Friday, June 21, 2024

Language's Deep Ambiguity

The only words one can know the meaning of with absolute certainty are one's own.  One can certainly recognize patterns, however erratic or conflicting or random, in how others seem to use the same words, but one would have to already literally know their minds to know what they intend.  Words can be misleading and they are always ambiguous on their own.  Thus, one can never know from them what the contents of another mind really are.  It does not follow from someone using a word that they must mean exactly what someone else does, and one is already trapped within one's own consciousness regardless.  Words do allow for more precise communication than grunts or gestures.  One can only hope to convey so much by pointing, waving, or groaning, after all.  Even so, all language is inherently, hopelessly ambiguous to varying degrees.

As mental or social constructs, human words are neither necessary truths of logic like axioms nor sensory objects one finds in the natural world.  They are created to reference things other than themselves.  For the sake of more detailed communication--or attempts at it--they are necessary if people are to interact beyond the most superficial non-linguistic means.  Words are thus arbitrarily conjured up and associated with various concepts.  To someone who has never thought about the metaphysics and epistemology of language, at least free of assumptions, their own cultural wording might seem so natural and apparent, but even if they never encountered a speaker of an outside language, they could at any time choose to realize that there is nothing about a happenstance sound or character that has any inherent meaning.

They could come to see that it is not obvious what others mean by their words, but that what they seem to intend can be obvious.  Beyond the fundamental nature of linguistic communication between isolated minds, there are even additional ambiguities in some languages that are more blatant to non-rationalists.  Systems like verbal Mandarin (not the written kind, which is as if it is a whole separate language) and Swahili, spoken in some Eastern African countries like Kenya, are languages with only gender-neutral pronouns, so there would be no specification of "he" or "she," or not a spoken clarification when it comes to Mandarin.  To someone such as an English speaker, this introduces more than the normal, baseline level of uncertainty.  Significant but fluctuating amounts of ambiguity are simply already present with all verbal or written exchanges aside from this.

The features or lack thereof in particular languages are not what necessitates that all words, by themselves, always unclear to an extent.  It is thoughts and intentions that dictate what objective concept was meant by a given usage of a word.  If one could see into other minds with absolute certainty, one would precisely know what their words mean with no capacity for disconnect, but then one would have no need for language altogether.  One could just gaze into other minds directly!  It is not just that some words have multiple meanings, that some words/phrases are absent from specific languages, or that languages such as Latin, like individual words, can go "extinct" (fading from public familiarity) or evolve.  One cannot know anything more than the seeming meaning of other minds' communication from audible noises or written symbols.

Other than the idiocy of passive assumptions like non sequiturs (which a person can identify without the prompting of language since logic is true prior to/independent of words), there could be personal motivations to believe things to the contrary.  It might be deeply painful to think that one does not really know the thoughts or feelings of a treasured spouse or friend.  The metaphysical isolation brought by this epistemological restriction might be uncomfortable in moments where one craves genuine interpersonal connection.  Then there are possibilities like someone not wanting to admit that they cannot know anything more than what words appear to mean in some text they hold dear.  No perception from within a non-telepathic or non-omniscient mind could prove the interior of other minds.  It can take rationality and potentially courage to truly understand this.

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