Language and Thinking

[Lord Mhoram]

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

I'm pretty sure he backed off from that, and nearly 100% sure he said [paraphrased] "That doesn't mean what you think it does."

That's awfully flippant. But, yeah, he didn't always hold that position. He later of course said there's a limitless number of language-games we can play wherein meaning is use. Still, late and early Wittgenstein both emphasize over and over again the overwhelmingly dominant role language plays in the way we function in the world.

[Avatar]

Makes sense to me. Language is meaning, and meaning affects how we see and interact with it.

--A

[rusmeister]

...something ugly, evil, and/or false.

Not necessarily. "Passed away" is a euphemism for dying, for example. Which is none of those things.

That said, in general I agree...euphemism exists to put a nicer face on something that's an (often) unpleasant reality.

This is not to say that they cannot have their place of course.

--A

I agree that to a materialist, "pass away" looks decidedly like a euphemism. To anyone who believes that the spirit does pass on to another world, the term will simply represent a matter of fact.

Also agree that euphemism has its place - as in "going potty" instead of "defecating". I'm talking about euphemism whose effect is to mask truth with falsehood, with an end result that people aren't even going to agree on truth - and the language is a contributing factor in forming worldview (what IS truth).

[Vraith]

I'm pretty sure he backed off from that, and nearly 100% sure he said [paraphrased] "That doesn't mean what you think it does."

That's awfully flippant. But, yeah, he didn't always hold that position. He later of course said there's a limitless number of language-games we can play wherein meaning is use. Still, late and early Wittgenstein both emphasize over and over again the overwhelmingly dominant role language plays in the way we function in the world.

Heh...I didn't mean YOU you, and the flippancy was his [and directed explicitly at other philosophers...though it must apply to most of us, since people STILL disagree about what he meant].
But, it is true that language dominates how we go about our business.

[Fist and Faith]

Agreed. But hopefully you'll agree that no other organizations have the influence those two do. It's hard to beat compulsory government schooling for the most important years, days, and hours of of the most formative years of our lives, and outside of that, it's hard to escape the media - darn near impossible, in fact.

My guess would be that the Catholic Church has had a greater influence on the world than any other group. If we can group all denominations of Christianity together, nothing else comes close.

I do charge modern terms like "birth control" and "abortion" as being so aimed, precisely because they mask the nature of what is actually being done.

So obviously, we need to distinguish between terms and euphemisms; more exactly, which terms are actually used to mask the nature of the actual thought or deed.

Hmmm...most forms of "birth control" I suppose, should technically be called "fertilization preventers" or somesuch...but everyone knows that they don't prevent birth, they prevent pregnancy.
"Abortion" on the other hand, is perfectly accurate...a process is halted. It's only "murder" if one believes as you do as a base assumption.

Those who do not believe aborting an embryo/zygote/fetus is murder could well say calling it murder is an euphemism. (Or a reverse-euphemism?)


rus, after hearing you say so much about how death is an unnatural, bad thing, I'm quite surprised you don't call "passed away" a euphemism. Isn't it just an attempt to make death acceptable?

[Avatar]

I'm talking about euphemism whose effect is to mask truth with falsehood...

Euphemism isn't falsehood though. It's just another way of describing something. Yes, perhaps a less harsh way, but that doesn't make it false either.

--A

[Orlion]

Well, it's about time I made an appearence...especially since the intial post that gave birth to this topic was in response to what I said

Words have power. This is apparent even if we say a word only describes a certain thing. Changing the meaning of words can, in my opinion, change attitudes. One only need remember the word "liberal." Beforehand, this could be considered good, "an abundance." However, a smear campaign has turned this word into a swear in some sectors of society (i.e. the liberal plan that will sell your children as rocket fuel). This example will lead up to another point, a reason why words are manipulated like this.

Words contain feelings. They do not have to possess much of a clear definition to control the hearts of humanity. Some words are almost nothing but the verbal embodiment of feeling. Hence, some words that are viewed as emboding hateful feelings are labeled "bad" and "vulgar". Some try to avoid these words because the use of them is enough to cause emotions in the invoker and the reciever.

