Language and discourse, and, while we're at it, reality

[Fiendishjester]

K, a couple of questions.
1: Is language a baseless system?
2: Does discourse shape reality, or even create reality?
3: Is perception a scewed way to base reality on, do we base reality on perception?

Well, these are the most interesting reality based questions I could think of, any answers are appreciated.

 

[A Believer]

I don't think that a normal person could even have a clue. Though, that is a very good question.

 

[Kyubi-no-Youko]

3: Is perception a scewed way to base reality on, do we base reality on perception?


To answer the second part of this question...yes, we do base reality on our perceptions. Does this make our perceptions realities? No. Ones opinion is not fact. They may be based upon facts (or even lies/fallacies) and be strongly backed by them, but that does not make the opinions/perceptions themselves fact.

I'll try to get to the other questions...if I think up an answer. ^^

 

[Fiendishjester]

So does that mean that reality does not exist?

 

[Fiendishjester]

and P.S. I have my own thoughts on all of these questions, I just wanted to see what you guys thought and then start a discussion.

 

[Kyubi-no-Youko]

So does that mean that reality does not exist?

Reality:

That which is real; an actual existence; that which is not imagination, fiction, or pretense; that which has objective existence, and is not merely an idea.

to say reality is not exist is an oxymoron. Reality is existance.

Which leads to another question.

If imagination, fiction, etc...exist, doesn't that make those things reality?

 

[Fiendishjester]

let me re-phrase then, does that mean there is no reality. But for the record, it isn't really any oxy-moron, I mean, to say "existence doesn't exist" would not nessacerily be a contradictory statement, it would just get rid of the idea of existence.

 

[Kyubi-no-Youko]

Good point.

I'm making this up as I go along...if it isn't obvious by now.

Is there no reality? Hard to say. I may very well be a figment of your imagination...and/or you of mine.

 

[Blessed-one]

2: Does discourse shape reality, or even create reality?


isn't reality "created" by circumstances and experience? then it is different for everyone.

 

[wryan]

"K, a couple of questions.
1: Is language a baseless system?
2: Does discourse shape reality, or even create reality?
3: Is perception a scewed way to base reality on, do we base reality on perception?"

here's my stab at it.

1. To narrow it down a bit lets consider spoken languages only.(i.e. english, spanish, french, etc.) I'm guessing that the "base" being referred to would be reality. I think the answer to the question would depend on whether or not you considered an individual's perception to be rooted or based in reality, because when we communicate what more can we communicate other than our own perceptions of what we deem as real or not real.

Some might say that every individual's own perception of the world is "reality" if only to that person. I believe this idea began(or was first documented) from the Sophists, but I could be wrong.

My own beleif is that their is an absolute truth/reality, but I do believe that each individual's perception does differ in relation to it.

So my answer/question would be that if language is an effective way of communicating one's perceptions, and one's perception's are based, whether largely or slightly, in reality, than no, language is not a baseless system.

2. Discourse definately shapes perception, so if you believe that one's own perception is reality then yes.

If you don't believe this(which is the category I fall into) it becomes tricky because how do we define just what is real and what is not without using our own perceptions as a guide?

Using our perception we can find an answer pretty easily. Let's say someone tells me that the rules of gravity are a lie and I believe them. So taking my newfound knowledge I climb a tree and jump. Regardless of whether or not my perception is flawed, I'll still fall, and I'll still hit the ground. The reality is not neccesarily what I heard, understood or thought I heard and understood. The reality is me falling and hitting the ground. I may still view the event as an illusion, but the doctor might not find the reality too tough to grasp. What I'm saying is that even false perceptions carry a real consequence. The courts may have an insanity plea, but natural laws don't seem to.

But if we're not allowed to use our own perceptions we'd need to have some kind of defintion for just what reality is, which is not easy to come by. Descartes believed "I think therefore I am", so in his mind the fact that he had perception proved to him that he was real. My opinion is that even though our perceptions are flawed, they are based upon reality which at times can usurp our perceptions. Ofcourse I can only tell what is real(or flawed) through my own perception, so I guess I'm running around in circles here.lol

3. For this one, I'd say yes to both questions. Yes, perception is a skewed way to base reality, and yes we base reality on perception.

