Language Can Describe Truth

Humans wouldn't be able to function as a society if the fact that individuals can mean different things by the same words prevented any successful communication of ideas whatsoever.  I've previously explained how all human languages are arbitrary and that words in the human vocabulary have no inherent meanings in themselves, though the fact that individuals and societies arbitrarily assign meanings to words does not affect how concepts objectively exist independent of the words used to describe them [1].  Someone else might mean something by a word that is totally foreign to what I mean when I use the same word.  But this does not mean that language cannot convey any truth at all--if someone argues that, he or she disproves the very claim being offered.

The claim that written or verbally-spoken words cannot convey truth at all becomes entirely self-refuting the moment it is put forth in a written work or orally.  Someone could privately think that human language cannot adequately express truth to other beings without believing an inescapable contradiction, yet the moment that he or she shares that stance with others and the receivers of the message understand the concepts on any level, if the concepts are true, the claim becomes hopelessly self-refuting.  At that point, the claimer would be using words to argue for the conclusion that words cannot convey truths about reality, which commits intellectual suicide.

Even if no one could effectively communicate with language on any level because every person meant entirely different things by the same words, words used by individuals could themselves still describe truths about reality to those individuals in their thoughts, as each person could know exactly what he or she means by a term and there would be no ambiguity in communicating those words and the concepts they represent to another human.  The difference here is that while words would be utterly incapable of communicating truth to another person, they could still be useful tools for individuals to use within their own conscious minds.  Because of this, words can still retain some use for understanding truth by logical necessity.

I hope that readers can see what I am saying and what I am not saying here.  Human language is far from a perfect communication tool, but it is far from useless as well.  Language has severe limitations, both in its non-universality of meaning and the fact that humans can struggle to use language to describe certain concepts to begin with.  But it is not entirely without benefit for seekers of truth.  It is impossible for it to be so.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-relativity-of-language.html