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.

---

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.

[tpaine]

This thread is beyond the "The Absurdity of Thinking in Language". It is an absurdity in itself.

Then isn't absurd for you to participate in it?

Spinner, what's absurd is that you to think I'm 'participating'. Kibitzing the comics from the peanut gallery was a old and honored vaudville tradition.

[thinktwice]

I wouldn't see the need for reason/languages as liferafts

My liferaft analogy has a connection to Ayn Rand material. In an incredible Rand essay about the molding of humans by their masters, she writes ...

Man's mind is his basic means of survival -- and of self protection. Reason is the most selfish human faculty: it has to be used in and by a man's own mind, and its product -- truth -- makes him inflexible, intransigent, impervious to the power of any pack or any ruler. Deprived of the ability to reason, man becomes a docile, pliant, impotent chunk of clay, to be shaped into any subhuman form and used for any purpose by anyone who wants to bother.

From "The Comprachicos" -- an essay within a collection titled "The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution"

[stuartcr]

You're welcome.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your posts, Hank!

The debate about Platonism started long before our discussion and has been engaged by some of the most gifted minds of all time. We will not settle it here, but for Lurkers who want to know more about Platonism, I’d like to offer a few excerpts:

What is Mathematics?

Barrow explains Platonism this way:

Plato's philosophy of mathematics grew out of his attempts to understand the relationship between particular things and universal concepts. What we see around the world are particular things -- this chair, that chair big chairs, little chairs, and so on. But the quality they share -- let's call it 'chairness' -- presents a dilemma. It is not itself a chair and unlike all chairs we know it cannot be located in some place or at some time. But that lack of a place in space and time does not mean that 'chairness' is an imaginary concept.

When you replace the concept of 'chairness' with the concepts of number like 'threeness', you start to see Plato's point. Three is not a physical object it is a universal concept, like 'chairness'.

Plato's approach to these universals was to regard them as real. In some sense they really exist 'out there'. The totality of his reality consisted of all the particular instances of things together with the universals of which they were examples. Thus the particulars that we witness in the world are each imperfect reflections of a perfect exemplar or 'form'. (pg.25)

The view as pointed out earlier is this: Mathematics exists. It transcends the human creative process, and is out there to be discovered. Pi as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is just as true and real here on Earth as it is on the other side of the galaxy. Hence the book's title Pi in the Sky. This is why it is thought that mathematics is the universal language of intelligent creatures everywhere….

Barrow goes on to discuss Platonic views in detail. The most interesting idea is what Platonist mathematics has to say about Artificial Intelligence (it does not think it is really possible). The final conclusion of Platonism is one of near mysticism. Barrow writes:

We began with a scientific image of the world that was held by many in opposition to a religious view built upon unverifiable beliefs and intuitions about the ultimate nature of things. But we have found that at the roots of the scientific image of the world lies a mathematical foundation that is itself ultimately religious. All our surest statements about the nature of the world are mathematical statements, yet we do not know what mathematics "is" ... and so we find that we have adapted a religion strikingly similar to many traditional faiths. Change "mathematics" to "God" and little else might seem to change. The problem of human contact with some spiritual realm, of timelessness, of our inability to capture all with language and symbol -- all have their counterparts in the quest for the nature of Platonic mathematics. (pg. 296-297)

Ultimately, Platonism also is just as problematic as Formalism, Inventionism and Intuitionism, because of its reliance on the existence of an immaterial world. That math should have a mystical nature is a curiosity we are naturally attracted to, but ultimately does not really matter. Platonism can think of a mathematical world as an actual reality or as a product of our collective imaginations. If it is a reality then our ability to negotiate Platonic realms is limited to what we can know, if it is a product of our collective imaginations then mathematics is back to an invention of sorts. True or not our knowledge of mathematics is still limited by our brains.

Do there exist mathematical theorems that our brains could never comprehend? If so, then Platonic mathematical realms may exist, if not then math is a human invention. We may as well ask, "Is there a God?" The answer for or against does not change our relationship to mathematics. Mathematics is something that we as humans can understand as far as we need.

Lurkers who are metaphysical naturalists (atheist) might find this one more engaging:

Naturalized Platonism or Platonized Naturalism (pdf)

Platonized Naturalism is the view that a more traditional kind of Platonism is consistent with naturalism. Traditional Platonism is the realist ontology that recognizes abstract objects, i.e., objects that are nonspatiotemporal and outside the casual order. The more traditional kind of Platonism that we defend, however is distinguished by general comprehension principles that assert the existence of abstract objects. We shall argue that such comprehension principles are synthetic and are known a priori. Nevertheless, we claim they are consistent with naturalist standards of ontology, knowledge, and reference. Since we believe that Naturalized Platonism has gone wrong most clearly in the case of mathematics, we shall demonstrate our claims with respect to a comprehension principle that governs the domain in which mathematical objects, among other abstracts, will be located. This is the comprehension principle for abstract individuals, and in what follows, we show that our knowledge of mathematical truths is linked to our knowledge of this principle. Though we shall concentrate the argument of our paper on this particular principle, we believe that similar arguments apply to corresponding comprehension principles for properties, relations and propositions.

