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Person A "he is blind"
Person B "no he isn't blind"
Person A "yes he is"
Person B "what is a blind person then?"
Person A "A blind person is someone who has a blind sight-identity"
Person B "what is a blind sight identity?"
Person A "It is the deep, persistent, innate sense of being blind that might or might not match the biological ability of seeing"
When someone says "this thing (or this person) is an X" and someone else replies "when you say "that thing is an X" what information are you conveying about that thing?" There are three possible exhaustive and mutually exclusive answers:
1_Direct, non circular definition: You have a specific condition in mind. Example: "When I say "that person is an X", I mean they are wearing green shoes", This actually tells something checkable about the person.
2_Homonym /multiple distinct meanings: The word has several unrelated senses, and context decides which one you’re using. Example: "X" can mean either 'someone wearing red shoes and yellow socks' or 'someone who smokes' So when I say 'that person is an X' I’m saying one of those two things depending on the situation.
3_Arbitrary label with no shared property: The word is just a label for a group whose members have no common defining trait(s), making it practically meaningless. Example: We label the set {2, 17, 9, 3, 21} (which are the members of the group) as “blens” . When I say "2 is a blen” or "17 is a blen”, I’m not conveying any real information about those numbers (unlike saying one is even or prime).
What are your thoughts? Are there any cracks in this?
Specifically what information does the phrase "this person is a woman" convey?
some say to me "a woman is whoever identifies a woman" but that's circular, it would mean "a woman is whoever identifies as [whoever identifies as a woman]" and then "a woman is whoever identifies as [whoever identifies as [whoever identifies as a woman]]" then "a woman is whoever identifies as [whoever identifies as [whoever identifies as [whoever identifies as[......."
Others say "a woman is someone who identifies as what they understand a woman is" but that's circular as well and conveys no more information than "a glorp is someone who identifies as what they understand a glorp is", and it's the same with saying "it's whatever a society considers a woman" because this would either beg the question or imply that the group labeled "women" is arbitrary and can include anything without a shared property between it's members.
Some others dismiss the question by saying "every society had a different definition" but my question is about the current definition, that would just mean that those societies were using the same label to refer to different things. So dismissing the demand of definition wouldn't be legitimate unless if the word is meaningless or that it has no shared meaning or isn't truth apt.
i am not asking about what everyone who had ever used the word "woman" meant, i am asking about what you mean by it and what information you're conveying when you say "this person is a woman" (so everyone can answer for themselves). In particular, what sufficient (non-circular) condition do you associate the word "woman" with?
(hey, i started using Reddit recently and didn't know about this community until very lately)
I am not going to say that religion in our society has become only by name but it's closer to that than ever. One of the things that I noticed is that our respect and practice of our religion had decayed to being barley about the fundamentals of the fundamentals (الأمور الإعتقادية) and even those are being kept implicit in day to day life rather than being the most important topic in a person's exsitence which religion is about, plus religious holidays and Ramadan obviously which have become more of a habit. From what I see in the media and my environment it feels like people (especially the youth) are slowly and silently switching to a western-like mentality mostly in the bad aspects when the teachings contradict desires.
What are your thoughts and experiences about this?