Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

I would like to open a discussion on creative experimentation with language forms, particularly as that might relate to the “postmetaphysical” project.  

Often, in exploring “postmetaphysical” and “enactive” approaches, we concentrate on the content of particular visions.  But to realize the potential of these visions, might it not be important also to consider the forms of our natural languages – to explore the metaphysical presuppositions that underlie our grammatical systems, for instance; to deconstruct them and possibly reconstruct something new?

Although strong linguistic relativism no longer holds water, neither does the universalist rejection of it: the influence of language and grammar on thought, perception, and behavior is an accepted fact in linguistics, and the debate now centers around the extent of this influence.  Is this something that merits exploring?  How can we approach it?

Earlier today, I started a related thread on this topic over on David's Integral Archipelago forum, which I welcome you to read:  Conscious Language Evolution.  In it, I discuss my early experiments with alternative grammars and languages – inspired, in part, by David Bohm's writings on language and fragmentation, and his proposed experimental language form, the rheomode.

For this thread, I want to concentrate first on David Bohm's proposed approach – since I think it has features which are compatible with the postmetaphysical vision(s) explored in this group, although it also has shortcomings that need to be acknowledged.

The following quote, taken from an essay on Bohm's rheomode, is a good place to start:

The rheomode of language is not an artificial language (like Esperanto) or a perfect language for scientific purposes the logical atomists dreamt of, but a way to reshape in an enactive way the relationship between language, experience and reality.

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

From The Rheomode of Language of David Bohm:

1. Coda : The myth of ‘perfect’ language
 
It is an old myth of mankind that there can be developed or uncovered a type of language that is ‘perfect’ in the sense of completely fitting (being attuned to) to the nature of thought as well as to the nature of reality mirroring both of them in a sort of perfect coincidence (perfect symmetry). If one reads the monograph of Umberto Eco (1995) In Search of the Perfect Language one cannot but be stricken by the permanent re-appearance of this idea in different garbs throughout the last 20 centuries of European history. This idea appears also to have a history of its own in each of the other main civilizations in the world.

Thus, Eco points out that the ‘speculative grammar’ of the Modistae asserted a relation of specular correspondence between language, thought and the nature of things. For them, it was a given that the modi intelligendi and, consequently the modi significandi reflected the modi essendi of things themselves (cf. Eco 1995: 44). The Modistae were, by all means not the only ones to come with ideas along these lines. For Agrippa von Nettesheim (De occulta philosophia, I, 74), the Hebrew writing must be considered as particularly sacred; it exhibits perfect correspondence between letters, things and numbers (cf. Eco 1995: 120). One can continue along these lines in tracing different aspects of the belief of the perfect language that corresponded to the original one given to Adam by the God, and with which Adam gave the ‘true’ names to the things in the world, the names that correspond to their essences.

We are, however, children of a different world, from this point of view (among others). We do not believe in such superstitions. We know that language is conventional means for communication and nobody can expect to find in it high degree of correspondence to reality outside some quite restricted limits. Just to the opposite. We became accustomed to believe to the claims of many physicists and philosophers alike that language is rather a hindrance on the way to ‘proper’ representation of the physical reality, the true reality, the only reality, the final reality. It is a matter of common sense nowadays both in theoretical physics as well as in the cognitive sciences to maintain, for example, that the mental space does not actually correspond to a physical space. “It merely represents the information of a physical space.” Thus we have an essence that the two still share, the so called “information”; everything else is not necessarily the same. And we have a residual problem – how to define ‘information’.

Vestiges of the myth of perfect and universal language, however, still remain in different garbs in the modern philosophies up to the XX century (here I will follow again the overview of Eco 1995). Thus Ludwig Wittgenstein had the ambition to create a language whose signs were univocal and whose propositions mirrored the logical structure of reality itself (Tractatus logicophilosophicus, 1921-2, 3.325ff. and 4.121). Rudolf Carnap proposed constructing a logical system of objects and concepts such that all concepts might be derived from a single nucleus of prime ideas via formal rules (Der logische Aufbau der Welt, 1922-5). Russell & Whitehead in their Principia mathematica developed a formal language, i.e., a language only with syntax, and pointed out that it could become a ‘perfect language’ with an addition of a vocabulary. Eco comments in his brief review of these new reminiscences of old ideas, that above mentioned philosophers all hoped to construct a scientific language, perfect within its chosen range of competence, a language that would be universal as well (cf. Eco 1995: 313). These philosophers and logicians did not claim that such a language would replace the natural language in its common use. Still, their attempt was based on the belief that the natural language is deficient in different ways in representing reality, as it ‘really is’, while such a structure of reality” is possible in making revisions in its structure (to certain extent and in certain directions, fighting, first of all, such features of natural language like vagueness, polysemy, and ambiguity and thus clarifying the reference potential of its expressions).

2. The rheomode of language – the basic idea

In his most popular book the theoretical physicist David Bohm (1980) proposed inter alia an experiment with language, and this experiment is strikingly different from those carried in linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, communication studies, cognitive psychology & cognitive science, philosophy, logic, etc. He proposes “to experiment with changes in the structure of the common language” (Bohm 1980: 27).

From linguistic, psychological and philosophical point of view, the proposal of Bohm for an ‘alternative’ language is an unprecedented one along the following lines. Nobody before him claimed that in order to comprehend how language contributes to the way thought is constituted it is not enough to follow it; it is necessary actively to interfere with its function in order to discern clearly ‘same’ and ‘different’ in its structures. The practice with no alternative in linguistics is to study language in manipulating the acceptability and grammaticality of its units with different sorts of permutations deletions and additions in their structure. To this status quo Bohm offers the following Ausweg:

[…] one of the best ways of learning how one is conditioned by habit (such as the common usage of language is, to a large extent) is to give careful and sustained attention to one’s overall reaction when one ‘makes the test’ of seeing what takes place when one is doing something significantly different from the automatic and accustomed function. (Bohm 1980: 28)

[…] to see the relevance or irrelevance of a statement is primarily an act of perception of a very high order similar to that involved in seeing its truth or falsity.  In one sense the question of relevance comes before that of truth, because to ask whether a statement is true or false presupposes that it is relevant (so that to try to assert the truth or falsity of an irrelevant statement is a form of confusion), but in a deeper sense the seeing of relevance or irrelevance is evidently an aspect of the
perception of truth in its overall meaning. (Bohm, 1980: 33)

[…] it is not right, for example, to regard the division between relevance and irrelevance as a form of accumulated knowledge of properties belonging to statements (e.g., by saying that certain statements ‘possess’ relevance while others do not). Rather, in each case, the statement of relevance or irrelevance is communicating a perception taking place at the moment of expression, and is the individual context indicated in that moment. […] when relevance or irrelevance is communicated, one has to understand that this is not a hard and fast division between opposing categories but, rather, an expression of an ever-changing perception, in which it is possible, for the moment, to see a fit or non-fit between the content lifted into attention and the context to which it refers. (Bohm, 1980: 34)

The spontaneous and unrestricted act of lifting into attention any content whatsoever, which includes the lifting into attention of the question of whether this content fits a broader context or not as well as that of lifting into attention the very function of calling attention which is initiated by the verb itself. (Bohm, 1980: 35)

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

Of related interest is the constructed language, Lojban.  Here is some information on the language from several online resources:

Lojban was originally designed for the purpose of supporting research on a concept known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: “the structure of a language constrains the thinking of people using that language”. Lojban allows the full expressive capability of a natural language, but differs in structure from other languages in major ways. This allows its use as a test vehicle for scientists studying the relationships between language, thought, and culture.

The following links provide more information on the use of Lojban for testing the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis:

20. Lojban is supposed to be intended as a test of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in its negative form: “structural features of language make a difference in our awareness of the relations between ideas.” Is this simply another way of saying “Distinctions are more likely to be noticed if structurally marked”? If so, this is trivially true.
 
21. How can 'ease of thought' be measured? Measuring facility with predicate logic may not be enough to establish 'ease of thought'.

General introduction:

Lojban is a carefully constructed spoken language designed in the hope of removing a large portion of the ambiguity from human communication. It was made well-known by a Scientific American article and references in both science fiction and computer publications. Lojban has been built over five decades by dozens of workers and hundreds of supporters.

The principal sources of its basic vocabulary were the six (at the time) most widely spoken languages: Mandarin, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic, chosen to reduce the unfamiliarity or strangeness of the root words to people of diverse linguistic backgrounds. The language has drawn on other constructed languages' components, a notable instance of which is Láadan's set of indicators. Also Toki Pona and Esperanto have mutuality with Lojban to some extent.

