I wrote: > > > The use of the word 'art' has metastisized so wildly, so uncontrolledly, > > because though the human mind was clever enough to devise language, it > has > not > > been nearly clever enough to make its use foolproof. > > language is still in a primitive stage comparable to riflery soon after > its > > invention, when the projectiles were spherical metal balls > Michael responded: > > Please, Tom, that's a ludicrous bit of hyperbole. Language is one of the > oldest human accomplishments, perhaps the very oldest communal > accomplishment--how could societies have arisen without communication. > Language isn't *primitive*, either chronologically or notionally: it's > geometrically more complex than almost every other human production. > Everything humans have made or invented have, typically, has only a few > capabilities. Language is infinitely malleable, as the first sentence of > this > excerpt acknowledges. > I stand by my allegation of "primitive". About two-thirds of the way through the nineteenth century, "philosophy of language" had not been invented yet. Writers then (rightfully) gloried in what language could do. Notice that I said, "For some purposes". If you'd gone to the philosophers in the late 19th and told them that, for the next 125 years, philosophy would be bent over language trying to straighten it out, you might have been told, "that's a ludicrous bit of hyperbole." Then came Frege, Russell, Whitehead, Tarski, Strawson, Wittgenstein, Austin, Searle, Quine, Grice, Davidson, Donnellan, Putnam, Kripke...
In something I'm working on, I found myself writing: BREN Oh, our talk-sounds often work well enough -- in the kitchen, on a ball field or a battlefield. Because we all link simple sounds like Milk! Run! Shoot! with similar raw sensations -- KIT -- But we're not in a kitchen right now -- BREN -- No, we're on a battlefield -- KIT -- I'm saying listen to us! We're understanding each other! BREN We are? ...With philosophy, politics, religion -- when we hear their psychedelic sounds -- 'freedom', 'art', 'salvation', 'understand', 'meaning' -- we all conjure notions, but they're abstract, fuzzy, and, most important, various. If anything, language -- as a philosophical tool in the mire of Saul Kripke's modal logic -- is perhaps more bogged down now than it was fifty years ago. I'd love to see where it will be (for philosophy) a hundred years from now.
