The Absurdity of 'Thinking in Language'

the author's site ^ | 1972 | Dallas Willard

[unspun]

The Absurdity of 'Thinking in Language'

This paper has been read to the University of Southern California philosophy group and the Boston 1972 meeting of the American Philosophical Association, as well as to the Houston meeting of the Southwestern Philosophical Society. Appeared in The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, IV(1973), pp. 125-132. Numbers in "<>" refer to this journal.

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Among the principal assumptions of major portions of philosophy in recent decades have been: (1) That philosophy somehow consists of (some sort of) logic, and (2) that logic is a study of and theory about (some sort of) language. There, of course, follows from these a third assumption: (3) That philosophy is a study of and theory about (some sort of) language--though this implication should not be taken as representing any phase of the historical development of recent philosophizing. Instead of listing these three points as assumptions, it would probably be more correct to regard them as categories or complexes of assumptions; or perhaps, more vaguely still, as 'tendencies' or proclivities of recent philosophical thinking. But precision of these points need not be put in issue here, as this paper does not seek any large-scale resolution of the problem area in question. The aim here is to examine only one proposition which plays a role in the clearly existent tendencies referred to: Namely, the proposition that we think in or with language. I hope to show, first, that we do not always think in or with language; and then, second, that the very conception of thinking in or with language involves an absurdity. What implications this has for broader philosophical assumptions or tendencies will not be dealt with here, though the implications in question seem to me to be extremely important ones. That human beings think in language is explicitly stated in such diverse places as ordinary newspapers, the more sophisticated popular magazines and journals, and serious discourse in the humanities and the social sciences, as well as in the technical writings of philosophers. To prove this broad range of consensus would be idle; but, in order to have the philosophical context clearly before us, we may give a few brief quotations. <126>       (1) Man, like every living creature, thinks unceasingly, but does not know it: the thinking which becomes conscious of itself is only the smallest part thereof. And, we may say, the worst part:--for this conscious thinking alone is done in words, that is to say, in the symbols for communication, by means of which the origin of consciousness is revealed. (Nietzsche, Joyful Wisdom, sub-sec. # 354)      (2) Let no one be contemptuous of symbols! A good deal depends upon a practical selection of them. Furthermore, their value is not diminished by the fact that after much practice, we no longer really need to call forth a symbol, we do not need to speak out loud in order to think. The fact remains that we think in words or, when not in words, then in mathematical or other symbols. (Frege, Mind, Vol. 73, p. 156)      (3) It is misleading then to talk of thinking as of a 'mental activity'. We may say that thinking is essentially the activity of operating with signs. This activity is performed by the hand, when we think by writing; by the mouth and larynx, when we think by speaking; and if we think by imagining signs or pictures, I can give you no agent that thinks. If then you say that in such cases the mind thinks, I would only draw your attention to the fact that you are using a metaphor, that here the mind is an agent in a different sense from that in which the hand can be said to be an agent in writing. (Wittgenstein, Blue Book, pp. 6-7)      (4) ... The woof and warp of all thought and all research is symbols, and the life of thought and science is the life inherent in symbols; so that it is wrong to say that a good language is important to good thought, merely; for it is of the essence of it. (C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers, II, p. 129)      (5) Words only matter because words are what we think with. (H. H. Price, Aristotelian Society, Suppl. Vol. XIX, p. 7)      (6) Theorizing is an activity which most people can and normally do conduct in silence. They articulate in sentences the theories that they construct, but they do not most of the time speak these sentences out loud. They say them to themselves.... Much of our ordinary thinking is conducted in internal monologue or silent soliloquy, usually accompanied by an internal cinematograph-show of visual imagery.... This trick of talking to oneself in silence is acquired neither quickly nor without effort.... (Ryle, Concept of Mind, p. 27. See also pp. 282-83 and 296-97) <127>      (7)This helps to elucidate the well-known difficulty of thinking without words. Certain kinds of thinking are pieces of intelligent talking to