Language, How We Talk About Ideas and Objects, and the Confusion which Arises from It

In this essay I’d like to talk about what I think to be the peculiar way we use language to refer to ideas and objects, and also to try to explore what I think to be the reason why at times it is easy to mistake what’s supposedly just ideas/hypothetical as something that is real as in “it is how nature is” and to think what’s supposedly real/the case to be just ideas as in “it is less real/weaker in substance, mere ideas and therefore more susceptible to doubt”. For example, some people mistake scientific theories such as the theory of evolution to be something that “needs more research before being proven to be entirely true”, or that “it is just a theory, so it might be true, it might be false, but nowhere does it hold the same degree of certainty as real facts”, despite the fact that it has been proven to be entirely true in biology and as something that we can actually see in our life (the evolution of diseases, dog breeding, etc). On the other hand, some people believe in conspiracy theories, or people in the middle ages truly believed that some diseases were caused by God’s wrath, and so one of the ways to be cured might be to repent and lead a pure life from then on.

Because this essay will be somewhat lengthy, I’m going to break this essay into three segments. Each segment will deal with their own set of questions as we spiral down deeper into the core of our problem. This is done so that our exploration will still be quite easy for us to follow without sacrificing the rigorousness necessary to reach the right conclusion. The first segment will be a brief discussion of how our language works. Specifically, it will discuss how language works in terms of its functioning and rules and also how words receive their definition. The next segment will then deal with the specifics of the confusion. It will discuss how the rules of language and its workings open the way for this confusion between ideas and reality. The third and last segment will deal with the deepest question of all, that is, the cause of our confusion. What is it from a person which allows us to have this confusion, and whether or not such confusion is inevitable.

Because each segment is related to each other in its ideas, it is inevitable that at times in a given segment I backtrack and reinvestigate an idea which I have discussed previously in a segment prior to that given segment. It is because at times some ideas can only be explored more thoroughly under the light of its own implications and consequences.

Thoughts on Language

Wittgenstein, in his book Philosophical Investigations, put forward an interesting thought on language. Language, usually thought to be something very close in concept to human rationality, was thought by him instead as a part of the human form of life. In short, according to him, it is the way we live that language is a part of, instead of our form of rationality. Other than that, he put forwards multiple insightful remarks on language, such as how language is used in everyday life, etc. For now, the point of interest to us is his idea regarding the possibility of language being something that is for everyone to see instead of something that is private. This idea is important because it allows us to solve multiple philosophical problems, ranging from explaining the way we use language in our everyday life to solving problems presented by solipsism and idealism. Because language is something that is public instead of something that is private, it allows ideas, feelings, sensations, and other things which some might have thought to be something that is unknowable in essence by someone else other than me to be something for everyone to see.

The idea that the definition of words depends on my personal experience which is unknowable to other people is called the “private language argument”. Because in a sense, the understanding of the words that I use isn’t completely similar to yours, what I know therefore isn’t completely communicable (or transferable) to another person. In other words, it is possible that when I say something using these words, the definitions of these words, what the words refer to, isn’t completely the same as what you think they are. The definitions of words are private, even if words supposedly refer to something that is outside of us.

While it is not precisely the case that the private language argument certainly leads to solipsism (or that solipsism certainly leads to it), both of them usually come with the other as a package in different variations. For example, one version might say that because what I see is limited to the phenomenon that only I can see (through my internal representations), even if the words that I use refer to something that is supposedly outside, it is inevitable that our definitions will differ only because the phenomenon from your point of view cannot be the same with mine. And because I can only know things through my internal representation, it is impossible to know whether or not the world is actually like what I have in mind. It is possible that, following Descartes, I have been deceived by a malicious spirit, and that the world outside my mind is unlike what I have in mind.

Another version might go as follows: while it is the case that words do refer to something that is outside of us (assuming we really do know what is there outside of us to a certain degree, therefore lending certainty to the possibility of words referring to objects having the same meaning for both you and me), ideas, sensations, concepts that are inherently personal, such as pain, sadness, love, and loss, are still beyond total communicability. The reason is almost similar to the first, that is, the fact that the definition of such words is private i.e. incapable of truly being shared. My pain is my pain, and not your pain. Even though this version is weaker than the first one, it still lends some possibility that we can never truly be able to know whether the other person can understand what I’m saying. Other than that, depending on how the person is thought to be ontologically, it can also create the possibility of doubt regarding the existence of the other as such. After all, if how I experience things is different from how others experience it, can I truly say that their conscious makeup is similar to how I am? It is possible that the person next to me isn’t really conscious at all, and it is possible that he is just a zombie pretending to be a person.

The private language argument can certainly put an end to language as we know it by throwing certainty out through the window. If communication is impossible, then what’s the point of language? And yet language does work, and we use it on a daily basis. Wittgenstein, therefore, put forward the idea that for language to work, it at first has to be public, i.e. its definitions have to be there for everyone to see. Otherwise, it would be an impossibility for us to understand what it means to be in pain. For a child to understand what the word “toothache” means, he first has to learn it from other people. Imagine if it is truly the case that my pain cannot be known at all by other people. Through what means can the child learn what the word means? Perhaps we can try to emulate our actions as if we have a toothache to teach the child what it means. For example, we can put our hands on our cheek, then try to act as if we’re in pain. However, such behavior can only be possible under the context of communicating pain, that is, communicating something that I am experiencing. In other words, it first has to assume that what I feel can in a sense be known by someone else, and not only by me.