This quality sometimes makes debate a fruitless venture. Instead of debating ideas and clarifying positions, words are used to control emotion, to manipulate the listener to the arguer's side. All you need to do is talk about "justice," "rights", "patriotic" and so forth, and the person who argues against you now has to deal with your reason and the emotion that you invoked. The worse thing is, many of these words (like justice) have no clear meaning anymore. Try this: Sometimes it will be said that a policy isn't "just", but what does that even mean? Are you saying it is "unfair", "unlawful", "unmerciful", what? And if it is one of those other descriptive words, why not use that? Plainly, saying that a policy is "unlawful" describes the policy, but doesn't rally emotion against the policy like saying it is "unjust."

Because of these characteristics, I try to avoid the use of certain words in debate, they simply do not help clarify matters. I'm not calling for the elimination of meaning, the meaning had all ready been eliminated. In certain contexts, other words or phrases also have more emotional then intelectual value: murder, significant life, etc. If understanding is to be reached, this needs to be understood, and the words in a debate that carry emotion should be identified, recognized, and tossed when analyzing the debate. This would force a clarity of meaning and, hopefully, understanding.

[rusmeister]

Agreed. But hopefully you'll agree that no other organizations have the influence those two do. It's hard to beat compulsory government schooling for the most important years, days, and hours of of the most formative years of our lives, and outside of that, it's hard to escape the media - darn near impossible, in fact.

My guess would be that the Catholic Church has had a greater influence on the world than any other group. If we can group all denominations of Christianity together, nothing else comes close.

I do charge modern terms like "birth control" and "abortion" as being so aimed, precisely because they mask the nature of what is actually being done.

So obviously, we need to distinguish between terms and euphemisms; more exactly, which terms are actually used to mask the nature of the actual thought or deed.

Hmmm...most forms of "birth control" I suppose, should technically be called "fertilization preventers" or somesuch...but everyone knows that they don't prevent birth, they prevent pregnancy.
"Abortion" on the other hand, is perfectly accurate...a process is halted. It's only "murder" if one believes as you do as a base assumption.

Those who do not believe aborting an embryo/zygote/fetus is murder could well say calling it murder is an euphemism. (Or a reverse-euphemism?)


rus, after hearing you say so much about how death is an unnatural, bad thing, I'm quite surprised you don't call "passed away" a euphemism. Isn't it just an attempt to make death acceptable?

I already responded to that last:

I agree that to a materialist, "pass away" looks decidedly like a euphemism. To anyone who believes that the spirit does pass on to another world, the term will simply represent a matter of fact.

Your comment on the Catholic Church (aside from appearing to be in part how the Catholic Church sees and presents itself) is irrelevant to my comments on what is today. If you agree on the enormous and practically universal influence of schooling and the media today, that's all I'm asking for.

I have limited my discussion of euphemism to that which works toward deception (masking) by design. It is the opposite of euphemism to describe a benign idea or act as evil.

[Fist and Faith]

Your comment on the Catholic Church (aside from appearing to be in part how the Catholic Church sees and presents itself) is irrelevant to my comments on what is today. If you agree on the enormous and practically universal influence of schooling and the media today, that's all I'm asking for.

No, I don't agree. Not in all ways. Despite a truly massive amount of evidence, the vast majority of Americans don't believe evolution exists. They think God created our world as we see it. The education system has failed miserably, and you guys are winning. So quit complaining about how it makes people unable to think or believe anything other than what they want us to think and believe.

I have limited my discussion of euphemism to that which works toward deception (masking) by design. It is the opposite of euphemism to describe a benign idea or act as evil.

Yeah, I understand. But I started a thread about how language and thought are, might be, and might not be related. Then you made euphemism the focus of the thread. (And we all know your agenda for doing so.) But the opposite idea - trying to make something that's not bad seem bad - is just as valid a point to discuss. And to those who do not think abortion is murder, that's what you're doing.

