The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.
On day one of class, I would display this statement for my graduate students to ponder and discuss. I attribute it to Ludwig Wittgenstein, even though that’s not exactly what he wrote. No. He wrote (in German)…
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
But my phrasing is better (hee hee).
At first, there’s a quiet trepidation that befalls the students as they consider the notion. Language IS the world?
Then, after some discussion, we inevitably get into the definition of terms (which makes me giggle) and finally come to terms that language may not be the LIMITS of the mind but dang—it sure is most of it.
So allow me, dear reader, to continue laying out the carpet for this cosmogony I hope will snap into focus if I can weave just the right tale.
Consciousness is based on language.
Before I make this case, it’s important to clarify that consciousnesses is not the same thing as cognition or perception. Those are neural abilities. Nor is consciousness to be confused with the self. So, to better understand my perspective, I want to make clear distinctions between these ideas.
Perception is the sensation of stimulus and a response to the stimulus. It’s a physiological response that doesn’t require any directed attention. Cognition is information processing. As established by Marcel in 1983, information is often processed unconsciously (e.g. task switching, response inhibition). It’s neural activation.
The self is an object of consciousness in later development. It’s OF consciousness; it is subordinate to it.
So, what is consciousness? Well, in my last submission, I emphasized the idea that it is an effusion caused by the neural exchanges between the two hemispheres of the brain. But that doesn’t really address the concept of consciousness entirely. That’s more the physiological mechanism it undergoes. In fact, when mind is best understood is when it’s viewed as it being part of a hive. That is, there’s an extra-corporeal element to mind. One that can better be understood via a set if axioms.
Consciousness isn’t a one-to-one correlative of experience
Consciousness isn’t necessary for concepts
Consciousness isn’t necessary for learning
Consciousness isn’t necessary for thinking
Consciousness isn’t even necessary for reason
Most folks would probably say that the main function of consciousness is to gather and store experiences—like a video camera—so one can recall them when they need to. But a professor of mine once had us try to recollect the following, seemingly simple and personally accessible memories:
Which is your second longest digit on your right foot?
At a street light, is it the red or the green light that at the bottom?
Which number is J associated with on a telephone keyboard?
How many teeth do you actually see when your brushing?
Write down all the things that are behind you without looking.
I wasn't able to automatically respond to ANY of them. I had to work them all out in my mind. Like the J/number thing. I had to conjure or conceive what I know about keypads the 3-letters each has, and then count through, three letters at a time to get to 5 key. I felt so educated when applying the skip-the-first key subroutine too 😄.
The point is that NO—consciousness is NOT a recording device. All that attentive experience CANNOT be recorded and stored (where, by the way?). Unless you’ve given particular effort to remember the information, it’s unlikely that you will, say, know how many teeth you look at usually while brushing (even though you stare at them for minutes on end, daily).
Have you ever seen an apple? Let me put to you that no one has EVER seen an apple. They’ve seen specific, particular apples (e.g. Red Delicious, Granny Smith). Apples are a concept and as such, they can never be seen. It can’t be perceived by your senses. Particular apples are in the environment. It’s only in consciousness that the concept of apple exists.
Unfortunately, thanks to the early conceptions of education thought leaders of the 18th and 19th centuries, learning has come to be considered the profiting of experience. But on further meditation, consciousness is not required for learning. We know from work done in the mid-40s that a person, animal, or even plant can be conditioned to respond unconsciously (e.g. Pavlov’s dog).
As I type these letters, I am not conscious of each key I press on the board. I am quite unconscious off my action because, if I stopped to focus on each key as I type, I would slow down to a point where I wouldn’t want to write further. My CNS and PNS respond automatically based on what my intention is.
Thought is a complex idea. It’s often considered as our ability to “free”-associate. To judge, evaluate, and express via language. Although we often direct our thinking (consciously), consciousness isn’t necessary to think. For example, imagine you’ve closed your eyes and before you on a desk is a softball and a bowling ball. You then reach out and pick one up with each hand and judge which one is heavier. You can feel the ridges of the seems on the softball, the smooth surface of the bowling ball; you will be aware (conscious) of the sensation of the objects against the skin of your palms, the tension in your left are instead of your right arm…and THAT’S how you judge which is heavier. But it’s not your mind that determined which is heavier. It’s your nervous system and muscle strength that made you aware. In this example, judging is not conscious.
We often associate reasoning with logic. But they aren’t the same. Reasoning is a series and amalgamation of variant thought processes. Logic, on the other hand, is simpler.
Logic is the science of the justification of conclusions we have reached by natural reasoning.
-J. Jaynes
Now I know this all might read like a matter of defining logic, reason, thought, etc. It may all seem technically a matter of semantic confusion. But what is being attempted to be conveyed here is that reasoning, as we’ve come to know it is much more a structure of the nervous system, rather than consciousness.
Finally, to make the overarching argument here—that consciousness is based on language: where is it? Consciousness. Is it in your head? When you close your eyes to introspect (think) what are you seeing? YOUR EYES ARE CLOSED!
