[Ralath]

Ah Ralath, I was comparing prose and poetry because both are written using text. A picture cannot be satisfactorily explained using words. However, if you started to describe "Saturn ripping his son's head off and causing blood to stream down to the floor", you would just about begin to describe the picture.

Begin being the keyword. BEGIN to describe the picture. But there's no way that can communicate the same thing as the picture itself. I am not revolted by those words the same way I am revolted by the picture.

Now, I think "I am sad" says about the same thing as "My sadness is as deep as the ocean". Only thing is that the latter shows that you have verbal/literary skills. It doesn't cause the meaning of the sentence to change in any way. If the meaning is inherently different and deep, it should surely be noticeable, if not quantifiable.

But the meaning IS inherently different and deep. People experience different levels of happiness and sadness. But they most definitely do not quantify it. People don't go around say, "Oh, I'm twice as happy as I was yesterday." Or, "I'm sad plus two about the death of my dog as I was sad about the death of my cat." I mean, what the heck does that even mean?

The reason we have analogies and metaphors and figurative language (and prose and poetry) is because these things can communicate to use better and in a way that direct phrasing cannot. Heck, I bet if you looked through your own writing, I bet you would find a ton of instances where you use metaphor or simile where you could have been direct. Why didn't you? Because the metaphor and simile communicated something better.

Not everything of worth is quantifiable.

The reason that a lawyer's job changed from proving that someone was guilty/innocent according to law to arguing what the law meant was because law was written so subjectively. Law should mean the same thing to everyone.

No one means to write law subjectively. No one goes to write a law and says, "I want this law to mean different things to different people so we can have lots of court battle over the meaning."

There is no "inherent" flaw in law. That's like saying "This guy is a human. But he has this inherent flaw which makes him not a human but something else." Similarly, lack of objectivity cannot be an "inherent" flaw of law, because law itself is a set of objective, legally enforceable rules.

Terrible, terrible analogy. You don't specify what you mean by inherent flaw. If a "human" was flawed enough (say he was made out of a different material--metal and wiring), then that most definitely does not make him human.

And you are arguing in circles. You are basically stating:

"Law is objective because law cannot lack objectivity."

Circular argument. Not credible.

I'm not sure what you definition of law proves either since it doesn't mention anything about objectivity/subjectivity. But I do think there is an interesting part of the definition:

Law
–noun
1. the principles and regulations established in a community by some authority and applicable to its people, whether in the form of legislation or of custom and policies recognized and enforced by judicial decision.

If law was truly objective, they wouldn't need to be enforced by a judicial decision

Once it is someone's decision, it is definitely not objective.

But instead, you are trying to bend the law to suit your means i.e arguing with what intention the law was written. The thing about law is, it should be unbendable. What should be done here is further laws introduced such as "Nobody is permitted to build houses greater than 2 storeys, and the aforementioned house should not be taller than 20 feet (or whatever). Extensions to the house will not be treated as storeys."

I am not arguing about what the law should be or how the law should be interpreted. I'm talking about how the law is and how the law is interpreted.

Even in your modified law, we can splice it further. What is a house? Does someone have to be living in it to be considered a house? Is a trailer considered a house? What are extensions? What about basements? Do they count into the height of the house? Do they count as one of two stories?

A direct statement? No. It does not cover instigating someone to suicide directly or indirectly. So we extend the law to cover all such scenarios. We do not sit in court and try to figure out what the "intention" of the writer was. The thing about writing law is, whatever the writer has intended, should come out onto that paper. That is true objectivity.

Wait. HOLD UP!

"whatever the writer has intended, should come out onto that paper."

Let's analyze this statement.

Whatever the writer has intended????? Really?? A writer's intent is objective now???

You even contradict yourself with this argument.

First you say that we shouldn't figure out what the intention of the writer was. And then you say that we should follow the intention of the writer.

Really? Really?!

And that doesn't even count the fact that there is no possible way to write a law "that covers all scenarios." Believe it or not, the world is not made up of black or white.