IS THE WORLD MADE OF LANGUAGE?

IS THE WORLD MADE OF LANGUAGE? (2015)

by Milen Martchev, Hitotsubashi University

This paper examines whether the statement that the world is 'made of language', or that it is 'akin to language', as has been put forward under slightly different guises in the past by certain philosophers, linguists and scientists, can be construed to offer a meaningful and deeper than superficially metaphorical insight into human cognitive reality and perhaps even physical reality itself. In the process, the nature of language and codes, some contemporary developments in scientific discourse in the area of fundamental physics, as well as the apparent recent surge in the use of 'consciousness' as a world-explaining metaphor will be considered. Chief among the arguments made here is that no matter what strategy we choose to go by in order to explain existence, and even if the human mind can conceive of the possibility of some kind of 'ultimate' or 'unitary' reality, then that reality, whatever it may be, resides where language and thought cannot penetrate; conversely, any humanly conceivable state of affairs necessarily begins where language and logic do―at the level of duality and binary oppositions.

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