Thank you for the kudos at post 668! You assert that my response gives rise to dismissing all future responses:

Yet they all said enough to indicate they do not really believe language is capable of expressing truth entirely and exactly, so anything they say or write from now on can be dismissed as not expressing the truth entirely and exactly, according to their testimony about the inadequacy of words.

The same could be said of your position. If betty boop, unspun, tortoise and I were to agree that Truth cannot be known objectively and in fullness and thus, expressed by any language – then any attempt of yours to assert the same can likewise be dismissed, by any of us, as overreaching.

Hank, I am nothing. I have no credentials. I am no academic. But some of these who disagree with you are true intellectual heavyweights. I leave it in their capable hands to affirm or debunk my assertion.

[tortoise]

Well I'm certainly glad you explained this. But then, since you used language to do it, and language is grossly inadequate for expressing and communicating, I assume the explanation is grossly inaccurate, and thus I will dismiss it.

See? You don't grok (and your reasoning above is specious incidentally), so QED. :-)

Hint: If the data loss amounts to a regular noise floor, it generally means that data has been reduced by a stochastic function i.e. low value bits have been discarded, so that you can squeeze the important stuff through the remaining headroom. By your reasoning, analog tape couldn't possibly record anything but garbage because it stores audio in a format that necessarily reduces the fine detail of the original sound to a much smaller "alphabet". By discarding low-value transient patterns, the economy of data transmission (whether human language, audio, or otherwise) is greatly increased with only a slight loss in communicated value.

Sure, a recording of a live performance of Beethoven's 9th doesn't sound quite like being at the live performance, but it is close enough that you can certainly tell it is Beethoven's 9th and in quite a bit of detail at that, without the cost of transporting a concert hall and a symphony orchestra every time you want to hear it. Communicating with perfect fidelity generally isn't possible in the real world, so we quantize for economy. Human language doesn't have a special status that allows it to bypass mathematics.

[tpaine]

Oh goodie, some "true intellectual heavyweights" are coming to FR.

I got the hardly waits.. You suppose they'll 'think in our language'?

[thinktwice]

Human language doesn't have a special status that allows it to bypass mathematics.

The human language words "I love you," surpasses all within mathematics.

[js1138]

Mathematics exists. It transcends the human creative process, and is out there to be discovered. Pi as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is just as true and real here on Earth as it is on the other side of the galaxy.

I'm not a mathematician, but I suspect the value of Pi could be affected by the curvature of space. If truely "flat" planes do not exist in reality, then the value of Pi is constructed (and imaginary).

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the heads up to your posts!

I haven't responded to you directly because I have not read Ayn Rand and am trying to shake my impressions of her philosophy so that I can give her material a reading without the negative prejudice I currently hold. PatrickHenry gave me some "starting points."

You and I are complete opposites on matters of theology and neither of us are malleable. Our theological views permeate our thinking and language - and thus I see no useful result from a lengthy discussion.

You might however enjoy reading the second article linked at post 684 if you are interested in Platonism or Mathematics.

[tortoise]

The human language words "I love you," surpasses all within mathematics.

As far as I can tell, this statement is semantically null.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your post! Truly, Free Republic has been blessed with intellectual heavyweights.

You suppose they'll 'think in our language'?

Actually, that is a problem and one that betty boop addressed earlier. These articles frequently use language which has a very precise meaning to those in the field and can sound like "fluff" or "pseudo-intellectualism" to those who don't speak the language.

One of the reasons I always seek out betty boop's posts (especially late into a thread) is that she unravels the techno-jargon so that I can access it, too. The effort is much appreciated.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your post, js1138!

I'm not a mathematician, but I suspect the value of Pi could be affected by the curvature of space. If truely "flat" planes do not exist in reality, then the value of Pi is constructed (and imaginary).

The Euclidean Geometry of 300 B.C. (plane) was not replaced by the work of Gauss, Bolyai and Lobachevsky in the early 1800’s (non-Euclidean Geometry) – much like quantum field theory does not replace quantum mechanics (concerning particles) – much like Relativity does not replace Newtonian physics. Each advance proceeds to greater specificity, but the previous continues as valid to its own domain.

