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* Words create reality?

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09:38 / 15.12.01

Mostly I agree

quote: It is also a very good map, as we are capible of mistaking that map for the external world at times. We are awfully good map makers, and the map is a viable reality we can interact with of its own. This map, is made our of words.

But don't think it goes far enough. Like many complex systems the map has inherent properties that were not inherently planned. In effect it achieves super nodality when the inherent properties develop unplanned sub systems.

Hence we can talk about things like pokemon and Higg's Boson in a way that allows them to be real within the map space.

Because we live in the map rather than the territory much more than we realize we then become attached to things that are purely map properties, and build them into the system we regard as our identity. I suppose the world is real but we are imaginary.

Incidently King Mob was given the drug that causes you to read words as things (confusion of signifier with signified) in 1:17, when it was named Key 17(?).

19:01 / 16.12.01

'Reality' is a shared hallucination that we understand by an agreed symbol system.
It's true that we don't create reality through words, but it is through words which we describe and understand. Taking this we can say that words affects our perception of reality.
And no I'm not anyone in disguise, except myself.

01

05:27 / 17.12.01

Language is the interface or operating system that we choose to use. It is constantly updating itself thereby influencing the inner workings of the machine, or reality.

We have physical and non-physical reality. Do words create reality? That depends on what you're talking about. Did words create the stone on the ground? No. It was there before language.
holy fuck, I just had a thought, language is the guide or pointer that's going to send us on our way to unfold and upload our conciousness into the supercontext.

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

06:21 / 17.12.01

I do so enjoy it when people realise that a cursory reading of "The Invisibles" is all they need to provide all the answers they might ever need on this Earth.

08:49 / 17.12.01

quote:Originally posted by Ian Jawbone:

I love the idea of God's word creating the universe out of nothing. I'm not sure if we live in an 'abracadabra' universe.

'In the beginning was the Word: and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.'

[punctuation probably wrong]

Now, I know this isn't an accurate translation of the original Gospel text, but it seems to me that the idea is consistent with it; and that seems to me to be a little more complex than an 'abracadabra' universe. God doesn't say the word, he *is* the word - the embodiment of it, in some sense (can you have a metaphysical embodiment?). God *is* his creation, and in this case the first word is literally 'God'(=equiv).

This seems to me to have all sorts of ramifications to do with Natural Theology and First Causes which have nothing to do with this thread; but thinking about the hebrew bible made me think of Kaballah, and the use of words to uncover mystical truths in the Jewish religion.

Or am I talking tommyrot again?

01

15:21 / 17.12.01

I do so love watching pretentius ponces who continually try to bolster their pathetically weak egos by engaging in a constant verbal mastubatory technique of spewing out as many snippets of acedemia that they can.

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

15:39 / 17.12.01

Originally posted by Zerone

"I do so love watching pretentius ponces who continually try to bolster their pathetically weak egos by engaging in a constant verbal mastubatory technique of spewing out as many snippets of acedemia that they can."

Boy are you in the right place.

14:27 / 29.12.01

So god is a word?
That'll be civilisation then.

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

19:05 / 30.12.01

quote:Originally posted by zerone:
I do so love watching pretentius ponces who continually try to bolster their pathetically weak egos by engaging in a constant verbal mastubatory technique of spewing out as many snippets of acedemia that they can.

Yeah. Fuckers. Cunts can probably even spell "academia". And "pretentious". And, inexplicably, "masturbatory", which I thought you would have down cold.

*Try* to bring something to the argument, Zerone.

Meanwhile....the Gospel quote, IIRC, uses "logos", to mean word, which can also be an argument, or a reason. Which is quite a rich concept. There is an argument, I believe, that the word is in fact "Messiah" - that is, that the world is created by God's promise to redeem its inhabitants.

But yes, was God being performative - saying "I create the world", and by saying it doing it - or is there a "magic word" that exists at the centre of or the beginning of or woven throughout creation, or is the fact that God is able to understand and explain the universe linguistically the thing that brought it into existence?

[ 31-12-2001: Message edited by: The Halfway Haus ]

robert b maas

19:17 / 30.12.01

[ 31-12-2001: Message edited by: robert b maas ]

01

22:30 / 30.12.01

quote: Yeah. Fuckers. Cunts can probably even spell "academia". And "pretentious". And, inexplicably, "masturbatory", which I thought you would have down cold.

Or "explain."

23:56 / 30.12.01

What do you need explained, zerone?

How about something other than magic words? Like this.

