He compares the meaning of words to the value of currency. Words that fall out of use can no longer be used meaningfully in conversation just like coins belonging to a currency no longer in use. This comparison underscores a point that he credits to Putnam: that we are able to use language meaningfully in part because we belong to a community of language users, including those who, perhaps unlike us, know how to apply the terms correctly. For example, says Noe, he can speak meaningfully about the difference between two kinds of trees (elms vs. oaks) even though he himself cannot distinguish one from the other.
How about defining it as an instance of functional complexity? And treating the list of properties as following necessarily from this definition? Okay, this is very diamond-in-the-rough (or perhaps zirconium...) but here goes my thoughts on the matter: (Complexity) Many diverse parts (functional) acting for the sake of the whole I think I need to add something like "not as the instrument of another" or something like that. Given that they act together as one whole and given entropy, etc., the organism will need to posses more order than its surroundings (homeostasis). It will therefore need to take in energy (nutrition), which it will use to sustain its readiness to interact with its environment so as to preserve its own being (homeostasis again?), but which will eventually break down (death), so that in order for that life form to continue it will need to duplicate itself (reproduction), which, upon occurring, will involve both development (growth) to maturity and...
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