My name

The power and influence of one's name over ones own life, especially the psyche, is enormous. I've seen its influence over the years of my work with the young Salesians and Diocesans. 

There have been times, when years later, people have approached me with a BIG THANKS, for one primary reason: consistently addressing them by their name, rather than the nickname given by their own companions. Even to this day, I prefer to call people by their given name or a name they liked to be called by, rather than a nickname or some weird nondescript sound. 

 

Superb title and inspirational lives

 This evening after supper as I was glancing through the news, I came across the following headline and it certainly caught my attention

Meet India’s first family of Chess: Father who never watched, mother who can’t name the pieces, two grandmasters

I could easily guess from the title what the content of the article (published in Financial Express) could be. But the title itself is superb! 

More interesting and inspirational is the content of the article.  It describes how the family still continues to live in the same house, as before.  That the father of the house stays home (primarily because of his disability) but watches his family earn name and fame across the globe.  The mother accompanying the siblings as they travel the world, playing off world champions and becoming grandmasters themselves.  The parents themselves are grandmasters, albeit in a different life game - like most parents, in the whole living kingdom. 

Unwanted pregnancy?

 I've come across the phrase 'unwanted pregnancies' many a time and perhaps it is standard term in vocabulary and linguistics. Nonetheless I prefer we rather use the phrase 'unprepared pregnancy' to refer to the same meaning. Or even 'unintended pregnancy'.

One can't 'want' to have sex and be 'unwant' about one of the natural outcomes of the same. Most importantly, I prefer the proposed change of vocabulary since the former phrase appears derogatory in its reference to a child, who has had no say whatsoever in its own existence. 

Irony!

 

Prayers and adjectives

 Attending Mass the other day in one of the convents, and listening to their commentaries and descriptions at various points of the Mass and even before and after, it occurred to me: the use of adjectives should be banned in formation houses and convents!!

This is not the first time that I have heard words and commentaries being abused to such an extent that very beautiful words sound horrible!! Of course, there are always occasions when the Mass or any event is celebrated beautifully with great reverence and just right amount of creativity.  But there are also occasions when there is an overdose of creativity and everything is exaggerated.  The emphasis is mistakenly placed on impression rather than devotion. Or as someone corrected me, that's their way of expressing devotion.  

I wonder if any of these people who wish to express their 'devotion' through such intricate frills (words, actions, events...) do the same with their own parents when they relate to them everyday, or even on special occasions. 

Devotion and reverence, especially for us religious, is not a decoration; it is our basic lifestyle! 

What's language for?

 What's the ultimate purpose or need of language for us human beings? 

The most common answer I guess would be communication.  But the ultimate need?  I am slowly come to the conviction, it is for meaning.  Our basic search for meaning is what propels our tryst with language.  It is not communicating meaning, but seeking meaning.  

Meandering

Our journey in and through language is not merely consistently adopting the Constitutive or the designative approach, it is actually weaving in and out of each that makes us human. Not a fixated stagnant deepening but wild meandering through all of it. 

Language and the human race

 If someone were to walk upto me and speak in a language I know not, about snow I would not understand anything of what he or she just said.  After this if I'm asked for a judgement or opinion about this person's knowledge of snow, it would be unfair for me to state that the person does not know anything about snow.  the fact that I did not understand the other does not mean that the other doesn't know.  Similarly it would be unfair to judge me as ignorant, because I do know something about snow but not how the other person spoke about it or what he or she said about it.  I'm yet to know that language.  

So me alone or another person alone does not become the sole criterion of judgement about the rightness or wrongness of a language - or even knowledge.  Language is a community adventure.  And by community, I mean the world community!  Anything less than the whole human race expressing its opinion or judgement is partial.  

Humanity, a reality we share-in

Humanity is a reality we being humans share-in, rather than contribute-towards.  

When speaking of in terms of contributing-towards, the drawback is that if one does not contribute towards it the total is less by that single contribution.  The deficiency in humanity is due to those not contributing towards its total pool.  As such what is diminished is the overall humanity - not the individual self who did not contribute towards it.  On the other hand, when speaking of in terms of 'share-in' when one does not share-in the existing realm of humanity what is impoverished is not the reality of humanity itself but the individual who desists sharing-in.  

However, two misconceptions that can arise when we speak of 'share-in': that humanity pre-dates us  and that it is something that exists by itself (pre-existing and independent of ourselves).  Transcendent?  The reality is exactly opposite - humanity does not transcend human borders. It is only within the realm of human beings that one can speak of humanity.  It is true that one can speak of humanity being inspired by the divine or humanity reaching out to the animals, but these are aspects where humanity is relating to rather than 'leaving' the boundary of us human beings.  The sum total of humanity - a very bad way of putting it - evaporates into thin air without us, human beings.  

Another aspect: sharing-in incorporates contributing-towards.  The other way need not always be possible or effective.  The fact that I share-in something will naturally lead me to contribute-towards it - in and through innovative ways.  The fact that I contribute-towards need not always mean I fully and whole-heartedly associate with it or see that which I contribute towards as integral to my identity.  Eg.: volunteering vs random acts of charity.  

