Are We Naught But Words?

[Dillinger]

Do we know anything beyond language? Beyond the words we use to describe things?

I don't just mean here, online, I mean everything, everywhere.

I think truth is beyond words, beyond our ability to shape language.

 

[naudiz]

I think so too, Dillinger. If, for no other reason, than the multitude of things that are inside and all around, for which there are simply no words to describe.

 

[modest mouse]

Do we know anything beyond language? Beyond the words we use to describe things?

You have an avatar that contains no words. It conveys something.

I think truth is beyond words, beyond our ability to shape language.

Obviously. Language is a tool, like anything else. Truth is amyth because perception and interpretation are inherent in anything that would be shared by more than one person and thus considered a 'truth'.

 

[Ask For More]

Indescribable is a good word.
Like the pain of having a soccer ball blasted into your gonads...
Indescribable....

 

[Desert Amazon]

 

[sunstruck]

We created language as a means of explaining things. There is inevitably a vast amount that could never be defined.

Anyone who has ever been speechless has felt this.

 

[modest mouse]

Some of us use a look, or silence (showing contentment), or feeling and touch to relate words. It's pretty effective.

DA, not to be a pain in the ass but the fallacy in your logic may be what Dillinger is getting at (or he may be playing intellectual to get chicks).

A look, or silence is not to relate words. Words should not enter the equation, the formulae, the act... they exist as an artificial means of conveying the act you describe. You've inverted the order and therein lies the deception of words as finality or the limitation of the human experience.

"touch to relate words' ....... think about that phrase. touch should relate everything but words. If your touch is limited to the confines and trappings of any given language than you are not truly alive.

I suspect you would have worded your post more carefully but I'm using you to possibly illustrate a point.

 

[Never]

Dillinger
"Do we know anything beyond language? Beyond the words we use to describe things?

I don't just mean here, online, I mean everything, everywhere."

Questions like this are always quite ambiguous, that would depend on how you define 'know' and 'word'.

I could rephrase your question to: Can the human mind be cognizant or aware of any action, sensation, or experience that cannot be described using the written or oral language?

I'd say 'no'.

I've never encountered anything that I couldn't describe to another human being who shared my language and my general culture/experience using words. Could I describe it 'perfectly'? Not at all, I don't believe I can even experience something 'perfectly' when it's happening to me not to mention the limits of language and my ability to use it.




Dillange: "I think truth is beyond words, beyond our ability to shape language."

I think truth is subjective. Even if I discribed a horse perfectly to another person, if they've never seen a horse they won't know exactly what it looks and acts like.

 

[Desert Amazon]

 

[Dillinger]

From "The Divine Invasion" by Philip K. Dick:

... but color moved through it, like St. Elmo's fire. The color, a shiny, glistening red, seemed alive. It collected here and there, and where it gathered it formed words, or rather something like words. As if the world had become language.

 

[modest mouse]

DA, you didnt particularly misunderstand but rather illustrated the point to an extent. That words can illustrate or flesh-out an idea, a sensation, etc... but the initial 'thing' exists in a way/form that remains separate from language.

 

[Mellon Collie]

Re: Re: Are We Naught But Words?

You have an avatar that contains no words. It conveys something.

Actually his av is a golden apple with the word Kallisti inscribed which translates into "To The Prettiest One".

But I agree with the idea you are putting across.

 

[modest mouse]

At the time it was a pic of his cock. Perhaps I should have noted that.

 

[Mellon Collie]

Heh, well I got to show off some of my massive intellect so whatever.

 

[Dillinger]

COCK - Golden Apple of Discord (Kallisti) - what's the difference? *lol*

Just words we used to describe pictures. I would venture to say that we can't even look at pictures or at the world without wrapping words around what we see or what we feel.

Have you ever looked at a tree and not thought the word "Tree"??? Hmmm?

There are very few moments in our life that there isn't an internal dialogue, in our native language, narrating our every experience. Perhaps one of the only moments we might be free from such bounds is during orgasm.

 

[marksgirl]

Very profound Dill.

 

[Siren]

 

[HighSchoolJock]

actually there is a school of thought that claims words have no meaning

 

[Dougy]

'Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is they are not even superficial'
--Friedrich Nietzche

 

[Dillinger]

"Language is a Virtual Reality created by the strange symbol-making capacity of the upper quarter inch of our front brain. Language created God and Satan and Hell, and it created Liberty and Equality and Justice and Natural Law. Langauage creates spooks that get into our heads and hypnotize us." -- Robert Anton Wilson

 

[juicylips]

Do we know anything beyond language? Beyond the words we use to describe things?

There are simply no words to express how you feel after experiencing a soul drenching orgasm.

You simply lay there and let pure emotion take you wherever it wants. I'm actually not coherent for minutes afterwards. Like being transported.

No. There are no words for that.
JL