Philosophy Lounge

August 28, 2011

Some confusion on the structure of language.

Filed under: linguistic philosophy,metaphysics — Tags: , — jbernal @ 12:07 pm

Not too long ago I engaged a philosophical acquaintance in a rather confusing discussion. I had objected to some philosophers’ tendency to bring up the notion of “incommensurable languages” when referring to our very different forms of expression when we talk about physical objects and when we talk about mental life. Accordingly, these two incommensurable forms of “language” allegedly suggest two distinct orders of existence, namely physical reality and mental reality: the discredited Cartesian dualism.

My interlocutor, Spanos, then restated things by substituting differing perspectives on reality for a dualistic metaphysics.

“It is a significant piece of evidence in metaphysics if we assume that the structures of language follow the structures of reality. Then the existence of incommensurable languages suggest that there are incommensurable orders of reality. In other words, it suggests dualism. But if we reject dualism, then we can distinguish between reality as it is in itself, and reality as it is in our experience. Then we can hypothesize that the incommensurability stems from the nature of reality as it is in our experience and not from the nature of reality as it is in itself.”

To which I replied:

Now you choose to talk about orders (plural “orders”) of reality. I thought that you had taken the position that there is only one reality of which there are two manifestations, physical and mental? But now it is a plurality of orders of reality. This might permit you to avoid a Cartesian dualism, but this surely brings up its own set of problems. The point at issue is your presupposition regarding the nature of descriptive language. I have grave problems with that.

Isn’t it a type of metaphysical confusion to speak of the “structures of language” reflecting (you say “follow”) the structures of reality? A good deal of any language (English, French, German , Spanish) has nothing to do with “following the structures of reality.” Language is used for many things other than describing reality. When I use language to make a request, to issue a command or to express my surprise, I am not describing the structures of reality. Moreover, I’m not sure that any part of descriptive language and scientific language can reasonably be described as one in which “the structures of the language follow the structures of reality.” The metaphysical claim regarding parallel structures is suspect, if not downright false. It is not as if a proposition (expressed as a statement in a language) is a picture of reality, which might or might not be commensurable with it.

For example, let’s take the declarative sentence: “The cat is on the mat” — uttered when in fact a cat is on the mat. Does it describe the structure of reality, and hence can be commensurable with reality? It seems to me that all it does is accurately state a fact: the cat on the mat. There is no attempt to state the structure of anything here; nor is the statement one that could pass as a picture of reality. If I needed to show the structure of the situation — cat on the mat — I would take a photograph or construct a model of the room-cat-mat. If I tell you that the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range is southwest from Pueblo, Colorado. I have accurately reported a geographic fact. I have not given a piece of language whose structure reflects the structure of reality (at best a good model of south-central Colorado might do that). Why would anyone think that language does that? I don’t have the vaguest idea what language would have to be to do that. Language does not function that way.

But I suppose this misses the metaphysical point about the function of language that you have in mind. However, surely the metaphysical position at issue (structure of language reflects the structure of reality) is not one held by many philosophers and scientists today.

Spanos then amended his position:

“I am not so sure that the structure of language follows the structure of reality. Maybe it only follows the structure of reality as we experience reality. That, in fact, is what the double aspect theory implies. So the dualism may be more apparent than real.

“Maybe the structures of language impact causally on the way we experience reality, as many philosophers have suggested. But if statements did not follow something, how could they be true? If a pragmatist says that they are true only because they work, the realist asks how they could possibly work if they did not at least reflect reality as we experience it. If someone says, “the cat is on the mat,” then he suggests a certain relation between the cat and the mat. If I take a look and find that the cat is in fact on the mat, then I would say that the relation represented in the sentence is verified by the relation found in experience. The whole of science seems to depend on this kind of relationship between idea and experience.”

To which I replied:

Your statement that maybe ” the structure of language…”only follows the structure of reality as we experience reality” strikes me as just another way of saying that in some cases we use language which is descriptive of the situation we perceive as fact. If we see a cat on the mat and in fact a cat is on the mat and I describe this by saying “a cat is on the mat,” my affirmation of the entities: cat and mat, and statement of their interrelation — cat is on the map – describes what is factually true. But I would claim nothing about ‘structures’ in general, either about language and certain not about reality, even reality as experienced. A description of a simple empirical fact (cat presently on the mat) does not involve a commitment (not even a suggestion) to a metaphysics regarding structures of language, reality, or reality-as-experienced-by-us. It is just a simple description of empirical fact.

Contrary to what the young Wittgenstein tried to show in his book, Tractatus, the syntax of language and patterns of logic do not parallel the ‘structure’ of the world. Languages function in varieties of ways which are not exposed by any particular patterns or syntax. And whatever “structures’ of the real world are exposed by the natural sciences (not by philosophy, which discovers nothing!) are varied and complex, and hardly such as to be “followed” by the structure of language. Not even the language of mathematics can be fully descriptive of the rich variety of “structures” found in nature. Maybe fractal geometry comes close; but surely the structures of fractal geometry are not found in our natural languages.

In short, I doubt that the parallel between language and reality which you assume as a metaphysical truth is really there at all.

Another acquaintance, Pablo, interjects:

“Well, yes, Spanos, I agree that language does reflect the structures of reality. I argued for this position long ago. Our notions of space, time, causality, and the subject/object nature of language reflect a world that is actually composed of space, time, causes, and a subect/object manner of looking at the world.”

At this point, I could only utter some bewilderment in closing the discussion:

“Language reflects the structures of reality”(?) “Our notions of space, time, causality” reflect “…a world composed of space, time, causes (?) And “and the subject-object nature of language” reflects “a subject-object manner of looking at the world” (??)

HELP! Some wooly-minded metaphysician has captured both Spanos’ and Pablo’s philosophical minds!

May 29, 2010

Uneasy about ‘Language’ and ‘Thought’ as Entities

Filed under: linguistic philosophy,metaphysics — Tags: , — jbernal @ 11:52 am

Recently someone asked me to look at an essay entitled “Language and the World.” Below I include some of my initial reaction to the idea, expressed in the essay, that we can talk meaningfully about the relation between the world and abstractions like “language” and “thought.”