Perhaps what makes it possible for someone to learn what words such as “happiness”, “sadness”, “toothache”, “loss”, “love”, etc. is that the sensations themselves aren’t something that is hidden from view. We act out those feelings and sensations. We make public things which are supposedly “private”. Being in pain is not just feeling the sensation of pain. Pain without pain behavior isn’t known as pain as such. Pain is more than just the sensation of pain. Just like anything else that we have (love, sadness, etc.), whenever pain comes, pain assaults our senses. It cuts through our stream of consciousness and violently makes its presence known. It is not just an isolated sensation at the corner of our consciousness. It quickly draws our attention to it. It then makes everything according to its own terms, just like being tired makes us incapable of thinking clearly. It becomes one with our consciousness as being in pain. I am this experience of pain. Therefore when we prick our finger or accidentally bump our toes to a wall, we don’t need to wonder whose pain it is that is under my attention. It is me, as someone experiencing this pain.

More than anything, from an outside perspective, pain is the expression of pain. When someone is in pain, we can see his pain from the way he holds his toes, from the way he cries out for help, from the ways he screws his face, etc. Pain is there. For us, there is no difference between pain and its expression, just like crying signifies sadness. In our life, when we stumble upon someone crying out for help while holding a bleeding arm, we do not automatically think “that person is expressing pain-expression, but what is it that he’s truly feeling?”. Instead, we immediately know that that is an expression of something that he is experiencing, namely pain. What is inside of us can be easily seen outside. In fact, it is a mistake to think that there is an unbridgeable gulf between what’s inside my mind and its expression outside. The expression and what is being expressed should be thought of as a package, just like when we see someone cry out in pain, we know that he is experiencing pain. Even if we want to hide our sadness from anyone else, we still have to act on our intention of hiding sadness. In a sense, us hiding our sadness is the expression of what we have in our mind i.e. the desire of hiding our sadness. We first have to acknowledge our sadness and do something about it. Deceit is only known as such only if it is acted on. Deceit is deceit only when a person hides his intentions, and precisely because he hides his intentions can it be called deceit.

This leads us to the impossibility of private definitions. Private definitions require feelings and sensations to be isolated from the greater form of life. They have to be treated as something that is hidden from the outside view, and detached from the person as a whole. It is as if when pain comes, it is in suspense, a peculiarity to be examined and to be reacted to. It is not integrated into the consciousness that the person is. And hence, when someone talks about pain, it is detached from the person and is something to be referred to, like a rock at the bottom of the lake. But pain is not a peculiarity. Pain is life as pain. It is felt throughout the body and throughout our actions. It is expressed by the body as being in pain, just like sadness is sadness as crying. It is when it is public can we talk about it. Only when it is for everyone to see can we set boundaries and definitions and refer to it as pain.

From the explanation above we can see that what makes language as such possible is the fact that we are the way we are now. Supposed for example, when someone is in pain, there is no pain behavior. Pain is a peculiarity that is hidden away at the corner of our consciousness. Perhaps there will be no word referring to pain like the one we have at the moment and even if there is such a word, its sense will be different from our “pain”. Precisely because, in this case, what we think and feel are in a sense actions that are expressed can we have a language that can refer to things that are supposedly internal as well. And so, language isn’t just something that can be thought of as an “internal mental tool”, something that is used like puzzle pieces only for the sake of mental activities, nor can it be thought of as something that is formal i.e. used only to refer to something that is rigid. It can be thought of as a way to express someone’s desire, something that is vague and without any tangible thing that can be held. It is first and foremost the result of what we are, and how we do things.

However, making definitions public isn’t the sole condition of creating language. Using only that principle, it might be enough to make a primitive language, one that only, for example, points to things. However, it is still the case that even in a primitive language, there exists a whole set of rules, rules according to which the act of naming and the act of expressing things, make sense. In short, there has to exist an entire set of communication protocols to capitalize on this public definitions, and in a sense, public definitions can only make sense according to the senses of the rules.

Take for example someone who has just learned a new expression of emotion. Since language is constantly evolving, it is not impossible for someone to make a new word to specify what kind of feeling he/she has. And comparing one language with another can also put us in the same situation, that it is possible to specify our feelings with words that do not necessarily exist in another language (there are cases in which a word isn’t entirely translatable to another language, or at best might still be translatable to the other language but it doesn’t quite capture the full meaning of the word). Now, if definitions are public, how is it possible that one feeling is known in one language and not known in another language? It might not make sense for us to say that the person whose language (language A) has that particular word for that particular emotion has the capacity to experience something that cannot be experienced by the other person whose language (language B) doesn’t really have the equivalent word to express that particular feeling. We also cannot really say that before learning language A, the user of language B has never had that particular feeling at all, and that by learning language A, somehow the user can then experience that feeling he’s never experienced before. If we say that, it is as if language then has the peculiar ability to make something into being from non-being. Therefore, we have to think that perhaps the feeling has always been there, only that until now, it has gone unnoticed, and that we’ve never been made aware of it.

Now how can that feeling go unnoticed before the user of language B learns language A? We can say that perhaps that particular feeling simply doesn’t have a role in the language game of language B. That’s why it has never been referred to and therefore remains invisible. There is no such chip to be used in language B. That is why when we get a hold of the language game of language A that can refer to that particular feeling, we can immediately grasp it and realize that the thing that is referred to has always been there all along, hence opening up the possibility of modifying the language game of language B in order to refer to that feeling. We’ve added a new chip to the game, or even learn an entirely new game. Therefore, while it is true that things can only be named if the language game allows it to be seen, it is by no means an impossibility to expand the horizon of said language game. It’s not about seeing what’s outside of language, it is rather utilizing other languages in order to expand the language user’s horizon.