[Vraith]

Have to go with Fist on this.
In most classrooms, you can talk about murder.
Abortion can get you in trouble except in very particular circumstances.
Religion is discussable in certain ways/contexts, if you're very careful.
Atheism will get you questions from the schoolboard.
You can teach any number of books that, explicitly religious or not, are so implicitly.
But someone's gonna try to ban anything explicitly or implicitly anti-religion [especially if it's anti-Christian]...and sometimes they'll just make it up "Harry Potter Teaches Evil and Magic." though it is purely fantasy, and the values it does hint at are pretty darn conservative, in general.
And don't get me started on Creationism/evolution.

And Rus...for people who don't agree [other faiths, or no faiths, whatever] with you but know just as many words, when you say "objective" and/or "the truth" it seems you are using euphemisms for "faith" and/or "what I believe"
In other circumstance than a public board like this, [a classroom, for example] the form of your argument is exactly something I mentioned earlier: not insistence on clarity, a method of control.

[rusmeister]

Your comment on the Catholic Church (aside from appearing to be in part how the Catholic Church sees and presents itself) is irrelevant to my comments on what is today. If you agree on the enormous and practically universal influence of schooling and the media today, that's all I'm asking for.

No, I don't agree. Not in all ways. Despite a truly massive amount of evidence, the vast majority of Americans don't believe evolution exists. They think God created our world as we see it. The education system has failed miserably, and you guys are winning. So quit complaining about how it makes people unable to think or believe anything other than what they want us to think and believe.

I could argue about what percentage or fraction of the American public actually rejects the idea of evolution - I think it MUCH smaller than you do; everyone is conditioned to speak of millions and billions of years, of dinosaurs, early man, etc... But I don't think that the most fruitful line. I think it a much more useful line to state that the goal of public education that is succeeding wildly, that is consonant with imperialism, or in its modern form of cosmopolitanism, with economic rather than military dominance, is the propagation of the central tenet of pluralism - that it doesn't matter what you believe because what you believe doesn't matter; that truth is purely individual (except scientific/technological truth). In this the success rate is close to 100%, and the people that really disagree with that homeschool their kids or send them to private. This is further reinforced by everything in the media, and why the most commonly repeated buzzwords for a couple of decades now are "tolerance" and "diversity" (not bad things at all - in measure). I speak as a former public school teacher, and so armchair generals can relax on trying to convince me otherwise.

I have limited my discussion of euphemism to that which works toward deception (masking) by design. It is the opposite of euphemism to describe a benign idea or act as evil.

Yeah, I understand. But I started a thread about how language and thought are, might be, and might not be related. Then you made euphemism the focus of the thread. (And we all know your agenda for doing so.) But the opposite idea - trying to make something that's not bad seem bad - is just as valid a point to discuss. And to those who do not think abortion is murder, that's what you're doing.

Certainly we can discuss both euphemisms and other phemisms. But I'm going to hammer into euphemisms because they predominate in public discourse and others (kakphemisms? - My Greek is quite limited, which I regret) do not. They are decidedly the exception to the general rule. People do say "having sex" and "sleeping together" FAR more often than they say "commit adultery" or "fornication".

It is a question of truth, and whose view on truth - including the view that truth is purely personal - will determine public policy.

PS - when you speak of "my agenda", it comes across as if I was conspiring to impose something that I do not necessarily see to be truth. I do not speak of "your agenda" in a similar way.

[rusmeister]

Have to go with Fist on this.
In most classrooms, you can talk about murder.
Abortion can get you in trouble except in very particular circumstances.
Religion is discussable in certain ways/contexts, if you're very careful.
Atheism will get you questions from the schoolboard.
You can teach any number of books that, explicitly religious or not, are so implicitly.
But someone's gonna try to ban anything explicitly or implicitly anti-religion [especially if it's anti-Christian]...and sometimes they'll just make it up "Harry Potter Teaches Evil and Magic." though it is purely fantasy, and the values it does hint at are pretty darn conservative, in general.
And don't get me started on Creationism/evolution.

And Rus...for people who don't agree [other faiths, or no faiths, whatever] with you but know just as many words, when you say "objective" and/or "the truth" it seems you are using euphemisms for "faith" and/or "what I believe"
In other circumstance than a public board like this, [a classroom, for example] the form of your argument is exactly something I mentioned earlier: not insistence on clarity, a method of control.

