Towards a possible definition of "The Nation"

[Cael]

Language/the signifier, is our only way to relate to the real, so you cant depend on any real as an independent support for anything in language, as we only percieve the real through language, inevitably you are back to supporting one signifier with another signifier.

If you believe that the only way you have of relating to 'the real' is through language, please set yourself on fire. (It's probably important that nobody notices, though, because if they point out to you that you're on fire, that could hurt. Like, a lot.)

No doubt it would hurt a lot, but I would relate to that pain through language. Some people enjoy pain, will even pay money to have it inflicted on them. This is a function of their entry into language.

[stringjack]

No doubt it would hurt a lot, but I would relate to that pain through language.

You really wouldn't. I would have to relate to it through language.

[Cael]

Ok, you replied before I added another sentence. Unless I was killed instantly, I would realise what was happening through language. Of course my body would go into shock and I would die, but that is clearly not what I was talking about when I said "relate to." That is a real cause and effect outside language, like one stone hitting another.

[stringjack]

Unless I was killed instantly, I would realise what was happening through language.

You would understand what was happening through a particular conceptual system that you (mistakenly) think of as language.

That is a real cause and effect outside language, like one stone hitting another.

Quite so.

[Cael]

Unless I was killed instantly, I would realise what was happening through language.

You would understand what was happening through a particular conceptual system that you (mistakenly) think of as language.

That is a real cause and effect outside language, like one stone hitting another.

Quite so.

Could you tell me something about a "particular conceptual system" that operates outside language? How can a concept be formed outside language?

[stringjack]

Could you tell me something about a "particular conceptual system" that operates outside language? How can a concept be formed outside language?

If conceptual systems were dependent on anything we normally think of as language, animals wouldn't have conceptual systems. They do. Hence. Language is an intersubjective phenomenon and I see no reason to doubt that an individual's conceptual system exists prior to his or her language (and must exist prior to language, since it is logically prior to language).

[Cael]

It seems very likely that the infant, just like the more intelligent animals do have a primitive conceptual system prior to language. But once language has "colonised" the human body, there is no turning back to this primordial system. Perhaps you might be interested in an extract from an article on the work of Elizabeth Spelke:


"Infants are born with a language-independent system for thinking about objects," says Elizabeth Spelke, a professor of psychology at Harvard. "These concepts give meaning to the words they learn later."

Speakers of different languages notice different things and so make different distinctions. For example, when Koreans say that one object joins another, they specify whether the objects touch tightly or loosely. English speakers, in contrast, say whether one object is in or on another. Saying "I put the spoon cup" is not correct in either language. The spoon has to be "in" or "on" the cup in English, and has to be held tightly or loosely by the cup in Korean.

These differences affect how adults view the world. When Koreans and Americans see the same everyday events (an apple in a bowl, a cap on a pen), they categorize them in accord with the distinctions of their languages. Because languages differ this way, many scientists suspected that children must learn the relevant concepts as they learn their language. That's wrong, Spelke insists.

Infants of English-speaking parents easily grasp the Korean distinction between a cylinder fitting loosely or tightly into a container. In other words, children come into the world with the ability to describe what's on their young minds in English, Korean, or any other language. But differences in niceties of thought not reflected in a language go unspoken when they get older.

Spelke and Susan Hespos, a psychologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., did some clever experiments to show that the idea of tight/loose fitting comes before the words that are used/not used to describe it.

When babies see something new, they will look at it until they get bored. Hespos and Spelke used this well-known fact to show different groups of five-month-olds a series of cylinders being placed in and on tight- or loose-fitting containers. The babies watched until they were bored and quit looking. After that happened, the researchers showed them other objects that fit tightly or loosely together. The change got and held their attention for a while, contrary to American college students who failed to notice it. This showed that babies raised in English-speaking communities were sensitive to separate categories of meaning used by Korean, but not by English, adult speakers. By the time the children grow up, their sensitivity to this distinction is lost.

Other experiments show that infants use the distinction between tight and loose fits to predict how a container will behave when you move the object inside it. This capacity, then, "seems to be linked to mechanisms for representing objects and their motions," Hespos and Spelke report.

Their findings suggest that language reduces sensitivity to thought distinctions not considered by the native language. "Because chimps and monkeys show similar expectations about objects, languages are probably built on concepts that evolved before humans did," Spelke suggests.

Full article at:

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/200 ... think.html