We still use plane geometry everyday to calculate area because the specificity of the geodesic is not relevant in most circumstances. Likewise, Newtonian physics serves many purposes even though we would not use it in the space program. And the particle physicists continue to gather information and develop technology even though the field theory offers greater clarity in understanding the structure of the physical world.

[tpaine]

There's a reason it sounds like "fluff" or "pseudo-intellectualism". It is jargon.
Putting 'techno-' in front of jargon is a fine example of the practice, in fact..

The minute philosophy 'heavyweights' slip off subject, -- into specialised definitions of words, definitions only known to those in the 'field', -- they are in effect admitting that they cannot frame their thoughts into comprehensible ideas.
They then compound their attempted fraud by pretending to understand one another..

Unframeable thoughts are just mystical bull, - bafflegab..

[PatrickHenry]

I have not read Ayn Rand and am trying to shake my impressions of her philosophy so that I can give her material a reading without the negative prejudice I currently hold.

Hey, A-Girl! Why so reluctant to put one of your toes in the water? Get a paperback copy of Atlass Shrugged and try a few chapters. You can always toss it out if you don't like it. It's just a novel.
[Wild, uncontrolable hugs!]

[tortoise]

The minute philosophy 'heavyweights' slip off subject, -- into specialised definitions of words, definitions only known to those in the 'field', -- they are in effect admitting that they cannot frame their thoughts into comprehensible ideas.

Hogwash. All languages heavily overload words in a context sensitive manner. "Manifold" can mean a number of wildly different things depending on the context, but there is a conceptual relationship to the base word in all those cases. It doesn't matter whether you are a mathematician or an auto mechanic.

Just because you do not understand an overloaded application of a word (or do not care to) does not mean nobody else does. At least the overloaded term gives someone not familiar with it some vague conceptual idea as to what the term means in a particular context. Humans don't have the brain capacity to spare to invent and remember new words and linguistic structures for every individual idea or concept we come up with. English already has a million or so words. If you want to give every context its own unique word, you'd have to increase the language size by a few orders of magnitude. Overloaded terminology is much more economical.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your reply, tpaine!

There I was, trying to formulate the best response I could, when - low and behold - I read tortoise's reply! All I can say is "ditto!"

Thank you so much for the excellent post, tortoise! The "manifold" example is superb.

[Consort]

Pi as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is just as true and real here on Earth as it is on the other side of the galaxy.

We have to stop making statements like that because they are delimiting and they discourage pondering about other possibilities and probabilities. God is quite capable of creating circles that don't conform to p as we know it.

Mathematics is a notational representation of human logic, flawed and otherwise. The notation is man-made and is figuratively and literally Greek to most people. Math has evolved and will continue to do so, and is a long way from being perfect, IMO

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your reply, PatrickHenry! Brazen hugs and *smooches* to you!!!

I've never been "into" fiction, because it feels to me like a waste of words (and time) as the author carefully describes everything to a gnat’s hair. I’m sure all those words are like music to some, but I’m most comfortable when narrative is reduced to bare essentials (LOL!)

[tpaine]

The minute philosophy 'heavyweights' slip off subject, -- into specialised definitions of words, definitions only known to those in the 'field', -- they are in effect admitting that they cannot frame their thoughts into comprehensible ideas.

Hogwash.

Nope, -- opinion.

All languages heavily overload words in a context sensitive manner.

That line is a fine example of attempted 'jargon'. We have a millon words in the english language. You can say what you mean without using  "heavily overload words in a context sensitive manner".

"Manifold" can mean a number of wildly different things depending on the context, but there is a conceptual relationship to the base word in all those cases.

How droll. Is there a point hidden in that sentence? Where?

It doesn't matter whether you are a mathematician or an auto mechanic Just because you do not understand an overloaded application of a word (or do not care to) does not mean nobody else does. At least the overloaded term gives someone not familiar with it some vague conceptual idea as to what the term means in a particular context.

You seem to have "overloaded" on your mind. Great jargon word. -- Meaningless in this context, as you can see by lining it out. Proves my point as to its being jargon..

Humans don't have the brain capacity to spare to invent and remember new words and linguistic structures for every individual idea or concept we come up with. English already has a million or so words.

Yep. -- That was my point. The heavyweights have no need to invent new meanings for the 'in crowd'... Doing so is a form of fraud. - They invent jargon to pretend to have invented new ideas.

If you want to give every context its own unique word, you'd have to increase the language size by a few orders of magnitude. Overloaded terminology is much more economical.

Sure thing, -- thus, [using jargon] is also, -- a lot easier than actually having to explain yourself in our common language.

[tpaine]

"tortoise! The "manifold" example is superb"


LOL..
They then compound their attempted [word] fraud by pretending to understand one another.