Lojban has a number of features which make it unique:

Lojban is designed to be used by people in communication with each other, and possibly in the future with computers.
Lojban is designed to be culturally neutral.
Lojban has an unambiguous grammar, which is based on the principles of logic.
Lojban has phonetic spelling, and unambiguous resolution of sounds into words.
Lojban is simple compared to natural languages; it is easy to learn.
Lojban's 1300 root words can be easily combined to form a vocabulary of millions of words.
Lojban is regular; the rules of the language are without exception.
Lojban attempts to remove restrictions on creative and clear thought and communication.
Lojban has a variety of uses, ranging from the creative to the scientific, from the theoretical to the practical.
Learn Lojban now or read the introductory brochure for more a more detailed description of Lojban.

And here's the first part of a recent film done in the Lojban language (with other parts available here):

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

- ((a) v (-a) v (a ^ -a) v (a v -a))

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

Hmm.

       (“<  (“<  (“<   
   __( ,,) ( ,,) ( ,,) __         
        “    “     ”
 
 
 
 

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

“It is not the case (-) that a svabhava can be said to exist (a), or (v) that it can be said to not exist (-a), or (v) that it can be said to both exist (a) and (^) not exist (-a), or (v) that it can be said to neither (-) exist (a) nor (v) not exist (-a).”

Formulated in this manner, that is using the calculus of a first order logic, this formula, which occurs in Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamika, generates a contradiction. The question has arisen whether Nagarjuna was implying some sort of non-ordinary or deviant logic that “embraces contradiction,” as some New Agey-type commentators have suggested. But as Robinson has shown, Nagarjuna favorably cites or implies the rule of non-contradiction.

The “paradox” can be resolved in two ways: 1. by resorting to a second order predicate calculus (such as that of Frege and Russell) to describe the situation; this solution has been suggested by Tom Tillemans and by Claus Oetke. A simpler solution, which is suggested by David S. Ruegg and Bimal Matilal, is to say that (a) does not simply refer to some fact or thing in the world, but to a statement about that thing. In this case, the way of formulating the above would thus: “It is not the case that one can assert that a svabhava exists, does not exist,” etc. Given what Nagarjuna has to say about not entertaining a thesis (pratijna), and given that the predicate calculus of Frege was unknown to Nagarjuna, this interpretation would appear to be more applicable.

Garfield discusses similar issues here.

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

“The self-recursiveness of the act of calling attention in its ability to call attention not only to the content which is picked up, but to the very function of calling attention, i.e., being attentive to something, as well as being attentive of the function of this being attentive to.”

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

One of the axioms that Robinson cites (the final one) has to do with whether something can be both an agent and that which is acted upon. A problem here would appear to be the status of consciousness. Shankara and Nagarjuna deny the possibility that consciousness can act upon itself, any more than a knife can cut itself, or an eye see itself. The Yogachara thinkers, however, say that consciousness is reflexive; it can be aware of itself, what they call svasamvedana.

However, according to the Madhyamika, the doctrine of emptiness is itself reflexive: the emptiness of emptiness. In other words, the teaching of emptiness is itself empty.

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

Bruce, this is an interesting topic and one to which I'll contribute when I return to my home town in a week.  In the mean time, I will lay my hands on Bohm's Implicate Order to remind myself what he says.

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

Great, Tom.  I look forward to it.

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

As a little background for any who may be interested (and that may not be many!), here are some of Bohm's thoughts on the influence of implicit grammatical structure on thinking and perception, including his rationale for creating his own experimental language form, the rheomode.  Bohm was concerned that language itself, while often an object of study, was nevertheless frequently exempted from experimental inquiry. 

From Wholeness and the Implicate Order:

“What, then, will be our question, as we engage in this inquiry into our language (and thought)?  We begin with the fact of general fragmentation.  We can ask in a preliminary way whether there are any features of the commonly used language which tend to sustain and propagate this fragmentation, as well as, perhaps, to reflect it.  A cursory examination shows that a very important feature of this kind is the subject-verb-object structure of sentences, which is common to the grammar and syntax of modern languages.  This structure implies that all action arises in a separate entity, the subject, and that, in cases described by the transitive verb, this action crosses over the space between them to another separate entity, the object.  (If the verb is intransitive, as in 'he moves,' the subject is still considered to be a separate entity but the activity is considered to be either a property of the subject or a reflexive action of the subject, e.g., in the sense that 'he moves' may be taken to mean 'he moves himself.')

This is a pervasive structure, leading in the whole of life to a function of thought tending to divide things into separate entities, such entities being conceived of as essentially fixed and static in their nature.  When this view is carried to its limit, one arrives at the prevailing scientific world view, in which everything is regarded as ultimately constituted out of a set of basic particles of fixed nature.

The subject-verb-object structure of language, along with its world view, tends to impose itself very strongly in our speech, even in those cases in which some attention would reveal its evident inappropriateness… [He provides some illustrative examples here.]

These considerations on the overall implications of sentence structures suggest another question.  Is it not pssible for the syntax and grammatical form of language to be changed so as to give a basic role to the verb rather than to the noun?  This would help to end the sort of fragmentation indicated above, for the verb describes actions and movements, which flow into each other and merge, without sharp separations or breaks.  Moreover, since movements are in general always themselves changing, they have in them no permanent pattern of fixed form with which separately existent things could be identified.  Such an approach to language evidently fits in with the overall world view discussed in the previous chapter, in which movement is, in effect, taken as a primary notion, while apparently static and separately existent things are seen as relatively invariant states of continuing movement (e.g., recall the example of the vortex)… [He first discusses some ancient languages, like Hebrew or certain Amerindian languages, which are primarily verbal.  Then he discusses his rationale for creating the rheomode.]

…At least in the present inquiry the rheomode will be concerned mainly with questions having to do with the broad and deep implications of our overall world views which now tend to be raised largely in the study of philosophy, psychology, art, science and mathematics, but especially in the study of thought and language themselves.  Of course, this sort of question can also be discussed in terms of our present language structure.  While this structure is indeed dominated by the divisive form of subject-verb-object, it nevertheless contains a rich and complex variety of other forms, which are used largely tacitly and by implication (especially in poetry but more generally in all artistic modes of expression.)  However, the dominant form of subject-verb-object tends continually to lead to fragmentation; and it is evident that the attempt to avoid this fragmentation by skilful use of other features of the language can work only in a limited way, for by force of habit, we tend sooner or later, especially in broad questions concerning our overall world views, to fall unwittingly into the fragmentary mode of functioning implied by the basic structure.  The reason for this is not only that the subject-verb-object form of the language is continually implying an inappropriate division between things but, even more, that the ordinary mode of language tends very strongly to take its own function for granted, and thus it leads us to concentrate almost exclusively on the content under discussion, so that little or no attention is left for the actual symbolic function of the language itself.  As pointed out earlier, however, it is here that the primary tendency towards fragmentation originates.  For because the ordinary mode of thought and language does not properly call attention to its own function, this latter seems to arise in a reality independent of thought and language, so that the divisions implied in the language structure are then projected, as if they are fragments, corresponding to actual breaks in 'what is.'…

It is clear, then, that in developing the rheomode, we will have to be especially aware of the need for language to properly call attention to its own function at the very moment in which this is taking place.  In this way, we may not only be able to think more coherently about broad questions concerning our general world views, but we may also understand better how the ordinary mode of language functions, so that we may be able to use even this ordinary mode more coherently.”

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

I've been too busy to write the blog entry on this topic that I've been intending to write, so I'll just post a few excerpts here from stuff I've been reading on the web.  In particular, I've been reading about Bohm's activities in the last few months of his life, and what came out of that:  he helped organize a meeting between physicists and Native Americans to explore some of his thoughts on language, process, and perception.  He died shortly after the first meeting, but the meetings have continued on an annual basis.  Here are some excerpts from one of these subsequent conferences.

~*~

Dan Moonhawk Alford:  I have [written] a lot of stuff over the years on how Benjamin Whorf', who's known for the Whorf Hypothesis, which I now call “The Great Whorf Hypothesis Hoax,” [got a bum rap]. Basically, the problem was [that of] linear thinkers trying to understand a holistic thinker.
 
Benjamin Whorf pointed toward linguistic relativity – and there's a whole history that you can read in one of my papers called “Stealing the Fire.” Just do a search engine search on Moonhawk and you'll find it at some point. And relativity really has to do with–when the language that you're using to describe phenomena no longer adequately describes the phenomena, you want to change the language. When Einstein did it, it was [about how] you can't describe 4D spacetime with a 3D space language-, you have to change the language to do it properly. So, every language carries with it its own worldview that tells what the universe it lives in is all about. And this is as true of programming languages as anything else: you choose your programming language for doing easily what you want to do.
 
And we have the same thing in Native America. Where English and other Western Indo-European languages are noun-dominated, Native American languages are verb dominated-, they are relationship/process-oriented, rather than object-oriented: watching the dancing rather than the dancers – the dancers fade back- into the background as you just describe the rhythms and the motions of what is.