Language, as an abstraction is just that: an abstract concept. Language does not have a separate and independent existence. It ‘grows’ out of the fact that there are cultures or groups of people who speak a language. In other words, language-using creatures (persons) and groups of people (cultures) come first, then we reflect on this phenomenon and refer to an abstract entity, namely, the “language” that they speak, e.g. English, Spanish, Latin, Russian, Chinese, etc. People speak specific languages, not language in general. If asked to do so, we can identify and describe specific languages; but I would be hard pressed to identify and describe this mysterious ‘entity’ called language in general.

So the question as to the relation between language and the world is for me a confusing question. Are we asking about the relationship between language-using-cultures and the world? Are we asking about the relationship between the world and specific languages, e.g. that between the world and Spanish? “Language,” as a general, abstract term, does not refer to a real entity that could have any identifiable relationship with the world, whatever that would mean.

Yes, I’m aware of the many philosophers who have spoken of the relationship between language and the world, e.g. Heidegger, Wittgenstein (of the Tractatus period), Nietzsche, and many others. I have read some of them and thought I understood what they meant, but now I’m not so sure. An analytical philosophers of the 20th century, A.C. Danto, even spoke of philosophy as occupying the space between language and the world, adding another questionable entity, ‘philosophy,’ into the mix. I read, enjoyed, and thought I understood what he was getting at. But now I’m not so sure.

I have an analogous problem with talk about ‘thought’ as something that may or may not exist independently of the language user who expresses it. Along the same line, I have a problem with worries or questions about the nature of thought: What is thought? What is the stuff of thought? Again, it seems to me that we’re dealing with an abstraction. Persons, or creatures capable of thought exist. Because we have evolved as creatures that can reflect on things, mull things over, and talk about it, we make reference to something called “thought.” It is only because there are such creatures, i.e., thinking persons — and the cultures they create — that we concoct the general notion “thought.” “I have many thoughts on the subject” can be restated “I have thought much about the subject.” The verbal terms (to think, to have thought about ..) seems primary. Later we concoct the substantive “thought” and then worry as to how this ‘entity’ relates to language or to the world.

I don’t mean to imply that all talk in terms of substantives (“language,” “thought”) lacks any useful application. I’m just expressing my unease with the tendency to use this talk of substantives as an excuse for quickly directing attention to a variety of metaphysical and ontological quandaries. Maybe we should look first at how we come to talk in this somewhat odd way.

May 20, 2010

Wittgenstein Contra a Presupposition of Dualism

Filed under: linguistic philosophy,the mind-body problem — Tags: , , — jbernal @ 5:54 pm

“Talk about behavior and talk about mental states are just two different ways of talking, each of which has practical application in appropriate circumstance; but they should not be interpreted as indicative of a dualistic view of personality.”

Paraphrasing an obscure Wittgensteinian scholar.

Most people who think about the question regarding human personality tend to adopt a dualistic view of humans in which the physical-corporeal aspect is distinct from the mental aspect. This seems to be the intuitive view about our existence in the world; after all, what we think, feel, imagine, dream and so on is surely a different process from our overt behavior, whether that behavior is physical behavior (action, movement) or linguistic behavior (our talking, writing, singing, etc.). Who would deny that I often do not express my thoughts or feelings? Who would deny that often what I do or say does not express what I think or feel? Nobody, it seems, from which many people draw the conclusion that dualism is correct: humans have both a physical and a mental aspect; and these are separate realities. The evidence can seem overwhelming.

But some philosophers have argued that the case for dualism is far from conclusive. There are a variety of ways of countering dualism. Some counter-arguments seek direct refutation of the dualist thesis; but some are modest attempts to raise doubts about some aspect of dualism. Before looking at one such modest questioning of dualism by Ludwig Wittgenstein, let us review some reasons for thinking that dualism is the true view of human personality.

We often find ourselves in situations in which we doubt that a person’s overt behavior accurately indicates what they’re really thinking. For example, we’re wise to be skeptical about the statements of an automobile salesman trying to sell us a new car or a politician trying to sell us on his candidacy. Are they being honest? Do their words really represent their thinking? What motives are they keeping hidden from us? Another example we can cite is the world of stage or film acting; surely we know that a good actor on the stage can make us believe that he really experiences specific feelings and emotions: an actress despairing over the loss of child is not really a woman in despair over the loss of a child. She is an actress skilled at simulating that situation for the audience. An actor who acts as somebody who believes his life is in danger is not really a person whose life is in danger. He is someone skilled at making the audience accept that situation as happening in the play. The point is that nobody denies that there are many situations in which we distinguish sharply between a person’s overt behavior and the person’s actual thoughts, feelings, motives; and these are situations in which we would deny that the observed behavior indicates the thoughts, feelings, or motives that are behind the overt behavior.

These kinds of situations can be presented as evidence for the dualist philosophy, which distinguishes between overt behavior and the mental life. According to the dualist, these two ‘realms’ might correspond in some way, but are separate realms of reality. Furthermore, except for a subject’s own report about his mental state, any knowledge we might acquire about another person’s mental state comes indirectly, by way of inference. We observe the overt behavior and infer the internal mental state; e.g., your telling me that you’re hungry allows me to infer that you really feel hunger pangs, although you could be fooling me.

On the other side we find the materialists and behaviorists who are skeptical about a philosophy which attributes dual reality to human personality. There are a variety of reasons for such skepticism, the chief among them being that the relevant sciences can account for human experience without positing a separate mental realm. The skeptics urge that we take a closer look at the doctrine that humans are have dual character, physical and mental. Furthermore, they question, if not reject, the idea that a subject’s overt behavior is an indication of the internal, mental reality; for example, they deny that ordinarily we infer that a person experiences pain from his behavior indicative of someone feeling pain. According to the philosophical ‘behaviorist’ perspective, in ordinary circumstances, a person exhibiting pain behavior is a person in pain.

