Drawing a cloud over the sun
A friend writes, in a lovely phrase, that natural language “is always flowing and helping us to understand”. To say that is a matter of description, wouldn’t you say? The phrase describes a certain fluid power in natural language, which lets us say many things.
Another friend worries about “the propagation of unlimited original terms”. It seems as if a sceptic might ask: “This propagation is surely not an act of description, but of revision?”
So I am wondering: perhaps all projects which set out to revise our language must rest upon the forms and patterning of natural language?
(If we wanted to use big, long, fancy words, we might try to sound more grand: “Perhaps all projects in revision necessarily rest upon those structural inter-relations between ontology, epistemology and logic which are already given by, or inescapably inherent in, the language in which we are speaking?” - But you might agree that this more formal phrasing does very little for us. Does it not merely draw clouds over the sun?)
And if that were so (if any revision must rest upon the forms of natural language), might we not be wise to be mildly sceptical even of slight revisionary projects?
Might we not wonder how to tell when a revision is sound? How are we to be fairly sure that the author is not building a House of Cards, a hopelessly flimsy erection? Or that we are not going into a mere maze of words, in which Mr Nobody is playing Hide-and-Seek, for there is no-one to find?
And now it seems natural to ask: given some revision which is
particularly radical and extensive, would it not be shrewd in us, if we were to view it with a matching degree of radical and extensive scepticism?
Here are a handful of questions which happen to scatter themselves across my path:
(1) Might a person not feel a need to create new terms, who is
writing in a language which is not their first language, and possibly lacks some of the subtlety available to the native speaker?
(2) Might not a person have a certain need to be less than perfectly clear, who (perhaps in theology, for example) is trying to defend the indefensible, and is to some extent caught up in a project of self-deception?
(3) Might one not wish to seem to say something clever and new, if one’s career were to depend, as an academic career may (in unhappy cases), upon a kind of conspiracy of mutual pretence or pretentiousness?
As you say, “So many terms, so little time!”
It seems a person might wonder, “Are there not resources enough in our natural language to say what we mean in a clear and simple way? Is it not a special case, when we need to coin a new word or phrase? And when we do so, do we not need to give an account of ourselves?”
Amongst those philosophers whose names all the world knows, many have taken trouble to write their new ideas without ever seeming to stretch the natural language.
Plato, Descartes, Hume and Frege come to mind as instances. Their writing is simple, elegant and clear. Even in their most startling or arresting moments, they are models of transparency.
In sum, I suspect that our sceptic might ask one question: “Do we muddy the waters simply because we have not yet learned our native tongue?”
And though fast (and even angry) answers come to mind, it seems that this may be a good question. I think myself that it merits a little slowness and contemplation, and ought not to be instantly cast aside.
In passing, I’m aware that this may be seen as a patrician line of thought. Perhaps it is no worse for that.
My love and good wishes to anybody who may take a few minutes to read this.
Rob
September 7th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Very interesting angle Rob. I like your “might one…” and “it seems a person might wonder…”