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diff --git a/content/entry/the-self.md b/content/entry/the-self.md index 2efbd03..dd4c010 100644 --- a/content/entry/the-self.md +++ b/content/entry/the-self.md @@ -2,16 +2,15 @@ title: "The Self" date: 2020-05-02T00:00:00 draft: false -makerefs: false --- # Language -Starting at a young age, we pick up language, mainly from our parents. We are very much conditioned to think in certain ways by the language we speak. This is known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis[1]. What I want to talk about is similar to Sapir-Whorf. It isn't about how particular languages affect one's worldview, but about how any language can create a false image of the world. Language is a tool for getting information from one mind to another. But it's more than that. It is a tool for thinking. One thing that should be taught more in English classes is that writing is useful for crystallizing and refining thoughts, not just communicating them. +Starting at a young age, we pick up language, mainly from our parents. We are very much conditioned to think in certain ways by the language we speak. This is known as the [Sapir-Whorf hypothesis](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity). What I want to talk about is similar to Sapir-Whorf. It isn't about how particular languages affect one's worldview, but about how any language can create a false image of the world. Language is a tool for getting information from one mind to another. But it's more than that. It is a tool for thinking. One thing that should be taught more in English classes is that writing is useful for crystallizing and refining thoughts, not just communicating them. The problem with any spoken language is that in order to be useful, it has to create abstractions. These abstractions are fuzzy, inexact ways of talking about things. Mathematical language is not fuzzy and imprecise like spoken language is. Mathematical language is symbolic and rigorous. What is written is unambiguous. But this fuzziness of concept is a necessary evil, otherwise natural language would be inefficient and slow and still inexact. The problem isn't language itself. It comes when we treat language as reality, when we forget we are dealing with these inexact fuzzy abstractions which are nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, etc. A lot of the words in spoken language are fuzzy. -This is something that I have always found intuitive but is an easy mistake to make in philosophy. I would argue that a rather large fraction of academic papers about philosophy aren't actually creating an interesting argument or bringing any substance to the table. Academics are simply bickering about how words should be used without even realizing it. For example, look at the Ship of Theseus[2]. The essential question it poses is this: "Is an object the same object if all its component parts are replaced over time?". I agree with Noam Chomsky that this is a cognitive issue manufactured by humans because we get really bent out of shape if we don't know what to label something. We have to have a label. So what we do we call something if all its parts are replaced? Do we call it something else or do we call it the same thing? Now the problem becomes more clear. It's a question about language. +This is something that I have always found intuitive but is an easy mistake to make in philosophy. I would argue that a rather large fraction of academic papers about philosophy aren't actually creating an interesting argument or bringing any substance to the table. Academics are simply bickering about how words should be used without even realizing it. For example, look at the [Ship of Theseus](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus). The essential question it poses is this: "Is an object the same object if all its component parts are replaced over time?". I agree with Noam Chomsky that this is a cognitive issue manufactured by humans because we get really bent out of shape if we don't know what to label something. We have to have a label. So what we do we call something if all its parts are replaced? Do we call it something else or do we call it the same thing? Now the problem becomes more clear. It's a question about language. -The right question is "If an object's parts are replaced, should we still call it the same object?". We could make a pros and cons list of calling it the same object versus giving it a different name and decide what makes more sense. One might think I'm being being pedantic about this and philosophers understand the real question is about what we call the object. My own personal experience has shown that this is not true. People often do not understand that they're arguing about what to call something, and it's not any deeper than that. This is called Mistaking the Map for the Territory[3]. +The right question is "If an object's parts are replaced, should we still call it the same object?". We could make a pros and cons list of calling it the same object versus giving it a different name and decide what makes more sense. One might think I'm being being pedantic about this and philosophers understand the real question is about what we call the object. My own personal experience has shown that this is not true. People often do not understand that they're arguing about what to call something, and it's not any deeper than that. This is called [Mistaking the Map for the Territory](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Mistaking_the_map_for_the_territory). But we have also created another problem. What is an object? Let's take a car for example. Let's say we haven't replaced any parts. Where does the car stop and the car's environment begin? Is the air inside the car also the car? What if the car is in orbit around the earth and it has no air, is the space inside the car still the car, or is it just empty space? This questioning is ridiculous in one sense because when I say the word "car", every English speaker intuitively knows what the word "car" means. For all practical usages of the word "car" we will never have to worry about bizarre philosophical quandaries about the identity of the car (especially since there's no "Car of Theseus"). We all just sort of know what other people talk about when they talk about a "car". @@ -38,9 +37,3 @@ There is a growing interest in the west around meditation and self which has bee # Conclusion If you take away anything from this post, understand that knowing facts about self versus experiencing it are orthogonal. If you want to really experience oneness with reality and get with your self, one way to do it is repeated meditation practice. There is no substitute. If you have any interest, just try it. Try different forms of meditation even for five or ten minutes, but start with mindfulness if you're a beginner. And keep practicing even if you don't notice anything the first few times. You really can't fail because it's like dancing. There is no end goal. You just do it for the sake of it. The most important thing is that you are doing it. Meditation doesn't guarantee a profound experience, but I'd be surprised if I met someone who meditated properly for one week, an hour per day and found nothing of value. - - -Link(s): -[1: https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity) -[2: https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus) -[3: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Mistaking_the_map_for_the_territory](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Mistaking_the_map_for_the_territory) |