This is the crux of it all: we assume there is an inside to us. We assume that the person we are talking with has an inside as well—that “space” behind your eyes and her eyes. But ask a surgeon—there is no inside. Just tissue, organs, blood, etc.
In fact, the ancient Greeks didn’t think the logos (THEIR equivalence of consciousness) was NOT stationed in the head: it was positioned above the heart. They conceived the brain as a cooling system for the body. But for a majority of people, locating consciousness in the head. But consider what may be occurring with the thousands of world-wide accounts of folks sustaining a brain injury and as they regain consciousness, they see that they are floating up by the ceiling of the room they’re in seeing their own unconscious body (i.e. exosomatic experience). Perhaps this isn’t some mystical event. Perhaps it’s a temporary relocation of your consciousness.
So given the above argument, let me turn to the argument that consciousness is based on language.
Metaphor
Back in junior high school (or middle school, as it’s known today), you were probably taught what a metaphor is. It’s when we use a word or phrase to symbolically refer to something OTHER than the literal meaning of the word or phrase (e.g. It’s raining cats and dogs.) But the ability to create/understand metaphors is MUCH more than a function of language (or are they one and the same?). What metaphors allow us to do is to dramatically increase our understanding of the world around us.
Ask yourself what you are actually trying to do when you want to understand something. I contend that you will try to find an analog for the concept being entertained. For instance, when a professor tries to explain an unfamiliar process to a student, the student, while negotiating with the professor for understanding, may engage the educator by saying something like “Oh—it’s like...”
That’s a metaphor the student generated in her mindspace while she acquires the new lingo, phrasing, and diction of the discipline the concept she’s targeting belongs to. To understand things, we develop metaphors by replacing the concept being acquired with a concept that is more familiar to us. Once the concept being acquired has the same level of familiarity that the already acquired concept holds, the person can say she understands.
So, here’s the basis of the contention: a conscious mind is a model of reality—a model built up with learned vocabulary and the use of metaphors as analogs of behaviors in reality.
That’s it.
When you look at a map to plot your course from your home to Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, you are relating the distance and pathways on the map to the actual roads and cities you will be travelling through. The relationship of the roads and cities and colors on the map are an analog of the actual roads and cities and terrain. In fact, consider how terrain is usually depicted on maps. Often, cartographers will use variant colors or shades knowing that the viewer will see the analog they create and develop a a metaphor in her mindspace that will allow her to best predict her actual travel course.
It’s all metaphors.
Think of how we communicate conscious processes with each other:
“I see what you mean”
“He is so brilliant”
“She is a bit dim—not too bright, if you know what I mean”
In what way are a person’s mental processes associated with lighting? In a matter of speaking, that’s how. Because lighting has NOTHING to do with mental processes. We use such linguistic metaphors for actual space and objects.
That primitive aspect of our consciousness, the metaphor of a mental space that separates the items/recollections we call thoughts is probably the most curious of all, for me. If I ask you to think of Stonehenge, and then to think of a spaghetti dinner, those two thoughts will have the quality of being spatially separate. For example, as you read the previous sentence, did you conceive the spaghetti dinner mixed in/up with Stonehenge? Probably not. Separate, distinct ideas which occupy different spaces in your mind, via language and metaphor.
Consider how we also use spatialization metaphors too to communicate about mental processes.
“He is so deep”
“She is narrow-minded”
“I need to get something off my chest”
I, Me, and Narratization
Consider the use of the word '“I”. It’s an analog of the self that can be used to be things and do things that the person isn’t. It’s how we imagine the self in imagined situations. Then, there’s “me”—another metaphor. These words serve us to look out from within the imagined self at imagined worlds AND to see ourselves, for instance, floating atop a room “viewing” our body.
In 1976, Julian Jaynes described the concept of narratization—a linguistic assimilation of the voices of the gods into a single sense of self, existing through time . In fact, he asserted that it was a linguistic shift, NOT a biological or neurological one, that brought about consciousness as we experience it. Mentality is a function of social context, our neurology, and language. If we want to understand our consciousness, we’d be better off examining our language practices instead of our neurons; our historical heritage instead of a microscope; our cultural history instead of the brain.
Circling back
It comes to this: if you can say it clearly, it’s real. If you can’t, keep thinking—don’t say anything: it may not be. That’s what Wittgenstein meant by “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world”. For something to exist in the world (note, not in the universe), whether it’s actual or imagined, it has to be potentially thinkable. Otherwise, we wouldn’t even recognize it as a thing. It would be meaningless; nonsense.
Sure sure. You might be saying “No, Dottore. There are things that exist that are beyond our ability to conceive”. Sounds like a good hedge. One question: what did you have in mind?
You see? The sentence There are things that exist that are beyond our ability to conceive is referring to what? “Things”? We can conceive of things. But in this case, the speaker is using the word “things” as a metaphor for the unthinkable. So even though the sentence sounds logical, even profound, if you…ahem…give it some thought…you’ll “see” that the sentence is senseless: or at worst, an attempt to seem wise.