Now as for emotion and perception and reason, it can be clearly seen that without language none of these ways of knowing can be clearly expressed. So for example, if you were sad and angry, without talking and sharing this feeling you could have this feeling left in you forever, which may cause permanent damage physiologically.
Take the concept of possession for example. A child owns a toy. And his mom owns the child. Then we refer to the toy as “Mom’s child’s toys.” Language models the combinatorial nature of concepts. Language therefore is able to, from its method of conveying basic concepts, in a combinatorial manner, in order to convey more complex concepts. Therefore, whatever concept we arrive at in thinking in whatever area of knowledge, we would we able to use language to express it.
However Language has many weak points, so as an example I would say if we take the Greek language we would find that there is no word for brown, so the question of “do they see it?” arises. And as we know of course they see it but this is one limitation of their language, or another good example is sadness, which has no word stating it in African language, although Africans do fell it, if not the most. So this proves to us that language does have limitations.
Another disadvantage of language is that it can not describe everything such as feeling in love or any other feeling, therefore any person trying to describe his feelings will find it a hard job to do. But on the other hand we find ourselves.
But this is nothing because the worst disadvantage of language is that words have denotations which are their original meaning in addition to a connotation which is the common meaning of a word. So for example if a Jordanian man said that he has bought a new Egyptian man to the house, he would for sure mean that he has bought new worker in the house or gardener, but a person from outside Jordan would understand it as bringing a person from Egypt to the house. In this case we must know how to distinguish between a concept the word refers to and the idea it is really meant to convey. Another example is "black man" and "nigger", both might refer to the same idea. However one is completely offensive and unacceptable, and is showing racism. Now the denotation of the word nigger is black and is used to refer to a person, but the word does have a racist connotation.
How about this: if nothing is better than freedom, and playing cards is better than nothing, therefore playing cards is better than freedom!!! This is just a small trick that can be done using language, which could provide completely wrong knowledge. So as it can be seen language is not perfect in providing knowledge.
Moreover, a problem is the mutability and unreliability of language. Before we think that language’s imprecision is so much a bad thing, let us remember that it is because of the desire for precision that we constantly add to and modify language. And unless we somehow developed direct mind-to-mind communication, it is our only form of communication. And why is a language so constantly changing? Simply because we are in the process of acquiring knowledge! So if you do not stay up to date with the changing language, you would be perceiving knowledge in a wrong way, leading to wrong decisions.
There is also inappropriateness in language as representation of knowledge that is abstract and different from the simple solution to problems of communication that it was. Well that simply is an idea assuming that language has to be what it always have been. Language changes because its users require it to. The change of language is simply the adaptation of it to the domain of its use. Take waves for example. Not the waves that surfers surf on, or even waves of ripples on water. Not sound waves or even light waves. Let’s take quantum probability waves. A very abstract concept, surely. But we can clearly see that we have named it a wave because it has similar properties to the normal waves we see and experience. But of course quantum probability waves don’t mean water waves. The word has been adapted for a new concept in physics. So the same word was used over five times to represent different things. So when should each word be used?
Another way of knowing is rationalism which is the use of reasoning to understand a thing, and there are two types of rationalism, which are inductive rationalism and deductive rationalism. Inductive rationalism is taking a small example and generalizing from it. So for example you could see a couple of swans which are white and therefore you generalize that all swans are white but this is not always right because u may find some black swans. Or you may have scored two goals in a row, so you generalize that you will also score the third one because you are on a hot streak, but the truth is that the chance of you scoring a goal on the third shot is fifty to fifty. While in deductive knowledge you would go from a general idea to a specific one. For example you would say that all humans have noses and I am a human so I have a nose. But this is not always correct, so if we consider this example that all tyrants and dictators are not women and children fear women such as there mothers this would mean that children don’t fear tyrants and dictators which is absolutely wrong. Therefore we can deduce that rationalism can be easily falsified. But considering another angle of this way of knowledge we would find it very effective, since detectives use their rationalism and reasoning to explain a crime and therefore they find the killer and understand the mystery and in they’re work no other way of knowing would be better than rationalism. And as a result of the following rationalism is the best way of knowing science since it is highly objective and it can be falsified which are the two main characteristics needed for science as an area of knowledge. Therefore it is a great source of truth.
We also use perception as a way of knowing which is using the senses to understand things such as looking, hearing and tasting and so on, but the main problem with this part of knowing is that it can not be falsified and it is limited, since our eyes and ears are limited in doing their function and so are the rest of our body organs which are used for perception. For example our ears can not hear everything since we can not hear sounds beyond the frequency of twenty thousand and less than two hundred. But as for art which is extremely subjective perception would be the best way of understanding since there is no good or bad art. This means that there is no black or white in this way of knowing because each person has a different way of perception and understanding things. Therefore it is hard to get the truth from it.
In conclusion, it can be interpreted that language doesn’t control the other ways of knowing. So instead of saying that our language is controlling or restricting our ways of knowing, in a sense it is our ways of knowing that are controlling and shaping language for its purpose.
Word count: 1613
Done by: Bassam Al-Nawaiseh