Objections, however, can be raised against this analogy. It is conceivable that some people might disagree by pointing out that this analogy already assumes that referring to that particular feeling makes sense in language B. Remember we stated earlier that if there is no such word in language B, then it must be that it must be the case that such feeling isn’t a part of the language game of language B or even to their way of living as a whole. For the user of language B, it has to be the case that it is simply not there, or at least it must be unnoticeable. Therefore to think that there is that feeling as something which can be referred to in the context of language game B even if language B doesn’t include that feeling in its playing rule means that we have to assume that it is somewhat “referable” in the context of language B even though it is not. After all, it is possible that when someone learns that word which refers to a particular feeling in language A which doesn’t have an equivalent in language B, instead of understanding what’s being talked about, that person just gets confused, the meaning of the word is entirely lost to him. In a way, one can say that the analogy is to an extent assuming a greater language beneath language B, so that we can say there is this feeling that language B does not refer to in the context of language B. However, this does not mean that this analogy is completely false. After all, while theoretically speaking their objection is in a sense true in some respects, such occurrences of noticing a sensation or something else which has previously gone unnoticed through the lens of another language can certainly happen in our everyday lives. Since the language game isn’t something that is rigid and clearly defined, just like a person playing catch with himself, it is easy to modify the rules on the go and adopt that word for his own use (such as adopting a French word to explain things that cannot be explained in English, etc.).

From this, we can see that even if everything is referable, even concepts, whether it makes sense or not to refer to such a thing depends on the playing rules currently at work within a certain language. In other words, whether a word has a sense or not depends more on whether the word has a use in that language game or not. However, some might put forward an objection to this. After all, isn’t a sentence, a proposition, composed of names, and each name in that sentence refers to an object of interest? If that is not the case, then how should we know what each word means in a sentence? To this I will say, while it is true that when I say “hammer” (while pointing at a hammer), I seem to be mentioning the name of “this” tool I’m pointing at, this does not mean that there’s a one-on-one correspondence with said thing, since the word itself refers to a type of tool and not necessarily this particular hammer (everyone uses the word “hammer” to refer to their own hammers). And yet, it is not exactly this type of tool that’s always referred to, for someone can easily imagine making a makeshift hammer, for example by using a stone as a kind of hammer. Therefore even noun words, words that are usually thought of as referring to a thing, get their meaning not from pointing to this particular thing, but rather by referring to a thing that serves a sort of purpose that the word requires it to have in a certain language game. In other words, the meaning is its use. Even a rook in chess does not have to be a rook-piece. We can draw a pattern on the floor akin to a chessboard and use rocks as substitutes to the chess-pieces, and everyone who understands how to play chess can use the rocks and the drawing on the floor to play a game of chess.

Now let’s elaborate more on this point. The meaning of a noun word isn’t its object, but the “role” the object bearing the name supposedly serves in the game. For example, let’s imagine a group of people using makeshift tools in order to build a house. Instead of using a knife to cut the rope, they use a sharp rock, and instead of using a hammer to knock things down, they use a slightly bigger rock, etc.. Now when I come to them and one of them tells us that they use this rock as a hammer and designates it as such and this one as a knife and designates it as such, do I object to this arrangement by saying that the rock looks nothing like a hammer, and that it shouldn’t be called as such? Don’t I understand that when he says that this is the “hammer”, I understand that it means it can be used and is usually used in this context to knock things over, drive a nail through a piece of wood, etc.? From this we can see that, for it to make sense that the word “hammer” doesn’t have to refer specifically to this particular thing (e.g. a hammer that is shaped in the way we’re familiar with in my toolbox), it is enough to think of it as just referring to a “thing” (i.e. anything) that can serve the given purpose that the word entails it to have. This is only possible because I am already familiar with the word “hammer” and the role it plays in the greater picture. If I know not such human customs (for example, I have never seen a hammer before, nor am I familiar with the term “tools” or even anything of the sort due to my upbringing), when they explain that this rock is used as a hammer, I shall not understand what he means. For me, he might be referring to this type of rock, or to a method of using it (like a method of striking the rock in such and such way), etc.. From this we can see that in a sense language paints the world in its color. Different languages paint the world differently. Differences in rules might mean whether or not I am capable of looking at the rock as a hammer or not.

What does this mean? Does that mean once language puts its stamp on something, we are incapable of looking it from a “pure” point of view again, or that we are now limited to looking at things from the point of view a given language makes available for us? On the contrary, our ability to use language proficiently is dependent on our ability to grasp things. For example, the reason why someone can designate a stone “a hammer”, even though it doesn’t resemble a “normal” hammer at all, is because he is capable of grasping the thing in-itself, and through what he can grasp, he derives many uses from it, one of which fits the use of a hammer. So in a way, this painting doesn’t stop us from grasping things as they are. However, keep in mind that this does not mean that the meaning of the word “hammer” refers only to what we grasp from a hammer i.e. the being of the hammer. On the contrary, what we grasp from objects and the words we use to refer to an object are two different things. After all, we can play chess using chess-pieces or rocks and still refer to it as playing chess. A rock can be used as a chess piece because it is a solid thing (for example), and it is a chess piece because it can be and is used in this game of chess. Therefore, what matters here is not that the rock is a solid thing per se. A droplet of water might not be able to fulfill what the word is intended to do, therefore a droplet of water cannot be used as a rook in the game. A boulder, though a solid, cannot be used to play a game of chess because it cannot fulfill the role the word requires it to do, namely be a rook in this game of chess. Therefore even if what we see in things influences our use of language, it is still the case that language in turn uses the influence of how we see things has on us for its own workings. What is derived from what we grasp from something, what can be made out of it, and how we split up the world into different categories are dependent on language.

