[lit-ideas] Re: Must the Word be Literate?
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 14:21:19 +0900
On 10/3/07, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> John McCreery wrote
>
> >> Perhaps, again. But there is no denying that modern philosophers
> >> ranging from Leibniz to the early Wittenstein took quite seriously the
> >> notion that an ideal language could be constructed in which all and
> >> only true statements about the world could be uttered.
>
> and Donal comments
>
> > ...is the idea of an "ideal language" really "rooted in quite common
> > earlier beliefs about primordial words": was it not, in Wittgenstein's case
> > anyway, rooted in the idea that there must be a logically perfect language
> > that could be developed or spelt out by philosophical analysis and in terms
> > of which we could then set a bar to measure our ordinary, natural language
> > against, and so engage in a process of philosophical clarification?
>
> I can't conceive of a language 'in which all and only true statements
> about the world' can be made. Any statement 'about the world' is
> contingent and for any such statement it must be possible to express its
> denial in the same linguistic form. Which is true is a further question
> but a language in which only true statements could be made would, I
> think, consist entirely of tautologies and other forms of analytically
> true statements. But be that as it may.
>
Donal writes about Wittgenstein's attempt to discover
>>a logically perfect language
> > that could be developed or spelt out by philosophical analysis and in terms
> > of which we could then set a bar to measure our ordinary, natural language
> > against, and so engage in a process of philosophical clarification
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.
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. The
point of meditation is to free the mind of words.
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?
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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