Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Thinking in Language

I'm going to disagree with Cameron here. Language does not create a finite world - the world is finite with or without language. The fact that language, however, constructs the world is what is important. Language transcends the world and also creates the world. Whatever is, is in language, and whatever is not, is also in language, but not in the world. Thus, language constructs and at the same time deconstructs (negates) things as they appear to us in the world (phenomenology). This is why language is infinite - it doesn't "create" the world, it creates the way we understand the world, and we understand the world through language, and in this way, language transcends itself and, hence, is infinite. This is how language "preforms thought". Thinking only occurs in language - we think in language. At the same time, language doesn't necessarily "think for us" (it can, and at time might, but it doesn't always). Language defines the limitations of what can and cannot be said, or thought, rationally, about a specific transcendent truth. 

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