When you study philosophy, you tend to spend a lot of time thinking about reason and language. For many philosophers, the two are inextricably linked. Plato warned of the damage that sophistry and oratory (the manipulative misuse of language, devoid of truth) could do on the minds of others, the power of stories to shape our character and ability to think, the power of mathematics to teach us abstraction, and of the changes that turning to written language could cause to our minds and souls. Augustine pondered the universal nature of grammar as he attempted to find a place for individuality within the rational soul. Medieval thinkers went over and over the nature of the Trinity and the idea of Christ as the Word, and what it meant for our understanding of personhood and knowledge. Rousseau warned that the introduction of purely conceptual language had changed our ability to think, empathize with others, and even act in our own best interests irrevocably. This is not even to mention the post-Heidegerrean “linguistic turn” to analytic philosophy and linguistic logic, and the political power of critical theory to challenge the hegemony of western phallogocentrism.
The point is, whether language and the human quality of thought are tied together is of central importance to our understanding of the world in both how we access it, and how it really is. Entire philosophical frameworks turn on whether either or both are universal and essential, or malleable and learned. I’ve recently come across a couple of articles to read in tandem when pondering the issue.
The first is an article from the NYTimes called Does Your Language Shape How You Think?, by Guy Deutscher. There’s a minor glitch at the beginning of the article when the author claims this idea was a discovery of a scientist in the mid 20th century, but other than that it’s a great piece. It doesn’t really dig too deeply into the structural issues at play, but it does work nicely with questions concerning vocabulary.
The second article is from Scientific American magazine titled Is Consciousness Universal? by Christof Koch, and I owe credit to the blog Self Aware Patterns for pointing it out to me (as well as this awesome comic that’s equally relevant to this discussion). This rounds out some of the open questions left by a discussion of language and thought, but it also leaves open questions about where thought originates, and where the subjective experience of language comes into play – sending me right back to the first article with new questions.
The question is whether our use of language plays a part in shaping our subjective experience or if it is itself shaped by some innate mental framework. I don’t have a solid answer with which I’m comfortable – I tend towards a more holistic view where the innate (a priori) and the empirical (a posteriori) aren’t separate but reciprocally intertwined. It’s a false dichotomy.
But it’s a dichotomy that’s fun to ponder. Let’s say that language shapes how we think, and that the edifice of reason is built empirically. On the one hand, the idea that a rational consciousness could be something learned through the manner of speech that surrounds us is deeply unsettling – few want to think that their very thought patterns and ability to imagine consequences is determined by something so changeable and arbitrary as their patterns of speech (it’s practically nihilistic). On the other hand, the freedom offered by a purely subjective notion of consciousness appeals to modern desires for autonomous individuation, giving some hope that we could be in control of how we think and what we give meaning if we could only harness the power of linguistics (the grand hope of ordinary language philosophy, if you’ll forgive my glibness).
Let’s say instead that consciousness and reason are innate and universal, and that language is just a way to connect that internal world with the external stuff that confronts us. In that case, language is just a tool that helps us take the complexity of sensory data and simplify it through the use of labels, categories, and hierarchies. On the one hand, this means that there reality has an essence, and that our minds have the power to access it. However, it also means that this power is only as strong as our language, and that faulty wording, bad grammar, poorly framed logic, and limited vocabulary can prevent us from ever accessing that reality. If we’re too wedded to our understanding of reason, we miss things that don’t fit into it neatly – like quantum physics (which I’m pretty sure I’ll never understand), gut feelings, and more.
I don’t think it breaks down that cleanly, though.
8 thoughts on “Universal Grammar”
SelfAwarePatterns
A fascinating discussion. I tend to think that thought is enhanced by language, and all other forms of symbolic thought, but that consciousness exists regardless. There are people, due to brain damage or a gene mutation, who lack the ability to understand language, but still exhibit the other signs of being conscious.
I think language is a way for us to communicate our sense impressions to each other. Think of any word, and some sense impression will pop into your head, even for abstract concepts like ‘money’ where an image of a greenback or your bank statement might appear. When we speak, we are using words to communicate certain sense impressions.
If the receiver’s word-sense impressions don’t match exactly with ours, then miscommunication happens. Therein lies the limitations of language. It’s probably why many scientists distrust any theory that can’t be expressed mathematically.
Michelle Joelle
Thank you for your comment! I’m not entirely sure I agree, though – I think we can picture something particular but still have a larger idea in mind, and I think we can understand without picturing things at all. I can say “tree” and picture something deciduous, and you could see an evergreen, and I could imagine a variety of scenarios where, unless I’m talking about a specific tree, it wouldn’t really matter or cause any misunderstanding.
