"Language is the house of being and in its abode dwells man" (Martin Heidegger).
"The problem of philosophy is not truth, but language" (Martin Heidegger).
The "Linguistic Turn"
The origin
The expression "linguistic turn" was coined by Gustav Bergmann in 1953 in his work "Logic and Reality" [1964], but popularized by Richard Rorty through his 1967 work "The Linguistic Turn" [2009], in which he claimed that "linguistic philosophy" was the new philosophical revolution.
Although Bergmann's approach was methodological, the "linguistic turn" was for Rorty more than the adoption of a new method: language is the key to solving (or dissolving) philosophical problems, and it consists in analyzing ordinary language in depth and reforming it to create an ideal language scheme that allows us to understand the true nature of philosophical problems.
The philosophy of Rorty - one of the most important American philosophers - following the pragmatist current of American philosophy, is as follows:
He questions the philosophy based on metaphysics, since it is a philosophy that speaks of itself and not of reality.
It is anti-essentialist and anti-fundamentalist. It rejects objective truth. Truth is circumstantial, the result of agreement or convention. We live in an interpreted world in which we never feel secure.
Reality is inseparable from fiction, because both are united by language. "Philosophy can only achieve autonomy if it evades time by fleeing from reality to possibility."
Philosophy is just another discipline, even comparable to literature and other forms of humanistic activity. Philosophy is not a privileged discipline, it is not a privileged perspective of knowledge, nor is it a kind of "court of culture". Philosophers do not have access to any transcendental truth or knowledge, nor do they possess special methods or techniques for analyzing reality.
Philosophical problems are problems that can be solved (or dissolved) by reforming language or by better understanding the language we use.
The concept of the "linguistic turn". A new paradigm
There are numerous interpretations of the concept of "linguistic turn". This expression has been used in different contexts, even outside philosophy. Nevertheless, we can synthesize its main characteristics:
Language as the center of philosophical debate.
In order to analyze philosophical problems it is necessary to analyze the language with which we express or pose them. Many philosophical problems, analyzed from the linguistic point of view, cease to be problems or we come to the conclusion that they are poorly posed. The problem of knowledge is a problem of semantic analysis. This is precisely the position of the so-called "analytic philosophy".
For the philosophers of the "linguistic turn", language is the central subject of philosophy. Philosophical problems are the problems of language in general. Philosophy is a discipline linked to language and meaning.
Language as something profound and essential.
Language plays a crucial role in human communications. But this role is only apparent. Behind the superficial language are hidden keys that provide a unifying vision of reality and connect with the essence of all things. Language is the essence of reality, rather than a reflection of it.
Language as a limit.
Language imposes limits to thought, to what is expressible and cognizable.
Language as consciousness.
Language unites two opposites: subject and object, which is the key to consciousness. Language breaks with this traditional dyadic or dualistic scheme, that is, between internal (subjective) contents and empirical (objective) contents, thus uniting ontology and epistemology.
Language as an a priori entity.
Language is not an expression of thought. Language is prior to thought. It is language that structures thought, and not the other way around. Language determines thought and reality. It is the Logos of the ancient Greeks. Language is deeper than thought and, therefore, is closer to Being.
Language as discovery.
Language is the way to the discovery of internal and external reality. It is the means by which we know the world and ourselves.
Language as transcendence of reality.
Language transcends reality. In this sense, it is something more important than reality. With language we can refer to imaginary entities, not existing at the physical level. Language connects us with possible worlds.
Language as creativity.
Language has such a structure that it facilitates creativity, by being able to put some linguistic elements in contact with others. Creativity is a property of consciousness.
Language as an autonomous entity.
Language is not something dependent on thought. Language has autonomy, it is self-sufficient, it has its own entity. It has its own power, not granted.
Language as the center of everything.
Language comes first, it is the center of everything. We dwell in language and language dwells in us. Language occupies all the spaces and spheres of the human being. Language is the essence of reality in all its manifestations.
In the "linguistic turn", analytic philosophy is only one aspect, since it does not cover all the characteristics. Although there are authors who identify "analytic philosophy" with "linguistic turn". For example, Michael Dummett believes that the "linguistic turn" was made by Frege in founding analytic philosophy, the philosophy of language. For Gustav Bergmann, the "linguistic turn" was made by Wittgenstein with the Tractatus.
Historically, since Aristotle, language has been reduced to a mere instrument for expressing thought. The "linguistic turn" represents a radical paradigm shift, placing language as a central, essential, profound and fundamental entity. Therefore, it is more productive and direct to investigate language than other more or less superficial aspects of reality. Language is the foundation of the understanding of reality.
The paradigm shift implied by the "linguistic turn" is to move from subject-object relations (or epistemology-ontology) to relations between linguistic forms and their meanings. The "linguistic turn" makes it possible to use language as a safe vehicle with which to enter the diffuse terrains of reality.
