"We don't realize how we create reality through language. If we say that life is hard, it will be hard" (Fernando Flores).
"The ontology of language is the basis for discovering its essence" (Heidegger).
The Ontology of Language
The ontology of language is a thesis developed by Fernando Flores, which was later continued by Rafael Echeverría. The latter reflected it in his book "Ontology of Language" [2011].
The ontology of language is based on 3 fundamental principles:
Humans are essentially linguistic beings. We live in language. Language is the key to understanding human phenomena. Our existence and our social environment are governed by language. Language is the center of human beings.
Language is not only descriptive (or passive) to express, communicate or transmit thoughts. Language is also generative, language generates being. Language is action and creates realities. Acting and being are interdependent. We act as we are, but acting also generates being. We are also what we do.
Human beings create themselves in and through language. When we speak, we shape the future, we open and close possibilities for ourselves and also often for others. Through language we shape our identity and that of the world.
Antecedents
Heráclito
For Heraclitus, the foundation of everything is the Logos, the primordial principle, the universal intelligence present in all things, which directs everything and produces the order of the world, the universal law that governs the cosmos and which is also present in man. Man can discover this Logos within himself, for the Logos is common to man and to things, it is common to the inner world and to the outer world. Wisdom consists in knowing this all-pervading universal principle.
According to Heraclitus, there is a continuous flow or change governed by the Logos. "Everything flows, nothing remains, nothing endures, everything changes." This becoming is based on dialectics, on the confrontation of opposites, on duality. Opposites do not contradict each other, but form a dynamic harmonic unity.
The ancient Greeks searched for the fundamental principles of all that exists. For Parmenides, the essential is being, which is immutable and eternal. For Plato, everything comes from the higher world of Ideas. For Aristotle, reason is the basis of everything. For Heraclitus, the foundation of everything is the Logos.
The term "Logos", however, is somewhat ambiguous and has been interpreted in numerous ways by different philosophers throughout history, having been polarized mainly in 3 senses:
At the deep level: the unifying principle, the underlying principle behind the diversity of the real, that which transcends reality and the source of reality, the synthetic, intuitive and profound, the being, the word, the verb or primordial vibration. It is basically the interpretation of Heraclitus.
At the superficial level as speech, expression, discourse, argumentation, rational and analytical thought, meaning.
At the intermediate level (between the deep and the superficial): as essential and universal language, the abstract and transcendent principle, the idea of ideas. The Logos is the center of everything, between the unmanifested and the manifested. In this sense it can be considered the language of the primary archetypes.
Heidegger
Heidegger's ideas concerning language are:
He interprets being (Sein) as Logos, the foundation of language. The Logos is neither logic nor reason nor expression (or proposition). The Logos is being, the deep dimension of reality.
He asked what he called "the ontological question": How are we human beings? His answer was that language is the foundation of human beings, their center. Language is neither a mode of expression nor an activity, but a dimension that opens man to being, that connects man with being. Language is the fundamental and essential dimension of man.
"Language is the house of being and in its dwelling man dwells". Being is hidden behind language, it is at a deeper level than language.
"Man is the shepherd of being". With language and his actions he makes himself to be.
Language is not a mere form of expression of thought. Thought is a primordial form of language, which becomes word, as experience of being.
Ontology is the Dasein (or Da-Sein), the particular way of existing proper to human beings, the way of being in the world, which manifests itself as language. And also language speaks to man because a language dominates our thoughts and actions.
Human language does not have its foundation in the human. Language transcends it, it is at a deep level of reality. Language is prior to man and speech.
"The problem of philosophy is not truth, but language". With this statement, he made a decisive contribution to the so-called "linguistic turn" in philosophy. The linguistic turn implies the elimination of metaphysics. Heidegger was one of the first philosophers to try to eliminate the mental structures erected by metaphysics that have dominated Western thought and replace them with other structures based on the visible in human beings: language. Western metaphysics has never been able to solve the problem of being, so we must go in search of the roots in language.
We must bring to light the foundations in which language dwells, the essence of language. The essence of language has nothing to do with concepts or symbolic forms. We must go to the ontology of language, beyond the philosophy of language. The ontology of language is the basis for discovering its essence.