In twentieth century philosophy two names which we can cite as philosophers who take this perspective are Ludwig Wittgenstein and Gilbert Ryle. However, their philosophical perspective should be kept distinct from the school of psychological behaviorism (e.g., John Watson, B.F. Skinner). Nevertheless, we can surely see a ‘behaviorist’ perspective in Gilbert Ryle’s argument rejecting the “ghost in the machine” and his general thesis in his book, The Concept of Mind, which undermines the relevance of mental processes underlying overt behavior. Likewise, the philosophical position implied by Wittgenstein’s reflections in the Philosophical Investigations seems to promote a ‘behaviorist’ perspective. In this context we can better understand Wittgenstein’s remarks questioning the tendency of the dualist to assume a sharp distinction between talk about inner mental processes and talk about overt behavior.

We find Wittgenstein doing this in Part II, Section V of the Philosophical Investigations. Here Wittgenstein presents a few remarks which can be read as an argument undermining the assumption that observation of a person’s overt behavior is always distinct from what we say about that person’s corresponding mental state; for example, when we observe a man exhibiting pain behavior (he grimaces and cries out) we observe only his behavior and then infer this mental state: his experiencing pain. Wittgenstein’s point is that in ordinary circumstances observation of pain behavior is the same as our observing a person in pain. In short, Wittgenstein raises doubts about the thesis of a dichotomy between our statements of a person’s overt behavior and our statements about a person’s mental states.

Wittgenstein’s style in presenting his arguments is cryptic and not always transparent. So I offer my attempt at a close interpretation and paraphrasing of Wittgenstein’s thesis.

He begins by remarking on the example of a moving point of light on a screen, and exclaims that one can draw a variety of consequences from the behavior of that point of light, depending on those aspects of its behavior that interest us. We might be interested in the velocity with which it moves, or in the path that it takes; or the number and frequency of stops that it makes. In short, the consequences we draw about the light’s behavior depends on how we our focus our attention. We’re selective in our observations taking only some parts of the light’s behavior as relevant and ignoring other aspects. Then he brings in the analogy to the observation of a person’s behavior. As with our observing the behavior of the point of light, so with our observation of a person’s behavior, we can draw a variety of inferences depending on our selective attention. For example, a tourist guide might recite some information about the place we’re visiting, while he seems to find something else humorous. As tourists we would likely ignore the behavior indicating that he finds something to be humorous, and just focus on the information he gives. But if we were a team evaluating his job performance, we might focus on his distracting ‘tics’ of humor or other indicators that he is bored. The inference we draw is not one about the information which he recites, but about the way he recites the information. We draw an inference, not about the place being visited, but about his qualifications to act as a guide.

At this point, Wittgenstein raises the obvious question:
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Then psychology treats of behavior, not of mind. – What do psychologists record? — What do they observe? Isn’t it the behavior of human beings, in particular their utterances? But these are not about behavior.

(Philosophical Investigations, trans. By G.E.M. Anscombe, Macmillan Company, 1953, p. 179)
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If the data recorded by psychologists are not “about behavior,” what are they about? Wittgenstein’s suggestion is that they are about the person’s state of mind.
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“I noticed that he was out of humour.” Is this a report about his behavior or his state of mind? (“The sky looks threatening”; is this about the present or the future?) Both; not side-by-side, however, but about the one via the other.

(ibid., p. 179)
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The description of behavior is our way of describing someone’s pain. When we make reference to his behavior we also make reference to his pain, in the same way our description of the sky as threatening is a way of predicting a storm. In short, this is how we talk about his mental state, his feeling of pain.
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A doctor asks: “How is he feeling?” the nurse says: “He is groaning”. A report on his behavior. But need there be any question for them whether the groaning is really genuine, is really the expression of anything? Might they not, for example, draw the conclusion “if he groans, we must give him more analgesic” — without suppressing a middle term? Isn’t the point the service to which they put the description of behavior?

(ibid., p. 179)
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Here Wittgenstein raises doubts about our inclination to separate observation about overt behavior from remarks about mental states. Ordinarily, when I observe someone groaning, I observe that he is in pain. The pain behavior does not represent internal pain; it is what we understand as a person in pain.
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“But then they make a tacit presupposition.” Then what we do in our language-game always rests on a tacit presupposition.

(ibid., p. 179)
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Do we have a “tacit presupposition” working here? Do we presuppose that this behavior represents internally felt pain? Wittgenstein asks that we consider whether our language-game of pain description rests on that presupposition. But the presupposition is part of the dualistic way of thinking. Maybe we should not assume that our way of talking is based on a presupposition.

Next he asks that we consider a case in which talk of a ‘presupposition’ makes good sense. This may lead us to think that in ordinary talk we presuppose a connection between behavior and mental state:
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I describe a psychological experiment: the apparatus, the questions of the experimenter, the actions and replies of the subject — and then I say that is a scene in a play. –Now everything is different. So it will be said: If this experiment were described in the same way in a book on psychology, then the behavior described would be understood as the expression of something mental just because it is presupposed that the subject is not taking us in, hasn’t learnt the replies by heart, and other things of the kind. —So we are making a presupposition?
Should we ever really express ourselves like this: “Naturally I am presupposing that . . . .”? — Or do we not do so only because the other person already knows that?

Doesn’t a presupposition imply a doubt? And doubt may be entirely lacking. Doubting has an end.

(ibid., p. 180)
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His point is that in ordinary circumstances we simply don’t doubt that a person exhibiting pain behavior is a case of a person in pain. Doubt is entirely lacking; but the notion that we presuppose a connection rests on the notion that there might be doubt about the connection, i.e., the notion that doubt has a place. But in ordinary circumstances doubt does not have a place. By noting that ordinarily this ‘presupposition’ business does not even apply, Wittgenstein suggests that implied dualism between our talk of behavior and talk about mental states may not even apply.

He follows with a comparison of our dualistic talk regarding behavior and mental states with the philosophical dualism between physical objects and sense-impressions.
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It is like the relation: physical object — sense-impressions. Here we have two different language-games and a complicated relation between them. — If you try to reduce their relations to a simple formula you go wrong.

