The limits of language (Venue: Starbucks)

(Scroll down for topic intro)

THE VENUE: Starbucks

It's winter so we will meet indoors for the next few months

When we meet indoors, we run the same event in two locations: Caffè Nero and Starbucks, so as to provide capacity for as many people who would like to attend, without overwhelming any one venue. Thus, there will be two events published, and you can choose which one to attend. Please don't sign up for both. This event is for the Starbucks location.

We meet upstairs at Starbucks. An organiser will be present from 10.45. We are not charged for use of the space so it would be good if everyone bought at least one drink.

An attendee limit has been set so as not to overwhelm the venue.

Etiquette
Our discussions are friendly and open. We are a discussion group, not a for-and-against debating society. But it helps if we try to stay on topic. And we should not talk over others, interrupt them, or try to dominate the conversation.

There is often a waiting list for places, so please cancel your attendance as soon as possible if you subsequently find you can't come.

WhatsApp groups
We have two WhatsApp groups. One is to notify events, including extra events such as meeting for a meal or a drink during the week which we don't normally put on the Meetup site. The other is for open discussion of whatever topics occur to people. If you would like to join either or both groups, please send a note of the phone number you would like to use to Richard Baron on: website.audible238@passmail.net. (This is an alias that can be discarded if it attracts spam, hence the odd words.)

THE TOPIC: The limits of language

This week's topic has been prepared by Duncan.

Ludwig Wittgenstein famously wrote: "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world", (later: "my mind"), implying that the boundaries of what we can think and experience are set by the language we use to describe them, effectively making language the container of our reality.

• Boundaries of Thought: If a concept cannot be expressed in language, it cannot be clearly thought or understood.
• The World is Thought: Since we can only think what we can articulate, the totality of our language defines the limits of our known world.
• Subjective Reality: Wittgenstein uses "my world" to indicate that this is a personal, cognitive limit, often linked to his exploration of solipsism (the idea that only one's mind is sure to exist).
• Meaningful vs. Nonsense: In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein aimed to define what could be logically stated (meaningful) and what could only be shown (such as ethics or aesthetics, which he considered mystical or beyond language's limits).

This can be interpreted as a cognitive boundary and not just a need for more words. We can only answer questions like: "what exists?" or "what do I know?' using the tool of language.

Wittgenstein also thought that language only has meaning within a context, which is often social. Thus language is deeply rooted in shared life experiences, not just vocabulary. Another well-known quote: "If a lion could speak, we could not understand him" implies that because a lion's "form of life" - their instincts, environment, and motivations - is so alien to human experience, we could not grasp the meaning behind their words, even if they spoke English.

This seems to relate to the common understanding of what language is, in its familiar spoken and written forms. But do we think in language?

The language of thought hypothesis (LOTH) proposes that thinking occurs in a mental language. Often called Mentalese, the mental language resembles spoken language in several key respects: it contains words that can combine into sentences; the words and sentences are meaningful; and each sentence’s meaning depends in a systematic way upon the meanings of its component words and the way those words are combined.

But even if we do think in some form of language, it isn't possible to translate directly between this and our familiar spoken or written language. You may have an internal, structured sense of how you are feeling today, but when I ask you how you are, you may struggle to put it into words. And even if you could, I could not directly relate your response to your personal and private experience of the world and your existence.

So, what to do? Should we just muddle through or attempt to communicate more thoughtfully?

Are other forms of communication, such as art and music useful? Or poetry? Can these media express emotions better than speech?

And finally, a passage from Orwell's 1984:

“Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. . . . The process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thought-crime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. . . . Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?”