oneself. Consider the way in which I 'thinkingly' wrote the last sentence. I can no more do the 'thinking' part without the talking (or writing) part than a man can do the being graceful part of walking apart from the walking (or some equivalent activity). (J.J.C. Smart, Philosophy and Scientific Realism, p. 89) These quotations will suffice to establish the context within which philosophers speak of thinking in language (or with language). Many other quotations could be added from the literature.1 It is not assumed here that the persons quoted all occupy the same position with reference to the relationship between thought and language. Yet it would be interesting to see what any of these thinkers, or others who suppose that human beings think in language, could save of their position from the critique which follows. Uneasiness about the conception of thinking in or with language has been expressed by a number of writers, but only over limited aspects of it.2 Here we shall consider arguments which purport to call the conception into question entirely and in principle. First, consider a reason for rejecting the view that we always think in language. It consists in the fact that thinking often occurs without the production, manipulation, or perception of sense-perceptible signs, without which there is no use of language. Such occurrences often provoke offers of 'A penny for your thoughts.' Thinking: Whatever we may decide to call them, and however it is that we are conscious of them, there are intentional states of persons, more or less fixed or fleeting, which do not require for their obtaining that what they are about or of be perceived by, or be impinging causally upon, the person involved. In order to think of3 Henry the Eighth, <128> of the first auto one owned, of the Pythagorean theorem, or of the Mississippi River, it is not required that they should disturb my nervous system. Such states (t-states) of persons are often called 'thoughts', especially in contrast with 'perceptions', and being in such a state is one of the things more commonly called 'thinking'. One no more needs to be going through a change of such states in order to be thinking, than he needs to be changing his bodily position in order to be sitting or lying or sleeping. Rarely if ever--as is alleged in the case of mystic contemplation--are these t-states unchanging. Usually they flow, at varying rates, intermingled with person states of many sorts, governed by such transitional structures as inference, goal orientation, objective structures given in perception or in other ways, and elemental association of 'ideas', among others. In what follows, we shall use 'thinking' to cover both the single t-state and the flow of such states, without regard to how intermingled with other person states. Language: Sense perceptible signs or symbols are an essential constituent of language. It is always false to say that language is present or in use where no signs are present or in use. And, whatever else a sign may be, it is something which is apprehendable via its sensible qualities. That is, it is something which can be either seen, heard, felt, tasted or smelled. Moreover, the use of language requires some level of actual sensuous apprehension of the signs which are in use on the occasion. (Confusion or distortion of this sensuous feedback can render a subject incapable of writing or speaking; and, of course, without perception of the sign-sequences emitted, one cannot understand the person emitting language.) Now cases can be produced almost at will where thinking occurs without language being present or in use. This, of course, is something which everyone--including the proponent of thinking-in-language--very well knows. It is these cases which, together with the assumption that we always think in language, create what in (7) was called "the well-known difficulty of thinking without words." If, as in (3), "thinking is essentially the activity of operating with signs," then when there are no signs--and when, consequently, the means by which we produce, manipulate, or perceive signs are not functioning--we do have a difficulty. In fact, a difficulty so severe that it amounts to a proof that thinking is not essentially the activity of operating with signs, and that often we think entirely without language. One cannot operate with signs where there are no signs. <129>  As the above quotations indicate, the most common move made to save 'thinking in language' at this point is the shift to 'silent soliloquy,' as in (6), or to 'pieces of intelligent talking to oneself,' as in (7). These are latter-day shades of John Watson's 'sub-vocal language.' Of course one can talk to oneself or write to onself. But talking and writing to oneself require the production and perception of sensuous signs just as much as talking and writing to another. The realization of this is what drives the thinking-in-language advocate to silent soliloquy or to nonvocal speaking--the written counterpart of which would be invisible writing. That is, they are driven to flat absurdities. A silent soliloquy--that is, silent speaking--is precisely on a par with a silent trumpet solo, for example, or silent thunder. A poet may say:        Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard             Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;        Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,             Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone;...                (Keats, Ode to a Grecian Urn) But there are in fact no unhearable melodies, no ears other than the "sensual," no ditties of no tone. What those who speak of silent discourse have in mind is, no doubt, the fact that interlaced with our thinking of or about things is a great deal of imaging of linguistic entities. (This is especially true of academics or intellectuals in general, because of their great concern with expression of thought. Probably an adequate phenomenology of thinking would exhibit great contrast between them and other classes of persons precisely at the relation between thinking and degree of activity in imaging linguistic entities and events.) But imaging a word is not using a word, any more than imaging a horse is using a horse. Moreover, imaging a word, phrase, or sentence is not producing or perceiving a word, phrase, or sentence any more than imaging a horse is producing or perceiving--or otherwise 'having'--a horse. To image a linguistic sequence is not to have it in a special sort of place--the mind--nor is it to have a special sort of linguistic sequence. To image is to exemplify a certain sort of thinking or intentional state, and a sort which does have interesting relationships with other kinds of thinking. But there is no reason at all to suppose that all kinds of thinking necessarily involve or are accompanied by this kind of thinking (imaging) directed upon language segments. And if there were, it still would not follow that all thinking requires language, since this kind of thinking about language segments is not itself language at all. Nor does it require any <130> language present in order for it to come to pass, since intentional inexistence applies to mental events when language segments are the objects, as well as when sticks and stones and animals are. Having considered a reason for rejecting the proposition that human beings always think in language, let us now consider whether they ever do. In fact, the difficulty is not, as Smart (above) and others have thought, in seeing how one can think without language, but in seeing how one would think with it. Thinking with or in language must consist in doing something with symbols, and so necessarily involves doing something to them--e.g., producing, altering, or perceiving them. If we would do something with the knife (e.g., cut the bread), we must do something to the knife, (e.g., clasp it in our hands). But, as we have seen, thinking occurs where nothing at all is being done to or with signs, there not being any signs in these cases. The power or act of having or changing t-states--that is, the power or act of thinking--is, then, not a power or act of having or altering linguistic symbols. (It is not, in fact, a power of doing anything with or in anything at all. The profound difference in kinds of powers and acts involved here is what Wittgenstein calls attention to in the last sentence of (3) above.) Thought is, of course, practical, in that it exercises an influence upon, or makes some difference in, the world of sense particulars. But it alone is not capable of acting with the sorts of particulars used in linguistic behavior as its immediate instruments. It is just this incapacity which makes it impossible for the advocates of thinking-in-language to give any account of the mechanisms or the 'how' by which the words in which we, allegedly, think are produced, manipulated, and gotten rid of--though they must be produced (or stored and hauled out), manipulated, and, in some sense, gotten rid of, if we are to think with and in them as our tools or instruments. Merely to ask the question of how, in detail, this is done in the course of thinking reveals, I believe, the absurdity of 'thinking in language'. Mere thinking can do nothing to signs which might be used in a language, and hence it can do nothing with such signs, or in the act of modifying the conditions of such signs. It is absurd to suppose that one can do x with y without in some way bringing about a change in the condition, state, relations, or properties of y. It is this and only this that I put by saying that it is absurd to suppose that one can do something with y while doing nothing to y. If it is replied that, of course, the mind or thought does not do these things, but that when we write, speak, hear, see, and otherwise relate to actual words in the actual employment of language, we then are thinking, with bodily parts managing the symbols involved, then it <131> must be pointed out that, while we may indeed also be thinking in such cases, we are not simply thinking. The