My maiden meeting with my supervisor, in person, was quite an experience! All his initial questions and subsequent clarifications were very clear and showed me where I was headed to, if I pursued my line of thought. And he certainly was not showing off, though his points were very scholarly.
There was however one question which left me baffled. I just could not think of any one reason or argument. The context was our discussion about how language reveals a particular worldview and my furthering that point to show how a diversity of languages assists, rather than diminishes, a better understanding of the reality as a whole. His question was: What assurance do you have that there is 'something more' to reality that what is perceived? There may be, but any guarantee? What rational proof or argument is there, besides intuition, that there is 'something more' to reality, more than what language reveals?
Each language is different and the other person's worldview is different from mine. That certainly shows that I do not have the full picture - neither has the other. But now together, we can arrive at a wider collective picture than an individual worldview. In this case, what is known is what is collectively known. The question still remains: what guarantee that there is more than what is known by this collective knowing? Perhaps that is all there is to know.
If I stated that there is a world out there that I seek to 'capture' through language, and each language is limited in its revelation, then I'm falling back on the Analytical notion that that knowledge is 'getting the world right'... I have been trying to get out of this mould of thought.
Perhaps need to give my head a break!
There was however one question which left me baffled. I just could not think of any one reason or argument. The context was our discussion about how language reveals a particular worldview and my furthering that point to show how a diversity of languages assists, rather than diminishes, a better understanding of the reality as a whole. His question was: What assurance do you have that there is 'something more' to reality that what is perceived? There may be, but any guarantee? What rational proof or argument is there, besides intuition, that there is 'something more' to reality, more than what language reveals?
Each language is different and the other person's worldview is different from mine. That certainly shows that I do not have the full picture - neither has the other. But now together, we can arrive at a wider collective picture than an individual worldview. In this case, what is known is what is collectively known. The question still remains: what guarantee that there is more than what is known by this collective knowing? Perhaps that is all there is to know.
If I stated that there is a world out there that I seek to 'capture' through language, and each language is limited in its revelation, then I'm falling back on the Analytical notion that that knowledge is 'getting the world right'... I have been trying to get out of this mould of thought.
Perhaps need to give my head a break!
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