Language – Achilles & Aristotle

Dogs, Happiness, Language, Life, Psychology

Frankish

Out walking the dog, what should pop up on my podcast playlist than Keith Frankish on Philosophy Bites explaining why I was lost in thought, while the dog was 100% focused on the walk…

The difference between us is he lives in the immediate, whereas we spend a lot of our time elsewhere.

Why?

Frankish explains:

Consciousness is the distinctive feature of the human mind. Because a conscious thought is a thought about something that isn’t perceptually present. We can react to thoughts about the world detached from immediate perception.

So if we can do it, why can’t animals? Not least given we have ostensibly similar sensory apparatus and not massively dissimilar brains?

The crucial difference is we have language… Frankish’s proposal is that it is the presence of language that enables us to have conscious thought, not just conscious perception.

We don’t just use language for communicating with each other, we use language for communicating with ourselves; for stimulating ourselves in new ways, for representing the world to ourselves, for representing situations that aren’t actually real… situations that ‘might’ happen and this enables us to anticipate, to plan to prepare for eventualities that haven’t yet occurred.

He continues:

This, I think is the function of conscious thought. Conscious thought, I think, is essentially a kind of speaking to ourselves.

And by talking to ourselves we can mentally shift in time and space in ways which my trusty hound probably can’t. He’s a clever little chap – but apart from chasing bunnies and squirrels in his sleep (you can see his legs twitching as he runs them down) he’s a creature of the immediate present.

As Frankish explains:

We might say that one of the main functions of mind generally, in us and other animals, is to lock us onto the world; to make us sensitive to the world around us so we can respond quickly to changes to enable us to negotiate the world in a rapid and flexible way.

But Homo Sapiens has another trick…

The function of the conscious mind, I think is quite different. It’s not to lock us onto the world, it is to unlock us from the world – to enable us to consider alternative worlds, to consider what we would do if things weren’t as we expect them to be, to make plans for how we might change the world.

So this ability to step back from the ‘immediate’ and use language – talking to ourselves – to reflect on what is, has, might or will happen is what our unique combination of language and consciousness give us.

So far so generically interesting. But potentially even more interesting is how I’m going to try and use this insight…

Here are the mental steps:

Most of the bad things that are happening to me in work (and there are plenty) are made worse be me running over them in my mind.
Because I’m quite verbally dexterous I may be guilty of sharpening them in my inner dialogue to the point of exquisite pain.
There is increasing evidence that most mental health problems contain a common ‘p’ factor of generic susceptibility.
Treatments may vary but nearly all (bar the most serious) respond to ‘talking therapies’ which aim to change the inner dialogue.
Mindfulness, which helps too, is all about turning off the ‘inner talking’ and returning to the moment – in effect locking back onto the world as a trusty hound would.
Although bad things are happening to me at work (as they are for most people right now) they are still not as bad as the versions in my mind (at least not all of the time) and most of them are anticipated and haven’t actually happened yet.
My inner voice is currently more negative and ruminative than is good for me.
And talking to other people makes it even worse.

So what to do?

Simple – switch language, and here’s why:

People in several different workplaces down the years have commented that I’m very cheerful and animated when I speak French.
I remember that when I used to live in France I couldn’t really do numbers very well in French; it’s like I was saying them in my head but the ‘numbers bit’ of my brain wasn’t properly engaging.
If I’m thinking about something terrible – like getting made redundant or making other people redundant it makes me feel really sad.
If I consciously think about the same thing in French, there is little or no physiological effect… it’s as if the ‘pain connectors’ aren’t there; I think it, but more slowly and not sadly…

Perhaps it’s because I have to work at it. I think more slowly, and my vocabulary is less ‘fine’ in French – but it seems the pain and sadness just isn’t there when I think the same thought in French. In fact it’s not really the same ‘thought’ at all, its more a daisy chain of words which register in the mind but aren’t ‘felt’ in the same way.

So based on Keith Frankish, when bad and sad thoughts crowd in, I clearly need to switch to Frankish – or French as we know it these days. Whenever I start ruminating or feel chest clenching anxieties about work I plan to try thinking about them in French to get them under control.

Let’s see if it works… And if not there’s always Italiano! Vive la France.

Language, Life

Languages

Although I’ve kept up my French (listening to Radio France Internationale), I’ve let slip the Italian – nothing to aim for, as the family holiday to Italia is off for another year (skint). Imagine my surprise today when I sheepishly logged into my Italian course on Memrise and found I can recall the lot – and arguably better than last time I tried it nearly three months ago.

What an amazing thing the brain is. It just quietly soaks stuff up, sticks it on an empty shelf; and then serves it up just when you least expect it.

