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transcending language?
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transcending language?

CypressMoon
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Posted 05/16/07 - 11:11 PM: Subject: transcending language?	#1
Wittgenstien wrote, "The limits of my language are the limits of my universe." I think, at least for wittgenstien, our language is derived from culture. So this reinforces what could be the now cliche of - "We are confined by our culture." He also wrote, "the mystic can feel the limits of the universe." This sounds to me like a materialist statement - in that the metaphysical sensation of feeling is one that is mirrored in our mind as opposed to represented. So to transpose, "The mystic can feel the limits of culture/language." My question here is as follows. Is it possible to transcend our culture, in the wittgenstinian sense? Or in the heideggerian sense, Is it possible to transcend the limitations of consciousness? Semantics aside, this is really the same question with different terms. Whether you're a materialist or an idealist, There must be some curiosity inside of you as to what is actually out there. Where do you look, or rather, who do you look to, to find what's in the world. Semantics aside, what is the thing in itself? Edited by CypressMoon on 05/17/07 - 10:40 AM
"We stand before the world, not in it." - Rilke "MAD, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence; not conforming to standards of thought, speech and action derived by the conformants from study of themselves; at odds with the majority; in short, unusual." - Ambrose Bierce (The Devil's Dictionary) If you have a small child, gently pull the mask over them first, and pull at the ends to tighten the straps.

Kelby
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Posted 07/22/08 - 02:58 PM:	#2
There is no thing in itself. What does that even mean? I want to see the thing free from our color schemas. Okay...get rid of the color. Next...I want to see the thing free from shape. Okay...remove the shape. I want to see the thing for what it really is. That would be nothing because all attributes are reliant on a perceiver/consciousness. (I do not mean this in an Idealist sense) What would that thing be in of itself? To even perceive a thing we would have to be looking at it through a consciousness. Even God’s consciousness would see it according to his unique consciousness and too would not be able to know what a thing is in itself. In itself basically indicates a thing as it truly is, that is, outside the limitations of consciousness. But it is through consciousness we perceive the world and to go beyond it is not even a matter of possibility. It just doesn’t make sense. A good example is…”what is the true color of the world?” Color is a secondary quality that emerges between our eyes interacting with the world. There is no blue color in objective reality. Nor is blue purely subjective. There is no color in the brain. The color subsists in a sort of limbo between interacting objects. Embodied Cognition has shown that we perceive the world according to our unique bodies, and this is the only world we can know. It doesn’t even state that we should even try to know the world “beyond” our bodies because that would be impossible. What we perceive IS the very THING that is out there according to our unique embodiment. Edited by Kelby on 07/22/08 - 03:04 PM
Embodied Cognition: http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/embodcog.htm#H2

swstephe
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Posted 07/22/08 - 08:54 PM:	#3
CypressMoon wrote: Is it possible to transcend our culture, in the wittgenstinian sense? Or in the heideggerian sense, Is it possible to transcend the limitations of consciousness? Semantics aside, this is really the same question with different terms. Whether you're a materialist or an idealist, There must be some curiosity inside of you as to what is actually out there. Where do you look, or rather, who do you look to, to find what's in the world. Semantics aside, what is the thing in itself? How about learning another language? I know several and don't see enough to really get worried about limitations on consciousness just yet. Maybe Chomsky's Syntactic Structure is correct in that every human has the same syntax despite the variations in language. I can safely say that every language has something that is used roughly like a "verb" and a "noun" and words or transformations that modify those words. I can write programs in a few dozen different programming languages. Here I'm communicating with something not human to order it to perform certain tasks in certain situations. I was interested in the language "Lojban" for a while, as it was supposed to be based more on logical structure than culture, (every sentence is the same pattern and there is no ambiguity). Perhaps becoming fluent in this language would free your consciousness beyond what is inherited from other humans. The only problem is there are supposedly only a few fluent Lojban speakers in the world, so there may not be too many people to talk to. For another time, I started to envision a non-verbal way of communicating which carried the essence of the information that was being communicated rather than just repeating the same information patterns. It involved a device which monitored your physical, mental and emotional states and produced a fluctuating symbol which communicated that state to anyone who could see it. I thought you could even put the devices on other, smarter, animals and communicate these basic shared, primal, instincts to them visually.
Ethics is the measuring of morality. Morality is the measuring of good. Good is the measuring of benefit. Benefit is the measure of values.

ade90212
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Posted 07/26/08 - 10:32 AM:	#4
Cypress Moon wrote: Wittgenstien wrote, "The limits of my language are the limits of my universe." I think, at least for wittgenstien, our language is derived from culture. You are confusing the early and the late Wittgenstein. The Wittgenstein who claimed that "The limits of my language are the limits of my world" is not the same Wittgenstein who believed that language is based in our form-of-life.
"Philosophers often behave like little children who scribble some marks on a piece of paper at random and then ask the grown-up "What's that?" - It happened like this: the grown-up had drawn pictures for the child several times and said: "this is a man", "this is a house", etc. And then the child makes some marks too and asks: what's this then?" - Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value

unenlightened
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Posted 07/26/08 - 01:38 PM:	#5
Conduct an experiment. Cease the stream of inner commentary; stop naming the feelings and sensations, switch off the mechanical language machine. Later you can turn it back on to tell us the results, or at least to tell us that the world does not fit inside language.
The observer is the observed. J Krishnamurti "Philosophy, to the Philistine, is an evolutionary process, watched over by some sort of brisk dynamic Providence, and culminating in the supreme insight of modern thought." John Cowper Powys