Again, hammering in that I am a certified ex-public school teacher, (I paid with sweat and tears, if not blood, for nearly four years for my experience and knowledge), I'll say again that the public philosophy insists that truth is personal and not corporate, and the cardinal sin is to violate THAT, whether you do so in the name of religion or atheism. You can say, as you said, carefully, that "Christians believe thus-and-so" (whether they actually do as a body or not), or "Atheists believe..." or "Muslims believe..."
And there is no more danger from encouraging reading of Phil Pullman's fantasies than there is from "The Chronicles of Narnia". And some controls really work only one way. Bans forbidding the wearing of crosses (which for Orthodox Christians is essentially mandatory - it would be a definite violation of my faith to ban me or my children from wearing a cross/crucifix. There is no similar ban on atheist symbolism for the simple reason that there is no such (universally recognized) symbolism.

That's getting away from language and into topics, though. On that, I'd iterate that it is the language that I attack that dominates public usage, and not the language that I defend.

[Fist and Faith]

Even if you are correct about all you say, rus... Even if your views are right, good, and objectively accurate, and mine are wrong, bad, and do not reflect reality - I still started a thread about the possibilities for thought without language, and you turned it into a discussion about how language (via the public education system and the media) leads people away from the good, true Orthodox values.

[rusmeister]

Even if you are correct about all you say, rus... Even if your views are right, good, and objectively accurate, and mine are wrong, bad, and do not reflect reality - I still started a thread about the possibilities for thought without language, and you turned it into a discussion about how language (via the public education system and the media) leads people away from what you see to be true.

I'm sure you'd want me to express your thoughts as you think them. I guess we all need to practice at seeing the best in people we disagree with. One of the things I found remarkable about GKC was the extent to which he did that, to which I only aspire.

You might find it a little difficult to express thoughts without language, though, and the ways in which you express your thoughts have a correspondence with what actually is true, although the degree of correspondence may vary.

Can you think without language? Sure. In language, there is a stage where we look at the sun and see a bright shining yellow thing before we name it. Trouble is, we can't think very much about it without language. Our thinking is reduced to a simplistic, animalistic level. Higher level thinking definitely requires language. You can watch whole videos without any language, and your (human) mind is going to be attempting to insert language the whole way. We have the 5 senses. But language is the thing that enables us to reason. If language goes wrong, reason will go wrong as a result.

[Vraith]

That's more on point. There are a number of problems that arise in it though.
For instance, the rising sun:
I'd say that painters who paint it, are thinking, and thinking very deeply, about it...and it's demonstrable in a lab environment that words get in the way of thinking in this painterly way.
I think this kind of thought is hardly understood, and more important than anyone gives it credit for, and it is in no way at all animalistic or simplistic, or imprecise. Not reasonable, nor unreasonable, but non-reasonable.
A poet and an astronomer can think/talk of the sun in profoundly different language...and, being someone who attempts poetry, I can tell you from personal experience watching a Jupiter asteroid impact for a college science class, a single person can think both ways at precisely the same time.
Both are thoroughly grounded in a "correspondence with reality."
Both mean something about the event, neither is "untrue," and yet you'll find yourself in a huge tangled, complicated mess if you try to logically reconcile them.
Difficulties come about when saying "if language goes wrong, reason will too." It is true, in a very narrow sense, but it is a problem of selection. Not all language functions on the basis of correspondence, direct reference, or representation. Not all language is meant to, or even CAN be used in logical reasoning. One has to, if attempting to be logical, selectively edit out/include only those parts of language that function within the framework of 'logic.' It is a cell within the larger field of language that has a semi-permeable wall.
'Reason' can only talk about those things that can be logically shown to be true. Language can be and talk about a lot more than that.
Enough, for now, I suppose.

[aliantha]

One of the aims of meditation, as I understand it, is to quiet that voice that is continually narrating our lives inside our heads, and just be in the present moment. To inhabit one's body and live in one's life, today, right now.

I don't see that as bad or wrong. In fact, it can be a good thing. A lot of the time, that voice in your head is just replaying tapes of all the people in your life who've told you what a hopeless failure and an idiot you are. It's quite a relief to be free of that, if only for a moment.