(ibid., p. 180)
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Wittgenstein’s point is that, like the two different language games of physical objects and sense-impressions, which cannot be reduced to a simple relation of sense-impression representing a corresponding physical object (as sense-datum theories tried to do), talk of overt behavior and that of mental states are two language-games which cannot be reduced to a simple relationship of behavior (utterance) representing the mental state. The relationship between them is much more complicated.

But doesn’t this imply a dualistic framework? Only in the sense that can talk about behavior and we can talk about mental states. For the suggestion of a dualism (if that suggestion lurks here) only concerns language-games, i.e., only concerns the various ways we talk about behavior and mental states. And the way we talk about these may or may not reflect a dualistic reality of human personality.

Wittgenstein’s remarks in this section (Part II, Section V) of the Philosophical Investigations do not ostensibly advance a philosophical behaviorism. At most, his remarks raise interesting questions about some of the assumptions of the dualist regarding our talk about behavior and our talk about mental states. The argument that he makes is one that, if successful, undermines some important premises of the dualist thesis.

April 27, 2010

Concerning Wittgenstein’s Rejection of Private Language

Filed under: All,linguistic philosophy — Tags: , — jbernal @ 2:26 pm

Recently I stated in writing my general agreement with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s view that a ‘private language’ is not a tenable idea. Upon reading this, one of my correspondents expressed opposition by stating his view that we can discern ideas in certain writers which are not entirely communicable (and which could comprise a language). He wondered whether these wouldn’t count as counter examples to Wittgenstein’s thesis.

Besides my correspondent, other people disagree with the conclusion that a ‘private language’ is impossible; they find this to be a controversial and doubtful claim. After all, they argue, can’t a person have certain ideas, and even some ‘words’ expressing those ideas, which he never discloses to anyone else? Couldn’t he mentally retrieve these ideas and privately held ‘words’ when he desires or requires them? Don’t some artists, poets, and composers have ideas which only they fully comprehend and which they attempt to express in their art? Can’t we call such privately held ideas a ‘private language’?

Other examples which might qualify as ‘private language include those religious experiences called speaking in tongues (Pentacostals?) in which the ‘speaking’ seems to be nothing but gibberish but which the speaker claims as the Holy Spirit ‘speaking’ through him. Would this be a ‘private language’?

One more candidate as a private language is the case in which all speakers of a language have died except for one person who knows the language, can speak it and understand it perfectly; but nobody else understands a word. (This actually happens with some small native American cultures which gradually die out.) Wouldn’t this be case of a ‘private language,’ private to the one survivor?

Before I reply to my correspondent and to these purported counter-examples to Wittgenstein, I need to do a simple exposition of Wittgenstein’s claim regarding private languages.
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The notion of a private language is taken up by Wittgenstein in Part I of his Philosophical Investigations. As with most ideas in philosophy, you can find some philosophers who agree with him and others (e.g. the English philosopher A.J. Ayer) who disagree with Wittgenstein’s view that a private language is impossible. Let’s see what we make of this important issue in philosophy of mind and that of language.

What does Wittgenstein contend with regard to the issue of private language? Based on my study of his remarks on the issue (mostly in his book, Philosophical Investigations) and my reading of some of the vast commentary on his philosophy, the main point concerns the meaning of terms. For any language to function in communicating and expressing ideas, concepts, thoughts, etc., the words and sentences of that language must have a relatively stable meaning, and this requires that users of that language observe rules of meaning. This means that we should be able to make sense of cases in which we get the meaning right and those in which we don’t. In other words, the notion of a rule seems to imply the possibility of correct and incorrect usages. And the notion of meaning implies the application of some rule.

Wittgenstein asks whether the application of a rule makes any sense with regard to a putative private language, one exclusive to the subject alone. How could the private individual, without any objective reference to other speakers or to a rule book or to some standard apart from his own private impressions, make any sense of getting a meaning right or getting it wrong? He argues that this makes no sense when applied to a strictly private context.

The important point is that one try to conceive of this ‘private’ language as strictly or completely private. When one attempts this it becomes evident that one must refer to standards or rules of meaning outside the private ‘stage’ to make any sense of following the rules, and to make any sense of getting the meaning of the words right, and to make sense of the possibility of making errors in our use of words; and thus to make any sense of the very notion of a language.

This is how I interpret Wittgenstein’s position, which I find rationally compelling. The very idea of language implies inter-personal communication and expression. Even the most subjective poets and mystics, when they attempt to express their inner most experiences, must rely on some form of language that can at least partly be understood by others. This implies the observance of some rules of meaning, which implies a social practice. Others, besides the private thoughts of the speaker-writer, are essential to the practice.
(The etymology of the word “language” itself, the Latin “lingua” refers to the tongue, thus to speech. With the invention of writing this function of the tongue includes also the hand, whether manipulating a pen or a keyboard. In any case, whether speech or writing, language is a way of inter-personal communication and expression. It is a social phenomenon, not at all a strictly private, mental one.)

Others disagree with this view; but, frankly, I cannot make much sense of their position. It is true that individuals claim styles of expression which nobody really understands and which therefore might be called a ‘private language’ of sorts. But this would be using the word “language” in an extended, metaphorical sense. It would be the type of expression and ‘language’ which you’re free to take anyway you please. My view is that a ‘language’ which one is free to take any way one pleases is not any kind of language at all. Even the most secret, cryptic code requires at some stage rules of interpretation. Otherwise, it would not have any function as a means of communication and inter-personal expression.

