Tuesday 18 October 2011

The language problem

In this post I will attempt to explain something that is by its very nature quite difficult to explain. It ties in to my previous philosophical posts at a fundamental level but is a bit further along in its thinking. Anyway…

My explanation starts with though, I believe though is an incredibly complex summation of a person’s total experiences and current perception, it also flows and a static thought is a nonsensical idea. Perception is affected by  many things such as the senses and hormones and such. Memories are imperfect and too numerous to be accessed in a direct way most of the time.

Language is used to take a thought distil it and enable it to be used as an external reference for a new thought. This distillation process however is an issue. The thought from which language is derived is of almost limitless complexity but the language that is created is considerably simpler. You can liken the process to that of recording live music, the original is an amalgamation of the venue, the people, the musicians, and of course the music and almost certainly many other possible variables. You record this music and only the sound waves are preserved and even then not completely accurately. You then have the sound engineer’s influence imposed upon the recordings and then its probably compressed into little mp3 files. The gist of whatever was recorded might be there but that is it.

Of course current language has its place for simple tasks, and like old valve amplifiers its beautiful because it does its job badly. I think however that philosophy has to as matter of urgency find some way of communicating more complex ideas through language. Invent the FLAC of language, instead of continuing to use dodgy mp3’s as it were.

This is not an easy task, thoughts are by it’s nature vague and written language for example is absolute. I however have come up with a preliminary idea. The idea of using shifting definitions. Or in other words a definition that changes(within a larger vague definition) each time you look at it. I have not worked out the practical aspects of how one would go about creating a shifting definition completely but I am confident I will create a couple soon.

This concept warrants more discussion but I think I need feedback first.

Thursday 6 October 2011

Philosophy

A thought has crystallised today that I think could be one of my more important ones. The purpose of philosophy, it's end game, but my new goal. To discover, invent or just reach a method for expressing vagueness and the pseudoabsolutes that vagueness produces.