I'm thinking of Compte's book on the failure of reason. If reason is a product of our own perception, than how can we use that same reason to measure our own perception?

It's like if you had a ruler that you weren't sure was giving you the right measurements. How can you measure whether or not your ruler was right or wrong, when all you have is that one ruler?

My personal belief is that reason, or perception, is incomplete without faith. I believe reason and faith were meant to be used together to complete each other, but I guess that's a whole other discussion. Thanks for listening to my late night ramblings. Bill

 

[Brimshack]

UGH!!!! Moderators!! He said discourse. That's gotta be against some kinda rule here. Else we'll be over-run by Foucault followers. It'll be the end of all good things I tell you. Please, if there isn't such a rule. Please make one up. I suggest the following:

There will be no discourses about discourse in this discursive community. In the event that a discourse demarcates a position with respect to the discursive features of discourse (including constructions evoked by means of metahym, hyponym, or obvious synonym), then all such discourse will be discursively occluded according to the most hierarchically rhobust and coercive discourse paradigms yet engendered within the vast spectrum of our androcentrically, racist, sexist, agist, homophobic, rape society! …thus effectively curtailing the discursive engagements so construed as to discourse in reflexive valence modalities via measures transposed uopn the discursive eventings via tokens of the most efficiently vertical power-relations symbolized and indexically constituted under the authoritative mimesis of our discoursively discoursing anti-discourse.

That ought to put the fear of the Deific Imaginary right into the little heathen!!!

 

[foolsparade]

Brimshack you tickle me funny bone.

 

[Fiendishjester]

lol, you forgot the static dominant power flows, you did say vertical relations, but not static ones, so

P.S. Foucault rocks, fine, he was an old gay guy who was into S and M (in Sanfransisco none the less), but his ideas were good (not the S and M ones........but the rest of them). Ride the Foucault horse!

 

[Fiendishjester]

Okay, these are my opinions on the questions (and yes, I am going to use some Foucault, if u dun like him, deal with it )

1: Is language a baseless system?

I would have to say yes. The reason is this, I wasn't refering to reality as the base, I as refering to anything that would count as a real foundation. "What would this sort of foundation be?" you ask, well, it would be anything that is outside of the system of language. But, it cannot be a system which itself is baseless or foundationless. For example, I would not consider intersubjective agreement a system wth foundation for a few reasons. First off, subjectivity is a foundationless system, secondly, because we can never surely know what another percieves without actually being that person, the agreement is falsified, I might of had something in my mind that I was agreeing on, but you have something completely different, therefore, it is a fallacious agreement. For example, I might agree with you that the definition of word "x" is "y" but none of us agreed what the definition of word "y" was, so itwas an artificial agreement, and thus, false. Let's plug in the "numbers" If I agree with you that "enraged" means "angry", but I think that angry means "pickle" and you think it means "orange" we never really agreed on what enraged means. When you think of it, can you really define any word? What I would think it comes down to is what in the end we would percieve the word means, but, since we can never really convey this, and like I sad, since we can never truly agree on this, I would say that language is a baseless system.

2: Does discourse shape reality, or even create reality?

This is of course, as you predicted Brimshack, where Foucault comes into play. Again, I answer yes, but only to the first part. Here is a quote from the book "Understanding Foucault" (yes, scoff all you want, I'm just trying to give an example that is easy to follow) the stuff in parenthasees (i dun know how to spell it) inside of the quote are comments that I put in, except for the last one.

"An example (of how discourse shapes/creates reality) could be something as mundane as records documenting the movement of ships into and out of a harbour over a 50-year period. A study of such records might find that, from a certain time, referances to piracy began to crop up-or to enter discourse. What such references would show is that piracy had bcome a problem for that harbour's shipping authorities. It may have been the case that acts of piracy had occured previously, but it is not until it enters the discourse of those records that it has a status within the practices and concerns of the shipping authorities. Certain events might have occured quite regularly-ships attacked, people killed, and goods stolenby men with wooden legs and parrots on their shoulders-but until these things were recognized as constituting something called "piracy", they would have been ignored, and given some other discursive explanation (say, rebellion, or acts of war, or just wild Firday nights).