On reading this, my correspondent raised a question about the language used by writers like Nietzsche, for example, who in his famous book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, refers to Zarathustra’s eagle and serpent: “What is Nietzsche alluding to by these images? Could it be the Apollonian and Dionysian dualistic forces? Or is it a reference to different aspects of creation?” The point the questioner is making concerns the notion that Nietzsche’s language in that work is private to him in the sense that we cannot be sure of all the aspects of his meaning.
———————-

This raises an interesting issue about the writings of people like Nietzsche. How exactly (if “exactly” even applies) do we interpret all the allusions, metaphors, imagery, analogies, etc.? This makes for much interpretive work for scholars and other writers (e.g. Walter Kaufmann offers excellent interpretations of Nietzsche). Yes, this style of writing, like much literary, poetic work, raises interesting problems of interpretation and meaning. Consider the centuries of debate over different interpretations of religious texts (Old Testament, New Testament, the Koran, etc.). Most great works of literature have multiple levels of meaning; and it takes good critics and scholars to give good interpretations of all that the writer is about. And there will always be a variety of different, even opposing, interpretations.

But these facts about literature do not say anything about the possibility of a strictly private language; at most they remind us that any individual can keep certain things private and not give full expression to his exact meaning. (Maybe he really intends to express ambiguity and a degree of vagueness? After all, in literature these surely have their function.) I doubt that Wittgenstein would deny any of this. Writers like Franz Kafka and Martin Heidegger often claimed that nobody truly understood them. We might then say that an important part of what they meant to say remained private to them. But this is simply a version of a secret or something I cannot reveal to others, for one reason or another. Sometimes I cannot reveal it because I lack the words or the talent (e.g. the talent of a Shakespeare) to express what I really mean. Sometimes I choose to keep my ideas obscure and hard to interpret. But notice that none of this requires a “private language” as such. In fact, it presupposes language as a tool of my culture by which I express my ideas and experiences to others, and sometimes intentionally impose limitations on the extent of that expression.

The private language issue is a conceptual issue. It simply asks that one think carefully about what language entails; and then try to apply this to a strictly private phenomenon or experience, one limited to the individual’s immediate experience and making absolutely no reference to anything beyond that. Wittgenstein argues that when you engage in this though experiment you will find that the notion of a strictly private language is ultimately an untenable one. A poet or a Nietzsche who writes works in which they attempt to express their ideas to the reader are not engaged in a private language. How could they be? In philosophy, the notion of a language that purports to be private might be applied to Descartes in his Meditations when he purports to reduce all his thinking just to his private ideas, with no reference whatsoever to material world. A metaphysical idealist, who claims all reality is nothing but ideas present to his mind (solipsism?) also purports to engage in private “meaning” (viz., language), insofar as he tries to express his strange perspective of things. But Wittgenstein would argue that Descartes and the idealist really do not accomplish what they claim to do. I agree.
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Finally some quick replies to the purported counter-examples posed at the beginning. First let’s consider the one that asks whether a person can have certain ideas, and even some ‘words’ expressing those ideas, which he never discloses to anyone else. Could this count as a private language? No, not in the primary sense of the word “language.” People can keep different secrets they never disclose to anyone, and even invent some private technique by which they remember to themselves these secrets. But as soon as they attempt to communicate these or try to express them to others, some form of language is required; and it cannot be ‘private’ in the strict sense of that term. Second, we have the case of speaking in tongues, which nobody can understand. At best, others can surmise that the person is having a highly emotional, religious experience in which they give expression to some feeling or other. But so long as none of this makes sense to others (there’s no translation key), this also fails as a language of any kind, private or public. Third, the case of one, lonely surviving speaker of a language that is dying out does not prove the reality of a private language either. It is an accident of history that only one person can speak and understand the language; but the language is a public one. There were accepted rules of usage that members of the tribe recognized and applied, and which the one surviving member of that unfortunate tribe also accepts, understands, and could apply should there be a situation calling for its use. These are the hallmarks of a public language, not a private one.

I conclude that Wittgenstein was correct in arguing that the notion of a private language is untenable.

March 30, 2010

Puzzling about the LANGUAGE thing

Filed under: linguistic philosophy — Tags: , , — jbernal @ 1:15 pm

It seems correct to say that language is a way of acting in the world or a form of intelligent behavior.

“….in the beginning was the WORD, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (from the Gospel of John ).

But can we accept this as an accurate statement of our linguistic genesis?

Countless eons of evolution of life — and later the evolution of the mammalian brain – came long before anything resembling a word.

As the members of the human species evolved to the next phase of their development, they became language-users. At some point in their development, humans found it useful (maybe necessary for survival) to communicate. Certain grunts, yelps, signals, etc. came to signify something: a warning, a request, a threat, etc.

By some remarkable accident this occurred: an individual made certain marks on a stone or a tree, marks which had some significance for others of the group — maybe the reminder of a transaction or the indicator of a remarkable event.

***

How do we state this ‘language’ business?

1. Humans are beings who happen to use language. Language, thus, happens to be the means by which humans communicate with one another, express themselves, and perform certain actions. It is a way of acting-in-the-world, but not the only way or inevitably the way humans had to go. They could have evolved using another tool or another way.

Or

2. humans are language-using entities. The use of language is an essential part of being human, i.e., essential to human reality. Without language there wouldn’t be any human reality (as we understand the term “human reality”).

***

Language evolves within a context of language users;
i.e., beings who use language in a variety of ways. At first, the way they communicate among themselves, and express emotion; later with the development of human culture, language-using beings express ideas and develop complex theories, eventually invent mathematics and science.

According to some anthropological accounts, human language probably evolved from oral-visual signals (within a group) to verbal-spoken language, and eventually to written language. At any phase of this development, what we understand by the term “language” only makes sense within a context of language users.

Another way of stating this: Language is possible only because of the existence of a group {tribe (?)} of potential language users. A piece of language (e.g., an utterance, a phrase) has meaning only because a community of language users has given it meaning.

Borrowing from Wittgenstein, we could say that only within a “form of life” is language possible. In general, that “form of life” includes a community of language users, a group of beings (in our world, human beings) who use certain sounds, tokens, marks, signals, etc. to communicate with each other and to express certain feelings and experiences.

***********************************************

….la mentalidad y la cultura…

Writing is a form of behavior, similar to talking but different in that writing registers a record that remains, at least for a short time. (Of course, modern electronic and computer technology allow our talk, messages, and records to be digitally recorded.)

