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Identifying and Analyzing Life


An example would be that a sufficient condition for being a unicorn is being a horse and having a horn on top of its head. A sufficient condition would not be that to be a unicorn it must have a tail. This is because a unicorn may not have a tail but can still be a unicorn and another animal may have a tail but not be a unicorn. .
             In addition to revealing essence by expressing necessary and sufficient conditions, it is necessary for the definition to be univocal, extensionally adequate, and epistemically serviceable. To be univocal, it must be unambiguous. Ambiguity is defined as a property of a linguistic string that is used with two of more meanings within ordinary discourse. An example of a univocal term is male because it is difficult to be interpreted incorrectly and is only used to determine or define ones gender. By being extensionally adequate, the definition will pick out all of the examples in real time and space that is meant by the connotation. This means that there are no counter examples. If the definition of human includes being born with ten fingers and a case is witnessed where a human was born having more than ten fingers such is the case for people with polydactyly, the having ten fingers is not a defining trait of humans. A final important criteria is that the definition be epistemically serviceable which means that it will be able to be used as a criteria for determining which objects are in or out of the extension of the term. This means that the definitions can be used to instantly judge whether or not a thing belongs in the extension of the definition. Without all of these three qualifications, a definition can not be considered adequate because it will be fallible. .
             Often an adequate theoretical definition is confused with other definitions that exist such as a lexical definition or stipulative definition. These do not function as adequate definitions but can still play an important role for words.


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