[lit-ideas] Re: Must the Word be Literate?
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 08:58:10 +0100 (BST)
Before getting to the point furthest below, just note my reservations on this
which centre on why omniscience would render all knowledge 'analytic' and
never 'synthetic'? Why? [Bearing in mind that 'premises' must be
distinguished from 'definitions' and that 'premises' may embody 'synthetic'
rather than definitional knowledge, for example].
> From an earlier perspective, the language in question would, of
> course, be the inerrant Word of God. And I think it was Leibniz who
> pointed out, as Robert Paul has done, that it would consist entirely
> of analytically true statements. It is only due to the limitations of
> human understanding that any true statement appears to be synthetic.
> Not being omniscient, we simply haven't grasped all the premises.
I tend to agree with the thrust of this, however:-
> Nowadays, we doubt the possibility of constructing this perfect
> language. The incompleteness theorems imply that any attempt will end
> in an infinite regress. But Wittgenstein's conclusion that we cannot
> talk about the really important things is far from novel; it has been
> the stock in trade of mystics for centuries. After all, "The Dao that
> can be spoken is not the Dao." The true name of God is unsayable.
Youser, youser, yahweh. Now to the end:-
> My anthropological question is whether, empirically, there is any
> evidence of people thinking this way about language in the absence of
> writing. Or, in other words, is writing the model for the Word that
> shapes the world but cannot, at the end of the day, comprehend it?
How could this be tested "empirically"? In thinking "about language in the
absence of writing" we are concerned about pre-literate societies - what
records will they have left us, and insofar as we find such societies extant
how could we test your question?
My feeling is that the view/feeling that there is an 'unsayability' about
things would have existed even in pre-literate societies - because, for
example, we all experience this when we struggle to express ourselves in
words [even before we are literate]; and in terms of religion etc. [as
opposed to expressing 'pass the salt'] this struggle to express the
transcendent in easy terms is particularly acute - so that, according to
Wittgenstein in TLP as with many mystics before him, we may as well give up
trying and just embrace the situation.
Donal
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