God's words describe a perfect map of the universe, and, since any perfect map contains all the information of the thing itself, some subset of the map is indistinguishable from the the thing (in this case the universe). Thus, the initial words of God were the universe, and, since these words were the onky portion of God that had, at that time, any physical manifestation at all, they were essentially the whole of God Himself.

Now, this may be a magical word in a sense, but, if I have made myself clear, then you could probably imagine a situation in which we mere mortals could do something very similar without difficulty, and without much consequence.

01

01:57 / 31.12.01

Hey Stolte. I understand what you're saying. My last post was directed towards the haus of minutiae.

This magic word argument doesn't cut it for me because it supposes that words are somehow the end all be all highest form of communication. Why? Because god uses them, and god is perfect therefore any utterance of his (being perfection of course) will create the universe.

Why would god use words? Why even bother? Wouldn't he have some faster more efficient way to get his point across? Something perfect? Language like everything else is in a constant state of evoloution. Created and developed by us to help understand our surroundings. Eventually creating new connections in which our consciousness evolves as well. Ie. the concept of nation that was mentioned before. For god to say "I create the universe" and then for us to go on and to say that we, as humans in fact are capable of doing the same thing only goes to show the inflated sense of self that I was talking about earlier. God uses words. We use words. Therefore god = us. We're on par. I'll bet he uses 20th Century English as mortar. Language is tool that maybe one day we'll evolve past. It'll be Vic 20.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

12:49 / 31.12.01

Okay, ignoring the fact that the bible was written a gazillion years ago by people who probably didn't have a word for tricycle and were trying to explain stuff, real or illusionary, with a language that wasn't up to the task, so maybe 'word' was only the best they could come up with, and ignoring the whole issue of translations of the text...

What better ways of communication can you come up with?

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

13:14 / 31.12.01

quote:Originally posted by Lozt Cause:
Okay, ignoring the fact that the bible was written a gazillion years ago by people who probably didn't have a word for tricycle and were trying to explain stuff, real or illusionary, with a language that wasn't up to the task, so maybe 'word' was only the best they could come up with, and ignoring the whole issue of translations of the text...

Actually, the Gospels, where Macavity's quote is taken from, were most likely written in the mid to late 1st Century AD, in Greek, a language which had already developed a fairly big ontological and epistemological vocabulary, one which Heidegger among others claims is more useful than most modern languages for dealing with this sort of question, and could certainly very easily develop a word for tricycle.

The word "primitive" is in itself a very interesting thing...

Meanwhile, very good question. How do you create reality, and communicate that reality, without language? Thoughts?

13:38 / 31.12.01

Re: The Gospels thing - (1) IIRC, only the gospels Luke and John were originally written in Greek. Luke's gospel was one of the 3 synoptic gospels more or less written around the same time and more less agreeing (hence synoptic) These gospels may have been written by actual disciples of "Jesus" or people who had a second order relationship with him. John's gospel, where Kit-Kat's quote comes from, was probably written around CE 100, in Greek again, and was probably written by someone who was not Semitic in origin. (Back to John in a second.) Redactive Critics of the bible hypothesize a text called "Q" (again IIRC) which was the source of the 3 synoptic gospels. This Q was probably written in Aramaic.

The quote Kit-Kat takes from John leaves out the integral next line "and the Word was made Flesh and dwelt among them." As opposed to some contemporaneous Gnostics/neo-platonists (which the writer of the John gospel is sometime lumped in with) as well as some of the new "techno-gnostics" like Hans Moravec, Ray Kurzweil, Extropians, etc., to me, this quote from John seems to indicate that regardless of the origin of (logos/reason/word), it is inextricably bond up in the Flesh, the meat world, the incarnation, not only of Jesus, but in man. Following from this, the form of man is inseperable from the concept of reason. Either body is an epiphenomenon of reason or reason is an epiphenomenon of body. Being a good materialist, I'd tend toward the latter.

(Bearing in mind I'm not trying to use an ancient text as an authority here. Merely using the quote as a mental aid to tease out a theory.)

Now what does this have to do with communication/language and the creation of reality? Give me a bit to think about this...I'm thinking phenomenology and transcendental solipsism...

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

15:23 / 31.12.01

In his very informative discursus above, Todd has actually given us quite useful little example of the possibilities for the crreation of the world through language. By using the term "contemporaneous neo-platonists, he has created for us a world in which Neo-Platonism existed around the end of the 1st century CE. Others would argue that this world is a false world, and trace the development of Neo-Plationism to Plotinus (c.205-270AD), arguing that what he is talking about must therefore be Platonism, albeit in a late form. Which of these worlds is the "real one"? And how can it be established without recourse to subjective sets of texts which themselves orely on language to make them meaningful, and other texts to make them "valid"?

