Language predisposes, it does not essentialise.
(Gee, I wonder what I was thinking about when this popped up?)
Perhaps it was this: when we (any two-plus people) talk about something, we approach it through series of approximations; we negotiate ourselves to a shared* understanding, which may still be incomplete because there probably isn't time to fully check all the separate ramifications, each of which has it's own ramifications, etc. etc. So we are hoping that our (by definition incomplete) mutual understanding is sufficient and relevant.
That thing named is not made into an essence through the naming. It is not, through being named, made fundamental, made into something requiring consent from all future speakers. They remain free to negotiate, although, generally, the results of past negotiations require, as they age and attract support, increasing energy and good fortune to succeed in making a change.
Take democracy. There was a time when that meant men voting for MPs. Then the "men" part turned out not to be important. No epistemically interesting word escapes this problem.
If we take "existence" to mean "existence for people" (try and remove every trace of "people" from a statement in a human language) then essence is at best "having been named". For example, a "tree" is a "tree-as-conceived-by-people". It's not a "tree-as-conceived-by-borer".
*Not at all this simple
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment