Groucho Marxism

Language is arguably mankind’s greatest invention. It has enabled us surpass other large-bodied predators like lions and wolves in our ability to command the environment. This is all the more remarkable when you consider that our senses are pathetically weak compared with other species. Could these two facts related? That is, could it be that the development of language resulted in us losing our ability to see, smell, and hear as effectively as other species? Perhaps the development of language had an adverse effect on the perceptual capacity of the human brain. It could be argued that the use of language diminishes the need for direct observation; but this doesn’t explain why we as a species would have lost our senses quite so rapidly.

An alternative explanation is that language acts as a kind of parasite which invades the human brain and diminishes its perceptual capacity. This view was first put forward by the linguist Frederik Kortlandt in the mid-1980s. According to Kortlandt’s theory, linguistics may be considered a branch of biology. However, his ‘language parasite’ differs from biological parasites as it is transmitted through sound waves rather than through bodily contact. Furthermore, reproduction of this parasite differs from the reproduction of biological parasites in that the reproduced forms do not resemble their parents to the same degree. This kind of reproduction may be referred to as ‘symbolic reproduction’, to contrast with the organic reproduction of biological parasites.

It is generally understood that human language does not follow the usual laws of logic. The reason for this, as emphasized by Wittgenstein, is that the meanings of words and phrases are derived from their use, rather than (as is usually assumed) the other way round. This is why the meanings of words often change significantly over time. It is also why dictionaries should always be seen as descriptive rather than prescriptive, and why linguistic purism makes no sense. Another way of saying this is that meanings are non-constructible sets. It is impossible to know a-priori whether particular thing belongs to a particular meaning, or equivalently, whether a particular meaning encompasses a particular thing. This can only be deduced a-posteriori, based on how words and phrases are used in practice.

To make this a bit more rigorous, we need to make some definitions. Let us say that a thing exists if it can be distinguished from other things, and let us define a meaning to be a set of things that exist. Let us further define symbolization to be the set of all things that exist, and abstraction to be the set of all meanings. We may then define mathematics to be the study of symbolization, and philosophy to be the study of abstraction. Thus, a mathematician is typically concerned with the problem of existence, and a philosopher with the problem of meaning. Further, we may define physics to be the phenomenology of existence, and linguistics to be the phenomenology of meaning (‘phenomenology’ just means the study of something as experienced from the first-person point of view).

Symbolization, the set of all things that exist, is obvious extremely large; but it is finite, as there is a limit to how many things can be distinguished. This means that meanings, although non-constructible, are also finite, as is abstraction, the set of all meanings. Infinite sets therefore do not exist in this framework, which is in accordance with the materialist view of mathematics I put forward in a previous blog post. However, the existence of finite sets that are non-constructable seems to be a contradiction, as we usually think of finite sets as being constructable. But what exactly do we mean by ‘constructable’? For our purposes, we may define a constructable set as a sets of the form {x: p(x)}, where p(x) is a proposition about x – that is, a statement about x that is either true or false.

Meanings are therefore simply finite sets that cannot be described in this way. Why does it follow from this that language does not follow the usual laws of logic? Consider the proposition ‘y is in the set X’. If X is a constructable set (as defined here), then we can write X = {x: p(x)} for some propositional function p(). We can then determine the truth or falsity of the proposition ‘y is in the set X’ simply by determining the truth or falsity of the proposition p(y). But if X is a non-constructible set (again as defined here), we cannot do this. What then can we say about the proposition ‘y is in the set X’? We can either say that it is undetermined, or that it is both true and false. Either way, this goes against the rules of classical logic, where all propositions must be either true or false.

In the same way that biological reproduction operates on genes, the symbolic reproduction of the language parasite operates on meanings – that is, non-constructable sets. These meanings reside in the human brain and are reproduced via sound waves. This view of language as a parasite which invades our brains controls our behaviour has important consequences for the study of human affairs. Language has enabled humanity time and again to discover new techniques, allowing easy exploitation and rapid depletion of hitherto inaccessible resources, thereby renewing or intensifying damage to other forms of life. The survival of the human species requires a large-scale effort to tame the language parasite by diminishing abstraction and encouraging direct observation.