I think this has little to do with narrow-mindedness or anything along those lines, and a lot more to do with the fact that definitions for words exist to facilitate communication. If I redefine life to include, say, my computer, I ought to have a very good reason to do this; otherwise, I'm just going to confuse people, and end up giving a full explanation every time I use the term 'life'.

Basically, this concept looks at the causality of language in reverse.