Language is the most precious and the most dangerous human gift Friedrich Hlderlin - Essay Example

10 October 2009 Language Language is one of the most precious human gifts as it allows human beingsto exchange thoughts and share information. Language is founded in the human need to make sense of the world and our place in it. What distinguishes it from mere personal opinion and credulity is its rejection of passionate convictions as sufficient grounds for belief and action, and its commitment to careful analysis and systematic reasoning. At the same time they help explain why, to the exasperation of those new to philosophy, it never quite succeeds in finding the ultimate, irrefutable, universally acknowledged truths traditionally presumed to be the measure of its worth. Simply put, subscription to a common set of doctrines ranks relatively low among the priorities of those engaged in philosophical inquiry. Rather than a uniform body of doctrine, philosophy manifests itself in an ongoing process of critically examining and refining the grounds for our beliefs and actions, the ideas we recognize as true, as deserving our loyalty and commitment. Thesis Friedrich Hlderlin states that language is the most precious and the most dangerous human gift". Language is among the signs and symbols by which humans order their worlds and construct their conceptions of reality. Researchers explore symbolic and semiotic accounts of language as an instrument by which people conceive reality or construct their representations of it: the ways in which experience mediates interpretation of the world. Since symbolism requires a relation between two different kinds of thing, one that symbolizes or signifies and another that is symbolized or signified, the dualistic tensions between the linguistic intrinsic and extrinsic figure prominently in symbolic theories, as do questions about interpretive latitude. Suspending 'logical' belief in the opposition of subject and object, inside and outside, mind and body, phenomenologists explore language from the perspective of the lived, bodily experience-from the interpreter's point of view, one might say. By attempting to set aside the binary oppositions that fuel debates between autonomists and heteronomists, phenomenology offers a perspective that is strikingly fresh and richly resonant with language as a lived, human process (Bennett et al 43). The idea that language structure is in some sense symbolic has philosophical roots that probably extend at least as far back in history as the ancient doctrines of mimesis and ethos-the belief that language imitates and shapes attributes of human character. The influence of idealism is also quite often evident in symbolic theories, since its quest to secure a place for language in the realm of cognitively significant activity yielded so many inspiring descriptions of language's distinctive felt and rational attributes. Also, since symbolic accounts generally entail the conviction that language's significance is a function of its capacity to signify, point to, or represent something other than itself, familiar tensions between expression and autonomy (between referential capacity and presentational immediacy) often lie very near the surface. Thus, symbolic accounts of language occasionally resonate deeply with idealistic philosophical orientations of formalistic or expressionistic persuasions, orientations to which they are in certain respects related. At the heart of her theory lies a very distinctive definition of 'symbol': a vehicle for the conception of reality (Searle 82). Anthropology of language suggests that language is the main criterion that distinguishes humans from other animals. What language does, in this view, is enable conception. This act of coherence making is, furthermore, the common foundation of thought and language; this achievement of coherence, not the logical operations by which it is subsequently manipulated and ordered, is the root of humankind's distinctive mental power. In other words, thought and language are each ways albeit contrasting ways -- of 'transforming reality symbolically (Miller 22)'. Since contemporary semiotics generally maintains that both symbols and signs are instances of referring, it is important to understand precisely how Miller's account differs. In this view, referring is essential to the function of signs or "signals," but not to symbols. Signs are of two kinds, natural or conventional. 'Natural signs' contain actual symptoms of what they designate, while the relationship between 'conventional signs' what they signify is largely arbitrary. This distinction, however, is undergirded by a common logical or functional foundation, a relationship between something accessible yet inherently less uninteresting (a sign) and something interesting but less accessible (the signified). Socrates and Aristotle see language as the main tool of rhetoric and argumentation. Socrates explains that symbols are the things with which we wrest entities and events from 'raw' sense data and the flow of undifferentiated presence -- things with which we forge pattern and meaning from randomness and confusion. People cannot know the world as it 'really' is, believes Socrates, only those aspects that get refracted for us by symbols and are thus rendered conceivable (Patzig 12). Syllogism is one of the main features of Aristotle's writings. This conviction that langauge has logical value has ancient roots, and is a conspicuous presence throughout the recorded history of reflection on language. Aristotle's theory takes knowledge as the measure of humanity. And like most, hers gravitates toward the historically prevalent heteronomist view that language's meaning and value lie somewhere outside the language itself. What distinguishes Aristotle's approach from its many predecessors is its attempt to establish language's cognitive significance by stressing its symbolic nature. But bringing language under the umbrella of symbolic activity inevitably raises questions about what language symbolizes, and how. Aristotle's treatment of these issues has the vigor and vitality (as well as some of the naivet) characteristic of any early exploration of uncharted waters. Despite inevitable shortcomings, Aristotle's portrayal of language as a symbol and of langauge activity as fundamentally rational are an important historical link between idealism and contemporary semiotic accounts of language. Aristotle comments: In the case of rhetoric there was much old material to hand, but in the case of logic we had absolutely nothing at all until we had spent a long time in laborious investigation. If, when you consider the matter and remember the state from which we began, you think that the subject is now sufficiently advanced compared to those other disciplines which have developed in the course of tradition, then it remains for all of you who have heard our lectures to forgive our omissions and to thank us warmly for our discoveries (Aristotle cited Patzig 123). As logical modes, both function in accordance with the same underlying principle: perception of common logical form between symbol and symbolized. So the patterns inherent in verbal expression make it well suited to certain kinds of conceptions and insights, while those in language are specially suited to others. Aristotle claims variously that language makes change perceivable, makes time audible, and