artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
|
posted June 04, 2014 12:08 AM |
|
|
What are the limits of language?
There is much to say about this but I'll keep the intro short.
A few weeks ago I was watching a video by some physicist named Lawrence Krauss, he was in a conference aimed at laymen, trying to explain how things can come out of nothing. At some point, he said that nothing is actually not exactly nothing, there are two kinds of nothing but the only way to actually present that information is by using advanced mathematical formulas* and as long as he had to stick to "language," he would, in a way, be lying. Since most of our semantics are derived by the way we sense things and our senses are limited, this can be the situation indeed.
However, there are two sides to this coin. While most people complain about how some things are impossible to put into words, they usually disregard the notion that the conceptualization of whatever they're feeling short of being able to express, mostly exists because we are lingual creatures in the first place: Abstractions are like inventions rather than discoveries. So the complaint is actually not caused by the fact that language fails to function, it is caused by the fact that it fails to function with 100 percent efficiency. I guess, that's why some thinkers postulate the solution to all the philosophical conflict as constructing a perfect language that the misunderstanding of any concept is theoretically impossible: Some sort of a Pax Lingua.
The period we discover to contemplate ourselves as if looking at a third party, is also around the same period when the lingual "I" begins to develop. And with that, our self-awareness leaps to a different level, unlike a cat who can chase his own tail until getting exhausted, we can realize that the reflection in the mirror, doing that hand wave is no one else but ourselves. We can do that, because up to a point, we can dissociate from our own selves and the key to that is having abstractions on a lingual platform.
So, in an "infinite" universe, is trying to specify everything with words like trying to drink the ocean with a cup of tea? Or is language the very reason of that infinity? Literally, just imagine the concept of infinity itself, how could we even try to imagine such a thing if we were not lingual creatures?
*Of course, that also brings back the question, "is math a language" and if so, how does that relate to the main question? Can everything be explained/expressed in math or is math only an aspect, a language hidden within another language like it is in music?
|
|
