That is a primary issue.
Years ago, I would ask people “What is a god?” Invariably the only responses that I got were:
- “There is only one!” or
- “God is just a myth.”
When I would ask what it is that you believe in (or insist is merely a myth) the question of definition of “god” was completely dismissed in favor of ranting either pro or con.
To this day, that doesn’t vary very much. And even though that word is a bit emotionally and/or socially charged, almost any inquiry of definition yields such poor results.
That isn’t bad, but neither does it complete the function of a definition. The bit about often using metaphor or whatever is superfluous. And the fact that a definition is a description is true, but there can be many descriptions that are not defining or determining descriptions:
Define an apple:
“Its a fruit”
…yeah, and?
“It’s usually red”
…and?
“It grows on trees”
So anything that is a fruit, red and grows on trees is an apple?
“yeah I think so.”
What about a cherry?
“A cherry isn’t an apple”
So what else isn’t an apple?
A definition is a inclusive qualifier description. If anything fits within the stated description, it must be the thing being defined, else it is a poor defining description, if one at all.
If you look up “to exist” in the dictionary, or just ask anyone, you get just about everything BUT a definition. Mostly you get merely substitute words; “to be”, “real”,… So on that one, I made a thread to give (as far as I know) the first actual defining description (involving having to have the property of affect - hence my “Affectance Ontology”).
But even after explaining the whole definition issue and giving a definition, what did I get in response? Alternate word substitutes or common characteristics: “existence is becoming”, “existence is the now”, “it is what it is”, “That which creates in the cradle of emptiness”, “the collusion of events in proximity”,… of course at this site, I got merely off topic discussion of peripheral issues (exactly as expected).
That is not how we define things. That is how we convey the basic idea.
To define a thing, we must give an UNAMBIGUOUS description, NOT VAGUE, NOT merely a SAMPLE, NOT merely some TYPICAL properties - a description that doesn’t fit anything else.
[list]Definition ≡ an unambiguous categorical description.[/list:u]