creates an image of passage; but it is language's special relationship to feeling that is its most significant value. Language should be regarded neither as a symptom nor as the cause of feeling, she urges, but rather as the logical symbolic expression of the inner, felt life. Language is structurally analogous to the realm of human sentience and thereby an important vehicle for the conception, and indeed even the 'education', of the life of feeling. Language does for feeling what language does for thought. Conviction that humans symbolically construct their worlds resembles thesis on a general level; but his close explorations of the 'logic' of symbolic functioning clarify many issues that remained cloudy, and correct points on which it appears she was probably mistaken. Many details of linguistic account and some of his most basic philosophical assumptions diverge substantially from the theory of language development. For other researchers (Marrinich 77), language symbols are not so much purveyors of insight into otherwise inaccessible realms of experience as tools with which people construct or create their worlds. Nor are art symbols go-betweens for mind and feeling, vehicles that mediate a cognitive grasp of the 'felt world'. Language's relation to feeling is more a function of the way symbols work: in language experience emotions function cognitively, in service of infinitely fine interpretive judgments and executive decisions. Words and other symbols,, thus, must not be viewed as proxies for a 'reality' to which they refer, nor vehicles for its conception. For in this view, language meaning (indeed, what language 'is', and even when it is) is not a stable, or indeed, a unidimensional thing -- it cannot be accounted for in perception of patterned sound alone (Marrinich 98). Some critics admit that language can be interpreted as enigma which is difficult to define and explain. For instance, linguistic symbols transform sense data, meaningless in themselves, into things, relationships, and events. As mediators of perception and conception, they determine what we can think or know. Language is no neutral conveyor of information about preexistent reality, truth, or meanings. It gives such things shape and in so doing determines what the world can be. We cannot know prereflective reality (reality as it "really" is), only various cognitive refractions afforded by symbols. Before the refinement of reason and propositional thought, people knew their reality metaphorically. Language and logic offer powerful alternatives and extensions to metaphorical thought, but have not replaced it. The foundation for all propositional thought and discourse, these ancient, imaginative powers remain viable today and are exercised extensively in artistic endeavors. So language and art share a common function, as symbolic systems: mediating our grasp of reality (Bennett et al 2009). Symbolization is truly unique to humans. For instance, animals can be taught to use signals to refer to things in their immediate surroundings. Such signaling activity is not symbolic, but symptomatic its use restricted to immediate wants and things physically present. Cognition and perception are not fundamentally different types of activity. Imagination, a way with images, is our basic cognitive process, the essential foundation of propositional thought. And imagination functions intuitively, guided more by feeling than by logic. If this is granted cognition can no longer be construed as a purely logical, cerebral process. Thought "passes from insight to insight not only by the logical processes, but as often as not by short cuts and personal, incommunicable means (Miller 87). A metaphor, though literally false, is a potent cognitive vehicle, a source of meaning and knowledge. Metaphorical expression is no mere linguistic coloration or ornamentation, rather, it articulates new ideas and insights, and with an economy and precision that eludes literal discourse. Metaphors are not, as the logical positivist would have it, symptoms of confused or ill-formed thought. They are simultaneously illogical and highly rational. Indeed, metaphor is the very source of linguistic novelty and vitality (Miller 93). In spite of great opportunities proposed by language to mankind, language can ruin lives of people and transfer negative information. In this case, the link between signs or signals and their referents is a direct one. By contrast, symbols refer to or mean their objects indirectly, through the crucial process of conception. Where signals consist of relatively simple, three-term relations among signal, object, and perceiver, the symbol situation is more complex. In symbolism, the link is not between sign and object, but between symbol and conception: the connection of symbol to symbolized is always mediated by a conception. Where signals are part of a three-term relation (subject-signal-object), language symbolism involves a four-term relationship among subject, symbol, conception, and object. This 'conception' that distinguishes signification from symbolization is the common foundation of all human mental processes. Propositional thought and pre-propositional, imaginative experience (language, for instance) appear radically different until one appreciates that they are both manifestations of this fundamentally human tendency to transform symbolically what is given to experience. Since both imaginative and rational activity grow from the same symbolic root, Searle argues, it is clear that human intelligence and knowledge extend well beyond the limits of language (Searle 198). The account of language means as revelatory faces yet another challenge, one that is disarmingly direct and forceful: that it derives from the deposed theory that knowledge consists in somehow tapping into 'essences'. But there are no such things as essences, no 'forms of feeling' apart from the experience of feelings themselves. No characteristics are in themselves essential attributes of anything, except for purposes of classifying. What is 'essential' is a function of one's language purposes and perspective, not absolute. In sum, Symbols on the other hand are tools that enable us to deal with things not present, to bring things to mind. They transform sensory impressions into things, events, ideas, and values. The human mind incessantly and automatically transforms sensory input into something new, something no animal has: conceptions that endure beyond the experiential data that give rise to them. Recognizing that this formative symbolic process is the essential foundation of all cognitive activity has profoundly important implications for the arts and language for it establishes that these uniquely human interests are fundamentally cognitive in nature. Human perception is a rational achievement, a transformation of fleeting sense data into meaningful images and situations. Works Cited Bennett, M. et al. Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind, and Language. Columbia University Press; 1 edition, 2009. Marrinich, A. P. The Philosophy of Language. Oxford University Press, USA; 4 edition, 2000. Patzig, G. Aristotle's Theory of the Syllogism. Dordrecht, 1968. Miller, A. Philosophy of Language (Fundamentals of Philosophy). McGill-Queen's University Press; 2 edition, 1997. Searle, J. R. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge University Press, 1999. Read More