What you see here is writing only because a cultural convention has been adopted by a group of persons who share the language. Without a cultural convention, this would be gibberish, mere scribbled marks signifying nothing. Something analogous may be said with regard to the sounds (noise) we make when we talk.

All of this sits on a cultural, genetic structure. Genetic evolution and cultural development have resulted in linguistic reality of language users.

….la mentalidad, the lengua y la mano…

The wonder of language: someone makes a series of scribbles on a piece of paper, and somewhere down the line others make a big fuzz over it.

What one thinks can be recorded on some kind of medium accessible by others.

Today we can see what Plato and Aristotle recorded for us 2500 years ago, and read what the writers of the Old and New Testaments recorded for others to read and puzzle over.

Sometimes I am amazed by language, that we can issue certain mutterings and thereby communicate our thoughts, and that we can make certain scribblings (marks) on paper, and thereby express out thoughts. From a biological perspective these things appear close to miraculous. Maybe John of the Fourth Gospel was not entirely wrong.

‘Mutterings and scribblings’, thereby the world is transformed.
(To what degree were we capable of thought before we became language-using creatures?)

Some one or some group must have invented signals and noises that signified something. Such primitive conventions allowed people to learn (determine) what other persons intended or desired. This required identification with a social group, the recognition that one belonged to that group and that members of the group shared much in common, that in a rough way, each member of the group was doing the pretty much the same thing, had similar needs and means of satisfying those needs and that by cooperating and combining work each could better achieve our goals.
——–
It is not likely that we could communicate effectively with a totally alien creature. We would need at least a few things in common, that like ourselves the creature has a consciousness or awareness of things, a perspective on the environment; and the less likely assumption: that we both share an interest in communication.
———-
A word or words do not exist in isolation. The very concept of ‘word’ presupposes the existence of certain types of beings and a certain type of culture, call it a “linguistic culture.”

A word is a piece of language; neither the word nor language can have any reality outside of a culture of language-using beings.

Language exists only as the tool of a language-using culture (cf. L.Wittgenstein’s “form of life.”)

At some point in their evolution humans became language-using creatures, and then these creatures invented gods and other mythical beings. (“the animal creature was the creator”)

With language comes the expression of thought.
Those early ‘mutterings and scribblings’ had more fateful consequences than anyone could have ever imagined.

Other animals have gotten along quite well without language. Why did human beings evolve differently?

“In the beginning was the word . . . ” — John’s Gospel tells us, but surely this is not completely accurate.

Much had to happen and develop before words could appear, i.e., before language was invented. Yet John is not completely erroneous here. Words marked a crucial development, if not a beginning.

“Without words life would have no meaning,” the poet exclaims.
Without words we are mute and dumb!

February 20, 2010

George Orwell’s call for honesty and clarity

Filed under: ethics,linguistic philosophy,Political Philosophy — Tags: , , — jbernal @ 12:43 pm

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets; this is called pacification.

George Orwell, from his 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language”

Language, Clarity, & Honesty

A few years ago a fellow humanist, Harry Becker, passed me some LATimes articles (11/04/07) under the heading “WHY ORWELL MATTERS.” The articles dealt with themes found in George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language.” Mr. Becker suggested that perhaps I could write a short article on Orwell’s essay and circled the following sentence by Orville Schell:

Above all what is needed is to let the meaning choose the words, and not the other way around.

(Schell’s LATimes article, “Follies of Orthodoxy”, 11/4/07)

Schell’s advice was puzzling to me; so I looked into Orwell’s essay for help. Mr. Orwell stresses the need for clear, simple language that uses words evoking concrete images instead of relying on abstract, Latin-based terms that fail to convey clear meaning. If we take his advice, our primary aim (in any discourse) will be clarity of meaning; whenever practical, we will choose simple terms which convey concrete images, instead of plugging in some obscure jargon to do the work for us, i.e. not let the words ‘choose’ the meaning.
To illustrate his point, Orwell imagines a professor defending Soviet totalitarianism, who is reluctant to make the straight-forward assertion that Soviet policy allowed the “killing off your opponents when you can get a good result from doing so,” and chooses instead to make the long-winded, obfuscating statement:

While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the rights to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.

(Orwell, 1946)

Not only is this pretentious and obscure, it also shows a speaker’s dishonesty and insincerity. As Orwell wrote,

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns to …long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting ink.

(Orwell, 1946)
But this abuse of language often evolves into a more sinister use of language. As Orwell illustrated in various books, political propaganda routinely converts ‘war’ into ‘peace,’ and ‘peace’ into ‘war’; critics of government policy are branded as subversives and enemies of the state.
But it is not only in politics and defense of war policy that we use language routinely to twist the facts and transform falsehood into truth, and the converse. This happens too frequently in any discourse (spoken or written) in which ideology and value judgments play prominent roles; for example, discourse concerning economic systems, or governmental policies regulating individual activity, or issues like the right-to-life vs. right-to-choose, or those concerning the teaching of Darwinian evolution in the schools, or the separation of church and state, or the various issues regarding the opposition between religious and secular values.
In my field of philosophy, some people are very aware of the need for clarity and honesty in discourse, since a fair amount of philosophical literature has traditionally been written in complicated, sometimes very obscure language. Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote concerning a few German philosophers, “They muddy up the water to make it appear deep.” Unfortunately, large areas of philosophical writing, especially in areas of metaphysics, religious apologetics, and political thought, can be described as projects that “muddy the water” to make it appear deep.
There probably is no guarantee that we can completely avoid the abuse of language in politics and ideological debate or the sophistry of certain philosophical styles. But, we can heed Mr. Orwell’s advice and hopefully not fall too often into those ‘muddy, stagnant waters,’ which can choke off any meaningful dialogue. One way is give ourselves the discipline of a formal study or self-study course in critical thinking. In addition, extensive, critical reading of relevant works of history, philosophy (the clear kind), the sciences, and literature can also help.

February 15, 2010

More chewing on the bone of “truth”

Filed under: linguistic philosophy,theory of knowledge — Tags: , , — jbernal @ 12:00 pm

“The truth” does not refer to an entity that exists and can be found. But often people speak this way: “The truth is out there. All we have to do is to look for it.”

