Words and Worlds

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Words and Worlds

or:

Poignant examples of humanity's search for meaning in its linguistic experience.

By Mark Heyne Dec.2006

Formally speaking, the heap paradox can be transcribed as a logic argument with anunconditional premise ("1 wheat grain does not make a heap"), a general conditional premise ("If i wheat grains do not make a heap, then neither do i+1 wheat grains") and aconclusion like "10000 wheat grains do not make a heap" (10000 can be replaced withno matter how large a number).

Vlad Vieru.Paradoxes show loopholes in the fabric of logic, but some paradoxes are resolvable bylinguistic analysis. Here, a vague concept is one with borderline cases, and these are bestdealt with in the following ways: by defining the concept clearly, or by admitting therelative nature of the attribute, so allowing a sliding scale of shades of grey betweenblack and white.Firstly, it may be a matter of definition.We might easily define the ‘heap’ problem out of existence by saying a ‘heap’ is differentfrom a ‘pile’: a pile of books is neatly organised while a heap of books is disorganised.So it is not a matter of quantity at all, but of organisation.It is obviously merely a matter of definition when we ask if a person is pregnant or not,dead or not, where that really is a yes / no type of situation.If we officially define a bald man as a man with no hair, then a man with one or two hairsis not bald, but there are loose usages of the word, so we can qualify ‘bald’ with ‘almost’,‘completely’, ‘practically’, or ‘-ish’.A person is said to be obese if we apply a technical definition involving the ratio of weight to height, and here we might if in doubt say “he is ‘technically’ obese even thoughhe doesn’t look it!”It is also a matter of definition when we ask if a mixed breed animal is a zebra, a horse ora donkey, and we may resolve that by applying a new label, such as ‘zeedonk’ or ‘mule’.A fish-or-flesh question occurs in most types of hybrid, and the solution by renaming is acommon one.

Definition doesn’t help when we have a genuinely vague concept however, such as ‘rich’.Is George Soros sitting on a heap of money? By most standards, yes, but sat alongsideBill Gates at the Billionaires’ Ball, maybe he would feel embarrassingly not rich enough.So we may have matters that are relative in comparison with other incidences.Perhaps an economic formula could be developed to define the borderline between‘developing’ society and ‘rich’ society that involves per-capita income, GDP, and so on,or a ‘rich person’ could be defined as one whose means exceed his needs by such andsuch a percentage.‘Beautiful’ is another case in point. There is no formula that can be applied to adjudicatein this most delicate of matters, and if pressed it is recommended to take the fifthamendment against self-incrimination.The logical rule of the law of the excluded middle, by which every proposition musteither be True or False, may not be appropriate in these cases. When Parminedesproposed the first version of this law, Heraclitus said controversially that things could besimultaneously True and Not True, while Plato laid the foundation for what wouldbecome ‘fuzzy logic’ by indicating that there was an area beyond True and False wherethese opposites "tumbled about."[Modern Philosophy is often refered to as mere hyperlinks to Plato, but I cannot find theoriginal Platonic source of this widely quoted factoid.]The sense that natural language does not have an adequate grasp on the world is far fromnew: Roger Bacon said “For the things of this world cannot be made known without aknowledge of mathematics.” Galileo agreed: 'The great book of nature can be read onlyby those who know the language in which it was written. And this language ismathematics.” Vague concepts may be inconvenient if the aim is to be logically precise,and this sort of frustration may lead one to feel like Frege that one is struggling againstthe inherent imprecision of natural language.

“ Something in itself not perceptible by sense, the thought is presented to the reader –and I must be content with that – wrapped up in a perceptible linguistic form. The pictorial aspect of language presents difficulties. The sensible always breaks in and makes expressions pictorial and so improper. So one fights against language, and I amcompelled to occupy myself with language although it is not my proper concern here. I hope I have succeeded in making clear to my readers what I want to call 'thought'.”

(Frege. ‘Thoughts’ 1918 :333f ).Which sentiment Witgenstein echoes closely in saying: “Philosophy is a battle against thebewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” As Russell put it in his forewordto Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, “

Mr. Wittgenstein is concerned with the conditions for

accurate Symbolism, i.e. for Symbolism in which a sentence `means' something quitedefinite. In practice, language is always more or less vague, so that what we assert isnever quite precise. Thus, logic has two problems to deal with in regard to Symbolism:(1) the conditions for sense rather than nonsense in combinations of words; (2) theconditions for uniqueness of meaning or reference in symbols or combinations of symbols. A logically perfect language has rules of syntax which prevent nonsense, and has single symbols which always have a definite and unique meaning. Mr. Wittgenstein isconcerned with the conditions for a logically perfect language -- not that any language islogically perfect, or that we believe ourselves capable, here and now, of constructing alogically perfect language, but that the whole function of language is to have meaning,and it only fulfills this function in proportion as it approaches to the ideal languagewhich we postulate.”