Now as to why this thought kept plaguing me this morning:  Can I speak of language too in this manner?

Gripped

 The word 'fear' is grasped and understood when one learns the meaning of it from the books or is explained by someone.  The spelling learnt, the vocabulary grasped and the dictionary definition understood.  However, when one actually feels it, say having met with an accident or living through a grave illness, then the word 'fear' gains more than what was learnt.  

In the earlier instance, we grasp 'fear'; in the latter, fear grasps me!  Earlier the self grasps the notion of fear, while in the latter self is gripped by fear! (Designative vs the constitutive)

Validity

On Validity, as conceived in social sciences... (extracts from here, an article by Eric Schwitzgebel)

Shadish, Cook, and Campbell (2002) begin with a seemingly clear commitment: validity is a property of inferences. 

Validity is a property of inferences. It is not a property of designs or methods, for the same design may contribute to more or less valid inferences under different circumstances.... So it is wrong to say that a randomized experiment is internally valid or has internal validity -- although we may occasionally speak that way for convenience (p. 34)

Inferences are not true or false. They are valid or invalid. What is true or false are propositions: the premises and the conclusion.

An inference is one thing and a claim is another! Shadish et al., despite emphasizing that validity is a property of inferences, confusingly add they will treat "inference" and "knowledge claim" interchangeably. But an inference is not a knowledge claim. An inference is a process of moving from the hypothesized truth of one or more claims to a conclusion which, if all goes well, is true if the claims are true.

Psychologists' and social scientists' claims about validity, in my judgment, make the most sense on the whole and are simplest to interpret if we treat validity as fundamentally a property of claims or propositions rather than as a property of inferences (or methods or instruments or experiments).

Validity, in the psychologists' and social scientists' sense, is best conceptualized as a property that belongs to claims: the property those claims have when they are true.

I diagnose the confusion as arising from three sources: First, ... Second, a tendency among those who do want to rigorize to notice that the philosophers' logical notion of validity applies to arguments or inferences, and consequently some corresponding pressure to think of it that way in the social sciences too, despite the dominant grain of social science usage running a different direction.

Human palms and language

 Learning of the day... human palms are of lighter colour than our skin. Even though this is most evident with those of us who are dark skinned but even those with lighter complexion, this becomes evident when one undergoes a tan.  The colour of our palms somehow still remain lighter than the rest of the body.  No other animal has this feature.  

The first to notice this and use this biological factor as an evidence for his theory was an anthropologist named Gordon Hewes.  He used this fact as an evidence to support his 'gestures first' theory in the field of origin of language.  That human beings used gestures to communicate far before and more effectively than using verbal words and sounds, is the backbone of this theory.  He speculated that this human peculiarity evolved to increase the visibility of our gestures. However, this is not the strongest of his arguments to prove his theory, nonetheless is an interesting and often overlooked human phenomenon. 

I was wondering how does this apply to the soles of our feet?  After all, they too are lighter in colour when compared to the skin around... unless you are like some of us who prefer to go around barefoot, in which case the soles of our feet are darker than coal!!  So actually speaking Hewes would have to explain the depigmentation on our soles if he was citing the lighter colour on our palms as an evolutionary change to facilitate gestures.  

Irrationality

In the preamble of the book on Irrationality (by Justin Smith)...

At the individual level irrationality manifests itself as dreams, emotion, passion, desire, affect, enhanced by drugs, alcohol, meditation; at the social level it is expressed as religion, mysticism, storytelling, conspiracy theory, sports fandom, rioting, rhetoric, mass demonstrations, sexuality when it bursts out of its prescribed roles, music when it breaks away from the notes on the sheet and takes on a life of its own.

Perfect recipe for speaking of Romanticism! 

Irrationality

Irrationality - as a middle ground between rationality and nonsense.  A lost space (thanks primarily to the Enlightenment era and Cartesian dualism).  A sort of fluid ground, not utterly rational and logical, yet real and influential. 

What then distinguishes it from nonsense? 
Its ability to influence and deeply affect matters of life and thought. 

My claim:
Irrationality is an unaccepted and often rejected notion in language and meaning that needs actually to be given space for operation, if language is to make sense.  However, cannot make it into a rule, that would then make it rational - lose its very identity.  Not saying irrationality is a must; but saying that its presence and influence has to be accepted and acknowledged.

Primary argument/evidence:
Without giving space for irrationality, language becomes fossilized.  There is no scope for further emergence of meaning. The existence of this dynamism which cannot be explained by all the rules put together, is evidence enough to state that there is some other force, besides the agreed and accepted rules and norms, at play. 

New language

Documenting the birth of a new language...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-51372265/how-nicaragua-s-deaf-children-invented-a-new-sign-language

Widening the divide with capitals!

A further reflection on the theme of intolerance and Christian unity, in the context of language - a topic that I'm brooding over! 

Disunity is brought about, in most cases, when an idea is held to be of greater importance than a human being. All cases of religious fundamentalism arise when the concept of religion takes precedence over humanity; when faith becomes greater than human life; when god - and I mean, the concept of God - needs to be protected, but not my neighbour. 

