The Nature of Language and Our Relation Between Knowledge of Ourselves and Others

To What Extent Does the Nature of Language Illuminate Our Understanding of the
Relation Between Knowledge of Ourselves and Knowledge of Others?

More than any other thing, the use of language sets humankind apart from the remainder of the animal kingdom. There is some debate as to where the actual boundary between language and communication should be drawn, however there seems to be no debate as to the nature of Language, which is to communicate, using abstract symbols, the workings of one mind to one or more others with a relatively high degree of accuracy. It could perhaps be said that we are all capable of expressing or representing our thoughts in a manner that is only meaningful to ourselves. Wittgenstein says that “..a wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it is not part of the mechanism.”1 The idea of a uniquely personal language is not relevant here and so will not be discussed further. Language is a system of symbols which represent thoughts, perceptions and a multitude of other mental events. Although the meaning of a given word or expression is by no means fixed, there is a sufficiently high degree of consensus in most cases to ensure that our thoughts are to a great extent communicable. This essay will concentrate on two aspects of language. Firstly that it gives our own thoughts and those of others a certain degree of portability and secondly that because it has a firm (though not rigid) set of rules governing the relationships between symbols it allows what would otherwise be internal concepts that could not be generalised, to be made explicit, examined in detail and compared.

If we did not have language we would be able to surmise very little about other humans around us. Non-verbal communication has evolved to instantaneously communicate ones' emotional state, and generally succeeds in this, however although it can reveal what a person may be feeling at a particular time, it says nothing about why those feelings are present and in any case is most reliable with strong emotions such as anger, fear, disgust &c. The less intense the emotion the more vaguely it is portrayed. If we are aware of the events preceeding the display of emotion we may be able to attribute a cause to it, but as psychologists Jones and Nisbett (1972) showed, these attributions are quite likely to be inaccurate due to the predilection that humans have for attributing behaviour to the disposition of the person being observed. In addition to all of this, non-verbal communication is limited to observers in the immediate area