Language is Scrawny

Have you ever considered how scrawny verbal language really is?

In our culture, we tend to live through language primarily. By mapping symbols to “real things”, we find language useful for getting messages across. Language reveals many things that would be otherwise remain hidden.

However, language does have its limits. Language works by defining things. That is, language works by narrowing the focus of your attention. Words necessarily exclude information not within the topic of conversation. To say something is a specific way is to necessarily exclude it from being other ways.

When someone asks, “How are you?” (and you want that answer to be intelligible), you must answer with a description using words (rather than interpretive dance :-) ).

Most people say something like “not bad”—but saying you’re “not bad” leaves many other options. You may opt for the cursory “just fine,” or you may decide to go into some detail. You might say “I had a good day,” or you may even decide to go on for ten minutes about what happened at work. But you can only talk for a limited amount of time (even if you spend your whole life answering the question!).

The point is that you need to cut the answer off at some point in the conversation. Even after ten minutes answering the question, you surely will have left some information out. Language is necessarily incomplete.

Language is scrawny— and that’s precisely the reason it is so useful. Defining ideas using language excludes the other things that the idea is not. Delivering a full and complete explanation is always impossible—and if you live exclusively through language, you’re cheating yourself considerably.

Language maps symbols to experience. Experience is infinite, whereas the linguistic symbols we have available to us is finite. There’s absolutely NO WAY language can ever completely describe what’s “out there” in any complete sense.

By the way, this has been proven mathematically! Just Google “Kurt Gödel” if you’re feeling adventuresome. He proved that any formal axiomatic system (i.e. language) will have assertions that can neither be proven true nor false within that system . Language will a;ways be incomplete. Or, to put it another way, stuff happens that can't be described.

A good example is one side of a card that says "Everything on this card is false". Then, on the other side, the card says "Everything on this card is true".

Which side of the card do you believe? You have to ask the card-holder which side to believe. After that, how do you believe the card holder? Maybe by jumping up another level and asking the card writer? And do you believe the card writer?

When do you stop asking? Who is the ultimate arbiter?

I’ve also heard it phrased this way once: There is no bullet-proof epistemology.