My Indian friends say that they can talk all day long and never utter a single noun. And this is real boggling to us English speakers. We couldn't even think of doing that. But when you have verbs that are like our English verb “slither,” where there's basically only one thing that slithers, you know what the subject is; and [it] you multiply that by many thousands, you can get an idea of how you can talk without nouns.
 
[Compare that with Whitehead's “All we know of an atom is its radiating … but there is no 'thing' there radiating!” – structurally similar: no nouns, no things.]
 
One other thing – well, let me just hit a few topics that are also of interest in quantum linguistics. Very specifically, speaking from the heart is qualitatively different from speaking from the head – and our society does the latter a lot, and we have to get to a certain place to be able to speak from the heart. This brings in, of course, ethics; it brings in intention- it brings women's ways of knowing into quantum linguistics.
 
The view of language that I have is an evolutionary, inside-out view of language that includes [rather than excludes] other life forms in Earth. And I propose it as a complementary view of language to go along with the synchronic view that Chomsky and others go by. I actually also, within this system, see complementarity itself as a cosmic universal. And it's the going back and forth between the two sides, trying to balance, that brings forth vibration.
 
I've talked here, in [conference] comments, about how I see analogs [to physics] in linguistics because of a common base of twentieth-century structuralism between physics and linguistics. I've talked about superposition [phonemes] and the collapse into certain sounds; how time and subject/object distinctions are verbal hallucinations that we project onto reality and then see it out there and think it's really out there…
 
A2: Brief Sketch of Bohmian Science Dialogues and Navajo Road Trip


Before I turn things over to the panel, I'd like to give you a brief sketch of Bohmian Science Dialogues, which the people here attended. This began in the early 1990s when Leroy Little Bear, a Blackfoot leader up in Canada, had read David Bohm's Wholeness and the Implicate Order and his writings on dialogue, and lie conceived of the idea of starting a dialogue between quantum physicists and Native Americans. He got David Peat and David Bohm both interested in this, and in April 1992 we had our first Bohmian Science Dialogue in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
 
My view of the consensus that came out of it is this: that linguists and Native Americans and physicists and psychologists and others all came to this Dialogue to discuss what reality is made up of and what reality is. And each came with their own favorite realm – let's just say it that way: the physicists the quantum realm, the linguists the meaning realm, the Indians the spirit realm, psychologists the mind, I guess. And after just a few days, we started seeing a consensus emerging, that if we were talking about these favorite realms, there were certain fundamental principles that they had in common that they did not share with the Newtonian realm. So, for instance: everything that exists vibrates, in a primary frequency domain, the only constant is flux in these realms; everything is interconnected in these realms, and in a part/whole relationship, a holographic organization.
 
And by the time we left, we realized that these seemed to be different facets of the same diamond, different paths leading into the same place, and that when physicists use the word “quantum,” it was like when the Indians used the word “spirit” and when linguists used the word “meaning” – that they were all [labels for] the same invisible realm. And the scientists went away shaking their heads, wondering, first, how come Indians had preknowledge of this realm that they weren't even supposed to know about, and, second, why their languages seemed better suited structurally to talking about eventings in that realm. Big puzzle.
 
So, we've had five other dialogues since then, and last weekend was the seventh Bohmian Science Dialogue, that we held in Albuquerque. Very quickly- We gathered together a number of Native American leaders [who, with] these people here, sat down at an actual round table, an inner circle with an audience on the outer circle, and we talked, as Leroy Little Bear moderated, the way he has all of the other dialogues. We talked about many interesting things, some of which may come out from these people…

Panel [Excerpt]

John Erskine: Of the four physicists on this panel, I'm the experimentalist. What I want to do is bring you three pieces of data that I've picked up during the Dialogue and the Navajo road trip. But first, let me tell a little bit about myself. I am a nuclear physicist and I spent the first part of my career at Argonne National Laboratory working with particle accelerators studying the structure of atomic nuclei. The second half of my career was in Washington, D.C. in the government office that provides the funding for most of basic research in nuclear physics in the country. This is the Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics in the U.S. Department of Energy. In that office one of the main motives for doing research is looking for physics beyond the standard model. We are interested in questions like: Does the neutrino have mass? How are quarks confined in the nucleus? What is the detailed process of nucleosynthesis in stars? So, coming from that background, I was alerted when I first saw emails from Moonhawk that told about the field of quantum linguistics, and the possible opportunities to learn new physics from the way that Native Americans speak and live.

From the Native American experience I learned that the Native American languages and modes of conscious are very different from the usual Western consciousness. And I could see that by studying these differences we might learn something important about the collapse of the quantum wave function in the human brain. This was a possibility. Consciousness is weird. We need help in trying to understand consciousness and, if possible, to put it on a physical, scientific basis. And so, learning about the Native American worldview and studying their type of consciousness, we might learn new ways to sort out this weirdness. I think of this as studying physics beyond the standard model.
 
Let me give you several pieces of data, examples, to give you a feel for the differences between Native American and usual Western ways of thinking. The first example is about horsebackriding. This comes from Amethyst First Rider. In English, when we say “the man rides the horse,” our language forces us to think in terms of a subject, the man, and a verb phrase, “rides the horse.” We get a clear visual image, but we pay a price. In Blackfoot language, the emphasis is on the physical feeling. It's a kinesthetic language, mostly verbs. So, in Blackfoot, to convey the same meaning, what's said is something like this: The way your body talks to you as you feel the movement of the horse beneath you – that's the verb. The verb conveys the kinesthetic feeling of the horse under you. And then comes a bunch of verb modifiers which tell about the rest of the information in the sentence, such as details about the man, the speed of the horse, how long he's been riding, and, other things. The primary thing is the feel of the moving horse underneath you.
 
A second example is about the Blackfoot language itself. This comes from Leroy Little Bear. Leroy says there is no Blackfoot language – it's just 800 variations on “to be.” He makes it up out of root words as the experience flows through him.
 
The third example is again from Amethyst. She says there are no metaphors in Native languages. It only sounds that way when translated into English. In English, the meaning of the word is generally not connected to the way the word sounds – mostly arbitrary assignments. Not so in the Algonquin language, of which the Blackfoot language is a member. Can you imagine a language in which the names of trees are assigned by the sounds that the leaves make in the fall of the year, when a gentle breeze is blowing?
 
Moonhawk: At an hour after sunset.
 
John Erskine: Yeah, okay, add that – even more specified: an hour after sunset.
 
Moonhawk: That's because the wind comes from a certain direction.
 
John Erskine: Mmm hmm, [affirmative sound]. And the next year, if there has been no rain, the name may change slightly, because the leaves are a little different. There are no metaphors. What's going on here is that Native American culture seems to be consciously trying to match their language as closely as possible to the lived experience of the natural world.
 
At this conference, we are all struggling to understand the circumstances which bring about the collapse of the wave function for the conscious human observer. Real data at this point is almost beyond our reach. We need to look at all possible kinds of data. I believe Native American modes of consciousness are uniquely different and should be explored. Perhaps a place to start might be to look at the fundamental awareness of the Native American, which is his sense of relatedness to all things. As they say, all my relations, or we are all related.
 
Andy Hilgartner: Mitakuye Oyasin.
 
John Erskine: [affirmative sound]. And these phrases indicate the notion of the Old Language, which Moonhawk told us about in the Cheyenne Tower of Babel teaching. So, it seems to me that somehow it may not be so difficult to pull this sense of universal relatedness out of quantum theory, or somehow to learn how to express quantum theory in a way that would vividly show up the Old Language which Native Americans tell us is very primary.
 
Moonhawk: What did you tell us at breakfast about 'moccasin'?
 
John Erskine: Oh. Oh, that's rather beautiful. Yeah, David Begay, the Navajo Dean of Dene' College. We were sitting around this large hogan in one of the college buildings, and talking about things. David said everything in Native American is always balanced between the masculine and the feminine, Father Sky and Mother Earth. But then he said the word “Mother Earth” is a poor translation of the Navajo, it just doesn't get it at all. And then he gave us a couple of concepts. One of them was something about the earth beneath one's moccasin, or the feel beneath one's moccasin. And he had some other phrases. So I thought about these things, and I tried to translate it into English as good as I could, using a verbal form, and what I came up with … now, if I can just remember what I told you this morning at breakfast, [pause], if I can get it into the right grammatical form [pause] “Lifts the moccasin gently.” There it is: “Lifts the moccasin gently.”
 
Moonhawk: “Supports.”
 
John Erskine: “Supports my moccasin gently”. [pause]. That conveys to me the sense of being lifted. There's a feeling sense to this and yet it's alive. In Native America God is not a noun. It has to be in some verb form.
 
