• Philosophy and Spirituality
    Welcome Guest
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Threads of Note Socialize
  • P&S Moderators: Xorkoth | Madness

Does Knowledge require Language?

Q

Quantum Perception

Bluelighter
Joined
Jan 22, 2009
Messages
339
Do all forms of knowing require the use of symbols or metaphors?
If so, then what about experiences like satori or moksha which are said to be ways of knowing outside the experience of forms and concepts?
Or even the fact you know how to move your arm, but you cant explain it to another. Science can explain it to a certain level, but asking how and why can be pushed on to infinity.
I'm stumped lol

Thoughts?
 
Last edited:
I think that all knowledge requires language by definition. By giving spiritual experiences names you conceptualize them. During the experience itself you're not thinking in terms of forms but when it's over you can't help from conceptualizing it.

Being outside the experience of forms and concepts is still a concept.
 
I don't think knowledge requires language. I just don't think we know HOW to conceptualize without it, because we've always had it. That doesn't mean it can't be done. That is one of the bits of knowledge that we LOSE when we use language.
 
^ I agree completely, vox. Knowledge certainly doesn't require language, or else no lifeform besides humans would be able to function effectively within an environment.
 
There is a convention in mainstream academic debates on this question where "knowledge" is given two different delineations:
1. Gnosis - Supra-linguistic phenomena.

2. Episteme - Linguistic knowledge.

The former is within the domain of mysticism and, being non-linguistic itself, is really pointless to talk about, IMO.
 
So are all animals with no form of language possessing of no knowledge, then? Can they have the rich inner lives they seem to, without any knowledge?
 
In the case of animals, I believe there was proposed the idea of ethology that animals act the way they are supposed to act without the need of knowledge in the first place.

Is the surface antigen of a virus a sort of knowledge - insofar as it becomes relevant (at all) only when it comes in contact with a white blood cell. Did the white blood cell "know" the virus? Or is this just the way things are?

The way I view it, there is definitely a semiotic process here, but it is so only by the fact that we linguistic creatures interpret it. There is a process of signification - it led to action (the white blood cell destroying the bacterium)... but was there any knowledge involved, besides ours?

This is my very, very rudimentary understanding of this line of thought, anyone else is welcome to expand or correct if I made a mistake...
 
Speaking of Semiotics, I was actually just reading a book on the subject and my mind was blown (again) by the admirable Umberto Eco

From "Semiotics and The Philosophy of Language said:
A person who does not know chinese cannot produce Freudian slips interpretable in Chinese... This kind of mechanical error is likely to involve content elements only in the eye of the interpreter. But in that case it is the interpreter who must be psychoanalyzed.
Click to expand...

=D
 
Last edited:
^ This question has no meaning, IMO.

It sounds like you're asking, "If seeds need apples, then how can you find an apple inside a seed?" (or something to that effect - I am not a logician).
 
greenberryhaze said:
If knowledge requires language, then how can you know what words mean?
Click to expand...

they are defined with other words, as well as images and ideas which are all in turn broken down to verbal definitions too.
 
Jamshyd said:
There is a convention in mainstream academic debates on this question where "knowledge" is given two different delineations:
1. Gnosis - Supra-linguistic phenomena.

2. Episteme - Linguistic knowledge.

The former is within the domain of mysticism and, being non-linguistic itself, is really pointless to talk about, IMO.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't have said quite this, but the idea that language knowledge is separate from other knowledge is an agreeable approach for me. That has to do with even the nature of the words used to say this:

greenberryhaze said:
If knowledge requires language, then how can you know what words mean?
Click to expand...

That's sort of the problem with "knowledge," since "know"s definition extends into the other side of things, that doesn't involve language. But, since this is a language question:

This is a good place to bring up Sassure and the notion of the linguistic "sign" I think. Basically every language is made up of "signs" and each has two sides, the "signifier" which is the sequence of letters/sounds in a word and the "signified" which is what thing we visualize mentally when we hear/read the signifier. The relationship between them is arbitrary, and speakers of the same language basically just agree on them to communicate. Semantics isn't so much my linguistic thing, but I bring this up when people ask that question usually. But, that basically answers the question, or provides an answer to the question.
 
