Is it a mistake to try and understand the world through language?

Question

language by necessity places things into neat little boxes, but what if the world is not like that? what if instead of black or white there are only ever infinite shades of gray? how do we know we're not stilting our understanding of the universe enormously by limiting our absorption and expression of knowledge through the weak, inefficient system known as language?

Answer 1

Language is the invention of man to verbally communicate his message and feelings. Men lived for long without languages in their journey. Many animals do communicate without any verbal mode. The most sensitive and the intuitive among men try to understand the eternal truth subconsciously by transcending the language. The language is still a poor communicator of the feelings. Meditation is the best possible mode of delving deep into the truth lying buried in our sub-consciousness.

Answer 2

Not by language alone, we need psychiatry!

Answer 3

Languages created a great and deep valleys between the people and languages are the main reason to create enemity, ego and hatredness among the people. But we are trapped and made habituated to live with the help of them. If it is possible to communicate with each other with our souls we can find peace everywhere and any where. Try to find out the advantages of a village as a globe and global village

Answer 4

The only limitation of definitions is that they cannot be presumed to be reality itself . It is not language's fault that the definitions are still mainly black and white that is most definately our problem - our language use exists only as a reflection of our individual ability to define - the language does shades and the words are the same for everyone - it's the quality of each mind that differs

Answer 5

Oliver Wendall Holmes said that words are the skin of conscioius thought.  Language is the best form of communication that we have on the playing field, even though 80% of communication is non-verbal.  The difficulty is that every culture assigns different meanings to the same non-verbal and language actions.

Answer 6

Math is a language, and if it were inefficient as you seem to think, then tell how is that so much of the universe has come to be understood by employing this language methodically to describe what we observe?

Sorry but I do not buy the whole deconstruction methodology, there is simply too much practical results that have been garnered from employing language of mathematical sciences to dismiss it or label it "inefficient".

How can a system that incorporates the "infinite shades of gray" into its fundamental frame work by considered a stilted approach?

If language is a poor tool then perhaps you can provide an example of how.

Or better yet an example of a more efficient system of communication.

If you had done this I might be willing to consider your line of reasoning, but failing to do so makes your question seem naive.

Answer 7

Life experience alone will help you to comprehend my dear Padawan.

Answer 8

Yes. Language is merely some human noise.

Knowledge of the world must gain through the experience of your life.

Answer 9

I disagree.  You've posed what I believe to be a great question.  But the same language you put to task has just helped you convey a message.  Language is a very dynamic thing that can't just be quantified as grunts and yelps.  Its a glue that forms understanding.  Math and time.  These things exist even if you don't acknowledge them, but language has help us harness the power they both hold.  the brain can learn to catch a pop fly baseball without ever uttering a word.  but the language of physics and math can explain why it happens and associate it with landing on the moon.  Not to mention it can evolve like  a living thing says a lot also.  A word like Ipod or cheetohs can come into existence to describe something so precise and fade into obscurity as the thing it describes passes away only to be brought when people talk about the dead like carpetbaggers or  vagabonds.

Answer 10

Language is the only tool that humans have to "understand" anything. Thoughts/ideas are language. Meaning and value are described by language. We cannot 'understand' via a Kantian "Das ding an sich" (Noumenon - or 'thing in itself').

It's not a matter of "what if," our empirical perceptions (Phenomenon) are a priori to linguistic expressions and descriptions, but they alone do not give understanding, meaning, or value.

Think about it this way, whenever you look up a word to learn what it means the definition is presented as a series of other words which can be looked up themselves, and on.... we never get to an understand of things, events, agents, entities, etc... without language. This is one of the major reasons why language (i.e. the proper use of it) is so important.