[Avatar]

a thread about the possibilities for thought without language...

There can be feelings without language, even understanding without language. But thought requires it. Try thinking about an abstract concept, which exists only through your definition...like...say...honour.

We might have a tacit, internal (subjective) understanding of what is meant by it, but to analyse it meaningfully, we have to verbalise it.

One of the aims of meditation, as I understand it, is to quiet that voice that is continually narrating our lives inside our heads, and just be in the present moment. To inhabit one's body and live in one's life, today, right now.

Meh. I'm about as present-orientated as you can get...I rarely worry about yesterday or tomorrow. That voice though...I like that voice. I am that voice. Ego is everything.

--A

[Vraith]

Meh. I'm about as present-orientated as you can get...I rarely worry about yesterday or tomorrow. That voice though...I like that voice. I am that voice. Ego is everything.

--A

Some people don't seem to have such an amicable relationship with that voice [or those voices ] I'm on good terms with some of them, but intend genocide on some of the others.

[rusmeister]

That's more on point. There are a number of problems that arise in it though.
For instance, the rising sun:
I'd say that painters who paint it, are thinking, and thinking very deeply, about it...and it's demonstrable in a lab environment that words get in the way of thinking in this painterly way.
I think this kind of thought is hardly understood, and more important than anyone gives it credit for, and it is in no way at all animalistic or simplistic, or imprecise. Not reasonable, nor unreasonable, but non-reasonable.
A poet and an astronomer can think/talk of the sun in profoundly different language...and, being someone who attempts poetry, I can tell you from personal experience watching a Jupiter asteroid impact for a college science class, a single person can think both ways at precisely the same time.
Both are thoroughly grounded in a "correspondence with reality."
Both mean something about the event, neither is "untrue," and yet you'll find yourself in a huge tangled, complicated mess if you try to logically reconcile them.
Difficulties come about when saying "if language goes wrong, reason will too." It is true, in a very narrow sense, but it is a problem of selection. Not all language functions on the basis of correspondence, direct reference, or representation. Not all language is meant to, or even CAN be used in logical reasoning. One has to, if attempting to be logical, selectively edit out/include only those parts of language that function within the framework of 'logic.' It is a cell within the larger field of language that has a semi-permeable wall.
'Reason' can only talk about those things that can be logically shown to be true. Language can be and talk about a lot more than that.
Enough, for now, I suppose.

Perception is not, in itself, thought. "Thinking about something" means applying reason to what we perceive. And when I speak of "thought" and "thinking", I am not speaking only of things related to logic, and by "reason", I mean thought processes.
Admiring beauty, or experiencing awe at the sight of an asteroid strike, is perception, but it is not thought. It requires language to even think "How beautiful!" or "How awesome!" One can be struck or awed, but that does not add up to thinking about the phenomenon. Even to generate poetry, which is the best vehicle we know of to express those internal experiences - perceptions - you have to have language first.

When I say "animalistic, I mean only that it is without thought as such.
The development of children is a good example. From the fact that we remember nothing of our earliest years - we only remember from the point when we could form language, and that very hazily, when at all. We give children picture books and teach language in connection with images, converting perception into thought. The main thing difference between acquisition of native language and that of foreign language is that we can use thought ourselves to help us learn "artificially". But when you first learn the word "dog", you aren't thinking about the dog. You are perceiving something hairy with floppy ears that makes funny sounds. Thinking about the dog means connecting ideas - and this is where maybe we have (a little) something to talk about. I'd describe the difference as being between taking information in and applying reason to the information, and only the latter is "thinking", properly understood. Connecting ideas and applying reason requires language. Without language, you are on the level of that small child - or animal - in terms of thinking.

(Let's make sure we're not clashing over semantics, btw.)

[rusmeister]

a thread about the possibilities for thought without language...

There can be feelings without language, even understanding without language. But thought requires it. Try thinking about an abstract concept, which exists only through your definition...like...say...honour.

We might have a tacit, internal (subjective) understanding of what is meant by it, but to analyse it meaningfully, we have to verbalise it.

Wow! I actually am in agreement with Avatar on something!