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"I think that Gorgias was right on when he said that "the effect of speech upon the condition of the soul is comparable to the power of drugs over the nature of bodies. For just as different drugs dispel different secretions from the body, and some bring an end to disease and others to life, so also in the case of speeches, some distress, others delight, some cause fear, others make the hearers bold, and some drug and bewitch the soul with a kind of evil persuasion." I don't think this was exceedingly dramatic, but I do think that most of the time, language is just a communicator of a greater reality. IE, I don't think it is reasonable to believe that language creates reality.
Let me use an example to clarify:
When I'm talking with my wife, my words and tone can carry a lot of weight and can significantly impact our relationship, for better or for worse. Sometimes I can say the right words in the wrong way and it can cause an issue. And sometimes, the words I say, such as "Will you marry me?" can excite a very intense, emotional response. Or if I was to say something very insulting and damaging, it could incite an intense response the opposite directions.
Of course, this raises the question: Is it the language that is causing the response, or the feeling/actions behind the language? I think it's a little bit of both. My tone and word choice can go a long way to determining how the conversation goes, and of course, so does hers. But for the most extreme examples, such as in the case of the proposal, it wasn't so much the words themselves as it was the sum total of the experiences in our relationship up to that point that caused her to react joyfully.
So in conclusion, sometimes language (the words you choose and the tone you use to say them) really affects those around you, but most of the time language is just the communicator of a greater reality. And it is THAT reality that really has the power!"
Your Turn: So what do you think? Does language create reality or does it communicate a greater reality?
Greg, you raise some interesting questions. The question, "Does language create reality?" seems to me to be ambiguous. It could mean: 1) Does language literally somehow bring reality into being, either ex nihilo or from preexisting stuff? or 2) Does language influence people's experience of reality? This assumes that reality isn't constituted by experiences. If reality and experience were the same thing then it would make problematic the claim that people misperceive reality.
Importantly if 2) were true, it wouldn't by any means imply 1). But if 1) were true, it would pretty straightforwardly imply 2).
The considerations you raise seem to me to be more relevant to 2). There are arguments that philosophers make in support of an affirmative answer to 1). Donald Davidson in his "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme" addresses some fundamental issues with such arguments. Let me know if you're interested and I can help you get a copy.
HMM... we touched on this in class yesterday, didn't we? What I'm trying to pull for is that reality exists independent of language, but I do acknowledge that it takes language to communicate that reality. And how we communicate can affect how other people interpret it, IE they can incorrectly OR correctly interpret what you're trying to communicate, but that doesn't change what is or is not true.
I'm sympathetic to that, i.e., that language is one thing, reality something else, and we use the former to say true or false things about the latter. But there are interesting issues raised by simple thought experiments. For example, if I asked you to imagine a very simple universe that contained only three individuals, A, B, and C, and then asked you how many objects that universe contained, what would be your answer? You might naturally say 3. But one can argue that the answer of 3 presupposes a conceptual scheme for counting. That is, it presupposes a particular concept of an object. Another concept of objects, namely, the mereological sums concept (and a mereological sum is essentially just an object that consists of the sum of other objects) could be used to say that there are seven objects in that universe: A, B, C, A+B, A+C, B+C, A+(B+C). The idea being that the truth of the matter regarding how many objects is dependent upon the concepts (language) you employ. And further, reality doesn't determine which concept you should employ.
You might think such a thing as a mereological sum is absurd, but it seems that we countenance them all the time. Your body is such a sum; your computer; your bed, etc. You might further want to say, however, that there are principled reasons for calling your body a sum, but none for calling A+C a sum. The problem is that it is very difficult to specify principled reasons for why some things are sums and others not that don't run into counterexamples. For example, you might say that two things form an object (sum) when they are somehow attached to one another so that they don't easily come apart. This might be used to explain why your body's cells form an object. But such a criterion for objecthood would mean that a piece of gum stuck to your shoe would form an object: gum+shoe. And that is not an object most people recognize.
Philosophers respond to these worries in one of four ways: 1) There are no principles we can use to determine which sums are objects and which aren't; thus, we should say that any two sums form an object, e.g., your nose and the Eiffel Tower. 2) There are principles we can use to determine proper from improper sums; they're just really hard to identify. 3) There are no principles, it's just a matter of brute fact which sums form objects and which don't; we can't, therefore, offer an explanation of why my pen is an object, but my nose and my pen aren't. 4) There are no principles and therefore there are no objects; all that exists are indivisible simples that are arranged in ways that we call "table," "chair," "body," etc.; but there are no such objects really.
So, as you can see, the situation is messy as hell and that's only a fraction of the complications. But it's also super fun to think about.
"So, as you can see, the situation is messy as hell and that's only a fraction of the complications. But it's also super fun to think about."
Haha yes, so true!
It seems to me, though, that the difficulty in this thought experiment arises at the beginning in an error in communication. Not understanding what me mean by "object" is just a failure to accurately communicate what we understand by it. I can conceive of my heart being an object and my body also being an object... whether or not it actually is an "object" doesn't really matter, does it? One's a heart, and one's a body.
However, if someone were to refer to my heart as something else, say as a eart-hay, I may not know what in the heck they're talking about. But my eart-hay probably wouldn't cease to pump, thereby circulating blood to the rest of my body. As a result, it still retains its intrinsic nature and attributes, despite the fact that it's referred to as something else entirely foreign to me.
"Messy as hell"... yeah, pretty much! Fun times, though!
Greg, you're right that not understanding what is meant by "object" could cause two people to talk past each other, just as when two people would talk past one another when talking about happiness (psychological sense) and happiness (well-being sense). However, that's not what goes wrong, if anything, does in the thought experiment.
You're right to say, "Look, whatever we call the thing, it's still pumping blood. And that goes for everything else. The bird still develops in the egg. The earthquake still knocks stuff around, killing, and maiming. Before there were humans, the mountains still rose, rivers formed, etc." When saying that there might be some connection between language and ontology (the kinds of things that exist), we have to be careful not to say that language brings things into existence in the way that the cabinet maker brings the cabinet into existence.
Nevertheless, when you say that the heart does what it does whatever we call it, you're still presupposing a certain way of dividing the world up into kinds of objects. So, of course, given the division of things into hearts and organs and organisms, etc., the heart is going to go on pumping whatever word you use to symbolize that conceptual division. But that is not really a reply to the claim that there are other ways of dividing the world up into kinds that are just as legitimate but that don't make a distinction between, say, the heart and lungs, but treat them as a single entity. The question is, if there are other equally legitimate ways of dividing the world into kinds, which is the correct division? The thought experiment, as given by Hilary Putnam, is meant to undermine the idea that there is a single right way, that the world comes ready made, pre-divided into kinds that we just slap labels on. One difficulty when thinking about these issues is getting past our conceptual bias. We take certain/most conceptual distinctions to reflect how things are in the world independent of the concepts/language. But there are real philosophical difficulties with that assumption. It may be in the end that it's correct. But it's not so clear.
I see what you're getting at. "Philosophical difficulties" indeed!
wow. whatever happened to 'black and white'?
everyone likes running around circles of grey?
seems to me a waste of time
just an exercise in semantics
Yes, it's an exercise in semantics, but I think the point is that the semantics do affect how we understand reality, or at least what someone else is talking about.
hmmmmmmm. I always knew you were smart.
;)