07 Language and Reality – Transcript

00:05saying that everything is information isn't very helpful for people who like to believe that there is a physical reality out there it means essentially that the world is an abstraction malleable by interpretation Emilia collection of prevailing beliefs information as a linguistic object is a rather understanding metaphor metaphor is for most people a device of poetic imagination it is much more pervasive in everyday life than most people assume

00:32our ordinary conceptual system in terms of which we both think and act is fundamentally metaphorical in nature there are no things without language language is the mother of all things when you look around and there seems to be things all around you that's because you speak it's because we speak that there seemed to be things but there aren't things without language things is a word I might even say that even the

00:59things that look to be objects they're really events they're complicated dances of electrons and swirling processes below the level that we can see but even there those are just more words I think part of the difficulty in understanding language is that when we try to understand what's outside of language we have to use language to do so we always

01:24already stand within language as we try to talk about what's outside of it there's the scientific theory which says the world is tiny packets of matters squealing along through empty space that close to the speed of light and subject to a certain set of interlocking laws

01:48that's what science tells us the world is another theory is and to my mind a much more appealing and even to ative Li correct theory is the world is language the world is made of language we can say that the world is composed of little demons doing

02:13calisthenics each one the size of a pissant eyebrow or we can say the world is made out of wave mechanical packets of matter flying along at the speed of light but notice that what we get each time is words our model of what the world is is made of words and the world is composed of description language is

02:42the medium by which we transmit our thoughts the language we use to communicate does fundamentally affect how we see the world language structures store at least the same degree that it reflects thought for the most part we live in a world constructed by language what and how we see the world is tied directly to how we describe it linguistic relativity was first suggested by Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf when they noticed the differences in language reflect the

03:08different views of different people the Hopi for example do not include references to the past present or future in their grammars although they do include two other tenses manifested and becoming manifested manifested includes all that is and ever has been physically this includes the senses and concrete items becoming manifested includes anything which is not physical has no definite origin and cannot be perceived

03:34with the senses verbs always Express with in terms of these two tenses in this way the Hopi do include some aspect of time but in a different way than the native English speaker would recognize the separation of the imaginal world and objective world didn't exist for the Hopi wolf argues that many ancient cultures conceived of thought as an active or pervasive energy in the physical world much like how we perceive electromagnetism the

04:01we thought world at no imaginary space another example of ethnolinguistics is with regards to spatial orientation using cardinal directions for example a person might think at sunset when facing north that their left leg is their west leg where as if they were facing south their right leg would be their West leg as a further example of linguistic relativity in one study German and Spanish speakers were asked to describe objects having opposite gender

04:29assignment the descriptions they gave differed in a way predicted by grammatical gender for example when asked to describe a key a word which is masculine in German and feminine in Spanish the German speakers were more likely to use words like hard heavy jagged metal serrated and useful whereas Spanish speakers were more likely to say golden intricate little lovely shiny and tiny speakers of different languages

04:55noticed different things and say make different distinctions for example when Koreans say that one object joins another they specify whether the objects touch tightly or loosely whereas English speakers in contrast say where the object is in or on another saying I put the spoon cup is not cracked in either language the spoon has to be in or on the cup in English and has to be held tightly or loosely by the cup in Korean consider some other language oddities

05:23such as in some cultures the meat of a pig is called pork yet in other cultures it is called pig whether the animal is dead or alive we can translate idioms but not realize that the cultural meanings are not transported across out of our set of symbols saying I could eat a horse in front of some peoples they may well assume that you really do want to eat a horse likewise in English coaches the heart is considered a symbol of courage love and

05:48strength whereas in other coaches those attributes are assigned to the liver we can only establish knowledge about something through its interaction with something else nothing takes on a meaning by itself meaning and existence comes only through interaction and relationship in this way the linguistic associations we build do profoundly affect how we see the world this still might be a hard thing to comprehend sure we might be talking about the same thing but describing it

06:15differently but a tennis ball is always going to be a tennis ball right unfortunately it isn't as simple as that it's people like Rob Anton Wilson points out the only reality we know is the one which we interpret through our nervous system niels bohr said we are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down Georg Hegel said to question language is to question being once I have no academic