Since how the world is split up, how it is thought to be, in short, how someone makes sense of the world depends on what is allowed by their language, this means that even though the users of language in a sense still depend on the world to construct their language (imagine if humans, like some animals which evolved in caves, did not have eyes. Wonder what kind of language we would have!), language becomes what is like an independent machine. Just like any machine, we might at first build it to solve a specific problem. But then, the functionality of the machine is expanded as we find ourselves in need of dealing with more problems. It’s just like pocket watches. First, it could only tell the hour and the minute and soon people started adding new functions to it, such as the ability to tell the day, the month, the year, and finally adding even more functions like having the ability to be used as a stopwatch, etc.. It slowly evolved from its primitive state to its more sophisticated state as the pocket watch was adapted and new functions added to it to face new situations. And as one feature slowly lost its function, it was discarded. However, while a tool is designed to solve a problem (i.e. the problem defines the tool, to an extent), the problem and the method of solving it are also in turn defined by the tool. The problem, that before could be solved in a myriad of ways, now has to be solved according to what the tool can do. Other than that, the way of life itself is to an extent defined by the tool. In a sense, now a person’s life has to revolve around that tool; fixing it, tending it, maintaining it, so that the tool can always be used when needed to solve a certain problem.

Therefore, we arrive again at one of Wittgenstein’s ideas: grammar is autonomous. It propagates itself. And while perhaps someone might say that language was there first to solve a problem, like technology, it then continues to develop on its own. Take the evolution of the steam engine, for example. Perhaps we’ve always thought that our technological development has always been the natural progression of things, that things have to develop in this way to achieve this certain goal. But in truth, it doesn’t have to progress this way. After all, there was no inherent justification for why the steam engine had to lead the way in the industrial revolution, and in turn be used for numerous things like marine propulsions, etc., other than the fact that it happened to be invented in that way and in that time by following such and such principles that just happened to be thought of in such and such way and be available for application in that time. Granted, someone could say that the reason why steam was used for marine propulsions and such in the 19th and 20th century was because steam was one of the most well-understood and easiest method to gain the necessary power to run those big machines, but this was only because they happened to had learned how to use it before applying the same principles elsewhere. In a way, even if we cannot imagine it with complete clarity, it is not an impossibility that perhaps, in a different history, someone might have utilized a different method of propulsion other than steam. Perhaps they would rely more on electric power to move their machines instead of steam because they happened to work out the principles of electromagnetism earlier than the people from our history. Or if steam was indeed the easiest method to do things (under certain conditions), perhaps then it didn’t have to be that kind of steam engine that was first used. Perhaps the development of the steam engine would follow a different path. Perhaps the development would be faster than the one in our timeline, or perhaps be slower. The point is, even if the functions and abilities of the steam engine had to be developed by the engineers in a certain way in order to face new challenges and new problems, it remains to be the case that they had to develop it on top of the known facts and the available machinery of their time. Therefore not only the steam engine defined the method to solve the problems of their time, it also defined the life of the world around it (how the machine should be maintained, how the infrastructure should be built to cater to the machine’s needs, etc.), and finally defined and outlined, if not outright determined based on what the next development should be, either that may be in the future planning of industrial infrastructure, future city developments, future educational systems, and the most important, the planning of the future of the machine type and technology themselves.

Language, just like any other human artifacts, rests on this delicate balance of autonomy, the enslavement of human activity, and needs. Language might first be made to solve specific problems, before finally gaining its own momentum, solidifies, and finally, like the steam engine, outlines if not determines its own development. Like the steam engine, it doesn’t have to develop in a certain way, and precisely because of this that we have a plethora of different languages, each with its own playing rules. And also, even if it is incapable of directly changing matter around it (because unlike the steam engine, it is incapable of transforming water to steam, or any other matter directly), it is still capable of affecting how we see the world. However, because it doesn’t deface matter directly, it is usually taken for granted. It is like a veil that reaches the farthest part of the world, and the deepest part of the ocean and yet remains to be invisible. When someone is asked why number has to be arranged from one to ten before restarting to one again (eleven), that person might just answer that it has always been the way of doing things. And this arrangement has affected how we categorize things, and how we arrange things. This arrangement has affected how physics is done, and while at a glance we can say that it doesn’t truly affect the world as it is and just the way we look at things, it is precisely because it doesn’t affect matter directly can we take it as it is, and think that it is just natural for us to do things that way.

The Confusion

Once we’ve understood the building blocks based on which we use language in our everyday lives, we can now move on to discuss how we talk about ideas and objects. By this, I don’t mean that the word “to run” and “chair” belong to the same role class in language. They certainly do play different parts in the game, and therefore belong to a different class of roles (like pawns belonging to a different class than rooks). By how we talk about ideas and objects I mean whether or not we say that this is what is real; whether this is a part of reality or not. In other words, It’s about whether what’s being stated is what is thought to be certainly the case or something that is less real, less certain, or “theoretical”.

It’s always been a topic of fascination for me because even though supposedly there is a clear distinction between what we refer to as ideas and objects, when we talk about them in our everyday life, the distinction becomes less clear. When we talk about objects, such as “the water is hot”, or, “the rock has just rolled down the hill”, most people regard such a statement usually as something that is real i.e. something that does or did actually happen. And yet when we talk about ideas, such as for example theories of physics, it is easier for some to think that what is being talked about isn’t real, or at least less than real than “my car has crashed”.

Imagine the time when we talk about certain ideas with someone else. Whenever we talk about ideas, what we have in mind is always the movement of objects. Take for example a physicist trying to unravel the secrets of the universe. He writes on his blackboard equations concerning the origin of the universe. What he writes on the blackboard are concepts, ideas to support certain other ideas regarding how the universe came to be. However, theories and ideas are not just phantasms, they refer to something that is outside of the blackboard in the universe. In the physicist’s mind, his equations represent how the world works, i.e. how matter dances around with each other to produce something that we can see. In other words, when he does something with his equations, what he does is not just moving signs from here to there for their own sake, but it is as if he’s moving matter from one place to another to ascertain whether they can interact with each other in this way or not. In a sense, theories, ideas, are actually packages, just like words such as “chairs”, “cities”, etc. which refer to a set of things that can be seen. When we talk about conceptual words, what we say are in essence similar to when we talk about complex objects. We live in the world of physics, just like we live in a city.

