It is no wonder that names have been considered uncanny manifestations of supernatural power, and that men have identified their names with their souls or used them to invoke spiritual forces. Indeed, the power of words has gone to man's head in more than one way. To define has come to mean almost the same thing as to understand. More important still, words have enabled man to define himself—to label a certain part of his experience "I."
This is, perhaps, the meaning of the ancient belief that the name is the soul. For to define is to isolate, to separate some complex of forms from the stream of life and say, "This is I." When man can name and define himself, he feels that he has an identity. Thus he begins to feel, like the word, separate and static, as over against the real, fluid world of nature.
Feeling separate, the sense of conflict between man, on the one hand, and nature, on the other, begins. Language and thought grapple with the conflict, and the magic which can summon a man by naming him is applied to the universe. Its powers are named, personalized, and invoked in mythology and religion. Natural processes are made intelligible, because all regular processes—such as the rotation of the stars and seasons—can be fitted to words and ascribed to the activity of the gods or God, the eternal Word. At a later time science employs the same process, studying every kind of regularity in the universe, naming, classifying, and making use of them in ways still more miraculous.
But because it is the use and nature of words and thoughts to be fixed, definite, isolated, it is extremely hard to describe the most important characteristic of life—its movement and fluidity. Just as money does not represent the perishability and edibility of food, so words and thoughts do no represent the vitality of life. The relation between thought and movement is something like the difference between a real man running and a motion-picture film which shows the running as a series of "stills."
... It is most convenient for scientific calculation to think of a movement as a series of very small jerks or stills. But confusion arises when the world described and measured by such conventions is identified with the world of experience. A series of stills does not, unless rapidly moved before our eyes, convey the essential vitality and beauty of movement. The definition, the description, leaves out the most important thing.
Useful as these conventions are for purposes of calculation, language, and logic, absurdities arise when we think that the kind of language we can use or the kind of logic with which we reason can really define or explain the "physical" world. Part of man's frustration is that he has become accustomed to expect language and thought to offer explanations which they cannot give. To want life to be "intelligible" in this sense is to want it to be something other than life. It is to prefer a motion-picture film to a real, running man. To feel that life is meaningless unless "I" can be permanent is like having fallen desperately in love with an inch.
Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity (1951: 46-48)
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
14 January 2010
31 July 2009
insuring life in a single sentence
4th Question:. . . . . .? (For the second time.)
Answer: Books? Yes, I read a lot, I've always read a lot. No, I'm not sure we do understand each other. I like to read best on the floor, or in bed, almost everything lying down, no, it has less to do with the books, above all it has to do with the reading, with black on white, with the letters, the syllables, lines, the signs, the setting down, this inhuman fixing, this insanity which flows from people and is frozen into expression. Believe me, expression is insanity, it arises out of our insanity. It also has to do with turning pages, with hunting from one page to the other, overflow of verse, with insuring life in a single sentence, and, in turn, with the sentences seeking insurance in life. Reading is a vice which can replace all other vices or temporarily take their place in more intensely helping people live, it is an aberration, a consuming passion. No, I don't take any drugs, I take books, of course I have certain preferences, many books don't suit me at all, some I take only in the morning, others at night, there are books I don't ever let go, I drag them around with me in the apartment, carrying them from the living room into the kitchen, I read them in the hall standing up, I don't use a bookmark, I don't move my lips while reading, early on I learned to read very well, I don't remember the method, but you ought to look into it, they must have used an excellent method in our provincial elementary schools, at least back then when I learned to read. Yes I also realized, but not until later, that there are countries where people don't know how to read, at least not quickly, but speed is important, not only concentration, can you please tell me who can keep chewing on a simple or even a complex sentence without feeling disgust, either with the eyes or the mouth, just keep on grinding away, over and over; a sentence which only consists of subject and preposition must be consumed rapidly, a sentence with many appositions must for that very reason be taken at tremendous speed, with the eyeballs performing an imperceptible slalom, since a sentence doesn't convey anything to itself, it has to "convey" something to the reader. I couldn't "work my way through" a book, that would almost be an occupation. There are people, I tell you, you come across the strangest surprises in this field of reading. . . I do profess a certain weakness for illiterates, I even know someone here who doesn't read and doesn't want to; a person who has succumbed to the vice of reading more easily understands that a state of innocence can be attained only by those truly capable of reading or by complete illiterates.