The subject of language demands more than a science of language and also more than a mere philosophy of language. It demands a true philosophical inquiry that allows us to understand the fundamental aprioric existential structure of speech. Language is a transcendental a priori, a totality.
Nietzsche
Language occupies a central place in Nietzsche's philosophy, for he held that the study of language is fundamental to understanding philosophy. As a philologist by profession (and philosopher by vocation), he had a highly developed linguistic awareness. He undertook a radical revision of the problematic of language, and his contributions on this subject were numerous.
It is not necessary to do philosophy of language, but to base philosophy on language. Nietzsche considered Heraclitus his mentor.
Reality is what can be expressed in language. What we think we know is only what we can express. Knowledge is constructed through language. We must dispense with all kinds of metaphysical principles.
Truth is a resource that we have invented. No one is the possessor of the truth. There is no absolute truth. Man interprets the world through language. We only make interpretations, which in turn change with time. Everything that can be thought is certainly fictitious. All human thought and its expression has an interpretative character.
Nietzshe used a genealogical analysis of words that went beyond the evolution of words. He looked at the conditions under which the various interpretations arose in an attempt to discover the hidden structures and forces at work in language. He came to the conclusion that language tends toward simplification: "The history of language is the history of a process of abbreviation."
Philosophical problems are, in reality, problems of the rhetorical character of language. Rhetoric in theory-the art of persuasion by the force and power of language-in practice is the superficial play of language, which does not reveal the true essence of things, the inexplicable, profound, unknowable reality. Language is rhetorical, it relies on doxa (opinion) and not on episteme (truth), the essence of things. Rhetoric (and, in general, language) has a minimal relationship with true reality. The only thing that normal (superficial) language does is to transmit subjective impressions, relative to the social environment in which it lives.
Language does not designate absolute reality because it does not directly reflect the essence of things. Language, as an intermediary or bridging system, creates a false "second nature" from the first nature that is the real. But the true language, the deep language, must open the conscience, make awaken.
Metaphorical language is what brings us closer to that unattainable and essential reality. It is dynamic, it gives us freedom by offering us different ways of seeing things. It is associated with intuition, with creativity, and produces understanding and awareness.
Conceptual language, on the other hand, is superficial, particular and static. Concepts deal with explanation, with what is associated with forms. They lead to nothing, they bind and limit us. Concepts dogmatize, rigidify, paralyze. Concepts are condensations of subjective opinions. They are frozen metaphors, figurative descriptions whose metaphorical origin has been forgotten, so they are interpreted literally. All concepts come from metaphors. Knowledge constructed by means of concepts is relative, it is not absolute truth.
Language is becoming. It is continually evolving and continually reconstructing itself, thanks to the dynamics of metaphorical expression.
A "linguistic transvaluation" based on the change from the conceptual type of linguistic mode to a symbolic-metaphoric type of mode that favors intuition and provides understanding, freedom, flexibility and creativity is necessary. This requires a new, pure, innocent and simple language.
Nietzsche thus inaugurates "active linguistics," linguistics based on active, creative forces. Traditionally, language was considered from the point of view of the receiver, the listener. But now it is a matter of the word transforming the speaker, and also the listener, by activating his or her resources of consciousness associated with deep language.
Language as inner transformation and as becoming, as continuous change, is related to the superman, the eternal return and the Dionysian spirit.
The superman. It tries to establish a relationship with the true language, the deep language, where freedom and creativity are experienced. It is necessary to change the dogmatic and rigid way of thinking through the method of transvaluation.
The eternal return. It is the continuous and repetitive becoming of everything, which is also manifested in language. It embodies the conception of the cyclical, non-linear character of the events of the world. The eternal return occurs because in each instant of becoming there is being. The consciousness of this mechanism is a new way of being and feeling of the superman.
The Dionysian spirit. The Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus symbolize opposite aspects. The former symbolizes serenity, clarity, measure, logic and rationalism. Dionysus, on the other hand, symbolizes the passionate, the vital, the impulsive, the spontaneous, the intuitive and the excessive. The intuitive-dionysian man (the superman), rather than knowing the world, experiences it, merges with it. The touch of the Dionysian to language makes communication an art, a manifestation of the essence and power of life. "The world is will to power."