Like most tongue-tied Britons, I find it easy to be scared off by languages; but we all speak at least one. With learning apps like Memrise, and foreign language radio (after this I’m tuning into Euronews Radio in Italian again) there’s a whole world of expression to explore. Meraviglioso.

Art, Language, Writing

Obscurantism

I congratulated a colleague yesterday on some lovely prose. His concise, interesting and informative writing made me happily read about 80 Moments which changed history – learning a lot in the process.

This morning, I read another piece of quasi-Academic writing; but which was much more of a slog. It was saying some important things, but in a rather portentous – even pretentious style. The few key points, could have been made a lot more simply.

Then, by happenstance I moved onto to a super article on ‘Obscurantism’ in the equally super Philosophy Now magazine. The question it poses is: when is being complex and hard to decode legitimate, useful; even necessary – and when is it plain unhelpful.

Here’s some of what Siobhan Lyons has to say:

‘Obscurantism’ can indeed be an effective manoeuvre, provoking greater thought-processes and intellectual investigation.

This couldn’t be illustrated more clearly than in Rembrandt’s The Holy Family with a Curtain (1646). I am less concerned with the religious meanings of this painting than I am about the curtain itself; a seemingly innocuous, pointless part of the work, and yet it provokes the viewer to wonder what lies behind it.

The curtain, blood red and purposefully pulled partly to the side, teases the viewer, offering not even a partial glimpse of what it completely obscures. The Virgin is plainly seen; and there is Joseph, semi-obscured in the background, near the curtain; but whatever is behind the curtain itself is left unanswered.

The painting thus features three forms of creative depiction: the Virgin’s clear visibility, Joseph’s semi-obscured form, and the curtain itself, a symbol of obscurantism, or rather, of the ability of obscurity to be creative, by emphasising the ambiguity that so often confronts us, which may however be the source of great art, and indeed philosophy.

For the greatest philosophies are aware of their own limits – aware of when they cannot answer the questions their philosophers ask. As Wittgenstein stated, language must be beset by certain limits.

So obscurity in language can be seen as not always self-defeating, but, ironically, as sometimes illuminating. Moreover, if language were a purely functional tool for communication, we would cease to have literature as we understand it.

If all curtains in all art were pulled completely aside to expose what lies behind them, then the need for imagination would deteriorate. This also explains why good writers are those who not only have a masterful grasp of language, but who also know how to pull it apart and put it back together in different ways.

Nicely put. Not everything in life, thought or Art can be expressed simply; and some things can’t be expressed at all. The art is in knowing which. But also, I think, in having a try. Only practice makes more perfect.

Achilles, Art, Language, Life, Odysseus, Writing

Writing

Is there a better thing than writing? While I’m not with the 20th century British philosophers who said language is all there is, I am with Aquinas. He’d say that, along with body and soul, language is a defining part of the human experience.

20th century norms made writing a minority sport – one for the professional. The rise of social media in the 21st century means we can all have a go.

I find if I don’t get the chance to write something, the day feels unfulfilled. And if (rarely) I’ve a moment with nothing I have to do, writing – or reading someone else’s writing – is the first thing I want to do.

For twenty years – from university to my 42nd year – I didn’t write anything for my own pleasure at all. Thank goodness for the invention of iPhone as my carry along notebook. I couldn’t be happier than when tapping out a bit of text with my right thumb.

Language, Life, Odysseus, Poetry

King James Bible

Four hundred years
of the King James Bible.
The blood sweat and tears
Of six writing panels
Produced a text
Which united a kingdom
To post-Elizabethan revival.
Still read today,
Words of great majesty
Hell, fire and brimstone
Meet faith, hope and charity
A piece of England’s history
And linguistic gift to the world.
Can’t vouch for the science
But there’s power in the words.

Having read an interesting article about the origins of the King James Bible, I’ve decided to give it a proper read. Aside from its obvious religious role, it is the origin of so many phrases and sayings we still use today.

The skin of my teeth
How are the mighty fallen
Be horribly afraid
From time to time
As a lamb to the slaughter
Beat their swords into ploughshares
Turned the world upside down
A thorn in the flesh
Fell flat on his face
Get thee behind me
A man after his own heart
Set thine house in order

It’s interesting to read passages which are completely familiar, and not. Also to note things which myth, custom and the Disneyfication of culture have added to popular folklore but aren’t actually there – no unicorns perish in Noah’s floods, just a lot of un-named things which ‘creepethed on the earth’.

It’s also remarkable how little time, and how few words, are spent on massively significant and controversial topics – creation for example. The language though is rich, terse and magisterial.

A life’s work. For a disputed King and his ecclesiastical writing panels, quite literally.