(Herr Mühlbauer has erased the tape by mistake. Herr Mühlbauer apologizes. I'd only have to repeat a few sentences.)
Yes, I read a lot, but the shocks, the things that really stay with you are merely the vision of a page, a remembrance of five words on the lower left of page 27: Nous allons à l'Espirit. Words on a poster, names on doors, titles of books left in a store window, unsold, a magazine ad discovered in the dentist's waiting room, a gravestone epitaph which struck my eye: HERE LIES. A name while flipping through the phone book: EUSEBIUS. I'll get right to the point. . . For example last year I read: "He wore a Menschikow," I don't know why, but I was immediately convinced that whoever this man might have been, this sentence meant he wore a Menschikow, indeed, that he had to wear one, and that this was important for me to know, it belongs irrevocably to my life. Something will come of it. But, to get back to the point I was trying to make, even if we were to have more sessions, day and night, I couldn't list the books which have impressed me the most or explain why they made such an impression, in which places and for how long. What is then left you will ask, but that's not the point! there are only a few sentences, a few expressions which awake inside my brain again and again, begging to be heard over the years: Der Ruhm hat keine weissen Flügel [The wings of fame aren't white]. Avec ma main brûlée, j'écris sur la nature du feu [With my burned hand I write about the nature of fire]. In fuoco l'amor mi mise, in fuoco d'amor mi mise [Love set me afire, I was set in a fire of love]. To The Onlie Begetter. . .
(I signal and blush, Herr Mühlbauer has to erase that at once, no one cares about that, I wasn't thinking, I let myself get carried away, the Viennese newspaper readers wouldn't understand Italian anyway and most of them wouldn't understand French anymore, not the younger ones, besides, it's not to the point. Herr Mühlbauer wants to think it over, he couldn't keep up entirely, he, too, doesn't know Italian or French, but he's been to America twice and never once encountered the word "begetter" in his journeys.)
Ingeborg Bachmann, Malina (1990:57-59)
Answer: Books? Yes, I read a lot, I've always read a lot. No, I'm not sure we do understand each other. I like to read best on the floor, or in bed, almost everything lying down, no, it has less to do with the books, above all it has to do with the reading, with black on white, with the letters, the syllables, lines, the signs, the setting down, this inhuman fixing, this insanity which flows from people and is frozen into expression. Believe me, expression is insanity, it arises out of our insanity. It also has to do with turning pages, with hunting from one page to the other, overflow of verse, with insuring life in a single sentence, and, in turn, with the sentences seeking insurance in life. Reading is a vice which can replace all other vices or temporarily take their place in more intensely helping people live, it is an aberration, a consuming passion. No, I don't take any drugs, I take books, of course I have certain preferences, many books don't suit me at all, some I take only in the morning, others at night, there are books I don't ever let go, I drag them around with me in the apartment, carrying them from the living room into the kitchen, I read them in the hall standing up, I don't use a bookmark, I don't move my lips while reading, early on I learned to read very well, I don't remember the method, but you ought to look into it, they must have used an excellent method in our provincial elementary schools, at least back then when I learned to read. Yes I also realized, but not until later, that there are countries where people don't know how to read, at least not quickly, but speed is important, not only concentration, can you please tell me who can keep chewing on a simple or even a complex sentence without feeling disgust, either with the eyes or the mouth, just keep on grinding away, over and over; a sentence which only consists of subject and preposition must be consumed rapidly, a sentence with many appositions must for that very reason be taken at tremendous speed, with the eyeballs performing an imperceptible slalom, since a sentence doesn't convey anything to itself, it has to "convey" something to the reader. I couldn't "work my way through" a book, that would almost be an occupation. There are people, I tell you, you come across the strangest surprises in this field of reading. . . I do profess a certain weakness for illiterates, I even know someone here who doesn't read and doesn't want to; a person who has succumbed to the vice of reading more easily understands that a state of innocence can be attained only by those truly capable of reading or by complete illiterates.
