Matt J Posted March 9, 2014 Posted March 9, 2014 Hello everyone, I was having a discussion with a friend of mine about language. Is it subjective or objective? I know it can describe things that are subjective and objective, but language itself would be considered subjective, right? What I mean is the actual meaning of the words are subjective, it depends on who you are and your geographical location(the culture you are in), and what year it is. Letters and spoken words are just symbols and sounds that we give meaning to, so I think yes it is subjective... but I am still not 100% sure. Do you think it would be possible to develop a language that is completely objective and there would be no way of misunderstanding someone? Thanks for you time, I look forward to your response.
_LiveFree_ Posted March 9, 2014 Posted March 9, 2014 I understood 100% of the words and ideas expressed in your post. It seems that language is actually objective. Let's try another experiment. Can you understand what I'm writing?
Prairie Posted March 9, 2014 Posted March 9, 2014 For each of the following, it is objective or subjective? Banana 2+2=4 The sun is shining somewhere They are bad Bob thinks that they are bad Language My sense is that language is in the same class as a banana; it is not a statement about things and therefore it is neither objective nor subjective. Language can be used to make statements about things, and those statements can be objective or subjective. As for how statements classify, it seems to fall on the line of whether it's projecting one's values onto the world, or giving context for them ("I think 'that is bad'" versus "that is bad"). Hmmm, maybe your question was about the meaning of a particular word. Meaning is clearly something subjective, because it's not a property of the word but of the people who use it, and can thus differ between people or the same person over time. The meaning of something is like the goodness/badness of it, just something projected.
dsayers Posted March 9, 2014 Posted March 9, 2014 What a fun question! I'm of so many different minds of the subject, I'm having a hard time organizing my thoughts. To me, objective simply means independent of our consciousness. Which technically, no concept is because concepts do not exist without consciousness. Even if what those concepts describe is objective. Words are all concepts. On the other hand, as you think of a concept, the chemical arrangement of your brain is objective, even if we cannot capture or interpret most of this in any meaningful way. In fact, you might even be able to argue that objective definitions of words could be subjective when you consider that you can have multiple words to describe one concept and multiple concepts that one word can indicate. Or there's interpretation. By that I mean, is a tail-wagging, four-legged, furry animal that barks a dog, a gato, or a chien? The answer is subjective while what they describe is objective. The VALUE of language is objective. I'm reminded of the part in Stef's Intro to Philosophy series when he uses the word "dangfur" as an example. That word has no objective value because no definition has been given, emanated, and accepted. Sorry if that's a mess. I was kind of eager to get all my thoughts out before they dissipated. I probably missed a couple.
dazed and confused Posted March 9, 2014 Posted March 9, 2014 words bring to mind certain associations, and those associations will be different for everybody. so yes, i think language to a certain degree is subjective.
TheRobin Posted March 9, 2014 Posted March 9, 2014 Words are just sounds with concepts attached to them. But which concepts are attached to which sounds is completely arbitrary. Ofc once people DO agree to use a given sound for a given concept you have a standard for a particular language that's then no longer arbitrary. (As in, IF you want to speak german then the sound to use for the conept "dog" is "Hund" (i.e. you can't just make up stuff and call it "german language", though you can make up your own language ofc and it would still be valid in and of itself as long as it's internally consistent)) What counts as language isn't arbitrary either, as making random noises isn't considered language, but for language to be language it needs consistency (using the same word for the same concept, using the same grammatical structure and such).
cynicist Posted March 9, 2014 Posted March 9, 2014 People have to agree on the meaning of words, so they are subjective. You realize that when you get into a heated debate with someone only to find out later that you simply defined your terms differently and actually have the same position >< (for example, to most people the term government means "a system of rules", so when you try to explain to them how it is evil they will look at you like you are advocating no rules whatsoever, which would result in total chaos)
masonman Posted March 9, 2014 Posted March 9, 2014 "actual meaning of the words are subjective" I absolutely agree. Language is only useful when different people's subjective interpretation of different words are all generally in agreement. I always dislike English classes that acted as if English was an unchanging, static language that had solid rules like math. Language doesn't. Languages are always changing, how we use different words is always changing. Language is just sounds with meaning, the sounds can change, the meaning can change. However languages are super useful because I can say "bicycle" and we both understand what I'm talking about. However you may think of a red bicycle sitting on grass when I say "bicycle," and I may think of a black bicycle floating in a white void when you say "bicycle." Language is not at all objective. If I said "ejaculation" 200 years ago, you would have had a completely different mental association with it than you had when I wrote it now.
AlesD Posted March 9, 2014 Posted March 9, 2014 I also agree that the meaning of words is subjective. That is why we have to start with defining the terms so we know what we talk about before we start talking especially in debates. Still for some words we can say they are objective. Here I mean words which describe a specific physical item. I don't think there would be much disagreement on what for example a chair or a table is. I think the subjectivity more comes in when describing more abstract concepts or emotional states.