The chimera of a logically perfect language has fascinated the greatest minds in history.Apart from Frege’s Begriffschrift we might reference Leibniz and his project of a‘Characteristica Universalis’, or universal symbolic language based on Chineseideograms. None other than the great logician Kurt Gödel believed that the

characteristica universalis

was feasible.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characteristica_universalisSimilarly, John Wilkins, a founding father of the Royal Society and Dean of WadhamOxford for ten years from 1648, though more renowned for being Master of TrinityCambridge for one, attempted to construct a universal philosophical language in whichevery concept would have a unique 'non-arbitrary' name.http://reliant.teknowledge.com/Wilkins/

Symbolic representation.

Russell continues; “

Wittgenstein also asserts that in order that a certain sentence should assert a certain fact there must, however the language may be constructed, be somethingin common between the structure of the sentence and the structure of the fact. This is perhaps the most fundamental thesis of Mr. Wittgenstein's theory

.”``

In the picture and the pictured there must be something identical in order that the onecan be a picture of the other at all. What the picture must have in common with reality inorder to be able to represent it after its manner -- rightly or falsely -- is its form of representation''

Wittgenstein, Tractatus 2.161

Do we mean more than the ability of language to ‘reflect’ reality, with a structuralsimilarity between language and the world, a grammar of the world we might say, in theway we might entertain Lacan’s idea that the ‘unconscious is structured like a language’?Or maybe this is similar to Kant’s saying "Human reason is by its nature architectonic."Unfortunately, Wittgenstein is coy about exactly how this picturing works: Russellexplains that “the structure in common cannot be put into words since it is a structure of words as well as of the facts to which they refer.” So language cannot be used to explainwhat language does, on the view that language is also a part of the world , and a hierarchyof languages would be needed to do so.Wittgenstein says “Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought andreality is to be found in the grammar of the language.”This is a possible approach that considers the relation of natural language to the world as‘given’ or unanalysable [so ‘mystical’]. The Chomskian idea of innate grammar is aKantian solution to the issue, seeing natural language in a necessary position mediatingbetween reality and the mind, though this expression tends to imply a dualism we mightwant to avoid.In ‘picturing’ the world, sentences as bearers of meaning by necessity have a uniquesymbolic relation to the world. For explanation of this symbolic representation we returnto Frege:“

I do not deny that even without symbols the perception of a thing can gather about itself a group of memory-images; but we could not pursue these further: A new perceptionwould let these images sink into darkness and allow others to emerge. But if we producethe symbol of an idea that a perception has called to mind, we create in this way a firm,new focus about which ideas gather. We then select another idea from these in order toelicit its symbol. Thus we penetrate step by step into the inner world of our ideas and move about there at will, using the realm of sensibles itself to free ourselves from itsconstraint. Symbols have the same importance for thought that discovering how to usethe wind to sail against the wind had for navigation.... Also, without symbols we would scarcely lift ourselves to conceptual thinking. Thus in applying the same symbol todifferent but similar things, we actually no longer symbolize the individual thing, but rather what the similarities have in common: the concept. This concept is first gained bysymbolizing it; for since it is, in itself, imperceptible, it requires a perceptiblerepresentative in order to appear to us

" (Frege 1882:83f.)We should note here the dangerous ground in Frege’s writings of an ‘imperceptibleconcept’ which is made perceptible to the mind through symbolism.Later, Frege postulates a further imperceptible entity which perceives this concept, thusopening up a regression of immaterial entities constituting the mind.