The Milestones of the Linguistic Turn
Throughout history there have been several paradigm shifts of language, from a pragmatist and superficial conception to a universalist and profound conception. We highlight the following:
Nietzsche
Nietzsche intuited that language was the key to everything, including his concept of the "superman," a man with a new way of thinking, feeling, and acting.
Ordinary language does not allow us to express the essence of phenomena (the profound). It only transmits superficial elements. "Everything is representation and mere appearance".
Language is metaphorical, based on similarities and analogies. Truths are "a mobile army of metaphors, metonymies and anthropomorphisms."
Reality is what we can express. We do not really know, we only express.
Language is not static because the world is a continuous becoming. The meaning of words varies over time. Language is interpretation, where nothing is fixed.
The task of philosophy is the totality of human knowledge. But knowledge is limited by language.
Heidegger
Heidegger made language the central theme of his philosophical reflections:
Language speaks to man because it dominates our thoughts. "Man acts as if he were a shaper and master of language, whereas in fact language remains the master of man, for strictly speaking, it is language that speaks. Man begins to speak when, and only when, he responds to language by listening to its call."
The philosophy of language must be the first philosophy and not ontology. There is a hermeneutics in language. There is philosophy because linguistic discourses do not discover reality, but create it.
Language is "the house of being". Being is a linguistic event. Language is the foundation of being. Language makes being visible. Language allows things to be. In the word dwells the being of things. Words and things are distinct, but they are not separate. They are united in Being.
Linguistic forms can create a world of possible events, as well as being applicable to reality.
Humboldt
Language is not the private property of any speaker, but a generator of intersubjectively shared meanings.
Language influences thought (or shapes thought). The formation of ideas is influenced by linguistic forms.
The primary function of a language is to shape the mind of a people. The mind of a nation is constituted by language. Each language implies a different vision of the world. The study of language is the ideal means to get into human nature.
Language is not a tool we use, but a medium in which we are immersed.
Language has 3 functions: cognitive, communicative and expressive of emotions and feelings.
Frege
Frege was the pioneer of the linguistic turn. He aspired to find a conceptual language that would perfectly express the logical structure of reality. He believed that there was a parallelism between thought and language, that language is the sensible expression of thought. And he analyzed logically the forms of linguistic expression.
Charles S. Peirce
Peirce anticipated the linguistic turn in philosophy by founding semiotics, the general theory of signs.
Wittgenstein
According to the great majority of authors, the first Wittgenstein (that of the Tractatus, of 1922), was the one who gave the "linguistic turn" to philosophy, although it was Frege, G.E. Moore and Russell who paved the way. Language was constituted as the articulating element of all twentieth-century philosophy. The ideas for which Wittgenstein is considered the realizer of the "linguistic turn" are the following:
Philosophy.
Philosophy is not a science. Philosophy is the clarification of thoughts by means of the logical-linguistic analysis of propositions. "All philosophy is a critique of language" (Tractatus, 4.0031). "Philosophy does not produce 'philosophical propositions' but rather the clarification of propositions" (Tractatus, 4.112).
Language and reality.
There is isomorphism between language and reality, between a fact and its figure (its representation). Language reflects reality. World and language share the same logical structure. Language connects the internal world (thought) and the external world (reality). The thinkable and the expressible are inseparable.
The limits of language.
Language shapes the limits of our knowledge. Metaphysical statements are meaningless, for they overflow the limits of the sensible. "The limits of my language are the limits of my world" (Tractatus, 5.6).
Study of language.
It is possible to investigate phenomena by logical analysis of linguistic descriptions of phenomena.
Ideal language.
The search for the ideal language represents the search for the essence of reality. All philosophical problems can be solved in the light of that ideal language.
Subsequently, the second Wittgenstein (that of Philosophical Investigations) made another "second linguistic turn", a 180º turn, by rejecting the postulates of the Tractatus and moving from a theoretical position, profound and universalistic, to a pragmatic position, superficial and particularistic:
There is no ideal language.
Since there is no referential ideal language for philosophy, philosophy becomes a purely descriptive activity of the multiple (cultural and social) linguistic uses.
Language is nothing more than a toolbox that allows multiple uses. It is linguistic naturalism.
There is no language-reality isomorphism.
The "Linguistic Turn" in MENTAL
MENTAL is the result of a process of supreme abstraction, simplification and universalization involving a universal "linguistic turn". MENTAL fulfills the characteristics associated with the "linguistic turn".
When we speak of the "linguistic turn" of MENTAL we are referring to the deep aspect of language, which is also the deep aspect of internal and external reality, which resides in the universal primary archetypes, the common archetypes of all things.
MENTAL harmonizes Wittgenstein's two "linguistic turns": the theoretical, idealistic and universalistic, with the practical, empirical and phenomenal. MENTAL is a theoretical, idealistic and practical, pragmatic language. Pragmatists hold that the importance of an idea should be measured by its usefulness or effectiveness in addressing problems. According to William James (a leading representative of pragmatism), ideas should be regarded, not as valid in themselves, but as "guides to action". In this sense, MENTAL is a pragmatic language.
