Now that is a good definition. It may or may not be true but it is a valid (in the sense of meeting the necessary conditions) definition. If we assume (and I am willing to) most people can agree on the general meaning of the words "living", "person"; and how to observationally or instrumentally determine whether an object is or is not a body and is or is not living AND what those words mean in combination, there is no ambiguity. I see a potential problem with the "breath of life" phrase in the latter parts of what you wrote because I can not figure out how an atheistic doctor could determine either by observation or by instrumentation whether or not a body (living or non-living) had it; that is why I snipped everything but the first line.
Do you see the difference between what you wrote this time and what you wrote the first time? What you wrote this time may be derivable from what you wrote the first time, and the first may be true, but the first was not a definition of "soul", whether that definition be true or not. What you wrote this time is a definition though again, it may or may not be true. I am not aware that being true is a necessary condition for a definition. While I would never argue against the proposition that being true makes one a better defintion, I don't know that they have to be true to still be classified as definitions. It seems to me that if they had to be true there could only be one definition of "sandstone", or "granite" or "frog" and at least for the rocks I just mentioned, the definition depends to some degree on on whose classification scheme you use.
Any logicians in the group have any thoughts on that?
Darryl
----- Original Message -----
From: Allen Roy
To: Darryl Maddox ; asanet
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2000 7:59 AM
Subject: Re: TE-man
Well let's see:
A soul = living person (by interpretation comparison between KJV and NIV
That seems pretty exclusionary.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Oct 19 2000 - 07:05:44 EDT