Perhaps someone might give the following objection. Sure when we talk about scientific concepts, we talk about how objects are. Perhaps, for example, through equations we can find out the reason why water boils at a certain temperature, etc.. However, as long as they’re called theories, they certainly cannot be thought to be the same as our statements about whether or not it rained yesterday, or whether or not I see the sunset at a certain time. The reason is that my statements whether it rained yesterday or not, or whether the Fourth French Republic was founded in the year 1946 or not, are certainties. I am certain of their truth, and they are not disputed facts.

However, is it not possible for our statements to be less well-founded than those theories? Is it not impossible that even though I think that it must have rained last night because the ground is now wet, it turns out that it’s wet not because it rained last night but because some water pipe ruptured this morning, and that it’s just been fixed just before I woke up? But then he might reply, that even if he was mistaken, he could just ask other people, someone who for example happened to look outside through the window last night and saw that it rained outside, or a historian who has interviewed some people who lived through the 1940s in France. Suppose then one further objects by saying that theories are constructed from multiple pieces of evidence and ideas that can be false, therefore the overall rigidity and certainty of theories as a whole are fragile because any of its assumptions and pieces of evidence can turn out to be false. To elaborate, his objection can take the following form: the term “evolution” (as in Darwinian evolution) is different from me thinking about how a certain plane crashed at a certain time in the past because the former is pieced together from disparate facts and can never be as certain as the latter. The former is built from multiple so-called pieces of evidence that are collected through certain methods before being categorized and explained through a certain paradigm before finally being a theory of sort.

However, to this I would say, is the latter, the reconstruction of a plane crash, can truly be a certainty? Was it not, just like the theory of evolution, derived from multiple pieces of evidence through certain methodologies informed by prior knowledge? And could we not reach the wrong conclusion as to why the plane crashed? In the end, what differentiates between the theory of evolution and the reason why the plane crashed is just the fact that the theory of evolution is a lot broader than the investigation of why the plane crashed and also the fact that the disparate pieces of evidence of evolution stretch far wider and farther in terms of time and place before being brought together under this umbrella term to signify everything as a whole. This is different from the plane crash which does not really have an equivalent umbrella term to signify in one stroke everything that had happened which lead to the current state of affair. And also, pieces of evidence for why the plane crashed doesn’t stretch far and wide in terms of time and place. They can be neatly thought of as a localized incident, a complete totality as that particular plane crash. Evolution, on the other hand, is everywhere, and so it can be hard to be thought of as a single complete totality. However, these differences are nothing more than just a difference in the degree of scope. In essence, both of them talk about what could have happened, if not indeed what has happened, and the reason for the current state of affair. The supposed class difference between these two is nothing more than just the result of a confusion, of an unnecessary requirement that isn’t even thought of when we talk about them in our everyday life.

However, not all concepts and theories are scientific in nature. After all, what makes them scientific in nature is the fact that it concerns itself with things that are supposedly real. Therefore for some people, it is unsurprising that scientific concepts are put in a way that conveys a message about how things are because it really is an investigation of how things are. Even if they’re mistaken, it would still be the same as me mistaking the puddle in front of my house as the result of the rain last night instead of the result of a ruptured pipe near my house. And so, we cannot solve the riddle completely without discussing concepts whose nature is different from scientific concepts, concepts such as the ones from philosophy, religion, etc..

The best way for us to tackle this problem is by realizing first and foremost that the language game used by science is different from what is used when other people talk about religions, witchcraft, philosophy, and other concepts. The linguistic tools used for science is different from when we talk about religion, philosophy, or even from what we usually use in our everyday lives. This is so because different tools are good for different problems, and different tools delineate the world differently. The word “exact” used in our everyday life is different from what we have in science. In what sense is this measurement “exact” enough? In our life, it might be enough to say that being in a certain place at 13:00 exactly when we’re told to do so is exact enough, while in science, perhaps it has to be exact down to the seconds, e.g. 13:00:01.

Because of this, we need to make things clear first. What do we mean when we say that this statement is “real”? Perhaps we are inclined to say that it means what we say is what is truly to be the case. However, in what sense does it mean for it to be truly the case? Does that mean that when we go and see what’s there to see whether a statement conveys something that is “real” or not, the statement has to truly correspond to what we mean by something? Does that mean when we say that it’s raining outside, we can truly see that it is raining outside? However, being real doesn’t have to be defined in that sense only. For example, we can say that two people who are using an empty bottle as a replacement for a ball to play a game which follows the rule of football as “playing football”. And when we watch them play, it does strike us as football, albeit probably in a less straightforward manner (for we need a bit more time and observation to realize that they’re playing football, while had they used a real ball, we could have immediately determined that they’re playing football). And as long as they play by following the rule of football, we would say that it is football instead of saying “play with the bottle”. While this might be less “real” in a sense that each word is used in a slightly different manner than usual (the bottle now being used and referred to in a sense as the “ball” instead of a ball serving as the ball like we’re more accustomed to) we can still say that it is the case that they’re playing football.