Wittgenstein
For the first Wittgenstein (the one in the Tractatus), language reflects reality. External world, internal world and language share the same logical form. Language is a "figure" (representation) of the world. There is an isomorphism between the representation and the represented. Language is not something secondary, a mere medium between the subject and reality, nor is it an instrument to represent thought. Language is a primary, essential entity, reflecting internal and external reality. Therefore, it is more productive, efficient and direct to focus on the study of language than on the diffuse world of psychological contents. To investigate language is to investigate the structure of internal and external reality; it is the key to understanding the world. The limits of language are the limits of our world. The inexpressible, that which remains outside language, is the mystical. There is a common essential language, an ideal language, a hidden and perfect grammar in all natural languages.
The logical-linguistic analysis of propositions is a means of clarifying philosophical thought and problems. There is a correspondence between the logical investigation of phenomena and the logical analysis of the language describing those phenomena.
Wittgenstein prompted the "linguistic turn" in philosophy by assigning language the central place in philosophy. There is philosophy because there is language. The philosophy of language is the first philosophy, which is the ontology of language.
John L. Austin
Austin was an original philosopher who posed with great clarity the essential problem between linguistics and philosophy. He is one of the most relevant figures of linguistic philosophy.
In his best known work "How to do things with words" [1982] he opposes the deep-rooted prejudice that the main function of language is to describe facts or states of things. He brought out the relationship between language and action. Traditionally, philosophy had separated theory from practice, knowing from acting. With Austin, such duality disappears; knowing and doing are two aspects of the same thing. In this sense, he distinguishes between "constatative" (descriptive) and "realizative" (action) utterances. Therefore, not every utterance is true or false.
He was the introducer of the concept of "speech act". The basic unit of communication is not the sentence or its signs, but a speech act. When we speak we perform a restricted and specific number of actions (speech acts). He distinguishes three types of meanings:
Locative act. It is the idea or concept of the sentence, i.e., that which is said.
Ilocutive act. It is the concrete purpose of the speech act (to affirm, ask, explain, order, advise, warn, wish, threaten, insult, promise, etc.).
Perlocutionary act. It is the effect or effects that speech produces on the receiver (frighten, amaze, entertain, pacify, cheer, etc.). This act is outside the domain of language.
These distinctions are merely theoretical. In practice the three meanings are often given together. An example is "Close the door, please," where it says, begs, and eventually produces the effect of closing the door.
John Searle
Searle is known for his contributions to the philosophy of language, mind, and consciousness.
He distinguishes between linguistic philosophy and philosophy of language. The former attempts to solve philosophical problems by attending to the ordinary use of a particular language. The second attempts to provide illuminating philosophical descriptions of certain general features of language such as reference, truth, meaning, and necessity.
According to Searle, the problems of philosophy can be solved in two ways: 1) by going deeper into the language we use; 2) by reforming language, even creating a new ideal language.
Searle is a continuator of Austin on the topic of speech acts: "All linguistic communication involves speech acts." The speech act is the basic unit of linguistic communication. He identifies Austin's illocutionary force as a particular case of intentionality (associating certain meaning with something). There are individual and collective intentionalities. What defines the type of speech act is not the meaning of the sentences used, but their intention. The same sentence, with a single meaning, can be used to affirm, ask, order, suggest, etc.
Searle reworks Austin's speech acts. He distinguishes 5 types of speech acts [Searle, 1986]:
Assertive or representational. It is a representation of the actual state of affairs.
Commitmentals. Commits the speaker to a future course of action.
Directive. Commits the listener to a future course of action.
Declarative. They create a new situation (e.g., "The verdict is not guilty").
Expressive. They manifest attitudes of the speaker (apologize, praise, etc.).
It also develops the concept of background: the context in which the intentional act occurs.
Fernando Flores's conception
Fernando Flores was inspired by Heidegger, who made him see the deep connection between language and being. Flores called his system "ontological design", in which he envisions the possibility of a great synthesis in the confluence of different developments related to cognition, computation and organization, from the perspective of language as a central element, as a unifying paradigm. Its main ideas are:
Language is essential. We cannot live without language. Language is the central element of human life in all its aspects. Language makes us aware of ourselves and others.
Language is descriptive as well as generative. We must distinguish between "speech that describes being" and "speech that creates or generates being."
Language is transformation. Language can transform people and organizations. Transformation is a journey or process from the realm of the known, the preconceived, the superficial, the superficial, the self-contained, the closed and the limited, to the realm of being, to the center of our true nature, of the deep, of creativity, of imagination, of opportunities and possibilities, where everything is connected, where truth, freedom, security and trust are experienced. The engine of this transformation is language.
Speaking with intention makes actions purposeful. In general, people speak without intention; they simply say what comes to mind.
It is necessary for speech to generate an atmosphere of freedom, openness, communication, conducive to imagination and creativity.
Language has power. "If you want to act powerfully, you need to master speech acts." "Words act like neurotransmitters on your neurology. Your words play a critical role in determining your mood, health and happiness." "With language we generate life. Without language we are mostly chimpanzees."
In speaking we can distinguish 5 basic linguistic acts: judgments, statements, affirmations, requests and promises. Of these, the most fundamental element is the statement. Normally, to speak is to declare. The linguistic acts that generate action are the request and the promise.
Flores worked on cognition (nature of knowledge), phenomenology, philosophy of language, computation, workflow, management (personal, group and organizational), software design and operations research. He attempted a synthesis based on the predominant role of language. And he achieved a new vision based on language as a central element. Flores is the creator of the so-called "ontological coaching", a coaching system based on the ontology of language, on the "training of being".
Rafael Echeverría's concepception
In his work "Ontology of Language" he corroborates Flores' ideas and expounds his own ideas:
The social, for human beings, is constituted in language. Every social phenomenon is a linguistic phenomenon. Language is a social phenomenon, not a biological one.
We not only act according to how we are, we are also according to how we act. Action generates being. One becomes according to what one does.
Context (or environment) plays a determining role in the effects of speaking.
Man creates language. It is the product of his evolution and evolves with him. Man perceives himself through language. With language we build our identity. Each word we learn changes the world we perceive.
The ontology of language is divided into two fields: the descriptive (speaking) and the generative (the consequences of speaking).
Language is possibility and generates possibilities. With language we are permanently constructing different possible futures. Our being is an open space pointing towards the future, towards a world of possibilities.
Language is not only descriptive of reality. Language also has the power to transform reality. We construct the world with speech. "Speech transforms, speech generates, language has a fundamental transforming power." God created the world with the power of the word ("Let there be light").
Language is something profound, magical, sacred. It is also a way of life, as Wittgenstein said.
The so-called "metaphysical program" that has dominated Western thought since Socrates, Plato and Aristotle must be overcome, transcended or closed. Metaphysics is approaching its historical exhaustion. The metaphysical program privileges a relation from being to action. The search for abstract universals, independent of human beings, sought by the metaphysicians, is futile.
For the ancient Greeks, who coined the term "ontology", this meant a general understanding of being as such being, which implied the metaphysical program. But ontology must be conceived as Heidegger did: as Dasein, the particular way of being or existing in the world. And to understand what it means to be human, we must turn to language. The ontology of language replaces the traditional "language of being" of metaphysics with "the language of becoming." Language must be placed at the center of the argument. There is no other way than that of language. Outside of language there is nothing to rely on.
It is necessary to bring together the different developments in linguistics, systemic psychology, sociology, anthropology and theoretical biology into a coherent synthesis, from a linguistic and non-metaphysical perspective.
We do not know how things are, we do not know their being. We only know how we observe them or how we interpret them. We live in interpretative worlds. There is not one world, there are as many worlds as there are human beings. We must abandon the pretension of knowing the truth. Truth and being are the two fundamental pillars (mutually dependent) of the metaphysical framework. There are only more or less powerful interpretations. The most powerful interpretations are those that open up the most possibilities. Power, and not truth, must be the fundamental criterion.
This implies that, in the matter of knowledge, we must shift the center of gravity from the observed (the being of things) to the observer. And, paradoxically, this postulate is nothing more than an interpretation that cannot be considered as truth.
Individuals act conditioned by the social systems to which they belong. But through their actions they can also change these social systems.
Human language has recursive capacity, that is, language can turn on itself and talk about speech.