-Jamshyd

There is a convention in mainstream academic debates on this question where "knowledge" is given two different delineations:
1. Gnosis - Supra-linguistic phenomena.

2. Episteme - Linguistic knowledge.

The former is within the domain of mysticism and, being non-linguistic itself, is really pointless to talk about, IMO.
Click to expand...

for some Gnostics, the belief on the highest knowledge comes in-part from a domain of silent truth.
from which, as the Goddess Sophia -*- many Mysto-Gnostics reach in deep for inspiration to write, create and speak of insights, wonder, love, liberate from material-thoughts, or this flawed existence we start with-
an existence believed to be flawed by isolation, and depravity.
an existence still conjured with knowledge, acquired in -part with out language in an existence of isolation.

studying, expressing through many languages, expressing through many mediums; through thought or internal alignment is the point of Gnosticism as i understand it -- maybe the 'Mytho' ideology more so.

consume knowledge.
share.
 
Language gives knowledge an accessible structure like a filing system. It makes knowledge findable, sharable, and siftable but I don't think there would be no knowledge without language.
 
No.. of course it doesn't.. A person with no concept of language can drop an apple over and over and gain the knowledge that it will always fall do the ground..

Sharing knowledge? Maybe.
 
paridiso said:
By giving spiritual experiences names you conceptualize them. During the experience itself you're not thinking in terms of forms but when it's over you can't help from conceptualizing it.
Click to expand...

It seems like you are describing the knowledge of the conceptualization of the experience rather than the experience itself.

I think Jamshyd's analytical distinction is useful here
Jamshyd said:
1. Gnosis - Supra-linguistic phenomena.

2. Episteme - Linguistic knowledge.

The former is within the domain of mysticism and, being non-linguistic itself, is really pointless to talk about, IMO.
Click to expand...

However, I disagree with Jam's statement that "gnosis" is only within the domain of mysticism and is pointless to talk about.

An example of "gnosis" within the sociological context can be seen in Max Weber's idea that sociology seeks "understanding" (Verstehen). Understanding does not come from language but rather because humans (think that they can) can put themselves in the position of the other and see the world in their terms. This suggests to me that there are other ways of producing knowledge that are outside of or irrespective of language.
 
Last edited:
peer review said:
owever, I disagree with Jam's statement that "gnosis" is only within the domain of mysticism and is pointless to talk about.

An example of "gnosis" within the sociological context can be seen in Max Weber's idea that sociology seeks "understanding" (Verstehen). Understanding does not come from language but rather because humans (think that they can) can put themselves in the position of the other and see the world in their terms. This suggests to me that there are other ways of producing knowledge that are outside of or irrespective of language.
Click to expand...

That is a very interesting interpretation of Weber's conceptualization of the action-orientation (and the latter's constituents). I will have to dwell further on the matter, but it almost seems like Weber's concept of this understanding describes the substratum to which language points and from which language arises.

My best stab is that knowledge points to systems of 'artifacts' which serve as 'pivots', to coordinate activity toward various ends (eg, efficient cooperation (Marx), productive, disciplined bodies (Foucault), etc.). Here, even gnosis inheres partially symbolically, in coordinating mystical participation. Is this conception of knowledge linguistic? Well yes, insofar as it claims to define what sorts of things symbols are.

ebola
 
Last edited:
this makes me now have to wonder what the true language of our world is?
it seems to gain "true" knowledge we have experiences of fact. to develop further upon our experiences and grow from them would be to learn and gain, to notice patterns of 'the', or our past.

in this sense, sharing the experience would be to 'truly' learn and teach, expressing ones own perception; maybe art would be a true expression of experience. to share knowledge through language, the risk of a 'reality' becoming an 'ideology' of any context is bound to occur.

spoken or written words of letters, are constricted to knowledge of letters and words. 'artifacts' 'art' 'symbolic scriptures': [shape or color of figurative meaning] ill put it... they are all the same, their intent may not always be clear, but its essence of creation is.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top