Now take for example an ancient Egyptian religion that worshiped the sun. In their own time, for them it was the case that the sun was alive, and that it sailed on a barge from sunrise to sunset. However, now, we can say that it is not the case. There is no sun-god sailing on a barge across the sky. What is it that goes on in our minds that is different from what went on in their minds? We might be inclined to say that it is because the way they used the words is different from ours. Just like it is true that the empty bottle is the “ball’ in that game as long as it follows the rule of football and is used as the “ball”, the sun might be alive in that same sense i.e. based on the “playing rules” of their language that made it so. However, this argument is hardly convincing for some. After all, usually, something is considered to be true if it can be tested and verified. However, this requirement is the result of the game we play. In science, this rule holds true. For scientific postulations, theories, and paradigms to be considered as true, they have to be able to hold their ground against any equivalent scrutiny. They all have to be able to be tested and verified by other people. However, in our daily lives, we go by a different set of rules. We hardly test things in order to determine whether it is true or not. Even if some people have never tested the existence of ghosts according to scientific terms, in some cultures, ghosts do exist for them. And even if we say that “what is true is something that must be able to be “seen”, then it goes down to what does “being seen” mean. The criteria of “being seen” still lies in how the game is played. It’s just like “for you to move two spaces, you have to do this first”, “for something to be true, it has to be this”. As long as the language game is concerned, it says nothing of substance.

But then what does this mean that the criteria for something to be the case depend on the playing rules of a given language? Does that mean that truth is after all a consensus between people? In a sense it is not just a mere consensus. A consensus is something that is the case through the mediation of language itself. For example, let’s just say there’s a border dispute between two countries. To solve it, they decide to send diplomats to talk it over through a series of negotiations. During one such talk, one of the diplomats says that the border should be drawn over this river. Now what does that mean? It means that if both countries agree, then the land border will go over this river, and that would be the case after they both ratify their agreements. However, this “such is the case here” isn’t quite similar to “it is the case that the world is such-and-such” that is depicted by language. We should realize that such a consensus is made by building something on top of what allows it to make sense, i.e. the common ground based on which we communicate (i.e. common playing rules), therefore even if both countries disagree with the proposal, it is of no importance when it comes to making sense of the statement. After all, the idea that the border should go over this river is something that won’t suddenly lose all its sense when someone disagrees (or even when everyone disagrees) with it. After all, they understand what is it that they have a disagreement on. Even if the decision is arbitrary and that there is no “real” justification for why the border has to be drawn over this river, the meaning of that statement still retains its sense.

However, this is still far from giving us a complete answer. Surely one can object that even if what is considered to be the case depends partly on the rule of the game that’s being played and not just on a consensus, the available chips of the game still have to depend on what’s outside. One can say that the only reason why someone can use a stone as a “hammer” is first because the person can grasp what a stone is. Only after grasping the being of the stone can he integrate it into the greater set of tools based on which he can then derive the role for this rock. In other words, he might be tempted to say that if there is nothing that is grasped, then there will be no chips to be used in the game. Unless we want to say that people can invent chips out of nothingness.

But then if it is true that something needs to be grasped in order for there to be chips to play the game, what is the difference between this conception of language and the one that says that the definition of things must be the referent? After all, doesn’t it also require that language be derived specifically from what is already there in nature? If there is nothing to be grasped, then there are no chips, therefore these chips must be based on something that is there outside. But this is not the case. Imagine the first person inventing the game of chess. Based on what could he derive the game from? Didn’t he first have to come up with the rule of the game before deciding what were the chips that were needed to play the game? And even if it is said that the word “ball” can only be used according to a certain role it dictates, based on what context should the role be derived from? How should we create a game of chess, a game of football, or even any cultural artifacts if the definition of each word is the thing it refers to?

To answer the cause thoroughly, first have to realize that the rules of language, and also the form of life which language is a part of, is not just a mere phantasm either. Earlier we’ve discussed how language engraved itself in our life. This engraving is not just something conceptual, something which is incapable of changing anything in the world. Like the steam engine, it itself has become another fact of life, something that is graspable, even if it is invisible to our eyes. When we were born into this world, we’re not born into a clean world, we were born into a world already defaced with the human way of life. In other words, it is a mistake to think that we are born into just “a world”. Instead, we’re born into a “human world”, with its “human reality”. This is important so that we do not think that language is just a projection of nature, something which needs to follow what is in the world only.

However, we do not usually realize this, because we’ve always lived in this “reality”, we begin to think and feel that it is just how it is supposed to be. Because we’ve always thought that it is just how things are, we fail to see that how we see things is dependent on language. Instead, we then contemplate language when it is idling, i.e. when it’s not doing any work. And hence, when we do that, it is easy to think of language as something secondary to nature. However, things change when we visit some foreign countries whose culture is so different than that of ours. When we arrive there, we realize that there’s another way of seeing things, doing things, and even another way of living.

We are seldom capable of viewing our human reality, our spiral from human activity to the solidification of human activity to human activity again because we’re a part of said reality. We are “in” it, a part of it, constantly pushing our activity forward while leaving solidified activity behind to later be used as a stepping stone for our next development. As we are “in” it, it is not possible for us to be able to look at things from the outside at a whim. We in essence are the product of our culture. We at birth were slowly inducted into this way of living. We were taught how to dress, how to eat, and even how to think. Crying as the expression of pain was replaced by telling people that I’m in pain. We become the incarnation of our time, and we think that is how it’s always been.

The Cause of the Confusion

When we talk about epistemology, it is inevitable that somewhere down the line we’re going discuss ontology, no matter how brief. And to my amusement, I actually think that Sartre might be able to give us something of value here. Before I continue, I would like to say a few words about him first. While to my knowledge, Sartre never explicitly elucidated the connection between his ontological conception in Being and Nothingness and in both volumes of Critique of Dialectical Reason, I believe that even if there are parts of his conception of what a person is that changed over the course of his lifetime, such as his response against solipsism, there are parts that are still the same in essence in all three books, and personally I found some ideas from Being and Nothingness to be adaptable to his later ideas in both volumes of the Critique.