“The truth” by itself is vague and not very meaningful; it has to be completed by what that truth is about; e.g. the truth about human existence, or the truth about Church history, etc. (…and even then it remains problematic and vague.)

The search for truth, in a philosophical context, might mean the attempt to learn the significance and ultimate character of human existence. Other times, it may mean the attempt to identify those values that define human excellence and the good life. As such, the “search for truth” is value-laden, and the term “truth” is a value term (much like “good” or “sacred”).

A great paradox here is that in those important areas of human concern —viz, religion, morality, politics, history, social thought, etc.— the concept of `truth’ is a very problematic concept. It easily becomes confused (and “infused”) with factors of value judgment and (political and religious) ideological bias.
——————-
Typically in the modern age most professional philosophers do not claim to possess “truth” in the sense of wisdom, moral and religious truth, and certainly do not attempt to teach others the road to that truth. The role of the person of wisdom who points others toward truth and the higher good has been claimed by religionists and advocates of popular moral-ethical-political ideologies.
The typical intellectual and scholar would be painfully uncomfortable wearing the “robes of the wise man”; on the other hand, preachers, politicians and even “show biz” celebrities will frequently and comfortably don the robes of wisdom and moral authority.
Subsequently, many rationalists and critical philosophers look with great suspicion and skepticism on anyone claiming to teach wisdom and higher truth.
——————————

The “higher truth” is that there is no higher truth. There are only the “human-level” truths that human beings discover, learn and articulate in propositional form.

******************************
“Tell me the truth.” She cried, “Where were you last night?”
How could he answer her, since he didn’t have the foggiest …”

He could answer that he was practicing philosophy. That would throw her for a loss.

“Does he expect me to believe that story? might be her reaction. “Whoever heard of spending the night practicing philosophy?”

In this case, to tell the truth is simply to give an honest, factual account of your doings and whereabouts during the period in question. Nothing here should be perplexing; we all know what “truth” means.

“There’s no mystery as to where I was; I had to work overtime last night.”

There also is no mystery in this use of the phrase: “to tell the truth”; it simply means to speak truthfully to the best of one’s ability, to relate the facts.
*********************************

“Search for truth” is more problematic; as is the phrase “to teach the truth.” Often use of the substantive (on noun) “truth” or “the truth” is problematic, or at least misleading. Use of the adjective “true” and the adverb “truly” or “truthfully” are less problematic.

The proposition that the truth is out there somewhere, and that if we look, we shall find it can be correctly used in the proper context. (For example, as when we don’t know what happened but we’re sure there are ways of learning what happened.) But talk of “the truth being out there” often leads to a misconception.

Often our use of the noun “truth” suggests to people that there’s something called ‘truth’ existing “out there somewhere.” The only thing that is “out there” for us to discover and observe is the world of things, persons, animals, and happenings. (But even with respect to these, some will engage in philosophical debate.)
[Adding to the confusion, people sometimes equate “the Truth” to “God.”]

If the label “truth” does not apply to an entity, what does it apply to? [This is a misleading question and reflects a type of philosophical confusion.]

Maybe we should simply replace every sentence using the term “truth” by one that omits that noun. “He told the truth” is simply another way of saying that “he spoke truthfully” or “he made true assertions.” “We’re trying to learn the truth about this matter” is another way of saying that “we trying to learn what happened or is happening.”

Another thought: In many contexts the label “truth” is often simply a way of commending someone’s assertion, affirmation, statement, claim, etc.. Applying the label does not imply that someone has apprehended part of a mysterious entity called ‘the truth.’ We’re merely acknowledging that he got it right, that he hit the target. It is much like a gold star pasted to a student’s test or essay.

“True” makes sense only in contrast to “false”; and both are modifiers of nouns: reports, stories, propositions, explanations, theories. A report is true when it accurately reports the event in question. It is false when it fails to report the event accurately.

When I witness an event and can report accurately what happened, then my statements regarding describing the event are likely true. When I lack knowledge of what happened and purport to report it anyway, most likely my statements will be false. To say I speak the truth or fail to express the truth is simply another way of stating that I reported things accurately or inaccurately.

In some cases, my claim to speak the truth invites the question as to how I gained the knowledge at issue. In many cases, a valid claim to truth and knowledge go together. Yet we must allow for the occasion when a person makes a truthful statement without possessing the relevant knowledge. (e.g., He made a lucky guess, but surely could not have known.)

The concept of knowledge, understood as propositional knowledge (knowledge that ..), presupposes the concepts of truth and falsehood. I know that DC is snowbound when my belief that DC is snowbound is true and I have good reasons for that belief. My belief that ‘DC is snowbound’ is true makes sense only by contrast to the possibility that it (that belief) could be false.

February 8, 2010

Is “truth” a loaded term?

Filed under: linguistic philosophy,theory of knowledge — Tags: , , — jbernal @ 1:38 pm

“Truth” is a loaded term, my friend has said. “Let’s avoid it.”

A “loaded term” ? What could he have meant? Maybe that the term is vague and that people give it their own meaning with no guarantee that any two are talking about the same thing.

Sometimes we hear people talk as if truth were relative to the subject. “Your truth is not necessarily my truth.” Of course, this is just short for “truth as I see it” or “my version of truth.”

“Truth” is a term used by different people in different ways. The concept ‘truth’ is a concept applied by different people in different ways.

Consider this proposition: There are many different kinds of truth.

When the term “truth” is shorthand for someone’s (or some group’s) notion of truth, we can see that “truth” is a loaded term.

Often the context clarifies how the term “truth” is being used. A police investigator may need to determine who among a group of witnesses is telling the truth and who is not. Sometimes people tell falsehoods; sometimes they lie; and sometimes they tell the truth. There is no mystery here. The mystery and confusion come in when we hear about a preacher, or a politician, or a mystic who claims to bring us the ‘Truth’. A speculative philosopher may claim to furnish us with the absolute Truth. In these latter cases we should be skeptical.