I don't think I can give a better example, so yeh, I think that would be why discourse shapes reality. I would say it dosn't create reality, as in, It is not what reality is solely based on, because, if everyone was silent everything would not suddenly blink out of existence, no, I think reality is based on perception, which brings me to my last point.

3: Is perception a scewed way to base reality on, do we base reality on perception?

I would say yes to both. Basically for the same reasons stated by Wryan. But I'll go further, if reality is based on perception, which is scewed, does reality then exist. I would say that percetion creates reaity, and not the other way around. The only reason I say this is because I for one cannot know there is a reality, I am sure though, of my perception, basically like the ruler of the universe (reference to the Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy four part trilogy, lol). Where I think Wryan goes wrong is when he says "Regardless of whether or not my perception is flawed". There is nothing to base your perception on to determine whether it is flawed or not, therefore when you fall, your perception is making that reality, and if it doesn't, then your doctor is making is own reality when he thinks you are in critical condition. For example, there was a case of this women who has lupis, a disease where your immune system starts attacking your body, she wasn't expected to live for many more months, let alone years, and she lived for like ten more years after going to a witch doctor and getting a curse removed. Now she obviousy created a reality where the curse was the cause of her ailments. I'm not going to arrogantly reduce it to "I know reality doesn't exist due to that example" because it is obviously a very complicated thing, a possibility is we create rules for our own realities, but, the truth is, it's tricky, if reality really doesn't exist well, there are a lot of unexplained things, things that couldn't be explain because there is no reality to use to explain them.

 

[wryan]

Hey Fiendishjester,

For #1.

You said.

“What would this sort of foundation be?" you ask, well, it would be anything that is outside of the system of language. But, it cannot be a system which itself is baseless or foundation less.
When I was reading this part of your post I remembered the old example of what if what I saw as blue, you saw as green, but we both called it blue.

I’m drinking a soda while writing this so let’s use it as an example. I go to a restaurant and tell the waiter that I would like a Pepsi. Now the waiter might have a completely different perception of just what a Pepsi is, but nevertheless, he brings me just what I asked for, and had perceived to ask for in my mind. I have difficulty seeing how a thing could be baseless if a cause understood in a matter like this produces, more times than not, the desired effect. In my mind, having a base or foundation does not mean a perfect base or foundation. I believe that language could have a flawed foundation, but it’s still a foundation nonetheless. In other words, if language is based on perception(which is admittedly flawed) I don’t believe this means that language is baseless, because even within these flaws, time and time again, it seems that through cause and effect we can see evidence that there is some base communication going on. In other words, nine times out of ten the waiter isn’t going to bring me a cheeseburger when I ask for a Pepsi(unless I accidentally walked onto the SNL set that is. lol)

So to answer your first proof here. Perception can exist outside of language(in that at the very least there are things that we can conceive of but not communicate adequately). For the second part I would say that cause and effect(even when it exists in our own flawed perception) seems to point to some sort of base/foundation between people communicating through language. I’m sure you’ll disagree here, and I hope I’m not missing something too obvious.lol


For #2.
The more I think about it, the more I agree with you here, although I’m not familiar with Foucault. Speaking of perception, I think I mistook “create reality” to mean change reality, which would fall more into “shape reality.” So we’re in agreement here.

For #3 you make some interesting points. One thing that sticks out to me is that you believe language does not create reality, but perception does. My view is more that perception provides an interpretation of a reality that exists outside and independent of our own perception. The thing is your right, I cannot prove that this outside reality or truth exists, and yet I wouldn’t go so far as to say this proves it doesn’t exist. This is where faith comes into play in my mind, as a sort of bridge between my own limited perception and greater “reality”. So where many would look inward for truth, I would try and look outward for it, and try and bridge the two together.

I remember an interesting point Lewis once made about the existence of a greater truth outside of us. He said (paraphrased) when your hungry food exists to fill that need. When you desire a woman, she might not desire you back, but she still exists to be desired. So when we desire something greater than ourselves, whether it be in God, or in a greater reality, then just because we desire it, it seems to point to it’s existence in one form or another. It may not be exactly what we envisioned, but I cannot help but feel that we have the innate desire for a reason. So if we are desiring something greater than our own perceptions of the world, then hopefully something is there that is causing that desire.