15:57 / 31.12.01

Beg your pardon. I am in this area (as in all things) a diletante rather than an expert. I've just barely struggled through Plotinus's Enneads in translation, and I will cop to being more than a little confused by the various strands of Gnosticism, Platonism, and "Hermeticism" that rose and fell in the first few centuries CE (and a little before that). To be more precise on the type of thought I was inelegantly trying to lump John's Gospel in with, here's a quote from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophies definition of Neo-Platonism:

quote:This brand of Platonism, which is often described as 'mystical' or religious in nature, developed outside the mainstream of Academic Platonism. The origins of Neo-Platonism can be traced back to the era of Hellenistic syncretism which spawned such
movements and schools of thought as Gnosticism and the Hermetic tradition. A major factor in this syncretism, and one which had an immense influence on the development of Platonic thought, was the introduction of the Jewish Scriptures into Greek intellectual circles via the translation known as the Septuagint. The encounter between the creation narrative of Genesis and the cosmology of Plato's Timaeus set in motion a long tradition of cosmological theorizing that finally culminated in the grand schema of Plotinus' Enneads.

01

00:44 / 03.01.02

Is language the highest form of communication? For human beings right now, at this point in history, yes it is. But maybe as we evolve and language evolves as well (ie more connections are made), somewhere farther down the line it will meld with other forms of communication into something completely unrecognizable. What would replace it? I don't know maybe something along the lines of The Invisibles "emotional aggregates" theory. Or maybe some form of telepathy that condenses both verbal and non-verbal communication (ie. body language) into more compact packets of information. A form of communication that would be:
a. more potent in it's function providing richer and farther reaching descriptions than we can imagine right now.
b. of wider scope and easier to receive. Maybe we wouldn't neccessarily have to physically be with in an earshot and maybe we could communicate with more than one person at a time.

The point being that language alone in its current form would be slow and blunt, therefore obsolete. Our faculties would be so highly developed that they would need something more concentrated. These faculties would evolve because of the evoloution of language and vice versa. Any sort of chicken or egg paradox would be rendered inert.

05:01 / 03.01.02

Quite an interesting webpage:
Perception and stuff

The Planet of Sound

08:21 / 03.01.02

Good God! Is this thread still going? And have we come to any conclusions?

Re: Kant, I like to think of his astounding revelation that people's minds actually affect stuff as a bit like the astounding revelation that fire is hot. This thread has been a remarkable display of verbosity over insight. Is it any wonder that France, the most arrogant and lazy nation in the world, prides itself on its' philosophers, while the UK (well, Scotland, mostly) has a fine tradition of engineers who have actually affected all our lives in the most astounding ways?

08:48 / 03.01.02

Yeah, those arrogant and lazy French, what do they know about engineering with their crappy Eiffel Tower and Panama Canal and discovery of radioactivity, eh?

Fuck. Ing. Hell.

[ 03-01-2002: Message edited by: ephemerat ]

The Planet of Sound

08:59 / 03.01.02

Any excuse to have a go at the French. Sorry. Alec Eiffel, he was the father of aerodynamics, you know.

08:59 / 03.01.02

It is quite suprising that the thread got this far without a reference to Kant. I'm a blank sheet right now as far as these things are concerned, but having stumbled over a bit of writing on Kant it just seemed so relevant to this discussion.
Oh, and am I being too sensitive saying that the jingoism above makes me feel uncomfortable.

The Planet of Sound

08:59 / 03.01.02

Yes, you humourless wet. Jesus!

07:19 / 07.01.02

Stop ye squabbling!

Aaaany-way, engineering is an interesting example to use as it is based firmly on mathematics rather than word-play. I think that there's a fairly firm case for mathematics to be considered as a very different way of representing the world to standard written/spoken language. It's Strangely Other - it tastes different. And it communicates and creates reality (in a subjective sense, of course). Anyone else?

08:32 / 07.01.02

A problem occurs when mathematics extends beyond our capacity for visualization. We encounter the like of the Schroedinger's Cat thought experiment (not sure that is entirely relevant).
David Hume stated that:
quote: Though there never were a circle or triangle in nature, the truths demonstrated by Euclid would for ever retain their certainty and evidence.

