The Nonphysicality Of Language

You might go out into the world and find an apple tree, but you will not find the word apple, except for in spoken words or in writing.  You can see forests, sand, mountains, and various creatures living in such environments, but the words are not out there for anyone to discover through observation.  They are not part of the natural world.  Nor is there anything about an apple or a forest that logically requires the thing in question be connected with an exact term in a given language.  Indeed, the fact that there are different languages and that they can have such dissimilar words for the same concept or object is only possible because words are not logical necessities or part of the physical world.  

Human linguistic systems and their words are quite literally made up.  Yes, as with all other concepts, ideas of certain letters, combinations of them, and assigned meanings are still logically possible, so there are necessary truths about them rooted in logical axioms that cannot be invented.  But in the same way that there is no business unless one is formed, there is no English, Spanish, and so on unless someone makes it so.  This does not mean that words do not exist, though they only do in a concrete sense as a mental/social construct.  And though a naturalist might struggle to pretend otherwise, words have no physical substance.  They are not tangible items or part of nature at all.  At most, the page they are written on is physical, the electronic device they are displayed on is physical, etc.  The same is not true of letters, words, and sentences themselves—or of their linguistic meaning.

As nonphysical existents that do not exist apart from a mind to think of or use them, which itself is immaterial, the very existence of words alone means naturalism is not true.  Someone who speaks aloud to protest this is only relying on immaterial sounds and words to verbally state their position.  The use of physical vocal chords to produce sounds used in speech does not mean that words, whether in spoken form, in thought, or as linguistic concepts that are a function of mind-independent logical truths, are not objectively nonphysical.  They are.  While there are so many more foundational or important reasons why metaphysical naturalism is false which I have devoted much attention to here over the years, something as basic as the nature of language contradicts the idea that nothing physical exists.

With all the focus on God, angels, demons, and other things more akin to these entities when people dwell on general supernaturalism, it could be easy for the immateriality of words on all levels to not be noticed.  This very incomplete conception of what really constitutes the immaterial can deter people from realizing what does and does not fall into the scope of what the material, anything which is physical in nature.  It is far from the most significant aspect of reality that language is nonphysical.  Even this is still metaphysically significant, for though language does not have to exist, it is impossible for words themselves to be material.