(Herr Mühlbauer has erased the tape by mistake. Herr Mühlbauer apologizes. I'd only have to repeat a few sentences.)
Yes, I read a lot, but the shocks, the things that really stay with you are merely the vision of a page, a remembrance of five words on the lower left of page 27: Nous allons à l'Espirit. Words on a poster, names on doors, titles of books left in a store window, unsold, a magazine ad discovered in the dentist's waiting room, a gravestone epitaph which struck my eye: HERE LIES. A name while flipping through the phone book: EUSEBIUS. I'll get right to the point. . . For example last year I read: "He wore a Menschikow," I don't know why, but I was immediately convinced that whoever this man might have been, this sentence meant he wore a Menschikow, indeed, that he had to wear one, and that this was important for me to know, it belongs irrevocably to my life. Something will come of it. But, to get back to the point I was trying to make, even if we were to have more sessions, day and night, I couldn't list the books which have impressed me the most or explain why they made such an impression, in which places and for how long. What is then left you will ask, but that's not the point! there are only a few sentences, a few expressions which awake inside my brain again and again, begging to be heard over the years: Der Ruhm hat keine weissen Flügel [The wings of fame aren't white]. Avec ma main brûlée, j'écris sur la nature du feu [With my burned hand I write about the nature of fire]. In fuoco l'amor mi mise, in fuoco d'amor mi mise [Love set me afire, I was set in a fire of love]. To The Onlie Begetter. . .
(I signal and blush, Herr Mühlbauer has to erase that at once, no one cares about that, I wasn't thinking, I let myself get carried away, the Viennese newspaper readers wouldn't understand Italian anyway and most of them wouldn't understand French anymore, not the younger ones, besides, it's not to the point. Herr Mühlbauer wants to think it over, he couldn't keep up entirely, he, too, doesn't know Italian or French, but he's been to America twice and never once encountered the word "begetter" in his journeys.)
Ingeborg Bachmann, Malina (1990:57-59)
27 July 2009
the rub
If each of us carries around a set of criteria by which we judge certain acts as loving and tender or hating and brutal, what may be a loving act to one person may be a hating act to another. For example, one woman may be delighted if her suitor uses a "caveman approach" with her; another woman may think of him as repugnant for just the same behavior. The woman who sees the caveman approach as loving may in turn interpret a more subtle approach as "weak," whereas the woman who is repelled by a caveman approach may see the more subtle approach as "sensitive." Thus behavior even of itself does not directly lead to experience. It must be perceived and interpreted according to some set of criteria...
In order for the other's behavior to become part of self's experience, self must perceive it. The very act of perception entails interpretation. The human being learns how to structure his perceptions, particularly within his family, as a subsystem interplaying with its own contextual subculture, related institutions and overall larger culture...
Our experience of another entails a particular interpretation of his behavior. To feel loved is to perceive and interpret, that is, to experience, the actions of the other as loving. The alternation of my experience of my behavior to your experience of my behavior—there's the rub.
I act in a way that is cautious to me, but cowardly to you.
You act in a way that is courageous to you, but foolhardy to me.
She sees herself as vivacious, but he sees her as superficial.
He sees himself as friendly, she sees him as seductive.
She sees herself as reserved, he sees her as haughty and aloof.
He sees himself as gallant, she sees him as phony.
She sees herself as feminine, he sees her as helpless and dependent.
He sees himself as masculine, she sees him as overbearing and dominating.