[“ends side 1” – tape turnover]
 
Sarah Voss: I appreciate John's bringing up the idea that I heard for the first time at this dialogue, that there might be no metaphors. I'm having a really hard time with that idea. Because virtually everything I think and everything I do is metaphorical, in that I was trained to some degree by critical realists who say that the only thing that there is for us, the only way we really have of communicating with each other, is via metaphor. And so this was a novel idea, for me, to consider.
 
Let me share a little bit about how I came into being a part of this dialogue. It was the word “quantum linguistics” that did it. The curiosity of that. Because, that's a metaphor. [some light laughter] – and nothing I have heard since I've been involved in this has changed my thought on this. It's not that linguistics is done with quantum techniques. It's that quantum techniques and the characteristics of quantum world apply metaphorically to the linguistic view and offer a different view, an alternative view to the … Chomskyan? … linguistics. I'm not a linguist, here. What I am actually is a minister. I'm a Unitarian Universalist minister, and, before I was a minister I was a mathematician. And when I became a minister, I tried to relate mathematics to spirituality, religion, and have been trying to do that ever since. And I found I could do that by reconceiving my notion of mathematics, as a language.
 
Now, I heard last night Linda sing this wonderful song about how “mathematics is the language of science,” and I think she was singing to the choir, in this case. I also think that mathematics is a language of religion, of spirituality, and I'd say that history supports that. And, as I've done my research and looked at that, I've left off what I call either the qualitative aspects of mathematics or perhaps the metaphorical aspects of mathematics. And so, I was drawn into this discussion because I have worked so much with those qualitative aspects of mathematics. Quantum mind is a mathematical metaphor. There's a mathematical metaphor embedded in that notion, that mind, or consciousness or whatever else you want to put into that concept, is in some way like quantum physics. There's some connection to it, there's some characteristics, and I'm still trying – one reason I'm here Is I'm still trying to sort those out, to understand what those characteristics they are and how they can relate to our popular society, because I think our popular society is very interested in these notions. And so I'm trying to be at least somewhat accurate in what my own understanding is before I try to lift up these metaphors, and perhaps I then won't be accused of misappropriating them, which is of course always a concern whenever you take metaphors out of any area. or words or nouns out of any area, and apply them to any other area.
 
So! To get this around though to what I found in this experience – and it has been an experience! It's been a wonderful experience! And to also bring it back, I think, to your question, Moonhawk, about: do I, having been through this, think that there's any reason why physicists should lift up or should try consciously, intentionally, spending some time understanding Native American viewpoints on this? And the answer, the brief answer, is Yes. And I could stop there, but I won't. Because I think I need to share a little bit more about how I got to that – because it wasn't immediately obvious to me that physicists who speak English and mathematics and maybe something else, as far as that, but that's what I've heard here [chuckles] is English and mathematics …. I don't have any sense at all that everyone's going to rush off and learn Native American languages in order to do their physics. That doesn't make a lot of practical sense to me.
 
So what else is there that could be a reason for you even to spend some time with it, if you were a physicist? And I think that comes from a different perspective, and that goes back to the original thing that you said when you set it out, Moonhawk, as being that quantum linguistics is a complementary aspect to Chomskyan linguistics, and Chomskyan linguistics being the way that we are used to understanding our English, that we think in English, etc., etc. It's part of our culture, the way we think and look at things. And I realize that, at least what I've gotten from this is not that quantum linguistics means Native American languages, because I don't think they equate, but rather that quantum linguistics is an alternative way of examining or experiencing language, any language – English language, the Native American language, whatever language, maybe even mathematics [chuckles a little]. And that this bring in different characteristics. There's the same kind of characteristics that the physicist among you here are working with in the quantum field, where things interact differently. They are in a relational mode. They don't do the things that classical physics has done.
 
And so what happens is, when you attune to some of the differences in the language, even if you can't speak it – and I certainly don't speak any Native American, other than English, if that's a Native American language –, you begin to understand the differences. It allows you to get outside of the box of our normal language and that opens us up, and allows new kinds of experiences. What John said about Amethyst talking about the horse-riding: as she expressed that, she talked about feeling it, and she said it's not visual for her. When she pictures a horse, riding a horse, what she does not get is this mental image. I get mental images as soon as somebody says “riding a horse,” that's what comes, is a mental image. The very concept of not doing that is difficult for me to get around. And that's the same kind of thing that I think is happening in the difference between classical and quantum physics, as I understand it. It's difficult to grasp it.
 
Now, I'm taking it on faith that the Native American language has some things more in common with the flow of the quantum physics – but I am taking it on faith, after this little bit of experience. And it seems to me like it would be worth exploring some of that, in some way, and helpful to the physicists.
 
Steven Gamboa-Eastman: I just want to add a couple things. First of all, I just want to say, Moonhawk mentioned it, but it was the Native Americans who essentially sought us out. Leroy Little Bear and Sa'ke'j Henderson and those people sought out David Bohm. They went to the Fetzer Foundation, and got the money and did that. So. I think that's a very important point, that they sought us out. And I think the reason that they sought us out was because they feel that the Earth and our species is in imminent danger from the environmental catastrophe that we have created here, and my work around Chernobyl and in the human communities there certainly drove that deeply into my own mind – that urgency was required, that this was not a time of business as usual. So, I just wanted to mention that they did that.
 
And one of the things that we discussed over the weekend were some of the similarities, for example, between some types of sacred spaces and Hilbert space, rules for quantum mechanics, quantum mechanical primitive things. We discussed the collapse of the wave function and other things and tried to relate that back and forth. In my theoretical work, I use a lot of topological stuff, so I'm trying to think that way. So, I think they have not only a point of view and a language system which is extremely flexible, and unstatic, because it can create words on the fly to specifically delineate exactly the meaning that you have at this moment with this particular thing. Like, for me, the thing about the wind through the trees, it's very poetic, but it's very precise, and it's kind of like an address system. It's way of grounding yourself and fixing yourself in the world. And I think that that's of fundamental importance because, as everybody can see, we're developing rapidly some extremely powerful technologies and there are others that are sort of just being whispered about that may take place soon. So, all of these things should be grounded in the planet as a basic reference point and frame of reference, and then maybe some of these things will be able to help us overcome the deficit we've created. So. It seemed like there were some very interesting and concrete ways of approaching problems that have resisted solution up to now by expanding beyond the formalism itself into like taking into account things like intentionality, creation, how to create things…

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

I'm copying the following from another thread in which this topic came up:

Tom said:  Bruce, I suspect languages that do not use the verb to be are older, simpler, less developed languages, and that 'to be' is developmentally more complex.  I agree with what Karl is saying, from my own Particular Angle.  It seems to me that metaphysical thinking is a higher development, both conceptually and linguistically.  Metaphysical thinking, which in a sense can be seen to be based on 'is'—the root word of essence and being—is more abstract than the concrete thinking of the Native American languages I've read about in the Bohm dialogue extract Bruce posted.  It is even moreso developed than Neanderthal 'functional' language (grabbing an apple as 'apple is').

Wittgenstein's word-games approach, though expressed by W quite subtly, feels to me to be regressive.  It's the same feeling I get when I read about the interest in the kinesthetic language of Native Americans.  That interest likewise seems regressive.  It seems to me there's a developmental dynamic at play here, and that language and concept and with them feeling develop into the more abstract realms.

Yes, there are likely pre/trans issues attending the meeting between the physicists and the American Indians.  My point was that the assertion that 'something is' is not without its own form – here, starting from 'object' – and that isn't the starting place in all worldspaces.  Yes, from a relatively modern metaphysical perspective, we can generalize and apply the notion, 'something is,' across the board to all worldspaces, but we are, of course, applying a particular construct which carries its own subtle presuppositions.  In the case of the physicists who were interested in the highly (primarily) verbal Amerindian languages, I think it is because they have come up against the limits of metaphysical (thingifying) notions such as 'is' and 'object' and looking for even subtler, more dynamic and responsive modes of abstraction or cognition.  I don't think their impulse is inherently regressive. 

Because higher development often appears to involve a return to and a reappropriation of earlier modes and resources, it is not surprising to me that physicists might find it fruitful to return to earlier language forms – forms which are more verbal and process-oriented.  But the value may not be in actually re-appropriating these old language forms, but rather in gaining insight into radically different ways of conceptualizing and languaging experience, and therefore seeing their own language forms in a new light (stripped, perhaps, of some of the aura of givenness). 

With that said, I would also be hesitant to dismiss these 'older' languages as inherently less developed, in all ways, since of course a given language can span and accommodate a number of levels of development, and because I also believe multiple developmental trajectories are possible. 

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

On the Integral Archipelago thread, Tom posted the following response (which I wanted to copy here, since this thread is focused more on Bohm's work, and the other is focused more on my own language project).

