Is there any subject beyond language?

I suffer from delusions and halucinations, I have a condition known as schizoid affective disorder. I am also a poet. I can try to use my poetic pallet to paint a landscape or portrait of the things I have experienced whilst having a psychotic episode, Horror and beauty of schizoid-affective disorder, but to be honest, It is nigh impossible to truley connect to people and have them see what I have. Lower level, it is easy to convey things such as sight, sound, touch etc. but higher case it becomes increasingly difficult to transcend the barriers of box-sanity. We are all one in our own minds, yet we hardly understand ourselves. How the hell are we supposed to understand something that is irrational and beyond comprehension? To live with the illness that I have means to constantly question your own motives and emotions, to worry, even, that your thoughts are not your own, or if on the recovery or recovered, if those thoughts are sound or, in fact, not paranoid or ill-placed. To be forever balancing one's thought in contrast to the moment is something that can never completely be described no matter how eloquent or wordy you are. It is things such as this that rise above language. Yet if I explain it, although never to the extent that another person will understand it as I do, it all comes crashing back in tidal waves. It is these motions in my mind that someone else doesn't see. Am I making sense?

Kie

Lucky to get to language

ColoradoGuy said:

This one is a spin-off from a silly thread in another forum. The question is this: are there things, aspects of human experience, that language cannot comprehend; is anything out-of-bounds? For example, are there things the visual arts can do to our brains or our souls that are denied to language, to writing?

I think some of the immediacy of the visual arts, the direct connection to our feelings, bypasses language. Yet when we later describe that experience to someone, of course using language, the feeling returns.

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If Lacan was correct, and he may very well have been, human experience is experience of a range of personal signifiers of which even fewer are traversing conscious experience at any given moment. Language is not the same as the personal stream of signifiers so in effect we are living in a largely extra-linguistic way almost all the time. The thoughts we can track in a coherent way may have a linguistic structure but I think part of that seeming linguistic structure is illusory in that the designations can be vague and not even syntactic and there are large areas that play a role in conscious thought that are demonstrably (according to recent cognative studies that I have not seen) not even syntactic (and if not syntactic, then not linguistic): for example map-like "images" and apparently even images of "plots"...anyway, perhaps we only think we dwell comfortably in language and we are deluded by the feeling of relief when we are able to formulate some aspect of experience in language. So we tend to identify with those moments of self-reinforcement when we are well-enveloped in language and downplay all the circumlocutions it may have taken to get to those moments of formulating a self in language.

PS. I forgot to answer the question. Some subjects, for example simple narratives are well within language. Many subjects are not going to work well in language: for example what is really going on in anyone's head is not really going to fit well into language. Interesting topics ought to occur just within what language can deal with: complex narratives and complex motivation.

For example, in one of my favorite books, Peter Galison's Image and Logic: a Material Culture of Microphysics U. Chicago 1997, the author tries to get at the actual way that theory and observation and engineering and society and history interacted in constructing and getting results out of very elaborate experimental mechanisms in the 20th Century. I think language definitely gets pushed to its functional limit in Galison's astounding work. If he went any farther, he'd have to come to your house and build you a cosmic ray detector. And you still would not get the emotions of making original discoveries even then.

What about...

those extremely emotional events which simply cannot be described in words?

The death of friend's child, supreme sexual delight, an overwhelming feeling of joy or regret or sadness where one is left trying to explain but not finding any words that can convey what the experience was like.

ColoradoGuy said:

This one is a spin-off from a silly thread in another forum. The question is this: are there things, aspects of human experience, that language cannot comprehend; is anything out-of-bounds? For example, are there things the visual arts can do to our brains or our souls that are denied to language, to writing?
.

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Definitely. Anyone who has practiced meditation for any length of time and with any results would confirm that there are just no words that can describe the experience - at least, no English words. Sanskrit does make an attempt; but even Sanskrit words are useless for anyone who has not "been therem done that". Interesting topic!

ColoradoGuy said:

The question is this: are there things, aspects of human experience, that language cannot comprehend; is anything out-of-bounds? For example, are there things the visual arts can do to our brains or our souls that are denied to language, to writing?

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No.

It's only a question of vocabulary.

robeiae said:

No.

It's only a question of vocabulary.

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I can certainly find/invent words for everything I experience; but language is about communication. So whether I can communicate with those words is dependent on whether "the other" has shared my own experience.

You may, for instance, speak of "love". But of the other has never experienced love? The word is meaningless; he/she might imagine something that is nothing near what you really mean.
You know what the colour red looks like. You cannot really describe "red" to a blind person who has never seen that colour.

Language depends on the fact that in general, we experince the same emotions, see the same world. The less we share those experiences, the more limited our language becomes. We don't even have to go into the subtle, more esoteric realms. It's even so withn everyday language.