The "linguistic turn" of MENTAL is the discovery of Being. Now we can better understand Heidegger's statement "Language is the house of Being". Indeed, from the perspective of MENTAL, language is the consciousness that unites the opposites: the physical and the psychic world, the real and the possible, ontology and epistemology, and so on. And consciousness, as a faculty of the soul, is on a higher level than the mental; it belongs to our true being.
MENTAL is a global, Copernican linguistic turn. This turn implies an immersion, a descent into the deep, into universal abstract semantics. MENTAL highlights the universal nature of the "linguistic turn", as it is based on primary archetypes, on archetypes present in all domains. The key to everything lies in language. MENTAL language is the center. It is a universal linguistic turn.
We also highlight unifying characteristics:
In MENTAL, which is a deep and abstract level, ontology and epistemology are united by primary archetypes. The being of things (ontology) and what we can know about things (epistemology) are united.
MENTAL is not philosophy. Language itself is philosophical, it is the philosophical language. Nor should one do philosophy in other domains (such as mathematics and computer science), for these domains are manifestations of MENTAL, of the universal semantic primitives.
MENTAL awakens the consciousness, activates the deep. From this place philosophy is made and found. Strength and power is found when deep, universal linguistic resources are used.
In MENTAL philosophy also arises from combinatorics, which allows to create possible expressions that frees it from ordinary language and gives it wings, gives it freedom, contacts diversity within the unity of all things. If philosophy is "love of wisdom", with MENTAL you connect with the essence that provides that wisdom.
MENTAL is based on universal concepts. It is a philosophical language in the sense that it uses philosophical categories that are the very universal concepts that are present in all things. The categories with which internal and external reality is structured are found in language.
In MENTAL, truth is equivalent to meaning. In MENTAL, truth is absolute. Any expression may have an associated surface, expressible, dual truth (with properties of "true" or "false"), but it always has a deep truth, which is meaning, which is not expressible.
Faced with the different conceptions of language (language is reality, language reflects reality, language is part of reality, etc.), MENTAL affirms that all things share and reflect the same archetypes: inner reality (consciousness, thought, knowledge), outer reality and language. It is the simplest and most unifying thesis, which we must choose if we follow the principle of Occam's razor.
With MENTAL there is no separation between questions of substance and questions of meaning, that is, between ontology and epistemology. It is an overcoming of the old theory of knowledge based on the separation between cognizable object and cognizing subject.
For the Ontology of Language (by Flores and Echeverría), natural language is the center of the human, but with MENTAL we have the true center, the universal center, the center of all things, the root of everything. MENTAL is the center of the understanding of the world, the essential language that reflects the abstract structure of internal and external reality. It is the consciousness of the world and of ourselves.
The new language in which we are currently immersed is the Internet. A global world requires a common global language. The role of the formal language of science as a unifying factor in the codification and transmission of knowledge is extremely important. MENTAL, as a universal language, can play this fundamental role. A truly universal paradigm shift necessarily requires an ideal, essentialist language.
Addenda
Quine's "semantic ascent" as a linguistic turn
The expression "semantic ascent" was introduced by Quine and refers to the fact that the expressions of language that we use to refer to the objective world become something also objective to which we can refer with language. For example, if we say "Madrid is a city", we can move to "'Madrid' is the name of a city" or move from "Plato was a Greek philosopher" to "'Plato was a Greek philosopher' is true". This change is an ascent because the expressions of the new level refer to expressions of language, so they belong to metalanguage. Semantic ascent, therefore:
It is a methodology in philosophy in which one moves (or "ascends") from talking about non-linguistic subjects to talking about linguistic elements (entities, structures, events, etc.). It is a step from language to the semantic properties of language. It allows to speak, instead of things and objects, to speak of language, thus avoiding the fuzzy questions referring to the existence of things.
It is a way of reducing philosophical questions to questions about language, so it is a "linguistic turn", although less radical. According to Quine, language allows us to "reify" the natural world. The objectification of reality only makes sense through expressions with which we reflect the facts and things of the natural world.
It plays −according to Quine− an important, if not essential, role in philosophical discussion. For example, human knowledge (a philosophical subject), from this point of view, can be regarded as essentially linguistic.
It is not restricted in number of levels. There can be meta-expressions, meta-meta-expressions, and so on.
"Semantic ascent" is not a general methodology for philosophy. MENTAL is more general and "semantic ascent" is also possible, since it is a language and a metalanguage, so it can refer to its own expressions. In fact, this is a feature that is an essential part of MENTAL, being the integral union of pairs of opposites, including the language-metalanguage pair. MENTAL does not really refer to physical reality, but to an abstract reality. But, at a deep level, physical reality, abstract reality and linguistic reality share the same primary archetypes. In other words: the ontology of reality, the ontology of epistemology and the ontology of language are the same thing.
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