~*~

Tom wrote: 

One of the interesting things about the contingency of life on planet earth is that, while we can imagine living differently in quite some variety of more or less consequential ways, we don't know what qualities, or trade-in problems, we would have discovered on any of those roads not taken.  I think Steve Forbert once put this conundrum this way in a line in a song he wrote: life is strange; yes, but compared to what?

On the other side of imaging lives not lived is, for me, the rather serious question of just how different could things have been.  Relating this to questions Bohm asks in his rheomode chapter, could we, realistically or at all, have chosen a differently structured language?

My intuition, and nothing more for I haven't researched language evolution, tells me that language could not have developed appreciably otherwise, and that the thing-denoting linguistic structure of modern grammars is probably of or close to the order of a necessary development and stage.

I appreciate Bohm's attempt to jog the thing-natured element of our language, and I appreciate the creative imaginal leaps that interacting with Native American languages can bring.  FWIW, I was quite taken with descriptions above of the kinesthetic languagings certain NA languages foster.  On the other hand, those languages affected me from my vantage point of having developed mental and material structures corresponding with the thing language that has been my heritage, and I doubt a typical NA whose first language was kinesthetic would respond similarly.

That said, I suspect, on again nothing more than vague intuition, that language development, in the main, would lead eventually into an is-based thinging language, and that that stream of development is competitively superior for the specification abilities it offers, these being very important for scientific and power structure developments.  I'm sure Mister Chomsky would agree.

I appreciate Bohm's concerns, the main of these being that a thing-based language compels one, expressly and impliedly, “to discuss the observed fact in terms of separately existent things of an essentially static nature.”  Let's look a little more closely at this problem.

Basically, the nominative voice—the noun—is the root source of Bohm's main concern above: a noun is a person, place or thing, or basically, a thing, and thing-thinking is separative (until one realizes True Nature).  One might ask: does the noun correspond to anything in nature?  One answer to this question is that any posited correspondence but repeats the nominative structure: the correspondence is the noun, which is a mental frame that causes one to “see” noun-like things.  That answer possibly has merit, but I cannot tell, if any, how much.

Another answer might say: a noun corresponds (actually corresponds) to regularities observable in the vast holomovement Bohm so eloquently describes.  Thus in Bohm's words:

… all is an unbroken and undivided whole movement, and … each 'thing' is abstracted only as a relatively invariant side or aspect of this movement.

* FWIW, I don't ascribe to the oft cited 'everything is movement.'  Because each word (in my linguistic world) implies its opposite, 'everything is movement' renders 'movement' meaningless.  Does the fact that something is move?

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

Hi, Tom, thanks for your response.  From what I've seen in my amateur linguistic investigations, most modern linguists would probably argue that there is no such thing as a primitive language, at least not among any of the ones spoken in the world today.  The argument is that all human languages exhibit comparable complexity and expressive power – with some 'tribal' languages far exceeding (in some ways) the complexity of languages like English or French.  But in making this claim, it seems that linguists may be looking primarily at certain grammatical elements and relationships, rather than at the, say, Piagetian orders of cognition that you're describing.

Vygotsky has an essay on the relationship of language and thought that is relevant here, I think:  The Connection Between Thought and the Development of Language in Primitive Society.  I will post an excerpt from it below, and then will add a few comments afterwards.  If you're at all interested in the topic, the full essay is worth reading, if only for the interesting examples of linguistic conventions among different 'primitive' people.

~*~

The Connection Between Thought and the Development of Language in Primitive Society

We find that same path of development in another equally crucial sphere of the psychology of primitive man – language and thought. As in the case of memory, here again it becomes immediately apparent that primitive man is different from civilized man not only in that his language is poorer, cruder and less developed, as it unquestionably is. At the same time, however, the language of primitive nun impresses us with its vast wealth of vocabulary. Such languages are so very difficult to learn and understand primarily because they far surpass those of civilized peoples in terms of the wealth, abundance and luxuriance of various designations completely lacking in our language.

Lévy-Bruhl and Pensch rightly point out that there is a close link between these dual characteristics of the language of primitive man and his extraordinary memory. The first thing that impresses about the language of primitive man is precisely the vast wealth of designations at his disposal. Concrete designations pervade such languages; concrete details are expressed by means of a vast quantity of words and expressions.

Gatschet writes, “We intend to speak precisely, whereas an Indian draws as he speaks; we classify, he individualizes.” [15] For these reasons, the speech of primitive man, in comparison with our language, truly resembles an endlessly complex, accurate, plastic and photographic description of an event, with the finest details.

The development of language is accordingly characterized by a gradual tendency for this enormous abundance of concrete terms to disappear. The languages of the Australian peoples, for example, have practically no word: denoting general concepts, whereas they are inundated with a huge number of specific terms, painstakingly distinguishing the features and the individuality of objects.
Ayer, referring to the Australians, says, “They have no general words, such as tree, fish, bird, and so on, but exclusively specific terms applicable to each species of tree, fish and bird.”[16] The same absence of words for tree, fish and bird, accompanied by the use of proper nouns for all objects and creatures occurs in other primitive peoples.

Tasmanians have no word to designate such qualities as sweet, hot, hard cold, long, short or round. Instead of “hard” they say “like a stone”; instead of “high”, “high legs”; instead of “round”, “like a ball, like the moon”, adding an explanatory gesture. Similarly, on the Bismarck Archipelago there are no words for colors, which are designated in the same way, by naming an object that brings them to mind.

According to Powers, “In California, there are no species or breeds. Each oak, each pine, each kind of grass has its own special name.”[17] All of this generates the huge wealth of vocabulary of primitive languages. The Australians have separate names for almost each small part of the human body; for example, instead of “hand” they have several separate words denoting the upper part of the hand, the front of the hand, the right hand, or the left hand etc…..

Such detailed plastic description is both a big advantage and a serious shortcoming of primitive language. It is a big advantage because this type of language creates a sign almost for each specific object, and with remarkable accuracy gives primitive man virtual duplicates of all the objects he has to deal with. Understandably, therefore, bearing in mind the way of life of primitive man, shifting from such a language to a European language would mean being instantly deprived of a most powerful means of orientation in life.

At the same time, however, such a language endlessly burdens thinking with a host of details; it does not process the data of experience; it reproduces them in an unabridged form, just as they are in real life. In order to convey the simple thought that a man killed a rabbit, the Indian has to describe the entire scene of the event in fine detail. This means that the words of primitive man have not yet become differentiated from things, and are still closely linked to immediate sensory impressions.

Wertheimer describes the case of a semi-primitive man who had been taught a European language but refused, during an exercise, to translate the sentence “The white man killed six bears”.[19] A white man is incapable of killing six bears, so the expression itself seemed impossible. For such a person, language is still understood and used exclusively as a means of reflecting reality, and is far from acquired an autonomous function….

The unusual abundance of verb forms in the languages of the North American Indians was described many years ago. Dobrizhoffer thought that the language of the Abipones was the most frightful maze imaginable. According to Benyaminov, the Aleutian language has more than 400 inflections, for tense., declension, and person, each of which corresponds to a particular and precise shade of meaning.

Many authors agree that it is a pictorial or graphic language, and emphasize its tendency to “speak to the eyes”, to draw and depict the meaning to be expressed. Different expressions are used to convey motion in a straight line, motion to the side, or along a curve, or some distance from the speaker. As Lévy-Bruhl notes, “In a word, the spatial relationships that the Klamath language expresses so precisely may in particular be retained and reproduced by the visual and muscular memory.”

The prevalence of the spatial element reflects a tendency of many primitive languages. Gatschet found that considerations of space and distance prove to be exceedingly important in the representation of primitive peoples, and quite as fundamental as those of time and causality in our own thinking. Any phrase or sentence must express the relationship between objects in space…..

Thinking that uses this language, just like the language itself, is thoroughly concrete, graphic and pictorial and full of details; it also functions on the basis of directly reproduced real-life situations. Lévy-Bruhl refers to the inadequate power of abstraction involved in such use of language, and also to the peculiar “internal pictures” or “image-concepts” which are the material for such thinking.

We can safely say that the thinking of primitive man, using such a language, is eidetic – a conclusion also reached by Pensch on the basis of his own research material. In his opinion this language points to a sensory memory which has at its disposal truly vast numbers of visual and auditory impressions, and this pictorial function of primitive language is direct evidence of the eidetic nature of. primitive man. As the cultural development of language and thought progresses, the eidetic propensity recedes, taking with it any interest in using the language to convey separate concrete peculiarities.

Humboldt has rightly observed that when using these languages, one feels transported into another, very different world, as the perception and interpretation of the world that they suggest really is profoundly different from the mode of thinking of a civilized European.

