without any kind of 
definition.  You don't need the words "alive" and "dead" at all. You 
just need a clear set of criteria.  But no matter how clear you make the 
criteria there will always be hard-to-decide borderline cases where 
people just need to use their best judgment.

-- 
				-Angus B. Grieve-Smith
				grvsmth at panix.com


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