> Ambiguity is a feature of natural languages, it's not a bug. It's because of this ambiguity that you can pass a law and assume other laws will update their meaning accordingly.

Which is huge problem. It means that laws can be interpreted any which way we want, which essentially means that the law only retains its meaning for a certain period of time until, until people forget their meaning, or judges make enough exceptions to those laws to render them useless but "true in principle", or judges decide at whim to change the interpretation. Since laws can change, what reliance have we upon any of it? What guarantee do we have that we can keep our "rights"? It's an incredibly stupid system. Is there something better? - Not one we can implement, to say the least. So we're stuck with it. It's not a blessing, it's a curse.

It is a huge and unjustified leap to go from "ambiguity is a feature of natural languages" to "it means that laws can be interpreted any which way we want". It is interesting that this appears in a discussion of this topic.

In reality, natural language can be precise - consider a textbook on logic, for example. It is humans that are ambiguous, and if you force them to use a language that has a precise meaning, they will simply write things that do not mean exactly what they intend. We know this is so from observing how programming errors are made.

It's not that big of a leap. And a text book is actually a poor counter example. Can modern Greeks read ancient Greek? No. Culture degrades language. Gradually, words will mean something else. Consider the word "cool". How many people these days actually associate it with temperature first? Or "ass". How many people think "donkey"? Those are simple examples. We could go back to older English, but I think my point has been demonstrated.

Admittedly, I keep shortening my responses before posting, so sometimes I don't explain some logic that seems obvious to me. Apologies.

No one is disputing the possibility of ambiguity, but a few single-word examples is still a long way from "interpret any way you want." If you need to be precise about temperature or fashion or animal taxonomy or physiology, you can be, and a textbook is a better example than the observation that few people understand a language that is no longer in general use.

Notably, I wasn't talking about precisely-defined textbook words. If you go back, my original comment is directed at the fact that the Constitution can be liberally interpreted because the meanings of words change, which is due to cultural influence. Sure, we could go back and look at the history of America and figure out what "right" probably meant to the founding fathers (or "electricity" or yada yada for that matter), but to Joe Shmoe, the original meaning is either gone or no longer relevant. The only reason certain words' meanings don't change is because people aren't using them.

That said, I would still say natural language is, when you try to fully examine it without relation to reality, arbitrary (in a completely different argument), and while it doesn't mean "any which way we want" (initially), we could make a deep philosophical examination of the topic and come to that conclusion, but that's off topic. Though I feel like that's partly what you may have thought I was arguing initially.

We can only go by what you write, and you are making a more thoughtful point now. I do not think, however, that you can exclude "precisely defined textbook words" when the issue is whether natural language is necessarily imprecise (not that my textbook example is only about word definitions, FWIW.)

It's not completely arbitrary. Language still has meaning, but there is room for interpretation.

Think of it as a model of the world. To launch a rocket you need a pretty good model of how physics works, but you don't need to simulate and describe every single quantum interaction. Or you wouldn't be able to do anything.

Laws are like models, they describe our norms in (more or less) broad terms, but there is still a degree of uncertainty in each and every real world case.

Please explain to me what the word "know" means. We could debate about it for hours on end. Same with tons of other words. What exactly is "spicy"? Is there such a flavor as "savory"? How far is "close"? And your telling me it's not ambiguous? The fact is, while a defining feature might hold for a certain amount of time, a person's idea of "closeness" or "spicyness" or millions of other things will gradually change over time. Albeit alittle. Of course, I said all that to counter your rocket example, as it's not particularly answering the question about language.

With regards to language: As I said to other guy, can modern Greeks read ancient Greek? No. Culture degrades language. Gradually, words will mean something else. Consider the word "cool". How many people these days actually associate it with temperature first? Or "ass". How many people think "donkey"? Those are simple examples. We could go back to older English, but I think my point has been demonstrated.

Admittedly, I keep shortening my responses before posting, so sometimes I don't explain some logic that seems obvious to me. Apologies.