total event here, to which language certainly is essential, is not thinking. Correct use of language can even occur, as has been pointed out by Wittgenstein, without the occurrence of any peculiarly relevant t-states. On the other hand, thinking does occur without the use of hands, mouth, ears, eyes, fingers in any appropriately relevant manner. Hence, what can only occur by the use of these is not the same as thinking, though it may somehow involve or influence thinking. Smart remarks in (7) that, when he thinkingly wrote the sentence, "Certain kinds of thinking are pieces of intelligent talking to oneself," he could "no more do the 'thinking' part without the talking (or writing) part than a man can do the being graceful part of walking apart from the walking." This may be true of thinkingly writing the sentence (whatever that means). But it does not follow that one cannot think that certain kinds of thinking are pieces of intelligent talking to oneself without the use of language, though Smart clearly thinks that it does. Of course one cannot thinkingly write without writing. But that is nothing to the point of whether or not we can and do think with or without words. Also, the comparison to graceful walking is not apt. We do, as above shown, sometimes think without words or symbols, while no cases of grace without behavior are known. Now it is very certainly true that some processes clearly involving thinking as described above depend for their occurrence upon linguistic behavior and the sensible signs which it involves, for example, the processes of learning algebra or the history of the Basques, or learning how to counsel emotionally upset persons. But it is to be noted that these are not themselves processes of thinking, but rather are extremely complex processes involving all kinds of events and entities other than language and other than thinking--e.g., feelings, perceptions, buildings, other persons, days and nights, books, and so on. None of these processes is a process of thinking; and for that reason alone it is invalid to infer from them that thinking is linguistic behavior, or that one thinks with language. What is essential to things or events of a certain sort must be shown essential to them taken by themselves, not in combination with many other things. With reference to the involved processes in question, it might be more appropriate (though it would still be wrong) to say--as some have said in recent years--that we live in or with language. Nevertheless, it is certain that some kind of dependence relation--probably similar to feedback mechanisms--exists between linguistic processes and their sensuous signs, on the one hand, and certain sequences of t-states on the other. What, exactly, this relation <132> of dependence is continues to be veiled by, among other things, a priori assumptions about what thinking and language must be and do. One such assumption is that which holds thinking essentially to be an operation with signs or symbols, or doing something with--or in--linguistic processes or entities. The view that we (necessarily) think without language is, today, regarded as so outlandish as not to merit serious consideration. But this is not due to a lack of arguments to support it. My object here has been to focus upon certain arguments purporting to show the absurdity of thinking in language. The main points in these arguments are: Thinking does occur without any accompanying language whatsoever, and thus shows itself not to be a power or act of managing linguistic signs, once it is clear what such a sign is. Thinking, as distinct from behavioral processes involving it, can do nothing to signs or symbols, and hence can do nothing with them. NOTES See for example, Ramsey's Foundations of Mathematics, p. 138, and Kneale's remarks in Feigl and Sellars, Readings in Philosophical Analysis, p. 42. Return to text. See S. Morris Engel, "Thought and Language," Dialogue, Vol. 3, 1964, 160-170; Jerome Shaffer, "Recent Work on the Mind-Body Problem," American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. II, 1965, esp. p. 83; R. Kirk, "Rationality Without Language," Mind, 1967, pp. 369-368; G. Ryle, "A Puzzling Element in the Notion of Thinking," in Studies in the Philosophy of Thought and Action, P. F. Strawson, ed., (Oxford: 1968), pp. 7-23. Interesting remarks on the issues here are also found in Bruce Aune's Knowledge, Mind and Nature, chap. VIII and H. H. Price's Thinking and Experience, Chap. X.  See also Wm. James, "Thought Before Language; A Deaf Mute's Recollections," Mind, Vol. I, 1892; and see Wittgenstein's comments on this in Philosophical Investigations, No. 342. Return to text. I use only think here, for simplicity; but think that and other structures of such intentional states (and sequences thereof) might also be mentioned. Specifically, I would also wish to hold that instances of thinking that, in the sense of inferring or puzzling something out, occur in the absence of appropriate linguistic entities or activities. Return to text.