Language Traps

One of the most important strands of Wittgenstein’s early philosophy is the convictionthat our use of language can seriously mislead us in thinking about philosophical matters.He famously likes these confusions to being trapped like flies in a bottle. The purpose of philosophy in ths view is to clarify linguistic misunderstandings and so show the way outof the philosophical bottleneck. Though this sort of ‘linguistic’ philosophy may no longerbe as popular as it was fifty years ago, there are vital lessons to be learned from thisapproach.For example, the reification of concepts can be deceptively easy:

“ to 'thingify' an idea, treating a relatively abstract signified as if it were a single,bounded, undifferentiated, fixed and unchanging thing, the essential

nature of which could be taken for granted. It is a representational practice which functions to establish the self-evident 'reality' of the concept in question, treating it as if it has the ontological status of a specific physical thing in an objective material world. Reification suppresses the human intervention involved in the defining process as if thesignifier were neutral and had been an integral part of a pre-existing thing in the world.” Daniel Chandler

Being is not an attribute, says Russell, and this clarifies confusions arising from thesimilarity of sentences like “ My car is red” and “Ghosts are scary!” where the similarfunction of the verb seems to bestow existence on ghosts. We might say that naturallanguage is agnostic on these matters. In a classic phrase, AJ Ayers warns us that thegrammar of English can confuse us into giving unwarranted ontological status to somethings best left fictitious:“

The postulation of real non-existent entities results from the superstition that to everyword or phrase that can be the grammatical subject of a sentence, there must be a realentity corresponding…to this error must be attributed the utterances of a Heidegger whobases his metaphysics on the assumption that ‘Nothing’ is a name that is used to denotesomething particularly mysterious...”

Ayer LTL 59

The Language of Life

If we say that Wittgenstein was not in fact interested in constructing a universal language,and had great confidence in the ability of everyday language to carry significance, then

we can move away from the need to look for truth-values in each proposition orutterance. With linguists like Roman Jakobson and philosophers like Paul Grice, we can join Wittgenstein later in life speculating on the way everyday language carries meaningin ‘games’. This period of language philosophy is more British than Germanic, with the‘ordinary language’ philosophers endorsing natural language as a carrier of meaning inthe 1940’s and John Austin putting forward the idea of ‘Speech Acts’ in 1955.While Wittgenstein’s later thinking on the subject may have been influential withinOxbridge philosophical circles, his text of ‘Philosophical Investigations’ was onlypublished in 1953. Contextual or constructivist views of language use start with RomanJakobson and his emphasis on the communicative contexts of utterances, culminating in aphilosopher like Paul Grice who emphasizes the underlying etiquette of communicationas a social construct.The later Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘language games’ has thoroughly entered into theculture. This contextual or constructivist approach to language has become widespreadand may be described as the orthodoxy of the moment, with every competent languageteacher in the world sporting a plaque over his desk inscribed: “Meaning is Use. Period.”The language of life, as Frege calls everyday language-acts, is formed out of humaninteractions. It is not an abstract system that somehow resides in the mind and commentson our behaviour. Wittgenstein comments: “it is the form of life common to humankind,‘the common behavior of mankind’ which is ‘the system of reference by means of whichwe interpret an unknown language’” (

PI

206). Words and sentences arise out of socialinteractions, and only have their meanings in those contexts. Says Wittgenstein, “It is ouracting that lies at the bottom of the language game,” and, “the meaning of a propositionrests ultimately in the use we make of it.”However, we might ask if meaning is socially constructed, against what sort of criterioncan we measure its truth or veracity? That is to say, how can we be sure that acommunity-constructed language game with its inherent value system has underpinningsrelating it to reality? For example, the good citizens of Salem Mass. may all have agreedon the definitions of ‘witch’, ‘possession’, ‘evil’, but how can we leave our own judgements at the door of history here? It does seem that the system of the laterWittgenstein abdicates all responsibility for evaluation or judgement. Religious andethical matters are declared self-contained ‘games’ with their own rules and regulations,and we cannot comment on their outcomes. Unfortunately each ‘language game’ seemsto be untouchable. So the language-game of Sharia law can be defended on the groundsthat it is a social construct with its own circle of interlinked definitions, which cannot becompared with any other system such as the Napoleonic Code of France, or theconstructs through precedent and reinterpretation in British law. Yet there is definitely asense in which we would want to compare and confront these differing ‘legal games’, andfind some way to adjudicate between them in terms that transcend the individualcircumstances from which they arose, measuring them against a yardstick of universalhuman interests.

References :A.J Ayer. Language, Truth and Logic 1935.Daniel Chandler. Glossary of Semioticshttp://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem-gloss.htmlGottlob Frege "On the Scientific Justification of a Begriffsschrift".1882Bertrand Russell. Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.Text at: http://www.kfs.org/~jonathan/witt/aintro.htmlVlad Vieru . Vague Concepts and Sorites ParadoxesMachine Intelligence Research Laboratory Ottawa.Text at: http://www.ici.ro/ici/revista/sic1998_3/art09.html

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