The term “truth” is sullied so much by frauds of all kinds, preachers, priest, politicians, mystics, hucksters, salesmen, etc. that it should not surprise anyone that honest scientists and critical philosophers tend to avoid using term.

**************
Often the phrase “seeking the truth” merely means that we try to find out what happened, as in “What happened when the German army invaded Poland?” or “Did the defendant assault the victim as the prosecution claims?”
Sometimes we want to say: We speak the truth when our words correspond to the way the world is; or what we say accurately describes the way the world is; or what we say accurately reports what actually happened.

The easy game: Objective reality is there before us, and we simply report it or describe it.

*************************
“Seeking the truth” is often shorthand for “seeking to know a specific, local fact”: e.g., that William Clinton was U.S. President in 1995; or that Mt. Everest is over 28,000 feet high; or that the state of Colorado directly borders the state of New Mexico on the north.

The notion of absolute, universal, complete Truth strikes me as something perpetuated by theologians and metaphysicians.

Isn’t truth (any truth) always associated with a knowing subject?

Is “truth” a loaded term?

Suppose we’re trying to find out what happened in dispute between two people who give contradictory accounts. Joe claims that Ben assaulted him; Ben denies it. “They can’t both be telling the truth,” we might say. So we try to determine who told the truth and who spoke falsely. You might say that our job is to try to get at the truth in this matter.

After our investigation we might come up with an account of what actually happened, (Ben did in fact attack Joe) ….”as nearly as we can tell, this seems to be what really occurred.”

Eventually we establish that Joe told the truth and Ben was lying. In such a case, we work to discover the facts, and in so doing we learn what the truth is in this particular case. We learn also who speaks the truth and who does not.

Here we are talking about facts or actual events. (Facts: how things are or happen in the world.)

Such clear-cut, pedestrian cases of ‘truth’ and ‘truth-seeking’ would seem to be unproblematic. Police investigators have to do it daily. Here we would not expect anyone to say that “truth” is a loaded term.

*****************************************************

Certainly most people have no problem understanding the difference between fact and fiction. We certainly understand this distinction when it is applied to literature, when we refer to works of fiction and nonfiction. And we understand it when applied to the worlds of drama and movie making. Drama can deal with fictional stories and fictional characters, or it can be about actual, historical persons and recount factual events. A movie can be purely fictional (even a fantasy, e.g., the “Star Wars” series) or it can focus on historical persons and events, even to the extent of being a documentary (e.g. “The Longest Day”).
There’s a clear-cut difference between a biography about Abraham Lincoln and the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, or any story of fantasy with made-up characters. Surely no one would confuse these two, or dispute the claim that the former falls in the class of nonfiction, (it portrays a historical person and and describes actual events).

However, many other cases are not so simple and clear-cut. A work of fiction (e.g., a novel) can have many factual, historical elements in it (as in a historical novel); and a work that purports to be non-fiction, can actually contain much that is fictional (the author had a political purpose or let his ideological bias carry him away) which is presented as if factual. Consider, for example the controversy surrounding Oliver Stone’s films about the JFK assassination and Richard Nixon.
The distinction between fact and fiction also becomes very problematic in areas such as religion, politics, economics, social philosophy, and moral thought (this is not an exhaustive list by any means). Any area in which the values, bias, and attitude of the writer come into play are areas in which we cannot always be sure that we’re dealing with fact or fiction, history or myth. For example, take any “sacred writing” from any of the major religions: Bible (Old or New Testament), the Koran, etc. . . Can anyone be confident that the events depicted were factual, historical events, or that the persons described are really historical persons? The problem of separating fact from fiction here is great, the controversies old and apparently without end. Not surprisingly, then, many people conclude that the value of such sacred works are independent of their status as works of fiction or nonfiction, fantasy/myth or factuality; i.e. independent of the question of ‘truth.’

************************

“Truth” may strike us a loaded term because we often use it as an evaluative term: a truthful person, a true doctrine, higher truth and so on. It may seem to some that “truth,” like “beauty,” is in the eye of the beholder. What you see as a “higher truth” or a “deeper truth” about human existence I may regard as mere confusion and mystical fluff.

Speculative, philosophical theories sometimes purport to define “truth” in all-comprehensive, metaphysical ways. This should certainly trigger our skeptical sensors.

[Here we have the term “Truth” with an upper case “T” or even all letters in the upper case: “TRUTH”.]

Certainly the way that “truth” is used in religious preachings load the term with doctrinal, ideological baggage. Don’t we often hear Christians say “Jesus is the truth”? Here we might ask how the term “truth” is being used.

A good example of this loaded use of the term “truth” is a Vatican document reported in the L.A. Times on Sept. 6, 2000. This document, which is written by Catholic conservatives, declares that Roman Catholicism is the sole path to salvation, and bases its declaration on the assumption that the Church has grasp of “universal and objective truth.” Such use of the term “truth” leads some scientists and critical rationalists to avoid use of the term, and thus avoid association with the arrogant “defenders of the truth,” those who proclaim that only they and their special group have access to ‘truth.’
[A simple question might stop all these proclamations as to the truth: How exactly did your group acquire knowledge regarding this truth? ]

Religious people and speculative metaphysicians tend to talk about truth in the big sense of “TRUTH,” one that is universal and eternal.

Mathematical ‘truth’ has universal application. Does this qualify as universal, eternal truth?

(With apologies to Nietzsche) Talk of universal, eternal truth is just a substitute for talk of deity. Man cannot relinquish the urge to project his ideals into the objective realm. He projects metaphysical and theological truths. He projects deities.

Most scientists and critical writers avoid talking about truth(s). They simply go about their work of exploration and explanation, analysis and clarification.

Work in the natural sciences means you do not invoke gods, miracles, or metaphysical truth. The natural scientist just goes about his work.

There may be a connection between the philosopher’s inclination to system-building and the urge to invoke ‘Truth’ on a grand scale.
However, the work of science, empirical inquiry, the testing of hypotheses, and such does not fit well with systems and notions of truth on a grand scale.

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