[thinktwice]

principles of forensics

Speaking of forensics, I have a theory about people that can't be persuaded by overwhelming evidence contrary to their beliefs -- Democrats for Clinton, O.J. Simpson trial jurors, Christians for Christ, people like that.

They don't want to accept objectionable truth and they will resist such truth with every fiber of their soul until falling off a horse or some other such Road to Damascus event happens to them.

[thinktwice]

Does intuition exist?

Did the Wright brothers have any intuitive idea that their contraption might fly?

[Consort]

Consciousness and awareness have to already be there before any of that can happen.

Consciouness, existence, and identity are classified by Ayn Rand as "Axiomatic concepts," that require no proof -- they are "givens" within living and rational beings.

Human babies experience consciousness before awareness years before they are capable of using reason.

Those statements do not conflict with my above statement.

[unspun]

Consciouness, existence, and identity are classified by Ayn Rand as "Axiomatic concepts," that require no proof -- they are "givens" within living and rational beings.

The issue is not what Ms. Rand acceded to for the axiomatic, but that she doesn't credit the source of her material. That is epistemological plagiarism. She snatched part of the story, then hid in her room and drew the curtains, lest the light reveal.

Appreciate your interest in seeing some of the cards of others on the table. I'll only offer the book heading, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God...." Interestingly enough, that book ends by asserting that there aren't enough books to hold the knowledge therein, against which our only honest regard is wonder.

[thinktwice]

a net negative for the babies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

And a net positive for shortening the war and saving millions more from dying in the taking of Japan.

[betty boop]

I have the impression you are using the term reality in the less abstract meaning, to indicate what actually exists. Your examples, to illustrate, seem to indicate not what we mean by reality, but what reality, as an actuality, consists of.

And this is a bad thing???

Hank, it's not the reality we "conceptualize," but reality in the second sense, in all its immediacy and actuality, that we primarily have to deal with as human beings. That latter includes a huge deposit of the effects of concepts, bad and good, over time. Beyond being a mere concept, used for "identification purposes" (very interesting choice of words there), reality has, in addition to spacial/physical dimension, historical dimension, social dimension, and personal dimension as well.

How can any abstract concept possibly capture the richness, complexity, and dynamism of this "total system" called "reality?" Reality has a space-time extension that far exceeds that of the individual rationalizing mind engaged in the reduction of its complexity into neat "concepts" designed to stand in for the reality from which they are abstracted. Concepts are often designed to "make simple" something that runs away from us in space and time in every direction. To put it another way, we can only view reality, not in toto, but only from where we stand. Our view is necessarily partial. Yet we construct a concept of reality that attempts to comprehend the whole on the basis of that partial view.

You basically validate the foregoing passage in the following remark: "The first, the more abstract concept, is required to set the limits of what can be included in the second, less abstract, "what actually exists" concept."

Hank, what are we supposed to do with "the leftovers?" Pretend they're not there?

thinktwice insists that "reason is the test of reality." What does "reason" have to say about the relentless reductionism of the maneuver you describe? Or its prospects for bringing us closer to the truth of reality?

[unspun]

There wouldn't be any irrational predispositions and incorrect presuppositions in your post, would there?

I can find no evidence to the contrary, which actually evidence to the contrary, in terms of Christ. I do see much evidence about Him. I might suggest material to read there, but that doesn't seem to be an offer many take one up on.

Rare though fortunate are those who are encountered in the way God became manifest to brother Saul of Tarsus.

[Kudsman]

Good guess, but that is all that it is, a guess.

Oh I'm so glad you responded. Just so. Only a guess. True that you KNOW which fruit you hold or even if you are truly holding a fruit. I can't see, smell, taste, feel or hear it so to me it started as something abstract. However, I can think about and visualize it even though I cannot name it. Does it matter? Certainly. Because now I am thinking about it. Is it real? Also yes because I have made it so to me. I have also involved you in thinking about it, once again even though I cannot name it. LOL.Truly FOOD for the mind as well as the belly. :-)

Mark 14: 22 While they were eating, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, and said, "Take it; this is my body." 23 Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it. 24 He said to them, "This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many.

[thinktwice]

since you are familiar with AR's epistemology, you could just briefly reprise her axiomatic proof of God's non-existence.

I don't think Ayn Rand ever proved God's non-existence; but, perhaps I did.

[Kudsman]

Why do I duck at the sound of a shot? Not because of the shot that I heard. But rather the shot I have yet to hear. ;-)

[Kudsman]

Sorry I forgot to frame the context of my statement. Here it is. You asked: Does intuition exist?

[Hank Kerchief]

Is Santa Claus flying down every chimney in the world to deliver toys a rational, or an irrational conceptualization? If the latter, do you think this irrational conceptualization is of no use or value to parents of small children?

. Already covered, post #540

At the end of the post.

Hank

[Hank Kerchief]

Irrationality is not the only thing that is not reason. To say so is a fallacy.

I don't know what you mean, but since I never mentioned reason, it does not matter.

You said, something is "more essential (as Dallas Willard poined out) than strict rational conceptualization.

In the field of "rationality", something is either rational or irrational. You have chosen the irrational over the rational. I have chosen the rational over the irrational.

Are you upset that I pointed that out. I did not mean to upset you.

