Art of Flux Thinking

Language may take different forms, and an accurate definition of language is by all means very difficult – if not impossible – provided we see definition as an atemporal essence. In other words, a synthetic sentence binding the terms, in this case indefinitely or eternally somehow. A synthetic sentence, as Kant and others would have it, is a sentence whose ground for the relation between subject and predicate goes beyond the relation itself as concerns verification – or some may say meaning, not to confuse verification with meaning, and make the former binding atemporally somehow. For example, the sentence “it is a clear sky” can only be verified if we look outside, or more to the point, if we consult something other than the relationship between the words. The verification of the sentence goes beyond the words and their relation in order to ground the sentence itself (on the whole). Is this not perhaps because all sentences do something when and only when their words are combined? Look you at the word ‘hot’, does this tell you anything? Words on their own have no import, they become dead weight. However, “the lady was hot” as a combination of words brings with it something else – it begins to paint a picture, to tell an allegory, to play a game as some would say. Split that sentence up to its individual words and it dies, keep them together and they are all of a sudden alive – if we draw an analogous relation between meaningful and alive, and meaningless and dead. How is that possible? It is such a mystery; a beautiful mystery. We have here a movement from nothing to something. The parts (words) on their own are dead; the whole (sentence) taken in itself is alive, breathing, shaking, exciting, penetrating, consuming. A good analogy would be: play a melody one note at a time on a piano with a copious temporal gap between each note, and then play the same melody but this time with the temporal gap initially set for it. The flow of one cannot be compared to the flow of the other. The whole must be distinguished from its parts. Yet, we must ask, how can this distinction be made? How is it possible for the whole to be different, if it’s just the parts brought together? What makes for this distinction and difference? Binaries brought together establish a compound that is other than the binaries themselves individually. Relations between things then must take a priority over the things taken on their own or abstractly. Holism seems to take a priority over reductionism.

Yet, when we encounter a word, e.g. ‘cat’, on its own, we may ourselves independently infer something meaningful from the utterance. We must however distinguish carefully the meaning brought by the utterance or appearance of the word on its own and our inferences after its appearance. The word on its own is meaningless, what we infer from its appearance, the determinacy we give it is where meaning arises. Is this determinacy we add entirely subjective and as such solipsistic as some have argued, or is the relation  more complex than that?

Words on their own are dead weight. For example, upon hearing the word ‘cat’, a picture may come in my head of a cat, or a story, or a sentence, or a question… what occurs after the utterance is indeterminate, but upon the occurrence after the utterance determinacy and meaning is given to the word, or conversely indeterminacy and meaninglessness is established. For example, my familiarity with the word ‘cat’ and as such my capacity to establish a determinacy to the word, and conversely my unfamiliarity with the word “shkoll” and my incapacity to establish a determinacy to the word is grounded on something. Why is it that I can determine something about the appearance of the expression ‘cat’, and not of the expression ‘shkoll’? Is memory and prior use a necessary and sufficient reason for this tension.

This tension is particularly observable when encountering a word from another language that we have never encountered before. There is no inference we can draw from the word, no determinacy, whether imagined or real, because the word falls outside our field of possible determinacy – unless we arbitrarily assign a determinacy to it, but then we fall into solipsism. This is what Wittgenstein meant regarding the notion of the cog that moves in the machine but nothing moves with it. We must thus carefully describe what we mean by determinacy of words. There is a field of determinacy concerning words, out of which meaning arises. This field is grounded on prior use of the word. Upon the encounter with a new word, unless we use it so that it can establish itself in the field, it quickly enters a field of indeterminacy, otherwise solipsism.

We must at once relate and maintain that determinacy and meaning is a public affair grounded on habit and use of a myriad of words and expressions. A word is indeterminate until determinacy and as such meaning is offered it by its use. The encounter with a new word can only establish itself in the field of determinacy if it can find its way in, if it can be translated in terms of the already established field. (This implies a natural, pre-linguistic field upon which language grasps its determinacy, otherwise it would remain impossible, like building on thin air – conclusions already drawn by Wittgenstein.) In order for it to do so it needs a medium, a go-between, the indeterminacy and the determinacy. Until someone explains to me the use of the foreign word “shkoll”, or find the equivalent in my language, if there is one, then I cannot begin to establish it in the field of determinacy. It remains indeterminate and meaningless, as such dead. Meaning arises from this field of determinacy, in which words and their uses become hardened, but never on their own, they are always synthetically attached to other things e.g. other words, pictures etc. The more a word is used the more determinate it becomes, the quicker meaning can be adduced to it. There needs to be a capacity in us for attaching words to things or each other and establishing their use in memory. In order for this to happen, the words cannot be placed far-off the already established determinacy, no matter how small that determinacy is. Words, if they are to be meaningul to a person, must be traced back to something determinate and recurring in the person’s experience - whether it is their recurring use or a natural pre-linguistic field upon which language is built. Is this primarily a psychological and as such human feature pertaining to memory, or a linguistic feature pertaining to language on the whole?