Limits of Language

[North Cali Sammy]

Words can invoke the imagination, but can never accurately explain the nature of existence. In the end it is left to the listener/reader to finish the picture.

Example: "In my young life, she was the most beautiful girl I had yet seen, but she was not aware of her natural beauty."

 

[exchemist]

Words can invoke the imagination, but can never accurately explain the nature of existence. In the end it is left to the listener/reader to finish the picture.

Example: "In my young life, she was the most beautiful girl I had yet seen, but she was not aware of her natural beauty."

What has your example to do with explaining the nature of existence? It seems to just the speaker's commentary on a person's physical appearance and the apparent lack of awareness about it of the person. Where does the nature of existence come into this?

 

[Pinball1970]

Words can invoke the imagination, but can never accurately explain the nature of existence.

Words are used in the time and place so can change over time. In science they are very specific, in normal speak they are more mailable.
Words to not explain reality and the nature of existence in the 21st century, physics does.
The philosophers should follow the physics then give their view.

 

[North Cali Sammy]

What has your example to do with explaining the nature of existence? It seems to just the speaker's commentary on a person's physical appearance and the apparent lack of awareness about it of the person. Where does the nature of existence come into this?

That was a bad example. My apology. I was trying to demonstrate that anyone reading it would have their own image in mind of that beautiful girl.
As far as existence is concerned, defining it can be difficult with words, because what makes sense to me might not make sense to you.

 

[exchemist]

That was a bad example. My apology. I was trying to demonstrate that anyone reading it would have their own image in mind of that beautiful girl.
As far as existence is concerned, defining it can be difficult with words, because what makes sense to me might not make sense to you.

That's rather what I thought too. The "nature of existence" seems indeed very hard to capture in words. For many people, including me, it is hard to give the concept a meaning, let alone attempt to describe it. Existence is a state possessed by any detectable entity, isn't it?

Its "nature" suggests that that state of existence needs to be qualified or expanded upon in some way. But how? What different modes of existence could there be?

 

[North Cali Sammy]

That's rather what I thought too. The "nature of existence" seems indeed very hard to capture in words. For many people, including me, it is hard to give the concept a meaning, let alone attempt to describe it. Existence is a state possessed by any detectable entity, isn't it?

Its "nature" suggests that that state of existence needs to be qualified or expanded upon in some way. But how? What different modes of existence could there be?

Life (existence) is so large.

 

[exchemist]

Life (existence) is so large.

That is not an answer.

 

[North Cali Sammy]

That is not an answer.

It's beyond words. I can summarize it in a few words, but that falls short of defining it.

 

[C C]

Words can invoke the imagination, but can never accurately explain the nature of existence. In the end it is left to the listener/reader to finish the picture. [...]

Well, the "picture" attached to the words via personal preferences can not only consequently vary, but ultimate existential affairs remain noumenal, due to what the words are tokens for even being yet another veil or cognitive barrier.

Gorgias (483—375 B.C.E.):

(1) "Existence cannot be known." ..... I.e., the mind deals in mediating representations, not the original source of stimuli (i.e., the non-mental manner of existence).

(2) "Even if existence could be known, it cannot be communicated." ..... I.e., language is yet another (secondary) level of representation that is merely symbolism for the psychological or sensory presentations (including abstractions inferred from the latter). And thus accordingly even further removed from capturing a non-mental manner of existence.

Description is not only completely artificial, but usually lacks any resemblance to what it stands for. So symbols or speech patterns have to be correctly correlated to visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile private thoughts generated by the brain (which are dependent upon the latter's memory system). If the external world (proper) does not actually exist as such manifestations (subjective experiences of any sensory mode), then obviously our descriptions are even more limited by such an additional indirect connection.

But it still works out in terms of survival, which is all evolution speciously cares about. As an analogy: The icons that one finds on a computer screen do not reflect the hidden nature of the structure and operations in the technological device itself, but still enables one to interact with the computer (figurative for true reality) in an adequate or successful enough fashion.
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