More poetry and politics. Fun debate last night in Stephen's course- something still bugging me. For folks not in (or often in) Listening to Poetry, several of the folks we've been reading have echoed the idea that the language itself structures thought and thinking, and not the other way around. That is, instead of an extant material world coming into our senses which we then represent in words, all we ever see are symbols and systems of symbols organized in pre-determined ways- i.e. in grammars. Which is to say, there is no raw, unstructured world to appeal to in our talk about reality- only linguistic entities.

Dan wanted to say, and I think Heidegger, Cassirer and many others agree, that this shows how language is in control of us, how we can't escape its influence, how it structures us and our thoughts. If all we get are symbols, and the symbols are systematized for us already, and all we can do is manipulate the symbols according to the rules of the system, then all we can think is what language tells us to think. Put like that, and I think it could certainly be put even better, the view is pretty persuasive.

There are two arguments, however, that I can't seem to shake. The first: is it so obvious that we think in language? That's kind of a puzzle, so I won't muddy it up by exploring it any here, but I do kind of want to know anyone's take on it. Do you think in language? All of the time, some of the time? Do you think only in language when you think about language? Can you think about language in something other than language?

Number two, suppose we do think in language, does the kind of deterministic picture sketched above really hold true? How, on that account, would inventions and changes in language take place? If no one in the whole system has any free will, if we are all just causal effects in a chain whose first cause precedes us in time, why does the shape of the thing change any, which I think we would all have to agree language does, and often? As an analogy, if you started running a mathematical algorithm through a computer, and all of a sudden it started spitting out things outside the defined set, say a Joan Retallack poem, wouldn't you be a little curious as to how it happened?

I think it's consistent to say that the world is constructed and not given to us, and even constructed by a symbol system like language, but that we take part in the construction, as agents with degrees of free will (and I think this is what Waldrop is saying about com[position, even if she places most of the agency in language). I also think it's consistent to say we think in language sometimes, by other means other times. It's possible that a non-symbol system, the workings of our organic brain, gives rise to a symbol system, language, and that the two continue to coexist. It's possible that one could respond meaningfully to language with a non-representational gesture, such as a tear or a guffaw. It's also possible that non-linguistic phenomenon could give rise to a linguistic response, like a spring morning causing us to write a nature poem, and that is even consistent with a constructivist picture of the world, as long as you don't take language to be the only conceptual scheme which constructs the world.

Of course, being merely "consistent", or "possible" isn't the same as being true.