06:42background in linguistics or communication theory I feel that studying the relationship between language and reality is instrumental to being able to think at higher levels and find degrees of logic and reasoning after all language is literally the bridge for the psyche to telepathically communicate with itself Benjamin Lee Whorf said the change in language can transform our apprehension of the cosmos love with Wittgenstein believed that the foundation of language and linguistic

07:09meaning is the very basis of philosophy give my own research and what is presented in this series I'm inclined to agree for those wishing to examine this more closely I would recommend studying the Trivium

07:25a dog cannot lie neither can he be sincere a dog may be expecting his master to come why can't he be expecting him to come next Wednesday is it because he doesn't have language

07:54if a lion could speak you would not be able to understand what he said what do I say such a thing if we can understand him I shouldn't think we'd have too much trouble with alone you could get me to do you mean for me or for the lab yes yes we need to get an

08:19interpreter what possible use that be to imagine a language is to imagine a form of life it's what we do and who we are that gives meaning to our words I can't understand the lions language because I don't know what his world is like how can I know the world a lion in Heaven's in order for two people to understand each other and communicate effectively they must both share similar set of

08:45associations with a little and goose tick landscape fill up their experiences once occupy a semiotic space the illustration shown on the screen shows the space for the word bird words are symbols that refer lots of things but to our ideas about things no word refers simply to one idea but to a range of ideas conceptualized as a space within this space are a number of acceptable definitions of the word the more acceptable being nearer the center and

09:13the less acceptable closer to the edge when is a tree not a tree when it's a tree George Gurdjieff remarks that we live in a circle of the confusion of tongues and suggested we need to build a language upon the principles of relativity in order to introduce relativity into all concepts and therefore make it possible to determine the angle for this analogy of geometric

09:40communication is something which Wittgenstein also reiterated in order for a picture to represent a certain fact it must in some way possess the same logical structure as the fact therefore linguistic expression can be seen as a form of geometric projection language may change his form of projection but the logical structure of the expression is the unchanging geometric relationships this analogy of a sphere of connectedness is also similar to the analogy I gave earlier of a

10:08are being made of parts and subparts that communicate or interface with each other our evolution as a species depends on the evolution of our language as McKenna said we can only move as fast as the evolution of our language Robert Anton Wilson said you don't need to take drugs to hallucinate improper language can fill your world with phantoms and spooks of many kinds our descriptions limit how we move through space and the possibilities we can imagine in relation

10:35to the manipulation of objects EEP rhyme is a subset of the English language that was inspired by Afrika Korps news work on general semantics is designed to reduce the possibility for misunderstanding by removing certain words like ears and therefore highlights the subjectivity of the statement for example in English bate Herman is better the motor can be rewritten in E prime as in my present mixed state of musical

11:01education and ignorance Beethoven seems better than Mozart to me what may seem like linguistic analogy is actually quite effective and demonstrating how ambiguous abstract language really is it also shows how much we assume is implied within the words we speak in many ways the fact that the English language has divided the noun and the verb does the English speaker and great deservers nowhere is there a noun not participating in a process or a verb not

11:27in body physical matter for example it is raining where is the EDS the word according to the statement be doing the raining or logical statement would be rain is going on if we look unassumingly at the natural world its interconnected nature is hard to miss nowhere in nature do we find separate categories of the sentence all in nature goes together our unconscious assumptions contaminate pure reality making it impossible for the

11:55philosopher to see past the self invented syntax of his mind unfortunately most people take language for granted and don't give much thought to its logical comprehension or how it affects them and majority easily arises from the phantasmagorical image that words create the word dog provides a different image for instance for a Swiss Mountaineer an arctic explorer a British hunter an Illinois farmer Daniel Gilbert professor at Harvard University says we

12:22live in a world in which people are beheaded imprisoned demoted and censured simply because they have opened their mouths flat their lips and vibrated some air whereas Martin Heidegger said man acts as though he will the shaper and master of language while in fact the language remains the master of man the things we know are the things that we can apprehend linguistically the things that we don't know linguistically are the things that can't be seen I metaphysical

12:49we are caught within the syntax of our own language all philosophical undertakings must be done using language and therefore no thoughts can escape the unconscious metaphysical assumptions built into language the languages we are taught we can one of the primary programs that control us and also one of the hardest embedded programs to see beyond this will be explored further later on