What I want to talk about here is the idea that the reason why we’re so malleable in the first place is because we lack any inherent nature as a human being. Consciousness is nothingness. We lack any inherent being, and therefore we are free. This same freedom is also the reason why we can adopt any role in a pretend play that we can. We can pretend on being a waiter, being a doctor, or being someone else. And in a sense, because there is no inherent reason of why one has to do something, inherent justifications such as a destiny, a nature, or a fate to be fulfilled which compels a person to do something from the inside, any action that we undertake need not be justified by any inherent reason, other than the fact that this is how things are usually done, or “as a matter of course”. It is something which Wittgenstein brought up in his Philosophical Investigations when discussing language and following rules. We might try to find a justification to follow a certain rule, such as an arrow to the right means “turn right”, and an arrow to the left means “turn left”. However, there is nothing inherent to the sign which compels me to do the things which I right now think it tells me to do other than the fact that that’s just how it’s always been done. If someone from another country who has never been taught of what the sign means visits the country I live in and see the sign, he might not be able to understand what should he do in the face of it.

It is one thing following road signs, but it might be another thing when it comes to following a rule of logic, someone might object. After all, shouldn’t logic be something that is external? If we add two rocks into a basket that already has three rocks in it, no matter the culture and the time or place, we will invariably get five rocks. However, suppose that we find a tribe whose language only has the following words when it comes to numbers: “one”, “two”, and “many”. Won’t they deal with things differently? Even though it is true that if we add two rocks into a basket that already has three rocks we will invariably get five rocks, such facts might then be overlooked if we do not have the necessary tools to see it.

Imagine the people living in the 5thcentury BCE. During that time, people still believed that human health was basically dependent on the balance of four basic elements, blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. Those four elements were basically ingrained into their game rule, that people were supposedly composed of those four elements. Even if we in the 21stcentury can say with a certain conviction that those four humours do not exist because they could not stand up to scientific scrutiny and therefore could not be found, can we really say that they had never found those four humours as well? It might be the case that here, it’s less of a matter of us finding those four humours as such in our body and more of a question of how did they find in the human body something that we now cannot find? We cannot really say that they lied their way through their books. We cannot really say that they knew not what they were doing, and that for them medical practice was no more than bluffing their way through whatever situation they found themselves in. If that was so, then their doctors were nothing than con men. And yet they were not con men. For them, their medical sciences really did revolve around those four humours. For them, the four humours were not just postulations, assumptions based on which they derived their explanations to explain how the human body might probably work. Instead, they really did think that it was the case that there were four humours in the body, just like how they thought that for them to win wars, they had to make animal sacrifices to their gods, and that water boiled after being heated for some time.

And yet we cannot really say that for them it didn’t matter if they could find the pieces of evidence for the existence of their gods or not. Instead for them, as for some of us who believe in God, the evidence for the existence of the deity in question is exactly the same world which is also seen by those who do not share their beliefs as well. For those who believe in God, the fact that the world is so well defined in its physical rules might be thought of as the proof of the existence of a designer, while for those who do not believe in God, the same well-defined physical rules might be thought of as the proof of the redundancy of the existence of God. For the ancient physicians, the pieces of evidence for the existence of the four humours were also what we all can see today as well, such as the existence of some yellow fluids, or even the differences of personalities which were thought of as the result of how the four humours were mixed in our body.

From these two cases, we can see that even if in nature putting two rocks into a basket that already has three rocks in it will invariably result in the basket having five rocks inside it, this matters little at times to the conception of life manifested by the form of life the people have in their languages. But here we have to be careful. Language must not prevent its user from grasping things as it is, even if different conceptions of grammar (playing rules) might give birth to different conceptions of how the world works. Even if grammar is autonomous, we must not forget that grammar depends partly on matter as it is. Even if matter doesn’t immediately give birth to grammar, at least their relationship should be that matter is the one thing which grammar applies itself on. In short, grammar has to latch itself to matter to find its expression. Without the ability to express itself in its own terms, that playing rule is as good as dead.

That is how language develops over time. As old rules fail to find proper expression in matter, they get modified, or even discarded and replaced with new ones. Sometimes the rules become relics of the past, just like the four humours, after failing to take into account new discoveries in nature. And once they get discarded, they might at times still retain their sense, but only contained in a greater playing rule, that is, as forgotten relics of a bygone era. But even the activity of discarding of one or multiple grammatical rules depends partly on grammar as well. The source of a playing rule’s destruction can only be from within it. The reason is that grammar itself is infallible. However, isn’t this a circular argument? At first, it is said that the development of grammar depends partly on its ability to latch unto external matter. Doesn’t it mean that at least matter in itself holds some power over grammar as well? Not exactly. Matter is just there. It is passive, in itself it is incapable of disproving anything, nor of proving anything as well. That is why in the end the real power behind the falsifiability of the playing rule depends on itself. Take for example the case of the four humours. Even though it was discarded because it was incapable of taking into account new findings of the human body, this incapability was the result of the rules it set for itself. The rules were too constrictive, it forced itself to meet a certain standard it couldn’t reach itself. In short, the reason for its demise was the contradiction which formed within itself.

However, the playing rules are not just a way of seeing things, although it is true that the playing rules are in part also a way of seeing. Seeing the playing rules only as an isolated part of the human reality will result in an entanglement of trying to explain what the rules are in nature. In truth, the rules never stand alone. They bring with them a certain way of life, just like believing in the Egyptian Polytheistic Religion brings with it its rituals. The playing rules themselves then are a part of the manifestation of that form of life. This form of life points to behind itself a sort of soul, a soul that is the result of the fact that humans are not a mere “thing” in this world. It doesn’t mean that humans are isolated from the world. It cannot be denied that humans are a being-in-the-world, but they’re not a being-in-the-midst of the world. This can be seen from the fact that humans are the condition for there to be a revelation of being. The possibility of the revelation of being depends on the fact that there is a negation from consciousness between consciousness and being-in-itself, otherwise there will be no revelation-to-someone of being. And once it is realized that being-in-itself and consciousness are separated and different from each other can then be the possibility of making-sense-of-something. This making-sense-of-the-world is only necessary just because humans feel the need to include the world to form the human reality. Now what does it mean?