I suppose I just think there’s a lot more to communicate besides sense-impressions, and so the model needs to expand. Mathematics and logic take us further from sensory impressions, not closer – using Ps and Qs instead of premises, variables instead of measurements, and so on so that we can properly divest ourselves of the limitations of particular images and instead thing in relationship structures and super-structures. I suppose some might see this in their heads diagrammatically, but for others understanding might come without this, especially when the diagram is large and complex. You could work your way through the diagram, I suppose, but we can also grasp the whole, even when we can’t see the parts. We can skip steps, feel an aha moment when something clicks and the images all disappear. We can call up the digram when we’re explaining or rethinking, but it’s not always necessary.
I don’t think it’s the sum total of consciousness – I definitely don’t want to discount that language unites the inner world with the outer to give us labels for sense-impressions the way you describe, but I think there are different levels of language use, and that our brains use language differently at those different levels.
But then, I don’t have a great way to describe what I mean succinctly, so perhaps I’m not working from the most solid of foundations!
SelfAwarePatterns
I know where you’re coming from, and I did oversimplify a bit. For example, we have language for movement, for action, and for language itself.
But, for all I can determine, it all boils down to sensory perceptions and physical action. We do group these things into patterns, or patterns of patterns, and name those patterns, in other words engage in symbolic thought, but it still rests on a foundation made of senses and physical action. If you pay attention to our language, the names usually are metaphors of sensory perception or actions for those grouped patterns.
I’d be interested though in any counter examples you might have. But I wonder if your struggle to describe it might be because you’re having trouble finding the right sensory metaphor? (That said, it sometimes takes me weeks to figure out the best way to lay out a concept I hold to, but struggle to communicate, so I sympathize.)
Michelle Joelle
I agree we need the sensory foundation to build up the thoughts and the language to deal with the structural relationships of math, but I want to say that we can kick the ladder out behind us because we don’t need it anymore, and then starting from the top reconstruct it without any particular memory in mind.
But hmmm, a sensory metaphor – this is the issue, right, since I think I’m trying to say we don’t need sensory images beyond the word/sign but since phonemes and signs are sensory images, I’m sort of stuck. I’ll take a stab at it though.
The best I think I could do would be to compare it to muscle memory. The muscle needs the previous experience to build up the patterns, but then it operate by habit, not by reflecting on a previous experience. When I do a dance move, I don’t recall the moment I learned it, or think about any other particular time I’ve done it before, but build up a whole new experience from a pattern built into my movements. I can learn to do a particular in one context, but I’m not bound to that context at all. I can change song, do it a different way, and build it as something different and separate from that first experience. It’s remarkable how little I know about how a move works. A lead winds me up for a pop turn and I just sort of do it. This becomes especially obvious when I try to teach something new; I can do a certain move, but when it comes to breaking it down to identify all of the pieces, I’m always surprised by how much there is to something that feels so simple and unified in practice.
I think that we can have thoughts like that – thoughts abstract enough to have a life beyond their previous applications and concepts that can transfer information whether you realize it or not, and that’s what makes people such robust and interesting thinkers. That we can come from vastly different sensory experiences and build a common language that allows us to communicate at all suggests that there’s something about the way we process that affords concepts some kind of reality beyond a connection to a specific image.
I’m not sure if that clears anything up.
SelfAwarePatterns
Actually, I don’t disagree with any of that. I think we’re more on the same page than might have seemed evident at the beginning. I don’t dispute that we have knowledge that eventually becomes independent of immediate sensory experience. We also have innate knowledge that we’re born with (such as fear of snakes, aversion to rotting meat, etc).
But for even the most abstract principal, at least in *my* mind, I find involves some sensory or movement modeling. But maybe I’m just not thinking hard enough about it. I take some comfort that David Hume experienced the same limitation.
BTW, I can’t dance to save my life, but when I do exercises, I might do many movements that I don’t consciously think about, because my cerebellum is handling it for me.
Thanks for a fascinating discussion!
Michelle Joelle
I think you’re right that we’re closer than it might seem to agreement. I think I have some strong commitments to Plato that I can’t shake, so that’s probably seeping into my ideas. I’ll take comfort in Augustine’s doubt, as a parallel. And thank you! I’m sure we’ll return to it again sometime!
Nina Kaytel
Hey there! I nominated you for the Liebster Blog award. Please visit http://ninakaytel.wordpress.com/2014/01/26/award-time/ for more detail. Love and hugs!
Michelle Joelle
Thank you so much! You’re so kind! 🙂