Thurnwald, who fully concurs with these findings, notes that by virtue of its lexical abundance, the language of primitive man cannot be described as poor in expressions. In concreteness of expression it surpasses the language of civilized man. “It is, however, too closely tied to narrow activity in a small space, and with the circumstances in which the small group speaking that language lives. The language of primitive man is a mirror image of the special traits of the life of that group.”

The language of a group engaged in agriculture will contain a vast number of terms for coconut in the various stages of its growth, or for the different strains of corn. The nomads of Central Asia distinguish between their horses by sex and color. The Bedouin use similar designations for camels, and other peoples for dogs, while having no generic name for these species of animals. Thurnwald sees the concreteness of primitive language as a manifestation of vigor and expressive power, but also as evidence of its bonds to the particular, and its inability to express anything separate or general, or to define a relationship to other things. In the absence of abstraction, the language is dominated by a numerative listing of objects.

The reverse influence of thought on speech, noted by Thurnwald, is very important. We have already seen the extent to which the structure of mental operations depends on the resources of the language. Thurnwald has shown that when a language is borrowed by another people, or when two languages merge, the vocabulary itself is easily transferred from one tribe to another; but the grammatical structure is altered by the “thinking technique” of the people taking over the language. The thinking processes themselves are also closely dependent on such thinking resources.

Primitive man has no concepts, and finds abstract generic names completely alien. Primitive and civilized man use words in quite different ways. Words can be put to different functional uses. The mental operations performed with the aid of a word will also depend on how it is used.

A word can be used as a proper name, or a sound linked by association with this or that individual object. In this case, it is a proper noun helping the memory’ to perform a simple associative operation. As we have seen, to a significant extent, primitive language is situated precisely at that level of development.
As we have seen, the language of primitive man contains large numbers of proper names and tends to specify to the maximum extent each individual property and object. In this case the actual way words are used also determines the mode of thinking. This is why, in primitive man, the operation of memory takes precedence over thinking.

The second stage in the development of the use of words occurs when they function as an associative symbol not of an individual object, but of a set or group of objects. Here the word becomes a sort of family or group name. Besides its associative function, it also performs a mental operation by helping classify different individual objects, placing them together in a set.

The resulting new combination, however, still remains a group of separate concrete objects, each of which, on joining it, retains all its individuality and uniqueness. In this phase, words are a means for the formation of sets. Our family names are a typical example of this function. When I talk about a family name, say, Petrov, I use that word to designate a certain group of actual people, not because they share some common feature, but because they belong to a certain common group.

A set differs from a concept by virtue of the relationship between the individual object and the group name. By looking at an object I can say with full Lbjectivity whether it is a tree or a dog, because ‘tree’ and ‘dog’ serve as the signations of concepts – in other words, generic groups to which, by virtue of substantive features various individual objects belong. I cannot, by looking at a man, tell whether or not he is a Petrov, because in order to do so it is simply necessary to know, as a matter of fact, whether he goes by such a name. The individual thus remains, as such, in the set, but the set comprises different elements, united not by some inherent, substantial connection, but by an actual, concrete affinity which exists as a matter of fact.

To a large extent primitive man is at this stage of set-based thinking. His words are proper names or family names, that is, signs for separate objects or signs for sets. Primitive man thinks not in concepts but in sets. This is the most substantial difference between his thinking and ours.

When Lévy-Bruhl characterized the thinking of primitive man as “prelogical”, and simultaneously capable of making the most divergent connections, he saw the basic feature of that thinking in what he called the “law of participation”. This law holds that primitive thinking is not governed by the laws of our logic, but has its own special primitive logic, based on quite different representational links.
This special type of connection, characteristic of primitive logic, permits the same object to participate in different sets, and to form an integral part of wholly different connections.

This means that the law of the excluded middle is not valid for primitive man. For him, the fact a man belongs to the set “man” still does not mean that he is not a parrot; he can belong at the same time to the set “man” and to the set “parrot”. The Indians of the Bororo tribe, for example, used to claim that they were red parrots. They did not thereby mean that after death they became parrots, or that parrots were transformed Indians, but that Indians really were parrots. A connection of this sort is impossible in logic based on concepts, where the mere fact that a man is a man ipso facto means that he is not a parrot.

Such thinking and such logic, as we have seen, are based on sets, which in turn are based on concrete connections. The same object, of course, may have vast numbers of such concrete connections. The same man may belong to different family groups; his family may make him a Petrov, and his place of residence may make him a Muscovite, etc.

All the peculiarities of primitive thinking may ultimately be reduced to one basic fact: primitive man thinks in sets, not concepts. As Werner has put it, “Any primitive concept is at the same time a visual picture.”…

~*~

This essay seems to confirm, on the one hand, your intuition that primitive language structures and patterns may reflect features of concrete operational thinking.  It also appears to support, however, the basic thesis that underlies this thread: the (enactive) relationship between language/grammar and thought/experience, indicating that Bohm's project (or related ones, such as e-Prime or Lojban/Loglan) may have merit or be worth pursuing further.

In discovering the highly verbal, embodied/concrete languages of the Americas, I believe Bohm glimpsed, at least, the possibility, not of a return to concrete operational thinking (a pre/trans fallacy), but an opening beyond the horizons of the presupposed structures of our thought, towards a higher-order grammar that is similarly verbal and embodied, but in post- form, not pre.

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

Interesting article, Bruce.  Vygotsky et al draw quite a picture of primitive languages as even more mirror-like and representationalist than later languages like English. Some quotes regarding primitive languages from the article:

endlessly complex, accurate, plastic and photographic description of an event with the finest details

practically no word denoting general concepts

no word to designate qualities

huge wealth of vocabulary

it is almost impossible to count the number of nouns in such languages

he does not know how to express himself abstractly

the words of primitive man have not yet become differentiated from things, and are still closely linked to immediate sensory impressions

speak to the eyes

the language of one primitive tribe has ten thousand verbs, further augmented by the use of numerous prefixes and suffixes

the languages of primitive man conveys images of objects and transmits them exactly as they present themselves to the eyes and ears

thinking that uses this language, like the language itself, is thoroughly concrete, graphic and pictorial and full of details

the language of primitive man is a mirror image of the special traits of that group

the concreteness of primitive language … is evidence of … its inability to express anything separate or general, or to define a relationship to other things

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

Tom, I appreciated your points and agreed with most of them.  I have some partial reservations about your suggestion that one of the problems of abstract generalizing (separation) must be solved by more abstract generalizing (Madhyamika analysis), since I think more may be involved in the Middle-Way soteriological approach than abstraction; but I think you're right on when you way that the sense of separation is likely an outgrowth of patterns of abstracting cognition.  I also agree that Madhyamika analysis involves a high-order level of abstraction…among other things.  I will be happy to say more about this, but not in this thread – lest I turn this thread, too, into another venue for the inevitable and interminable Middle-Way debates!

More relevant to our topic:

I listened to the David Abram lecture and wanted to make a few comments, particularly in relation to your post and to the Vygotsky piece.  Abram notes (if you haven't listened to this yet) that members of a number of indigenous cultures feel a strong, living connection between their languages and their local environments – as if their languages were parts of, even products or expressions of, that larger natural world, participating in a rich field of greater-than-human linguistic exchange.  Abram traces this largely to the fact that these people belong to pre-literate, oral cultures, and therefore inhabit a deeply 'storied' space – a landscape embued with their oral history, in which all the features of that landscape 'participate' in their magical-mythic worldspace.  He further argues that the development of alphabets and literacy eventually dis-embeds story from the locality, and contributes to a people's growing sense of separation or alienation from the (concrete) natural world.

This account appears a bit tenuous to me.  I would agree that these developments were likely part of a larger overall movement, but I would personally connect the 'participatory' sensibility more to the generally concrete, richly detailed and almost photographic language forms (and modes of cognition) that Levy-Bruhl and others describe.  I would expect the transition from an oral to an alphabetic culture would likely accompany, or maybe even influence, the general movement towards abstract generalization in that culture, but I wouldn't consider it the primary factor (considered separately from cognition and grammar, for instance).

I understand why Abram, Bohm, Alford, and others, find the participatory, embodied, finely (environmentally) attuned and subtly detailed languages of these people attractive – bringing a “whiff” of a richness lost, perhaps, if not also a sense of new possibility.  But I expect they would not really want to return to an indigenous 'concrete operational' world, even if it has its own virtuosity and exceeds the modern WIE-world in some ways. 

Concerning the question of whether some of these languages were 'more verbal' than WIE languages, I do think it is fair to say that – even though they were likely concrete-verbal, as you say.  In some Amerindian languages, for instance, most of the actively used words are verbs; noun formation is possible, and is used in basic teaching situations, but in ordinary adult conversation, verbs predominate. 

