GENIUS FORUMS

From Peter Watson's Ideas:

To give another example, 'Mountain big' is a complete sentence in Chinese. It is not necessary to use the verb 'to be'. 'Without the subject-predicate pattern of sentence structure,' says Zhou Youguang, 'the Chinese did not develop the idea of the law of identity in logic or the concept of substance in philosophy. And without these concepts, there could be no idea of causality or science. Instead, the Chinese developed correlational logic, analogical thought, and relational thinking, which, though inappropriate to science, are highly useful in socio-political theory. That is why the bulk of Chinese philosophy is philosophy of life.'

When I read this paragraph, it seemed a perfect example of something that sporadically bothers me: the idea that our language may be insufficient for certain concepts that a more developed language would deem necessary to critical thouhgt.

I don't think I'm alone on this. Heidegger, for instance, virtually slaughtered the German language and remains to this day untranslateable because he felt he couldn't properly convey his ideas otherwise. Foucault showed how arbitrary historical discourse is, and that the terms of discourse can be shuffled indefinitely to serve any purpose.

Is anyone aware of any specific grammar structures imposed by English (and not by another living language) that restricts our access to truths?

Perhaps this is not quite what you are referring to, but it is a thought that came to me about differences of perceptions between grammatical structures of different languages:

In English, one would say "I am hungry" whereas in other languages one says "I have hunger." This illustrates an alternative way of perceiving one's essence of being.

Trevor Salyzyn wrote:And without these concepts, there could be no idea of causality or science.

I don't buy this at all. It is saying that no Chinese person comprehends the idea of cause and effect.

But the Chinese have historically made great steps forward in things such as technology, and also in philosophies that are based on an understanding of cause and effect, such as Taoism.

"That is why the bulk of Chinese philosophy is philosophy of life."

I'm not sure what that means. All real philosophy is philosophy of life.

When I read this paragraph, it seemed a perfect example of something that sporadically bothers me: the idea that our language may be insufficient for certain concepts that a more developed language would deem necessary to critical thouhgt.

I don't think it's a problem. We naturally adapt our languages so that we can convey whatever we want to convey.

For example, in English, if there is no word for what we want to say then we use several different words, which together are able to convey it. If these several words are very successful in conveying an idea then over time they become accepted as a standard phrase, and eventually the words may all be combined into a single word.

Is anyone aware of any specific grammar structures imposed by English (and not by another living language) that restricts our access to truths?

I don't think there's any structure that the poetic use of language can't get around. And ultimately, all language use is poetic. All language is merely a kind of pointing, or indicating. With language, all things are only suggested.

Elizabeth Isabelle wrote:In English, one would say "I am hungry" whereas in other languages one says "I have hunger." This illustrates an alternative way of perceiving one's essence of being.

It's the meaning that matters, not the actual words.

When a person says "I am hungry", he can mean the same thing as someone who says "I have hunger".

You right kevin. This whole thread is trash. Our language is fine to convey any idea.

Millipodium, this is your final warning. This is a discussion forum, not a place you can simply vote "This is trash".

Kevin Solway wrote:Millipodium, this is your final warning. This is a discussion forum, not a place you can simply vote "This is trash".

If you'll notice, I also said our language is sufficient to convey any idea. that's rich content for ya. Why are you against succinctness, because it challenges your own opinion of yourself that your sheer verbosity is significant?

Kevin,

Yes, the meaning is what is important, and language is merely an indicator no matter how precise ( consider that Truth is something that can only be known directly and never truly spoken, despite all of the volumes written about it), but I was correlating Trevor's quote with the concept of how language influences thought.

(As I indicated to Trevor, that was not exactly what he was referring to. Nevertheless, I thought it was a worthwhile correlating point.)

The difference may be negligible to nonexistent in general meaning, but I wonder how much these seemingly insignificant differences have subliminally on the perceptions of the general population.

In English, we do not assign gender to most inanimate objects, but the French assign a gender to everything. What effect does that have on the philosophies of English speaking versus French speaking people?

millipodium wrote:

Kevin wrote: Millipodium, this is your final warning. This is a discussion forum, not a place you can simply vote "This is trash".

If you'll notice, I also said our language is sufficient to convey any idea. that's rich content for ya.

Sadly, not "rich" enough. All you have offered to this forum are glib one liners. To convey ideas, you have to be able to back them with well thought out arguments.

Why are you against succinctness, because it challenges your own opinion of yourself that your sheer verbosity is significant?

Kevin, verbose? Now that's a laugh.

Maybe your feeling that Kevin's writing is verbose comes not from the number of words he uses, but from the depth of meaning expressed in them. But then that would imply you had some intuitive understanding of his ideas - an intuition you have, as yet, not expressed on this forum.

-
Sue

Elizabeth Isabelle wrote: In English, we do not assign gender to most inanimate objects, but the French assign a gender to everything. What effect does that have on the philosophies of English speaking versus French speaking people?

Grammatical gender does not really map well to semantic ("real") gender. A lot of times words are treated as masculine or feminine simply because they have a similar form to other words that have been treated as masculine or feminine.

Sue Hindmarsh wrote:millipodium wrote:

Kevin wrote: Millipodium, this is your final warning. This is a discussion forum, not a place you can simply vote "This is trash".

If you'll notice, I also said our language is sufficient to convey any idea. that's rich content for ya.

Sadly, not "rich" enough. All you have offered to this forum are glib one liners. To convey ideas, you have to be able to back them with well thought out arguments.

Why are you against succinctness, because it challenges your own opinion of yourself that your sheer verbosity is significant?

Kevin, verbose? Now that's a laugh.

Maybe your feeling that Kevin's writing is verbose comes not from the number of words he uses, but from the depth of meaning expressed in them. But then that would imply you had some intuitive understanding of his ideas - an intuition you have, as yet, not expressed on this forum.

-
Sue

You're out of touch with the facts, sue. Search my name and wonder at my true genius, much unlike the sanctimonius nihilism and language-mangling idiocy that prevails.

Stifle your inner bitch, honey.

Kevin:

I don't think there's any structure that the poetic use of language can't get around. And ultimately, all language use is poetic. All language is merely a kind of pointing, or indicating. With language, all things are only suggested.

I'm going to have to agree with this. I have a romantic notion of finding superior grammatical structures, or necessary words that somehow ended up getting treated unfairly (given too many syllables, for instance) -- and this actually goes with that idea, except perhaps not to the extremes that I want. But what I want isn't always true....

Otherwise:
Eliza,

In English, we do not assign gender to most inanimate objects, but the French assign a gender to everything. What effect does that have on the philosophies of English speaking versus French speaking people?

This is a very close to what I was asking. If it can be shown that something as seemingly simple as gendered nouns has a large influence on what people who use that language think about (and can think about), then it would make the "poetic use of language" very important.