I always find it extremely difficult to describe my home country, Guyana, to people who have never been there. How do I bring across the shape, smell, taste of certain exotic fruits, for instance? The smell of the marketplace? I might use just one word with a fellow Guyanese to evoke those smells, sounds, atmospheres; it is almost impossible if the person I am speaking/writing to has not been there. Genip, golden-apple, simatoo, soursop - these words have meaning for me and to my countrymen - probably not for you, and no matter how excellent my vocabulary is, you can never ever really "get it".

I find language extremely limited. I wish I could communicate without words; I'd do much better.

aruna said:

I can certainly find/invent words for everything I experience; but language is about communication. So whether I can communicate with those words is dependent on whether "the other" has shared my own experience.

You may, for instance, speak of "love". But of the other has never experienced love? The word is meaningless; he/she might imagine something that is nothing near what you really mean.
You know what the colour red looks like. You cannot really describe "red" to a blind person who has never seen that colour.

Language depends on the fact that in general, we experience the same emotions, see the same world. The less we share those experiences, the more limited our language becomes. We don't even have to go into the subtle, more esoteric realms. It's even so withn everyday language.

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It's not about inventing words--it's as exactly as you say: description based on shared experiences. And it is true that some people are limited in the potential range of experience, like the blind. Certainly, you can't necessarily describe a color, or the visual aspects of anything, to one who has no capability to see (in the literal sense).

But the question was not: Is it sometimes not possible to describe something with words in such a way that a particular person will be able to comprehend that thing, it's nature, what have you? The answer to that is "yes," as you have shown.

CG's question was: The question is this: are there things, aspects of human experience, that language cannot comprehend; is anything out-of-bounds?

The answer to that is "no," imo. There is nothing that a human being can experience that is beyond the potential scope of language. Think of describing a computer to a caveman (sorry, Geico guys). From the caveman's perspective, it would seem very much as you have said: he lacks the experiences and world-view to understand the description. But that doesn't mean language cannot be used to describe the computer. The problem is in the vocabulary, and vocabularies are indicative of experience, of world-view. So the potential is there, and this is always these case, imo, as hard as it may be to imagine (or describe ).

If it all comes down to vocabulary, then why does there seem to be more questions than answers in life?

robeiae said:

The answer to that is "no," imo. There is nothing that a human being can experience that is beyond the potential scope of language. Think of describing a computer to a caveman (sorry, Geico guys). From the caveman's perspective, it would seem very much as you have said: he lacks the experiences and world-view to understand the description. But that doesn't mean language cannot be used to describe the computer. The problem is in the vocabulary, and vocabularies are indicative of experience, of world-view. So the potential is there, and this is always these case, imo, as hard as it may be to imagine (or describe ).

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Well, my first answer to this question was also Yes; there are experiences that simply cannot be captured by language. The mind has dimensions that are quite certainly out of the range of vocabulary.

aruna said:

Well, my first answer to this question was also Yes; there are experiences that simply cannot be captured by language. The mind has dimensions that are quite certainly out of the range of vocabulary.

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Obviously, I disagree.

The conundrum here is that if I insist on examples of things/experiences that cannot be captured by language, how would you provide them, since you can't use language to describe them!

But things like love, your country's nature, and red are not such things, imo. The inability to provide a meaningful description of these things is dependent on vocabulary--of both the speaker/writer and the listener/reader.

robeiae said:

Obviously, I disagree.

The conundrum here is that if I insist on examples of things/experiences that cannot be captured by language, how would you provide them, since you can't use language to describe them!

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That's just it; I cannot provide them. All words I have ever learnt, in any language, are inadequate. Thid inability does not in any way disprove my argument; maybe all it means, to you, is that my vocabulary is inadequate. I maintain that it has nothing to do with vocabulary.

But things like love, your country's nature, and red are not such things, imo. The inability to provide a meaningful description of these things is dependent on vocabulary--of both the speaker/writer and the listener/reader.

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Even here, vocaculary is dependent on experience. Let's take a fruit, "simatoo", that grows in my country but is not normnaly exported, and which I assume you have never tasted.

Even if I had the vocabulary to describe the taste of that fruit - if you yourself have never tasted it, that vocabulary is useless. At the most I can compare with fruit you probably HAVE tasted - I could say it's a cross between pineapple and mango, for instance, which it isn't, and you might get an inkling of what I mean buy only if you yourself have tasted pineapple and mango.

Vocabulary is dependent in every case on the fact that we have shared experiences - the same senses, similar emotions, etc. We have generally been exposed to the same things. Words are no more that keys, shortcuts, we use to unlock those experiences. I say green, immediately you know what I meann. If you have never seen green yourself, the word is meaningless - to you.

I personally find words to be very inadequate substitutes for experiences.

Again, with colours and tastes I think I have missed the OP's actual question. Sorry - I'm posting in a hurry. Gotta go.

Reasonably well

robeiae said:

Obviously, I disagree.