Hank

[cornelis]

BB, do you have Voegelin's review of Vico in vol. 24? There's a good section on p. 107. "The Attack on the Cogito"

There is a bit more to Descartes's Meditations than would appear in Vico's critique; but again, what matters is the point of attack: that the cogito is not a point of certainty, in which the substance of man would be given in its immediacy, because the cogito belongs to the realm of phenomena. The cogitare is reflective "thinking about." It is not an unreflective, creative evocation of symbols that express a deeper stratum of human substance. In the reflective meditation of Descartes, Vico sees the symptom of the "barbararism of reflection," which is the signature of the crisis.

Elsewhere Voegelin notes that Vico's argument in his Liber metaphysicus of a distinction lost to secularism:

The argument of Liber metaphysicus I.1 is as follows: For the "Latini," the terms verum and factum seem to have been interchangeable. This appears from their synonymous use of the terms "understanding" (intellegere), "to read perfectly" (perfecte legere), and "to know plainly" (aperte cognoscere). The term cogitare, on the other hand, was of lesser dignity, meaning no more than simply "thinking" or "believing." since words are symbols of ideas, and ideas symbols of things, it follows that reading means to collect the elements of script in order to compose words, and understanding means to collect the elements of things in order to compose a perfect idea. To be in perfect and understanding possession of an idea means to be in the perfect possession of the thing itself. Perfet understanding can be achieved only through the identity of fact and idea.

From this insight follow the distinctions of divine and human knowledge. God is the primum verum because he is the primus Factor Since knowledge (scire) consists in the composition of things, the mind of man is capable of only thinking (cogitare), while true understanding (intelligentia) is reserved for God. God reads the things perfectly because he contains and orders them. Man, with his finite mind, can only think about them because man merely participates in reason, but does not possess it.

This doctrine of the "Latini," however, requires a qualification in order to be acceptable to the Christian thinker. The ancient philosophers of Italy could identify verum and factum because they assumed to world to exist uncreated from eternity, and because, consequently, their God operated always ad extra in an existing world. this is unacceptable in Christian theology because the world is created ex nihilo. Hence the Christian has to distinguish between the verum creatum and the verum increatum; only the verum creatum is identical with the factum. The verum increatum is not factum but genitum. The Holy Scripture, therefore, calls the Wisdom of God the Verbum.

FWIW

[unspun]

Ok HK, so definition, it is:

ra·tion·al    ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (r sh -n l)
adj.

1. Having or exercising the ability to reason.
2. Of sound mind; sane.
3. Consistent with or based on reason; logical: rational behavior. See Synonyms at logical.
4. Mathematics. Capable of being expressed as a quotient of integers.

I was speaking of actively "exercising the ability to reason" so as to apply thought through logic, as you at least should know (and I wouldn't be surprised, if you do know).

I am not very "upset," HK, although I freely confess you anger me from time to time. I find it very affrontive to hear someone who knows better so set against truth (while claiming to honor truth) as to engage in the blasphemous posts you have written previously and for which you do not apologize.

But my outrage is not the point, nor is your blasphemy, per se. The point is that for someone to be so mindfully, intentionally blasphemous it tends to mean a bitter, willful animosity with God, and far from a search for truth. Someone like this is not to be trusted. Someone like this will waste people's time intentionally, and is apt to mislead, just as intentionally as this kind of person will attempt to accuse the revealed God.

Now, if that is not you, good. I am not accusing you of these things, merely pointing out tendencies of someone who knows of God's revelation, but curses Him. Even if it is you, though, greater than my anger is, in Christ, my love and desire to see you live.

That does not mean however that I believe it is necessarily fruitful to spend time communicating with you, so much as communicating to others desipite your using an Internet forum to convince people of your way of attempting to falsify the revealed God.

I suggest that it is in the interest of those others to consider this. Now, these hideously evil traits may not apply to you. You have only said enough for one to be very cautious -- and very concerned for both you and those the spirit that may affect others with you would do to intentionally obscure and twist minds and hearts, from their regard of the truth.

I'll ping another, for accountability.

[Cvengr]

You forgot the punchline...

86%===>7*45!!! hahahaha

[Roscoe]

You said, something is "more essential (as Dallas Willard poined out) than strict rational conceptualization.

