Quote from: darkv0rt3x on July 06, 2022, 10:25:23 AM

I can give you an example that sometimes happens to me that makes me thinking just like that. Like "who decided that the word <spoon> represents an object that allows you to take objects into your mouth?? Why not <priche>, <glast> or anything else"?? Note: those sets of chars are only that. Sets of chars that I put together randomly! No idea if there are words like that!

So, when you say that something has value, maybe it gets real value if more people agree with that! Someone decided, and others agreed that <spoon> could be a set of chars to represent the object that allows you to carry objects into your mouth. I know that words has their own etymology, but I think you get the point.

First, I want to distinguish concepts from words. Concept are the ideas in your head. Words are the perceptual reference to those concepts. Words are like pointers to concepts.

As you’ve observed, different culture uses different languages which have different words pointing to the same concept. So the concept of “spoon” may have different words in German vs. English but they both refer to the same concept. That is, similar objects (but not identical) arises in the recipient’s mind when you say the word “spoon” or its equivalent in German (to a German language person).

Now I agree with you that it doesn’t matter what the words are. That is, it doesn’t matter if the English person calls the concept of spoon “spoon” or “price” or “glast” unless they want to communicate with another English speaker. At that point, it does matter that there is agreement between the two individual that the word “spoon” refers to the same concept.

Now, that may mean that the words, for the purposes of communication, are necessarily subjective; but it doesn’t mean that the concepts themselves are.

For example, I may “feel” like the concept of “glast” should refer to both things that can be used to scoop soup as well as things that can be used to cut meat. But that would be an invalid concept because it is tying things together by their non-essential. That is, spoons are used for specific type of tasks. Even if no two spoons are identical, they all can be used for the same tasks. Knives, however, are used for very different tasks. To combine these two category of things together under the same concept would make the concept useless and therefore invalid.

Now, some person may claim that, based on their feelings, the term “glast” should refer to both spoon-objects and knives-objects. And they would suffer the consequences for creating and using invalid concepts by ignoring the fact of reality that these are two very different objects.