Banno
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Posted 07/26/08 - 03:39 PM:	#6
CypressMoon wrote: Wittgenstien wrote, "The limits of my language are the limits of my universe." I think, at least for wittgenstien, our language is derived from culture. Cypress, your comment is extrapolation rather than exegesis. "The limits of my language are the limits of my world' is perhaps best understood as saying that there is nothing about which we cannot talk. Think of it as an equivalence statement: if there is something in the world, then we can talk about it; and if we can talk about it. then it is a something in the world. But you can talk about anything, and anything can be talked about; so Wittgenstein is not here placing any restriction, either on the world or on language. Nor do I think he would agree that language derives from culture. Rather, language and culture form a way of life. each is indispensable to the other. End of exegesis. You cannot transcend your culture or your language, since you are embedded in both. But both language and culture grow to encompass novelty. So this again is not a limit. Edited by Banno on 07/26/08 - 03:45 PM
Davidson: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement. Russel Morris: There's a meaning there, but the meaning there doesn't really mean a thing...

Banno
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Posted 07/26/08 - 03:51 PM:	#7
ade90212 wrote: You are confusing the early and the late Wittgenstein. The Wittgenstein who claimed that "The limits of my language are the limits of my world" is not the same Wittgenstein who believed that language is based in our form-of-life. Perhaps, but I don't think the change from early to late was so great that he would reject the old claim. The statement about the limits of our world are not incompatible with the notion of form-of-life.
Davidson: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement. Russel Morris: There's a meaning there, but the meaning there doesn't really mean a thing...

springmo

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Posted 07/26/08 - 10:20 PM:	#8
It's crucial to understand what early Wittgenstein meant by "the limits of language are the limits of my world" before saying that it is compatible with his later philosophy. In the Tractatus, language is capable of representing things in states of affairs. The world is my world because the world IS these representations of it. Language is limited in the sense that it can only represent things, which are composed of their logical constituents known as objects, in states of affairs. The world is not the totality of these "things" but is the totality of their relations, which we articulate in language. That is why, according to Wittgenstein, that any propositions of religion, aesthetics, even philosophy are nonsense and cannot be said because they don't represent things in states of affairs. This is the argument. I don't think Wittgenstein meant that such unsayable or "mystical" propositions weren't important. Quite the contrary, he had a deep respect for artists and gave away his entire personal fortune to support them. When Wittgenstein later wrote that Heidegger was "running up against the limits of language" he didn't mean it in the same sense. He meant that language is limited to what can be expressed intelligibly. I don't think anyone here who has read him would argue with the notion that Heidegger's writing borders on incomprehensible. To the later Wittgenstein, there is no need to transcend language. We are inclined to say that language is limited when he gives the example of us being unable to describe the aroma of coffee, for example. But then he begs the question, if we are truly lacking the words then why haven't we come up with any? For Wittgenstein, ordinary language is all right, if sometimes misleading. There is no need to be concerned with what we cannot express when we should be more worried about what can be expressed. Unlike in his earlier writing, there is no sharp distinction between what makes sense and what doesn't. Instead, the later Wittgenstein would ask 'in what context would I say that Heidegger makes sense?' rather than just saying that 'Heidegger doesn't make sense.' Edited by springmo on 07/27/08 - 09:57 AM

kris
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Posted 07/27/08 - 05:02 AM:	#9
CypressMoon wrote: Wittgenstien wrote, "The limits of my language are the limits of my universe." I think, at least for wittgenstien, our language is derived from culture. So this reinforces what could be the now cliche of - "We are confined by our culture." He also wrote, "the mystic can feel the limits of the universe." This sounds to me like a materialist statement - in that the metaphysical sensation of feeling is one that is mirrored in our mind as opposed to represented. So to transpose, "The mystic can feel the limits of culture/language." Did Wittgenstein mean language as a mode of communication that humans use or was he referring to a particular language such as English? If former, then he did not worry about language based limits. Language started with nothing and we can keep growing it as much as we want. If he was talking about a particular language, he would have benefitted from learning other languages. What is true of language is also true of culture. The two go hand in hand. About a mystic feelinng the limits of the universe, I disagree. We only feel limits when we stop learning. As long as we are learning, we cannot feel limits. My question here is as follows. Is it possible to transcend our culture, in the wittgenstinian sense? Or in the heideggerian sense, Is it possible to transcend the limitations of consciousness? Semantics aside, this is really the same question with different terms. Whether you're a materialist or an idealist, There must be some curiosity inside of you as to what is actually out there. Where do you look, or rather, who do you look to, to find what's in the world. Semantics aside, what is the thing in itself? We can tanscend our culture by learning about other cultures, which requires some knowledge of other languages. I feel fortunate to be writing here in English. It is not my native language. I learnt concepts through this language that are not expressed in my native language. Unfortunately, most Englsih speakers do not avail themselves of the ideas expressed in other languages. That said, language is not necessary to know what is "out there". It is however necessay to relate it to those who do not take the trouble to find it out for themselves. Of course, hearing from others is not the same as direct experience. Edited by kris on 07/27/08 - 05:35 AM
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Banno
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Posted 07/27/08 - 05:11 AM:	#10
kris wrote: Did Wittgenstein mean language as a mode of communication that humans use or was he referring to a particular language such as English? He certainly did not mean any particular language.
Davidson: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement. Russel Morris: There's a meaning there, but the meaning there doesn't really mean a thing...

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