Experience in all cases entails the perception of the act and the interpretation of it. Within the issue of perception is the issue of selection and reception. From the many things that we see and hear of the other we select a few to remember. Acts highly significant to us may be trivial to others. We happen not to have been paying attention at that moment; we missed what to the other was his most significant gesture or statement. But, even if the acts selected for interpetation are the same, even if each individual perceives these acts as the same, even if each individual perceives these acts as the same act, the interpretation of the identical act may be very different. She winks at him in friendly complicity, and he sees it as seductive. The act is the same, the interpretation and hence the experience of it is disjunctive. She refuses to kiss him goodnight out of "self-respect," but he sees it as a rejection of him, and so on.
A child who is told by his mother to wear a sweater may resent her as coddling him, but to her it may seem to be simply a mark of natural concern.
In one society to burp after a good meal is good manners; in another it is uncouth. Thus, even though the piece of behavior under consideration may be agreed upon, the interpretation of this behavior may be diametrically disagreed upon.
What leads to diametrically opposed interpretations? In general, we can say interpretations are based on our past learning, particularly within our family (i.e., with our parents, siblings and relatives) but also in the larger society in which we travel.
Secondly, the act itself is interpreted according to the context in which it is found. Thus, for example, the refusal of a goodnight kiss after one date may seem to be perfectly normal for both parties, but after six months' dating a refusal would seem more significant to each of them. Also a refusal after a previous acceptance will seem more significant.
What happens when two people do not agree on the meaning to be assigned to a particular act? A very complicated process ensues. If communication is optimum, they understand that they differ on the interpretation of the act, and also realize that they both understand that they differ in its interpretation. Once this is established they may get into a struggle over whether or not to change the act under consideration in the future. This struggle may take various forms:
Threat—Do this or else.
Coaxing—Please do this.
Bribery—If you do this I will do that in return.
Persuasion—I believe it is a good idea for you to do this because, etc.
However, often in human affairs where there is a disagreement there is also a misunderstanding and failure of realization of misunderstanding. This may be deliberate, i.e., a simple attempt to ignore the other person's point of view, or it may be an unwitting overlooking of the opposing viewpoint. In either case a disruption of communication occurs.
Laing, Phillipson & Lee, Interpersonal Perception (1966: 10-13)
In order for the other's behavior to become part of self's experience, self must perceive it. The very act of perception entails interpretation. The human being learns how to structure his perceptions, particularly within his family, as a subsystem interplaying with its own contextual subculture, related institutions and overall larger culture...
Our experience of another entails a particular interpretation of his behavior. To feel loved is to perceive and interpret, that is, to experience, the actions of the other as loving. The alternation of my experience of my behavior to your experience of my behavior—there's the rub.
I act in a way that is cautious to me, but cowardly to you.
You act in a way that is courageous to you, but foolhardy to me.
She sees herself as vivacious, but he sees her as superficial.
He sees himself as friendly, she sees him as seductive.
She sees herself as reserved, he sees her as haughty and aloof.
He sees himself as gallant, she sees him as phony.
She sees herself as feminine, he sees her as helpless and dependent.
He sees himself as masculine, she sees him as overbearing and dominating.
Experience in all cases entails the perception of the act and the interpretation of it. Within the issue of perception is the issue of selection and reception. From the many things that we see and hear of the other we select a few to remember. Acts highly significant to us may be trivial to others. We happen not to have been paying attention at that moment; we missed what to the other was his most significant gesture or statement. But, even if the acts selected for interpetation are the same, even if each individual perceives these acts as the same, even if each individual perceives these acts as the same act, the interpretation of the identical act may be very different. She winks at him in friendly complicity, and he sees it as seductive. The act is the same, the interpretation and hence the experience of it is disjunctive. She refuses to kiss him goodnight out of "self-respect," but he sees it as a rejection of him, and so on.
A child who is told by his mother to wear a sweater may resent her as coddling him, but to her it may seem to be simply a mark of natural concern.
