Monday, March 2, 2009
language paradox
Treatise I and II could be challenged on perhaps one point: how to define certain terms. In Treatise I, I assumed that every one knew what freewill was and in the latter treatise, I committed the same mistake of not effectively defining the word satisfaction. However, what remains to be ascertained is whether anyone can ever effectively define anything? Or perhaps to better understand the previous question we need to first answer: how to define something, and more importantly, what is the essence of meaning; in other words, how can we define a definition?The above questions are fundamental to what language is or what it stands for. And once we start answering thoes harsh questions, if we ever could, we uncover a very unsettling idea, a paradox in its own right. Language of any form consists of symbols. In case of words, they are noise symbols. However, thoes symbols have no meaning in itself whatsoever, untill they are supplanted with stimuli from one of the five senses. For instance, many of us have, and thoes who havent should, listen to people talking in languages we have not heard before. Thoes are languages, even if we dont understand them, because two people using the language seem to "understanding" everything effectively. Note the use of paranthesis, because I am skeptical of the word understanding. Anyways, what is essentially different between the people who know the different language X and we who have no knowledge of X. The difference is simple. The people who understand X have other sensations attached to the words which people who dont understand X couldnt. In fact, any and every sentence could be broken into fragments of experiences. For instance, lets take an English sentence example: I see a tree. I could be taken as a sensation of sight, tree again is a sensation of sight and the act of seeing is also learnt through the sensation of sight. We could supplant other sensations for I or tree or any other words, but to keep things simple here I have just chosen one sensation. However, to make things conspicuous, imagine what you think "xctws" means. I am sure nobody has a clue what that means because I just made that word up. However, now imagine what the word "I" would mean if you had never felt, smelled, seen, heard or tasted yourownself and associated it with the word I. It would exactly feel like the hypothetical word "xctws" in fact both of them will be identical.Therefore, at the very base of every language is that people seem to share the same sensations. However, the notion which needs to be challenged here is do we feel the same the sensations? And, there is absolutely noway of answering that question, which makes the whole language problem. If language has symbols, and symbols are made on sensations, but sensations are very private, personal and unshareable, then how do we communicate? One way to deal with the question is that if we are communicating then we should have similar sensations as well. However, I propose another view. And this view, I guess, is similar to wittgenstinian concept of the "language game." I propose that we are working in a bubble of assumptions. The assumption is that we all have the same sensations. Therefore, as long as we get the response, in the acceptable limit of responses, that is the recognizable symbols, we assume that the other person is understanding what we are saying. However, lets suppose we have a human with no thinking capabilities at all, but rather only has been programed to react to different situations in particular manner, or the manner which is commonly understood. Therefore, we would be talking to this person and he would be replying to us normally and we would never know that this person lacks the ability to understand. But another difficult problem arises, what do we mean by "understanding"? As long as somebody else is doing what seems to be appropriate, or that somebody seems to be doing things or replying with symbols that we deem are necessary for understanding, does it matter that ther other person understands or not? At the very basic level, we are communicating with other people but we might never be able to understand their ideas or their feels or more important their interpretations of the world. However, we think we understand because at the end we get replies or symbols which are outwardly common.
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