It means that when being is revealed to us, even if we have an implicit primitive (ontic) understanding of it, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we immediately take it in quietly. The revelation is quickly integrated into the human world. Or to be more precise, the revelation is only possible if there is a human world. Because consciousness lacks any nature i.e. a nothingness (the opposite of being-in-itself), being-in-itself is never enough for consciousness. This can be seen for example from the fact that the “now”, the present moment, can never be the singular integration between consciousness and being-in-itself. The present is not a point in time in which we’re completely engrossed in being. It is always fleeting and is always at a distance from ourselves. That is why we’re never completely one with it. There’s always a possibility of passing something absent-mindedly and not realizing that something is there in front of us. Consciousness overflows being, opening the possibility of having a past, something that trails behind, and something that spills into the future. There is always a possibility of a better life, or a life far worse than the one we’re having now. There is always a negation, a separation through which we define ourselves. Consciousness as a nothingness, as that which negates the world, is a necessary ingredient for there to be consciousness which is aware of its surroundings and of itself. If that is not the case, then consciousness will be something that is completely filled and opaque. There will be no awareness nor understanding of anything because there cannot be any revelation-to-someone of being.

The need to understand the world around us stems precisely from our need to be one with being-in-itself. According to Sartre, consciousness seeks something that it lacks, and that is its own foundation. Consciousness lacks something because it lacks its own foundation, that’s why a lack points to something that can fulfill it. In the case of consciousness, the lack of being points to being-in-itself.

In short, the sought after foundation can only be had by merging with being-in-itself, but without destroying consciousness itself (hence an impossibility and a contradiction). In other words, consciousness seeks self-sufficiency. However, consciousness cannot just be self-sufficient out of nothing. It needs to make use of the world around it. After all, consciousness is in the world. The birth of consciousness that is aware of itself and its surroundings and also one which lacks something gives birth to a world that is both a mixture of the human world and being-in-itself. It is a mixture of both in a sense that even when the world has being-in-itself as its foundation which gives us the ontic and ontological understanding of what being is, it is buried beneath the human form of life. The human form of life is laid on top of being-in-itself, but it doesn’t blind us from being-in-itself. The world-in-itself is still there, only it is inseparable from the human form of life through an internal unity of being.

The birth of the human form of life in turn gives birth to perspectives and abstraction. Even if consciousness has an ontic understanding of being, this understanding is already contaminated by consciousness. No longer is being-in-itself a whole that is unbroken in its unity. Once negation starts to sip through consciousness, being as seen by a person is split up into whatever it is that suits the needs of consciousness. Being itself is made abstract, and while at times it is useful for something, at other times, especially in philosophy as an activity, it becomes a poison which prevents us from seeing things as they are.

The formation of this poison can perhaps be explained when it is at work, for example, during the creation and transference of knowledge. Before there is knowledge, there is a perspective on being-as-the-original. But when knowledge is made out of it, it ceases to be a perspective on being-as-the-original and becomes a copy of that perspective of this being. However, the ontic understanding of the being-as-an-original is usually lost in abstraction. After all, for there to be knowledge, some things need to be highlighted and the background negated. What was once the original is now lost. However, knowledge cannot just be something which refers to itself. After all, knowledge is still supposedly a copy of being, albeit in a more abstract form. Therefore at its core, it still refers to how being-in-itself is, for indeed it is based on being-in-itself, but it is no longer an original perspective on being-in-itself. Instead, the referent to being-in-itself is nothing more than a general being-in-itself, a being without clarity. And this general understanding of being derives its existence from our ontic understanding of being-in-itself, an understanding that is less implicit and incomplete than something that has the final say in everything, and also something that tends to be easily poisoned by abstraction and misunderstandings as time goes on. This is then manifested in our language game. While language derives its signification of the real from this ontic understanding of being, in the end, language becomes a human artifact while the ontic understanding of being becomes warped and misunderstood through abstraction and misunderstandings in the human quest to make sense of the world. In short, in the end, the language game, like knowledge, is a copy whose source is lost, a manifestation of the human form of life and sustained by the human form of life as well.

To clarify, this does not mean that the language game is the result of the two. Remember that being-in-itself is just there and that the language game (and therefore the human form of life) latches unto it. Therefore while it is true that the language game is the result of the interaction between human life and being-in-itself, in the end, the language game is a human reaction to being-in-itself. The playing rule is the human part of the totality of human reality. Therefore the confusion that arises between ideas/hypothesis and the real/what is actually the case stems still from the human part of reality instead of from being-in-itself. So where does this leave logic? Logic as we know it is therefore a human invention. But this doesn’t mean that logic is completely arbitrary and superfluous. Logic is an invention based on the template of the ontic understanding of being-in-itself. However, just like any other human invention, this invention is still in essence a human one, and therefore less than perfect.

This human understanding is usually what is traded around in discourses, and as we can see, such human invention is bound to lead us astray at times. In our everyday life, one of the results of this ontological situation is the confusion between what is real and what is fictional, the confusion between what’s supposedly an idea/hypothesis that is less certain in treatment than a statement of fact and vice versa. The confusion all stems from our need to make sense of everything, to see everything from a human’s perspective. This confusion is then disseminated throughout our way of life, from how we see things and in the end into language itself as the embodiment of the human way of life. The need to explain things at times breeds philosophical confusions, and philosophical confusions are manifested in how we use language.