Did Semantics Cause Your Conflict?
The Meaning of a Word is more than a dictionary definition Our life experience shapes the meaning of words Some words or phrases are ambiguous 5 minute read Ludwig Wittgentstein Ludwig Wittgenstein , the 20th century philosopher, famously said, “ If a lion could speak, we would not understand what he said... I can't understand a lion's language because I don't know what his world is like.” (It is dramatized in a 4 minute video here .) The world Wittgenstein meant is the world of experience. Our experiences form our worldview, our reality. He didn't mean that a lion would speak in some foreign tongue , but that whatever words or phrases the lion used, he could not convey the idea or experience he was trying to describe. Photo by jean wimmerlin on Unsplash The way a lion runs, hunts, catches prey, eats and mates are beyond our experience. If a lion talked about any of these activities, how could we understand him? We would have no shared con