Dylan Lawrence Moore Posted March 9, 2014 Posted March 9, 2014 Language has an objective and a subjective component. Strangely enough, after studying 4 languages (Japanese, ancient Greek, Sanskrit, and German), I would have sworn up and down that language was subjective. I argued that anyone could come up with any list of sounds to describe any arbitrary concept in his head. I received a lesson when I read The Trivium. Here's the example in the book that convinced me otherwise. It involves 3 sentences. 1. Jane married a man. In this sentence, we have to know what a man is in order to understand the sentence. Jane didn't marry a rock, a house, or an abstract concept. She married a MAN. In fact, we could (subjectively) call man whatever we wanted, and as long as everyone was aware of the word, the sentence would still be understandable (examples: Jane married an architect, the groom, a Russian, etc.). This demonstrates the objective nature of language is called the first imposition. 2. Man is a monosyllable. In this sentence, knowing what a man is is not necessary to understanding the sentence. We're analyzing "man" as a phonetic symbol, and we could replace it with any monosyllable word and the sentence would still be understandable, even if we didn't know what the word meant. This demonstrates the subjective nature of language is called the zero imposition. 3. Man is a noun. In order to understand this sentence, we need to both understand the objective nature of "man" and the use of its phonetic symbol. This combines both the objective and subject qualities of the word "man" and is called the second imposition. Grammar is the science of the second imposition. Hope that helps! -Dylan
cynicist Posted March 9, 2014 Posted March 9, 2014 I don't think there would be much disagreement on what for example a chair or a table is. I think the subjectivity more comes in when describing more abstract concepts or emotional states. Do you mean a thing you sit on and a thing you eat from or the person in charge of a meeting and something you find in an excel spreadsheet? If it's something you sit on, does a bean bag count? Does it need to have legs or be made of wood? Personally, I would never call a bean bag a chair but according to Wikipedia it technically fits the definition of one. 1. Jane married a man. In this sentence, we have to know what a man is in order to understand the sentence. Jane didn't marry a rock, a house, or an abstract concept. She married a MAN. In fact, we could (subjectively) call man whatever we wanted, and as long as everyone was aware of the word, the sentence would still be understandable (examples: Jane married an architect, the groom, a Russian, etc.). This demonstrates the objective nature of language is called the first imposition. That's a good argument, but man can also mean human being without referring to a particular gender. It's only the context in which the word is being used that tells you which definition to go by. So, correct me if I'm wrong, but for that reason there is no objective meaning for the word 'man'. In English we typically use it to refer to a male human, but tomorrow we could all agree that it means something else, or create a new word that refers to a male human (a zorgle perhaps) and then simply use the other meaning of man. This is all horribly brain twisty due to the confusion of these things being both words AND concepts so I may have something wrong here, please let me know if that is the case.
Dylan Lawrence Moore Posted March 9, 2014 Posted March 9, 2014 That's a good argument, but man can also mean human being without referring to a particular gender. It's only the context in which the word is being used that tells you which definition to go by. So, correct me if I'm wrong, but for that reason there is no objective meaning for the word 'man'. Right, but that would be a homonym, which is a completely different, although similar, concept (man being a male human vs. just "human"). In this context I was very clearly referring to "male human", and even if one would want to make the argument that this is ambiguous, I think I made it rather clear when I mentioned that "man" could be replaced with "groom". The fact that a single phonetic symbol has multiple meanings doesn't make it impossible to focus in on one of those meanings, although in some cases it can get tricky. There is an objective meaning in this case for the word man (and objective meanings in other cases, as we just mentioned), because if there wasn't, no one would have a clue what I was talking about if I said "Jane married a man". To say that a single symbol has no objective meaning because it can represent multiple concepts is like saying that because the word "light" can mean a form of electromagnetic radiation, a tool which emits visible electromagnetic radiation (a lamp, for example), and the opposite of heavy, that there is no way to objectively understand the sentence "Turn on the light". In English we typically use it to refer to a male human, but tomorrow we could all agree that it means something else, or create a new word that refers to a male human (a zorgle perhaps) and then simply use the other meaning of man. What the word refers to is an objective concept (a male human) but the actual meaning is whatever we want it to be. Certainly. Tomorrow we could all hold screwdrivers backwards and use them to hammer in nails and start calling them hammers. That doesn't change that they are screwdrivers now and, even if generally recognized as hammers in the future, doesn't mean they can't be used as screwdrivers in the future. The arbitrary and subjective choice of phonetic symbols to describe objective reality is simply the creation, usage, and development of tools to deal with that reality. Just because we might develop a new set of tools in the future doesn't mean the current set isn't objective.
Dylan Lawrence Moore Posted March 9, 2014 Posted March 9, 2014 Yup! Glad I can help. I recommend grabbing a copy of The Trivium: http://www.amazon.com/Trivium-Liberal-Logic-Grammar-Rhetoric/dp/0967967503/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394397837&sr=1-1&keywords=the+trivium
Kevin Beal Posted March 9, 2014 Posted March 9, 2014 The actual experience of gathering meaning, being confused as to what a sentence means, or misunderstanding the meaning the words are meant to convey are subjective experiences. Linguistics is a shockingly confusing subject, at least for me, and that there are a lot of very tricky subjects in linguistics that aren't as yet understood, but the fact that you can gather meaning at all is proof of at least some objectivity. This is via shared consensus over the meanings of words represented by "definitions". It's nothing to do with the actual field that american footballers play on that determines the value of a field goal: that it equals 6 points. It's ontologically subjective, but the actual truth claim that "a field goal equals 6 points" is objectively true epistemically. The consensus is the basis for the objectivity.
Pepin Posted March 10, 2014 Posted March 10, 2014 Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology answers this pretty well. Concepts are abstractions of properties of what exists and represented by a single unit in the form of a symbol. The choice of the symbol is arbitrary, not subjective as personal tastes and feelings are irrelevant. By this, I mean to say that the choice of the symbol has no affect on concept that it describes, the concept and what the concept describes are completely independent from the symbol. In physics you could use the symbol 'm' to describe the concept of velocity or the gravitational constant, but the concept that the symbol describes and its relation to reality is a matter of objectivity. The concept of 'up' is an abstraction from reality made through the observation of movement. Assuming that people are using the same coordinate system, say up is away from the earth and down is towards the center, in saying that an object is moving upward, objective information is being conveyed. By objective, this is not to say that the object is actually moving upward, but rather that the claim "the object is moving up" is related to reality and can be falsified or verified through observation of object. There is a lot in regard to the subject, but I think the responses of others as well as mine are enough.
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