The conundrum here is that if I insist on examples of things/experiences that cannot be captured by language, how would you provide them, since you can't use language to describe them!

But things like love, your country's nature, and red are not such things, imo. The inability to provide a meaningful description of these things is dependent on vocabulary--of both the speaker/writer and the listener/reader.

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I think you are basically correct. If I understand you right, you are suggesting that language works reasonably well for most socially important uses most of the time. It is pretty clear (I think) that language does not work perfectly since (for example) for many transfers of information, maps and diagrams work much better.
Of course even maps and diagrams have to be explained somehow or other. And of course, the way the world works now, there are tremendous numbers of totally non-linguistic information transfers going on between machines all the time. Somebody still has to give an assessment if the information is to be passed on into social usage, but a lot of information actually reaches the stage of being reported along with a probability of its being true ( a p-value in the realm of statistics, for example, a "contact" in the realm of weapons systems) without ever entering the world of language at all (up to that point). In the end, of course, anything can enter the world of language, but how it does so can be crucial. For example, in blinded studies this exclusion from linguistic assessment is considered to result in a greater probability of truth for a given chunk of information.
Anyway...a lot of the recent history of science has been concerned with looking into how language links up with all these other structures (machines, instruments, photographs, diagrams, theories, histories, engineering traditions, computer programs and so on) and a fairly sophisticated terminology (yah! language in the end) has been worked out to provide a "vocabulary" in which to describe all that....

aruna said:

That's just it; I cannot provide them. All words I have ever learnt, in any language, are inadequate. Thid inability does not in any way disprove my argument; maybe all it means, to you, is that my vocabulary is inadequate. I maintain that it has nothing to do with vocabulary.

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You're misunderstanding me here, Aruna. I was admiting to this reality--if you say you can't describe some concept through words, I cannot prove you wrong.

However, I think people do two things in this regard:

1) Underestimate their ability and the ability of others to either articulate or comprehend a reasonable description of a difficult concept.

2) Overestimate the uniqueness of their own understanding of a concept.

In either case, the idea that "words cannot express this" can arise, but it doesn't make it so, again imo.

And Sokal...

I can read binary.

Map

robeiae said:

And Sokal...

I can read binary.

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And you can read maps too, but that doesn't make them linguistic objects.

*whooosh*

The sensation of physical pain is nearly impossible to describe in words, we utilize exiting words e.g. stings, itches, burn, hurts like hell, etc., to describe symptoms, but the feeling [sensation] of the pain is blocked, otherwise we would actually feel the pain when discussing it.

Example, hitting your thumb with a hammer while trying to put a nail in the wall, most of use clumsy folks knows what that pain sensation feels like, but can you accurately put words to convey the pain? I think not.

"It hurts like the dickens!"

Q.E.D.

Seriously, good point Robert. There's a reponse for that somewhere in the back of my mind. I'll have to dwell on it for a bit.

Sensations

Robert Toy said:

The sensation of physical pain is nearly impossible to describe in words, we utilize exiting words e.g. stings, itches, burn, hurts like hell, etc., to describe symptoms, but the feeling [sensation] of the pain is blocked, otherwise we would actually feel the pain when discussing it.

Example, hitting your thumb with a hammer while trying to put a nail in the wall, most of use clumsy folks knows what that pain sensation feels like, but can you accurately put words to convey the pain? I think not.

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I don't think language is supposed to convey absolutely everything, only the socially useful. If I say to a group of people: "Who is in pain?" and only those who are in pain say that they are, then we can say that language is working. Perhaps not perfectly, but well enough for most situations. If we want to measure pain, chances are we are going to have to specify some other procedure.

Is there any subject, or language, beyond Sokal?

Sorry...back to discussion in progress...

Subjects

gclare said:

Is there any subject, or language, beyond Sokal?

Sorry...back to discussion in progress...

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It makes me wonder. I'm writing a very big Sci-Fi series that features a time-traveling renegade Byzantine Mercenary as its largely absconded hero...so any subject close to Science or Fiction or the Byzantine Empire or Mercenaries or Renegades or absconding or relatively recent history is of interest to me.

Sounds intriguing! And serendipitous: how will your protagonist cope with language changing?

Good Question

gclare said:

Sounds intriguing! And serendipitous: how will your protagonist cope with language changing?

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Well...I'm only writing in English mostly, but so far people in the tale have gotten by with Latin when there were big disjunctions in time or space or demeanor or relative demonization. Because of the adventures of the savage tribe that raised Mr. Hero I assume Roman Army Latin would be more or less his native tongue and a reliable Lingua Franca for his early wanderings and even a possible way of communicating with some moderately modern characters. After all, Ammianus Marcellinus, was born in the East and wrote in Latin in the late 4th century, so Latin ought to work for the Early Byzantine adventures of even the most savage hero as well as standing him in good stead for later, more cosmic, deeds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammianus_Marcellinus