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

Bruce: I think more may be involved in the Middle-Way soteriological approach than abstraction …


Yes, my overgeneralization left room for various interpretations, so let me clarify.  I didn't intend to suggest that just learning, say, abstract logic or math or such would bring the restful peace spoken of by notions of enlightenment.  Further thinking of that sort can exacerbate one's conflicted feeling-being-apart.  

I did intend to say that, in addition to whatever else is required, like full self-responsibility, rigourous honesty, etc., what appears in a certain stage of human development must be solved within that level of development, or higher, by tools appropriate to that level.  I find it interesting (to refer a moment to the positive enlightenment schools) that peace and connection arrive when the person realizes 'I Am,' or 'amness,' or 'Self.'  These can be said to denote a form of experiential ('realized') abstraction—isness, beingness, amness—all centred on that abstract, otherwise separative verb 'to be.'

Thus what we have in this deeply felt sense of I Am is an experienced, universalized being: my being is not separate from the being of any thing ('thing' drops away).  That experience—apart, again, from whatever else underlies or precedes it—is at least also this: it is not but for the person's abstract generalizing capability, amness being highly abstract.  Nor is that experience but for the separation that developed preceding it: one must leave the world behind, in a manner of speaking, to gain this experience.  These are all IMO relevant points of historicity, and there's nothing like an unqualified overgeneralization to make that point.

Bruce: bringing a “whiff” of a richness lost, perhaps, if not also a sense of new possibility …


Such a project would surely bring those.  Let me add, referring again to the enlightenment traditions, that the world of abstraction (post-concrete world involvement) brings its own richness: that of a deeply felt connection with every-thing.  That connection does come at a cost, at least initially: a loss, one might say, of being mesmerized or mystified by or involved in that concrete richness (think Samsara, getting off the wheel, entering the Kingdom, or modern versions of which, ie, 'stuck in being').  If I am all that, why the mystification?  (mystification as separate-from)

Bruce:  whether some of these languages were 'more verbal' than WIE languages …


Yes, that's a good question I am unqualified to answer.  My feeling is I would have to be convinced by evidence that any perceived extra-verbalness wasn't just a different (concrete) form of being verbal.  If a language has 40 words for snow, and 30 verbs for walking (walking-leaning-to-left, walking-fast), I would think the key to any difference is concretism.  But j'speculate.


For our purposes, we can ask: how might our modern, abstraction-infused language be evolved?  What criteria are we to look to for possible experimentation?

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

With this post Tom I've come to understand what you've been saying in other threads, like the “what is postmetaphysical” thread. For example:

That experience—apart, again, from whatever else underlies or precedes it—is at least also this: it is not but for the person's abstract generalizing capability, amness being highly abstract.  Nor is that experience but for the separation that developed preceding it: one must leave the world behind, in a manner of speaking, to gain this experience.

This reminds me of numerous past threads (and current, e.g., see  Washburn) wherein we've determined that in the process of ego differentiation we separate from our earlier, bodily fusion experiences and become abstract. However, as Levin (and others, again see Washburn) point out, we require this abstract ego to experience not the previous fusion but something new, a highly abstract beingness that incorporates (includes) the previous fusion but adds something else (transcends). Hence I've argued for years now that the I-I of “I am” is indeed the rational ego, the witness, including our primordial fusions.

Now this also takes account of Balder's notion that this “experience” is more than “just” an abstraction, since it incorporates pre-reflexive fusion. And yet it is not devoid of abstraction, as if we could just go back to pre-reflexive fusion in meditation. Given we now have this ego it goes with us on this journey. And in the process creates a new experience that was not included in the original fusion.

On the other hand, without such “enlightenment” or meditative technology egoic-rationality, on its own, is still stuck in Cartesian dualism and separation. As you said:

what appears in a certain stage of human development must be solved within that level of development, or higher, by tools appropriate to that level.
 
I'm not sure the tools of rational thought, on its own, even combined with traditional meditative practice-tools, is sufficient for the “integration” process, since “enlightenment” from the traditional perspective, which combines both, is still shot through with metaphysical assumptions. It appears we need something akin to at least “vision-logic” with meditation to get to this integration. Although what constitues vision-logic is still open to debate, since even Wilber's version seems still shot through with some of those metaphysical assumptions.

As to how this relates to language is something I'm still exploring in the “what is postmetaphysical 2” thread by going back to Habermas.

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

Ed: Hence I've argued for years now that the I-I of “I am” is indeed the rational ego, the witness, including our primordial fusions.
 
Hi Ed, yes, you understand what I'm saying, which parallels what you say in your quote I reproduce that the I-I is the ego, just a slightly more grown-up version of it, as it were.  I agree with that.  In my understanding, the feeling of separation, and its existential angst et al, are emergents.  These, as in your example of ego—these and not other than these—give birth to, tada, I-I.  I think I've said somewhere that this experience of I-I is “experiential metaphysics” or “experiential abstraction.”  I mean by that ego-grown-up, abstraction-grown-up, a mere further development of that which is primarily implicated in the problem.  That grown-up version would include not just the 'separative' stage immediately preceding it, but all stages, including fusion states you mention.  Separation is a cosmic good of first order.  Smoke that one in the dharma pipe.


As to my statement ”what appears in a certain stage …,” you're right to qualify as you do.  My statement again overgeneralizes, and more precisely means to say: but for abstraction (amness), no solution to an abstraction (separation) problem.  An essential (but not the only) tool required to solve a problem of a given developmental stage is the very thing that defines that stage.  That's all.

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

See this post in the Transpersonal Cognition thread for further elaboration.

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

Tom wrote:  For our purposes, we can ask: how might our modern, abstraction-infused language be evolved?  What criteria are we to look to for possible experimentation?
 
Do you have any thoughts on this?  Bohm's suggestion, initially, was simply to experimentally tweak different aspects of our languaging and see what happens – as in his rheomode experiment.  As Bohm indicated, he was concerned with the limitations of the relatively static subject-object structure of WIE language, and suggested experimenting with a more verbally centered grammar:

We can ask in a preliminary way whether there are any features of the commonly used language which tend to sustain and propagate this fragmentation, as well as, perhaps, to reflect it.  A cursory examination shows that a very important feature of this kind is the subject-verb-object structure of sentences, which is common to the grammar and syntax of modern languages.  This structure implies that all action arises in a separate entity, the subject, and that, in cases described by the transitive verb, this action crosses over the space between them to another separate entity, the object… Is it not pssible for the syntax and grammatical form of language to be changed so as to give a basic role to the verb rather than to the noun?  This would help to end the sort of fragmentation indicated above, for the verb describes actions and movements, which flow into each other and merge, without sharp separations or breaks.  Moreover, since movements are in general always themselves changing, they have in them no permanent pattern of fixed form with which separately existent things could be identified.  Such an approach to language evidently fits in with the overall world view discussed in the previous chapter, in which movement is, in effect, taken as a primary notion, while apparently static and separately existent things are seen as relatively invariant states of continuing movement (e.g., recall the example of the vortex)…
 

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

Btw, regarding Abrams, I would think your take is more accurate.  Also consider what Vygotsky said about the integration of sign-languaging in certain pre-modern (?) languages.  The more kinesthetic wording apparent in these languages was likely supported by a truly more kinesthetic language involvement, hand-signaling being a way the body is included in language.  WIE languages very probably feel far too heady by comparison.

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

A relevant quote from a later work of Vygotsky:

“Each word is therefore already a generalisation. Generalisation is a verbal act of thought and reflects reality in quite another way than sensation and perception reflect it.”

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

My friend, David, just posted this link to a talk by David Abram on language and the ecology of perception.  I'm at work and haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, so I don't really know what I'm posting, but I expect it will be relevant to our discussion…

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

This thread has encouraged me finally to read a Benjamin Whorf book I bought several months back, Language, Thought & Reality.  Here's a Bohm-like starter quote from the book:

We are inclined to think of language simply as a technique of expression, and not to realize that language first of all is a classification and arrangement of the stream of sensory experience which results in a certain world-order, a certain segment of the world that is easily expressible by the type of symbolic means that language employs.  In other words, language does in a cruder but also in a broader and more versatile way the same thing that science does.

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

Thanks for the Whorf quotes, Tom.  I no longer have a copy of that book, but I'd like to pick it up again.  Here's a related quote, one which sort of sounds the note for this type of inquiry:

We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way - an agreement that holds through our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language.

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

Speaking of W(h)orf, how about learning Klingon? It's evoled into a complete language. Those “primitive” warrior types must certainly have retained the imaginal intuition in their grammar.

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

That's pretty funny, Edward.  I think the creator, Mark Orkrand (however you spell his name) deliberately tried to make it alien and counter-intuitive, but I haven't looked at it very closely.