That last paragraph was not considered to be a proof, just something I thought was pretty interesting. Thanks for listening. Bill

 

[Brimshack]

Foundation - itself an over-used metaphor. I don't know what it means to say that language has a foundation, so it doesn't really strike me as meaningful to say that it doesn't. In general I get white noise when people talk of foundations.

I like the piracy example. To it I would add evidence suggesting that grammatical differences appear to affect at least some perceptions. A linguist named John Lucy used the distinction between mass and count nowns to test differences in attention to number between English speakers and Yucatec Mayan speakers (who lack a count/mass noun distintion), and found that there were predictable differences in the way the speakers described number in visual representations.

Another example of the way that discourse shapes reality: If you reaqd Navajo history, you will see that there was a great deal of raiding that occurred between Navajo populations and Mexican and Pueblo populations prior to 1863. Navajos got most of the blame, though the entire Southwest was full of raiding parties and a thriving slave trade. Now in 1863 Kit Carson burned all the crops and hogans and killed all the livestock, so when winter rolled around most Navajos surrendered, and were forced to walk to a place in SE New Mexico (Fort Sumner). Four years later, they were allowed to return home. Many historians will tell you that the long walk is what ended the raiding practices. And indeed the raiding seems to stop if you read the books, but why does it stop.

It stops largely because it is not called raiding anymore, it was called theft. After Fort Sumner the Indian Service hired a Navajo leader, Manuelito, to form a Navajo police force, and they dealt with the problem on a case by case basis. When any raids on Navajos occured Manuelito reported to the army what had happened, and the army went and got the livestock back. When Navajos conducted a raid, the army notified Manuelito, and he found the raiders and got the livestock back. What had formally been treated as a collective action - and an act of war to be met with collective retaliation - was now classified as an individual crime, to be met with detective work and focused police measures. The difference was in other words in the way they talked about it, and subsequently the way they deal with the actions. The Navajo police force was successful in ending the raiding parties, but for this to occur all the parties involved had to change the way they talked about a practice which was objectively the same act in both periods.

…see they changed the outlines of the discursive power flows.

 

[Fiendishjester]

I completely agree with you Brimshack, and those are some col examles.

Now, for Wryan, when I say language is a foundationless system, I'm not saying it doesn't work, there are probably billions of examples showing that it does. I'm simply saying it has no foundation. Exclusively talking about language, I see it as a circular chain, that is just linked to itself. Basically when you start defining words to their smallest "denomination" for lack of a better word, the words start defining themselves (okay, I realize that must have been confusing, so let me clarify). Pretend I'm looking up what rage meant, some how I can read, but otherwise I don't know what the heck any of the words mean, and so am using a dictionary. So I look up rage, and then find the definition angry, well, I don't know what that means so I look up angry, I find mad, again, I don't know what that means, so I look it up and find, then I find fury, I don't know what that means, I look it up, it means rage. So, if you can envision it in your mind, I look at language as this intricate spiraling mess of chains that in the end are just attached at the ends. Of course to give any of these things meaning, we need intersubjective meaning, but like said, we never really agree on the same thing. So, while that waiter may give you what you desired, in essence, he was giving you someting completely different, and while the system works, it is still baseless, and that was my only point.

"So to answer your first proof here. Perception can exist outside of language(in that at the very least there are things that we can conceive of but not communicate adequately). For the second part I would say that cause and effect(even when it exists in our own flawed perception) seems to point to some sort of base/foundation between people communicating through language. I’m sure you’ll disagree here, and I hope I’m not missing something too obvious.lol"

I actually totally agree with this part except for the cause and effect thing which am a tad confused about. I agree that perception exists outside of language, I actually think most of perception does exist outside of language. If you could elaborate on what you consider cause and effect, maybe I could answer or agree with you on whether I would consider that a base.

 

[wryan]

I really like the Navajo example you use here Brimshack, nicely put. Bill

 

[Brimshack]

Thanks guys. Long time no see wryan.

 

[wryan]

Thanks guys. Long time no see wryan.

Yeah, this is the busiest season at work so I haven't had much time to myself lately, but it's good to be back. The site's changed a bit since last time I posted.(I can't believe the ETIAL thread is still going over in Unorthodox Theological Doctrines, pretty soon they'll have put the thread count back at zero when they run out of numbers). Anyway, thanks for noticing Brimshack, it means alot. Bill