In one society to burp after a good meal is good manners; in another it is uncouth. Thus, even though the piece of behavior under consideration may be agreed upon, the interpretation of this behavior may be diametrically disagreed upon.
What leads to diametrically opposed interpretations? In general, we can say interpretations are based on our past learning, particularly within our family (i.e., with our parents, siblings and relatives) but also in the larger society in which we travel.
Secondly, the act itself is interpreted according to the context in which it is found. Thus, for example, the refusal of a goodnight kiss after one date may seem to be perfectly normal for both parties, but after six months' dating a refusal would seem more significant to each of them. Also a refusal after a previous acceptance will seem more significant.
What happens when two people do not agree on the meaning to be assigned to a particular act? A very complicated process ensues. If communication is optimum, they understand that they differ on the interpretation of the act, and also realize that they both understand that they differ in its interpretation. Once this is established they may get into a struggle over whether or not to change the act under consideration in the future. This struggle may take various forms:
Threat—Do this or else.
Coaxing—Please do this.
Bribery—If you do this I will do that in return.
Persuasion—I believe it is a good idea for you to do this because, etc.
However, often in human affairs where there is a disagreement there is also a misunderstanding and failure of realization of misunderstanding. This may be deliberate, i.e., a simple attempt to ignore the other person's point of view, or it may be an unwitting overlooking of the opposing viewpoint. In either case a disruption of communication occurs.
Laing, Phillipson & Lee, Interpersonal Perception (1966: 10-13)
19 May 2009
What is the object of your wish?
A process accompanying our words which one might call "the process of meaning them" is the modulation of the voice in which we speak the words; or one of the processes similar to this, like the play of facial expressions. These accompany the spoken words in the way a German sentence [thought by a native German] might accompany an English sentence [spoken by the German], or writing a sentence accompany speaking a sentence; but in the sense in which the tune of a song accompanies its words. This tune corresponds to the 'feeling' with which we say the sentence. And I wish to point out that this feeling is the expression with which the sentence is said, or something similar to this expression.
... Another source of the idea of a shadow being the object of our thought is this: We imagine the shadow to be a picture the intention of which cannot be questioned, that is, a picture which we don't interpret in order to understand it, but which we understand without interpreting it. Now there are pictures of which we should say that we interpret them, that is, translate them into a different kind of picture, in order to understand them; and pictures of which we should say that we understand them immediately, without any further interpretation. If you see a telegram written in cipher, and you know the key to this cipher, you will, in general, not say that you understand the telegram before you have translated it into ordinary language. Of course you have only replaced one kind of symbols by another; and yet if now you read the telegram in your language no further process of interpretation will take place.—Or rather, you may now, in certain cases again translate this telegram, say into a picture; but then too you have only replaced one set of symbols by another.
... Our confusion could be described in this way: Quite in accordance with our usual form of expression we think of the fact which we wish for as a thing which is not yet here, and to which, therefore, we cannot point. Now in order to understand the grammar of our expression "object of our wish" let's just consider the answer which we give to the question: "What is the object of your wish?" The answer to this question of course is "I wish that so-and-so should happen." Now what would the answer be if we went on asking: "And what is the object of this wish?" It could only consist in a repetition of our previous expression of the wish, or else in a translation into some other form of expression. We might, e.g., state what we wished in other words or illustrate it by a picture, etc., etc.
... The fault which in all our reasoning about these matters we are inclined to make is to think that images and experiences of all sorts, which are in some sense closely connected with each other, must be present in our mind at the same time. If we sing a tune we know by heart, or say the alphabet, the notes or letters seem to hang together, and each seems to draw the next after it, as though they were a string of pearls in a box, and by pulling out one pearl I pulled out the one following it.