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

Bruce, there's a good article about Klingon here:

…Knowing that fans would be watching closely, Okrand worked out a full grammar. He cribbed from natural languages, borrowing sounds and sentence-building rules, switching sources whenever Klingon started operating too much like any one language in particular. He ended up with something that sounds like an ungodly combination of Hindi, Arabic, Tlingit, and Yiddish and works like a mix of Japanese, Turkish, and Mohawk. The linguistic features of Klingon are not especially unusual (at least to a linguist) when considered independently, but put together, they make for one hell of an alien language.Despite the fact that more than 250,000 copies of Okrand's Klingon dictionary have been sold, very few people know how the language really works. There are maybe 20 or 30 people who can hold their own in a live, unscripted Klingon conversation and a few hundred or so who are pretty good with written Klingon…The correct form of the phrase (live long and prosper) in Klingon would be yIn nI' DaSIQjaj 'ej bIchepjaj.And it breaks down (word for word) like this: “Life long you-it-endure-may and you-be-prosperous-may.” Or, in proper English, “May you endure a long life and may you prosper.”Klingon sentence structure is about as complex as it gets. Most people are familiar with the idea that verb endings can indicate person and number… But Klingon uses prefixes rather than suffixes, and instead of having six or seven of them, like most romance languages, it has 29. There are so many because they indicate not only the person and number of the subject (who is doing) but also of the object (whom it is being done to). In the “Live long and prosper” translation above, for example, the Da- on SIQ indicates a second-person subject and a third-person object (“You endure it”), and the bI- on the verb chep indicates a second-person subject and no object (“You prosper”).As if that weren't complicated enough, Klingon also has a large set of suffixes. Attached to the end of the verbs SIQ and chep is the ending -jaj, which expresses “a desire or wish on the part of the speaker that something take place in the future.” Klingon has 36 verb suffixes and 26 noun suffixes that express everything from negation to causality to possession to how willing a speaker is to vouch for the accuracy of what he says. By piling on these suffixes, one after the other, you can pack a lot of meaning on to a single word in Klingon—words like nuHegh'eghrupqa'moHlaHbe'law'lI'neS, which translates roughly to: They are apparently unable to cause us to prepare to resume honorable suicide (in progress).

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

Very interesting (and entertaining), Nicole – thank you!

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

Here's another Whorf quote, this one concerning something I said above about time being a more developed mental notion than space.  Time is a notion generated by generalizing across (abstracting from) memory, and is thus more mentally complex than the notion of simple space.

After long and careful study and analysis, the Hopi language is seen to contain no words, grammatical forms, constructions or expressions that refer directly to what we call “time,” or to past, or present, or future, or to enduring or lasting, or to motion as kinematic rather than dynamic (ie, as a continuous translation in space and time rather than as an exhibition of dynamic effort in a certain process), or that even refer to space in such a way as to exclude that element of extension or existence that we call “time,” and so by implication leave a residue that could be referred to as “time.”  Hence, the Hopi language contains no reference to “time,” either explicit or implicit.

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

Tom,

I can understand how Whorf would, looking for specific words for “time”, find none used in Hopi.

Having lived among the Navajo for over a year I got a sense of how their language (Dine`/ Athabascan), while packed with concrete references, conveys processes, implies durations and alludes to sequences.

For instance: the Dine` term for “White folks”, Bela-ghan-a , is said to have both an innocuous or neutral meaning, and a more charged dynamic meaning. The dynamic form of the meaning (of the identical word) is something like “whose-hand-is-as-long-as-their-forearm” , in which I read a rich set of allusions to the process, the history situated doing, of even the economic relationship of settler culture to the Dine`.

Earlier today Bruce mentioned Whitehead's misplaced concreteness. I wonder now if our long transitions from implicit to explicit spiritualities, the march of differentiation in meanings and values, has progressed in concert with a complimentory, 'opposite' process: an interiorization of diversities making the speaking subject more and more an 'implicit order' unto themselves, both other-reflective and self-reflective.

If so I'd expect language itself to eventually express such a process, how the “agreements' we're party to are changing.

K

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

In response to a blog entry on Integral Life (which I cobbled together out of my posts on this thread), IL member Kerry posted the following remarks:

Balder!

What a tremendous project.

For every question raised, a few follow in it’s answering.

Looking at Chomsky’s “innate linguistic knowledge” I read for some applicability to the pre-trans problem. Now I’m leaning toward encouraging the generation of more examples of new language with as much trust as our ancestors needed to give voice to their world-views, winging the novel out into usage, having usage shape them in turn.

Creating language consonant with the Integral vision, a compelling endeavor. I can imagine building, re-signifying, a vocabulary beginning with concepts already represented in, say, Matt’s AQAL Glossary, to target a trial of this, using the framework(s) which are themselves emergent as scaffold for new language.
Saussure’s language as intersubjective structure points to a necessity of this being a collective practice. What you’ve initiated individually, with evident affect already, may need We(s) to become language. Yet for every word, there was a first person to speak it. Over these last several decades a lot of philanthropy has focused on preserving ancient texts. I sense a complimentary historic value in this project.

To the individual, collectively established forms may appear arbitrary. Forms initiated at the individual can seem arbitrary to the collective. I think we need to demythologize the arbitrary. Intersubjective injunctions are the paths to grounding innovation.

That such a language would come about makes sense, see: Integral Psychology, “..vision-logic doesn’t just represent the Kosmos, but is a performance of it.”
The competence/performance distinction, hot in the recent half century of linguistic theory, seems to fall along the lines of “past recovery” and “future discovery” ( as in SES, pg. 776, …so it may be no surprise that the SES notes going furthest into language are to page 548, on the Ascender-Descender tension.)

I’ve begun to reflect on Chomsky’s (1986) position on rules (from a Wikipedia article, “…Chomsky goes so far as to suggest that a baby need not learn any actual rules specific to a particular language at all. Rather, all languages are presumed to follow the same set of rules, but the effects of these rules and the interactions between them can vary greatly depending on the values of certain universal linguistic parameters.” ) in relation to what Ken said in SES, pg.774, under Some Examples, re: grammar, syntax, and structure.

In a sketchy way I’m getting intimations that the full (or standard) semantics and Henkin semantics of Second Order Logic may relate to the evolution of language from the object pervasive world-viewing of concrete designations to the economy of expression which came with generalized conceptuality.

At any rate, I love the idea of designing language whereby form and function, structure and purpose, can be more consciously engaged. A project so big, it’s too big and therefore needs to be begun.

Thanks for the kick-off,

K

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

Kerry,

Thank you for the intriguing series of reflections and questions you've brought to the table.  (I wish we really had a large hardwood table around which we could gather!  With refreshments in front of us and a stunning view outside the window…)

I agree with you that a project like this is best realized collectively, if it is ever to become a living thing.  For me, it was a solitary practice (when I first took it up, in my early 20s) simply because I didn't know anyone else who would be remotely interested in such questions…not enough to actually create something new and “put it to test,” as Bohm says.

As you may know, a number of constructed languages have been created in recent years – from literary/artistic creations, like Tolkien's languages or Star Trek's Klingon, or Laadan (a “woman's language,” first created for a novel about a group of women who set about to create a language more reflective of women's experience), or the Tapissary pictographic project I've linked above; to 'logical' languages like Lojban, Loglan, Voksigid, and Gua\spi; to proposed universal, auxiliary languages like Esperanto, Ido, Kotava, or Novial; to various experimental languages, like Ithkuil (another philosophical language designed, in part, to test Sapir-Whorf's hypothesis) or Toki Pona (a language influenced by Taoist principles); to experimental variations on English, like e-Prime or Bohm's rheomode.  [I will provide links for all of these examples later.]

I mention these examples – and there are many more – for two, somewhat contradictory, reasons:  1) to illustrate that projects like this have been undertaken in significant ways, often collectively, which indicates (to me) that my proposed project is realizable; and 2) to suggest, perhaps, that with all of these newly created languages out there, an entirely new language might not be the wisest or most economic way to go – maybe there are existing experiments that could be built upon.

I appreciate your reflections on the possible developmental trajectory of language/grammar in relation to Henkin semantics and second-order logic – a movement from concrete specificity to generalized economy, for instance.  (Just such a movement appears to be illustrated in the Vygotsky essay I linked in my blog.)  In my own reflections on this project – such as they are at this time – I've been looking a bit at the Lojban language, since its grammar is founded on first-order, predicate logic.  I've wondered how second-order principles, or perhaps even something like the Independence-Friendly logic of Jaakko Hintikka, could be used to develop that grammar in new directions … but admittedly I haven't gotten any farther at this point than mild musing.

I'm not at home at the moment, so I do not have a copy of SES on hand for your references, but I look forward to checking them out later this evening.

All the best,

B.

Re: Language, Postmetaphysics, and the Rheomode

Appropos of nothing, other than general interest, here is a short discussion of an alternate form of verbal tense, used in the Lojban constructed language.