The Language Ontology Model in MENTAL
Although the ontology of language refers to natural language, from MENTAL's perspective there is much to contribute, for this language is the essence, the common underlying abstraction of all natural languages. All natural languages hide the universal language (which is equivalent to the universal grammar). In this sense, the ontological model of MENTAL simplifies and clarifies things a lot:
MENTAL is a universal ontology in which the internal world (thought, knowledge and consciousness) and the external world converge. It is universal because everything that exists is based on the same primary archetypes or philosophical categories. The ontology that reflects MENTAL is the ontology of reality, because they are the same archetypes manifesting in the different aspects of reality. Everything is the same thing.
For the ontology of language, 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.
MENTAL unites being (Parmenides), Logos (Heraclitus), Ideas (Plato) and reason (Aristotle).
Being is unknowable, it is the absolute, the undifferentiated, the immutable, the unified, where there is no duality. Being is the Logos. Being cannot be captured by reason. We can only approach being through the supreme abstraction that are the primary archetypes (or Platonic Ideas), the intermediaries between being and its manifestations (the entities, which are accessible by reason). MENTAL brings us closer to being, to the deep, where everything is connected.
If being (unmanifest and source of all creativity) is the first level of being (or fundamental level of being), then MENTAL can be considered the second level of being. The external world would be the tertiary being.
MENTAL is both descriptive and operative. The operative means generator, transformer of the internal (of itself) and of the external (the environment). Informatics, as the field of application of MENTAL, is the field where action and the results of action are most evident.
MENTAL is the language of consciousness. It unites opposites: the higher (the unmanifested) and the lower (the manifested), the physical and the psychic, the descriptive and the operative, reason and intuition, theory and practice, the concrete and the abstract, semantics and syntax, the superficial and the profound, the literal and the metaphorical, etc.
The journey of transformation through language (of which Flores spoke) becomes clearer when considering it from the point of view of MENTAL: it is a journey from the superficial to the deep, to the world of archetypes, where power, freedom, wisdom, creativity and consciousness reside. The real "ontological coaching" must be directed towards the deep, towards the archetypes of the consciousness. From that level we contact power, freedom, wisdom and the source of creativity.
At the deep level, reality is simple, it is pure abstraction. At this level, ontology and epistemology are the same thing. MENTAL unites ontology and epistemology.
The limits of MENTAL are the universal limits, the limits of expressivity and comprehension, the limits of possible worlds, including what we know as reality. True reality is in the deep, in the primal archetypes.
MENTAL is the commonality of all possible worlds and the meeting point of opposites, the universal synthesis of opposites.
MENTAL is the result of a process of supreme abstraction, simplification and universalization.
MENTAL provides active linguistics. All expressions are evaluated.
MENTAL awakens the consciousness, activates the deep. From this place philosophy is made and found. Power is found when deep, universal linguistic resources are used.
With MENTAL different types of linguistic acts can be made, which would be analogous to the types of speech acts. Some are primitive and others are derived.
As opposed to the different conceptions of language −language is reality, language reflects reality, language is part of reality, etc.−, with MENTAL it is affirmed that all things share and reflect the same primary 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.
From MENTAL we act from what is closest to being. To apply MENTAL is to design new ways of being.
We must question Echeverría's statement that "the search for abstract universals sought by metaphysicians is vain". Abstract universals exist; they are those that constitute the MENTAL language.
MENTAL is the realization of the synthesis intuited by Flores through language as a central element. Language is the only thing that brings us closer to Being.
Addenda
Computing and cognition
Fernando Flores and Terry Winograd are pioneers on the subject of the relationship between computing and cognition. Their joint work "Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design" [1987] involved a philosophical reinterpretation of computing and software design by relating them to the philosophy of language and psychology:
Software design is an activity related to design in general. To design is, in fact, to design new ways of being.
The important thing is not the technology, but the understanding of our environment and ourselves. With the environment we interact, the environment conditions us and, in turn, we modify the environment.
Computing must be reoriented, more than to the mere aspects of data processing, towards the issues of communication and coordination in the environment of an organization, where there is a series of collective activities. This is called workflow (network of workflows). An organization can be thought of as a network of workflows. Computers would be more effective if they recorded and tracked intentions, commitments, rather than merely manipulating information.
The rationalist tradition of artificial intelligence (building a human-like artificial mind) must be replaced by a different, more humanistic approach: building a prosthesis that amplifies the mind. The computer should serve to improve man's life, not to imitate man.
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