One easy way we fall into this trap of elevating a concept to a status higher than a living being, reducing the latter to such a minimal value so as to count for nothing, is when we capitalise a word!  When faith becomes Faith.  When god becomes God.  When church becomes Church.  These are tell-tale signs of where and what we feel are un-negotiable aspects of our living, at the altar of which everything else (not belonging to me), especially others, can be sacrificed.  Furthermore, with words like 'infidel', 'atheist', 'unbeliever', 'pro-abortionist', 'LGBTQ+', ... we can easily reduce persons, living beings with flesh and blood, families and feelings into despicable things that in their entirety ought to be made to disappear! 

That reminds me of a very stinging remark one of my former Rector's made on a report I put together after my supervision of a batch of third year students involved in the 'Immersion programme'.  Back then it struck me, as 'what's the big deal?' Why make a hue and cry about a regular use?  The phrase I used in the report was a description of a place: '...a place infested with naxalites...'  And the Rector had circled this phrase and written on the margins, "Even naxalites are people, not insects!" Looking back I clearly see.  I did not mind using the word 'infested' in the context of the naxalites, but I would never have used it in the context of seminarians or even a packed railway station!  My prejudices were laid bare.  

'Parent' in Hindi?

One strange insight that hit me hard the other day, while talking in Hindi to one companion from India, at the university the other day: Hindi does not have a word for 'parent'!  We have a word for 'mother', a word for 'father' but not for 'parent'.  The closest word we use for parent in Hindi is माँ बाप or माता पिता ... that is 'mother-father'. 

Or perhaps nuanced Hindi has one, but it certainly is not in common use.  I wonder why is that so.  How come the English (Western?) language coined a common word to indicate both parents while the ancient Hindi never really thought it necessary to have a single word denoting both parents.  Parents were always specified as 'mother-father'.  

Wittgenstein, language and transcendence...

Speaking of Wittgenstein, language and transcendence...

The fact that we might even be tempted to suppose we can do that bespeaks a deeply human longing to step outside our own skins. We can feel trapped by our bodily, time-bound existence. There’s a kind of religious impulse that seeks liberation from these limits: it seeks to transcend our finite selves and make contact with the infinite. Wittgenstein’s religious impulse pushes us in the opposite direction: he doesn’t try to satisfy our aspiration for transcendence but to wean us from that aspiration altogether. The liberation he offers isn’t liberation from our bounded selves but for our bounded selves.

Metaphysical speculations, for Wittgenstein, are like gears that have slipped free from the mechanism of language and are spinning wildly out of control. Wittgenstein the engineer wants to get the mechanism running smoothly. And this is precisely where the spiritual insight resides: our aim, properly understood, isn’t transcendence but a fully invested immanence. In this respect, he offers a peculiarly technical approach to an aspiration that finds expression in mystics from Meister Eckhart to the Zen patriarchs: not to ascend to a state of perfection but to recognise that where you are, already, in this moment, is all the perfection you need. 

Found at Aeon

Does or Is

We find it reasonable and easy to answer certain direct questions about things we see around us.  But the same ease and rationale fails us when we ascend further to the domain of persons and non-material realities. 
Why does this biscuit exist?
Why does this bulb exist?
Why does this car exist?
Why does this building exist?
Why does this office exist?
Why do I exist?
Why does the world exist?
Why does anything exist at all?
Note the increasing difficulty in answering the above set of questions. Why so?

The more distanced and uninvolved we stay, the easier to answer.  The more intimate and involved we get, the more difficult it gets to answer.

Gets us back to 'know thyself'.  Same with language. 

Perhaps we have been answering the wrong question all along: instead of answering what it IS we have been answering what it DOES.  We have been answering 'what does language do?' rather than 'What IS language?'.  We have equated DOES and IS.

Perhaps we don't have an access point beyond 'does'.  To answer, 'is' we need to get out of language.  (Do we?) And there is no 'getting out of language'.

Philosophizing as...

The other day while listening to a paper on Schelling, and his efforts at recognizing and addressing the alienation of humankind from nature, it was interesting to hear a particular nuanced approach that lies at the heart of the issue.  Schelling says that in order to restore the lost connection, one has to become a philosopher of nature.  And how does one become one? 

Among the other ways and descriptions of what and who a nature philosopher is, the author was stating that it is not so much about a person doing 'philosophy of nature' rather it is philosophizing as nature.  In the former instance, of doing 'philosophy of nature' or 'philosophizing about nature', the person is still maintaining a separation between nature and oneself.  There is already a disunity, right at the outset of one's effort at rectifying the brokenness.  The latter perspective, of 'philosophizing as nature' is whereby one realizes oneself as part of nature, not separate or disunited from.  Humankind is part of nature.  In so far as this is true, it is nature philosophizing nature!

This perfectly sums up what Taylor is trying to say about language.  We have no vantage point outside of it, so as to speak about it.  If we do so, we are already alienating ourselves from our own reality.  Language is to be understood from the inside, not from the outside - unless one is merely doing philosophy of language.