Now there is no doubt that, having the visual image of a string of beads being pulled out of a box through a hole in the lid, we should be inclined to say: "These beads must all have been together in the box before." But it is easy to see that this is making a hypothesis. I should have had the same image if the beads had gradually come into existence in the hole of the lid. We easily overlook the distinction between stating a conscious mental event, and making a hypothesis about what one might call the mechanism of the mind. All the more as such hypotheses or pictures of the working of our mind are embodied in many of the forms of expression of our every day language. The past tense "meant" in the sentence "I meant the man who won the battle of Austerlitz" is part of such a picture, the mind being conceived as a place in which what we remember is kept, stored, before we express it. If I whistle a tune I know well and am interrupted in the middle, if then someone asks me "did you know how to go on?" I should answer "yes, I did." What sort of process is this knowing how to go on? It might appear as though the whole continuation of the tune had to be present while I knew how to go on.
Ask yourself such as question as: "How long does it take to know how to go on?" Or is it an instantaneous process? Aren't we making a mistake like mixing up the existence of a gramophone record of a tune with the existence of a tune? And aren't we assuming that whenever a tune passes through existence there must be some sort of a gramophone record of it from which it is played?
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Prelimary Studies for the "Philosophical Investigations" (1969: 35-40)
... Another source of the idea of a shadow being the object of our thought is this: We imagine the shadow to be a picture the intention of which cannot be questioned, that is, a picture which we don't interpret in order to understand it, but which we understand without interpreting it. Now there are pictures of which we should say that we interpret them, that is, translate them into a different kind of picture, in order to understand them; and pictures of which we should say that we understand them immediately, without any further interpretation. If you see a telegram written in cipher, and you know the key to this cipher, you will, in general, not say that you understand the telegram before you have translated it into ordinary language. Of course you have only replaced one kind of symbols by another; and yet if now you read the telegram in your language no further process of interpretation will take place.—Or rather, you may now, in certain cases again translate this telegram, say into a picture; but then too you have only replaced one set of symbols by another.
... Our confusion could be described in this way: Quite in accordance with our usual form of expression we think of the fact which we wish for as a thing which is not yet here, and to which, therefore, we cannot point. Now in order to understand the grammar of our expression "object of our wish" let's just consider the answer which we give to the question: "What is the object of your wish?" The answer to this question of course is "I wish that so-and-so should happen." Now what would the answer be if we went on asking: "And what is the object of this wish?" It could only consist in a repetition of our previous expression of the wish, or else in a translation into some other form of expression. We might, e.g., state what we wished in other words or illustrate it by a picture, etc., etc.
... The fault which in all our reasoning about these matters we are inclined to make is to think that images and experiences of all sorts, which are in some sense closely connected with each other, must be present in our mind at the same time. If we sing a tune we know by heart, or say the alphabet, the notes or letters seem to hang together, and each seems to draw the next after it, as though they were a string of pearls in a box, and by pulling out one pearl I pulled out the one following it.
Now there is no doubt that, having the visual image of a string of beads being pulled out of a box through a hole in the lid, we should be inclined to say: "These beads must all have been together in the box before." But it is easy to see that this is making a hypothesis. I should have had the same image if the beads had gradually come into existence in the hole of the lid. We easily overlook the distinction between stating a conscious mental event, and making a hypothesis about what one might call the mechanism of the mind. All the more as such hypotheses or pictures of the working of our mind are embodied in many of the forms of expression of our every day language. The past tense "meant" in the sentence "I meant the man who won the battle of Austerlitz" is part of such a picture, the mind being conceived as a place in which what we remember is kept, stored, before we express it. If I whistle a tune I know well and am interrupted in the middle, if then someone asks me "did you know how to go on?" I should answer "yes, I did." What sort of process is this knowing how to go on? It might appear as though the whole continuation of the tune had to be present while I knew how to go on.
Ask yourself such as question as: "How long does it take to know how to go on?" Or is it an instantaneous process? Aren't we making a mistake like mixing up the existence of a gramophone record of a tune with the existence of a tune? And aren't we assuming that whenever a tune passes through existence there must be some sort of a gramophone record of it from which it is played?
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Prelimary Studies for the "Philosophical Investigations" (1969: 35-40)
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