Euclid's postulates were based on our intuition of geometric objects. With the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries, the Elements were scrutinized and logical omissions were found. This led to non-intuitive discoveries such as Einstein's Theory of General Relativity.
Mathematics is strangely other.

08:32 / 07.01.02

if math tastes different than spanish, "strangely other", as 2 out of 2 barbelithians surveyed suggest, does it get "closer" to reality?--or does _math_ "create" reality, while language gets top billing in all the marketing? In the beginning was the number, and the number was god and the number was with god . . .

Tryphena Absent

23:15 / 07.01.02

I'm doing a degree in philosophy and I'm (quite worried because I'm) completely lost. None of this is half as complicated as all of you have made it sound and I feel truly sorry for anyone who just stumbled upon this thread by accident (sorry for myself actually). Poor Saussure would be rolling in his grave the way you described the whole concept of the signifier and signified: to simplify to such a degree is quite frankly a crime (I wrote 1000 words on the first chapter of CGL, it took me five days to get within the word limit for that essay)
and how you got through three pages without a mention of Lacan is completely beyond me... creation of self through language seems to fit this subject too well for it to be overlooked.

23:28 / 07.01.02

Yeah, we're all real sorry we didn't do justice to outdated concepts from long dead structuralists, and over-complicated everything as well, perhaps you could enlighten us a little after delivering the requisite spankings?

Tryphena Absent

23:56 / 07.01.02

When I said you over-complicated I meant you over-complicated as in, the language that has been used to discuss whether words create reality has itself been over complex. Not in every case obviously but for example Saussure's idea on the signifier would be better described:

'The reality of signs is no longer to be located in the signified... but in the signifier' (Culler, Saussure, 1976)

Then the description I read could be given and make a little more sense once contextualized...

According to Saussure, within a linguistic system the differential relations of the terms (the signifiers) are logically prior to, and determine, the identity of the terms (the signified). Thus meaning is wholly a function of oppositions.

As for Lacan, he's interesting even while outdated and perhaps necessary to wheel out when you're discussing something like this if only for the psychoanalytic bent because the whole notion of whether words create reality has to open up in to what reality is eventually.

I'd prevaricate properly but I'm sorry I've got to go to work tomorrow and I'm actually falling asleep at my computer. I'm sorry if I sound harsh - I just thought I'd point out what seems recurringly obvious to me... it's not that I don't love the concepts but sometimes the way they're uttered within the whole subject of philosophy is so difficult and when I come on to Barbelith it's almost an extension of the amount of work that I've had to wade through(but that's another thread).

[ 08-01-2002: Message edited by: Janina ]

[ 08-01-2002: Message edited by: Janina ]

05:02 / 08.01.02

I understand what you are saying there Janina. I posted the same kind of sentiment earlier on when I noted my suprise that Kant had not been mentioned after so many pages and so many contributions from different people. I'm largely ignorant of philosophy, and know little about Kant, but happening across some interpretation of his work...well it just seemed so relevant here.
However these subjects are interesting in themselves without referring to, or perhaps even knowledge of, work related to the same type of problem. Barbelith isn't a forum especially for philosophy degree holders so it is a bit unfair to criticize it as such.

[ 08-01-2002: Message edited by: Buk ]

05:08 / 08.01.02

Yeah, I just figure anyone who's been near an art's degree could easily come up with a lengthy shopping list of relevant writers not mentioned in the thread, but it's hardly something to get het up about since it's a nonspecialist forum. If you think X has important things to say on the subject, say them, don't complain nobody else has - I am sorry this is coming across as more hostile than I want it to, I am really not trying to have a go at anyone but I guess words do create reality after all and I am a surly little pixie. Grrrr. The Master Signifier Aint Nuttin To Fuck Wit.

07:11 / 08.01.02

cf my post in Invisibles and Postmodernity

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

07:27 / 08.01.02

Saussure? Not convinced. The linguistic functions delineated by langue and parole fail, as Chomsky pointed out, to include the possibility of flexible sentence construction as anything other than case-by-case instances outside highly formulaic syntagm; in effect, the Saussurean concept of linguistic signification cannot provide any reliable signification for the locative structural concepts necessary for any serious project concerning the construction of reality.

Lacan's interpolation into this structure of Jakobsonian renderings of paradigm and syntagm as metonym and metaphor is useful after a fashion, but requires a subdivision of language and thus of of thought - both conscious and unconscious - into modular sense-blocks that is not only counterintuitive but ultimately incoherent.

Phew. Do I get to feel all clever and great now?

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