"A page of history is worth a volume of logic." -- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Justice William H. Rehnquist, Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Antonin Scalia

[unspun]

Why do I duck at the sound of a shot? Not because of the shot that I heard. But rather the shot I have yet to hear. ;-)

And having learned "bang" and "hurt," may you never take the time to use tests of logic, when a bullet would fly at you. ;-) Reason is wonderful, a critical element of our being, but human reason does not grasp all, especially not all that is wonderful.... eh?

[Hank Kerchief]

I have the impression you are using the term reality in the less abstract meaning, to indicate what actually exists. Your examples, to illustrate, seem to indicate not what we mean by reality, but what reality, as an actuality, consists of.

And this is a bad thing???

Well I didn't think so, or even suggest that it was. The whole point of my post was to see if Alamo-Girl and I were approaching the question from different directions. Both concepts are required for a full understanding of reality, so I just wanted to know where the emphasis was.

Hank, it's not the reality we "conceptualize,"...

I have no idea what you mean by this clause. You certainly do not mean there is no reality. You certainly do not mean if you or I say the word "reality" we have just invalidate it. Certainly when you used the word "reality" you intend for me to understand something by it. Does the word represent nothing? Or does it represent a concept which identifies something which identification you expect me to understand?

How many times must I say, all a concept does is identify something, and nothing more. Why do you ask, "how can any abstract concept possibly capture the richness, complexity, and dynamism of this "total system" called "reality?, when you know a concept does not "capture" anything. If you want to ask this kind of question, ask a platonist, like Alamo-Girl. Why ask me how a concept can do something you already know I do not for a moment suppose a concept can do?

You basically validate the foregoing passage in the following remark: "The first, the more abstract concept, is required to set the limits of what can be included in the second, less abstract, "what actually exists" concept."

I know you are too bright to simply be making a mistake here. If there are concepts that correctly identify various aspects of reality, (less abstract, "what actually exists" concepts) why should there not be a higher level concept by which all such concepts would be subsumed. That concept would necessarily set "the limits of what can be included," as concepts it subsumes.

If what you suggest were true, because there is a concept for arithmetic, and a concept for algebra, and a concept for trigonomety, and a concept for the calculus, there cannot be a concept mathematics which subsumes all these concepts, because that would somehow limit or invalidate them. You know this is not true. You also know, that this higher level inclusive concept also sets the limits of what can be included as concepts of mathematics. It excludes, for example, chemistry, and biology, but not necessarily geometry or topology.

Hank, what are we supposed to do with "the leftovers?" Pretend they're not there? What leftovers? In your sentence, "Hank, it's not the reality we "conceptualize," but reality in the second sense ...," are there "leftovers" to the two cases where you used the word "reality," that I should be worried about?

Since you use the word truth in a way that I cannot discern from the context of the sentences in which you use it, would you please tell me what you mean by the word truth. Oh, yes, is truth a concept?

Hank

[Cvengr]

Chill, the words will only be judged as good for nothing in His will.

Back to the original post.

On language, logic, meaning, thought, truth...

With respect to identity of language with thought and possible independence of logic, consider how many Asian languages, written and learnt in Kanji or katahana, uses a different part of the physical brain when bring processed.

For many years there had been some suggestion that if people of different cultures using different languages actually were discernibly different with respect to God given rights and how theythink, then such a difference would be most manifest between Chinese/Japanese and Western cultures. Yet it's rather amazing that the same rules of inference and deductive logic are intuitively understood by both cultures.

More discernible epistemilogically, would be a difference in religious structures. Western cultures have tended to have been more Judeo-Christian than the Chinese/Japanese and the element of faith is more distinctive between their outlooks. The Japanese, without faith in God, tend to place more emphasis upon trust than upon faith.

Many philosophical foundations of the Sino-culture are trust based rather than faith based as in American culture. Americans tend to place more emphasis on winning but only as long as one plays by the rules or in a fashion whcih ultimately places faith in good. Many Japanese might also engage in agreements with Americans, but frequently theirs is trust-based, willing even to condone insider trading and 'illegal' activity provided they trust both parties in the agreement seek to win. Many Americans may also play along in that game, many Americans don't mind playing 'illegal' games, but those from Judeo-Christian beliefs tend to balk based upon faith. The differences in those cultures are based more upon 'spiritual' aspects than upon physiological and logical aspects.