[Xmca-l] Language, mind and objectivity

[James Ma]

Hello Fellows,

I'd like to resume early discussion on language, music and philosophy with
a separate header to address the intersection of language, mind and
objectivity.

I now start by perusing Andy's message below. As it stands, his
counterargument to mine is a little sloppy and, more to the point, barely
scratches the surface. My argument centres on a position that there is no
way to talk about language without using language. Any language is thus to
be scrutinised through the medium of itself (or another language). In doing
so, one can't escape from being insider of that language. I
elaborate my position as below, which might serve as pointers for
discussion or reflection:

First, language faculty reduces to mind. In studying the mind, one needs to
attend to the use of mind in two different senses: a mind as the object
(that is being studied) and a mind as the subject (that is doing the study).

Second, to understand how mind functions in the world, it is necessary to
bring perception into focus. It seems to be a rather naive realistic view
that "in speech and writing, language is objective and actual, so we can
also observe it". This doesn't entirely qualify as a case of perceptual
recognition in that it latches on sense-data out of which one makes
inference, without taking into consideration an interaction of three
relations in perception, i.e. sense-data, the object behind sense-data, and
the subject (observer). There seems to be a missing subjective angle from
which the object is viewed. Moreover, inference processing is not simply
conscious or deliberate; it also sets free implicit, involuntary or even
irrational dispositions of the mind. In short, perception is interpretative
and subjective because it is participatory in nature. I believe that all
claims to knowledge answer in the end to perception. Taking for example
language teaching, it involves a human being working with another human
being, in which case you have to consider the effect of consciousness and
intersubjectivity. There is no thought-free perception or perception-free
thought - what you get in the mind is not the same as what you perceive!

Third, writing, which has the life of its own, can't be analysed without
being impinged by the observer's own perception. Recent research in TESOL
emphasises the role of learner identity in second language acquisition.

Perhaps we should think that the world is already the best representation
of itself, to which human beings have limited access. I found Thomas
Nagel's explanation of objectivity an eye-opener and a mind-liberator!

James


> On Tue, 1 Jan 2019 at 22:54, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:
>
>> It is clearly wrong to say that we can't study language objectively
>> because we exist and think in it - in speech and writing, language is
>> objective and actual, so we can also observe it. But to study language
>> objectively, from "outside," requires the student to acquire a certain
>> distance from it. Teaching grammar is one way of achieving that, even
>> writing too, I guess, and anyone who learns a second language has a point
>> from which to view their first language. Thus we can learn that "Je ne sais
>> pas" is not necessarily a double negative. But is the interviewer who asks
>> an artist to explain their painting failing to stand outside language to
>> see that there is something else. Like the psychologists who ask subjects
>> questions and take the answer to be what the person "really" thought. It's
>> the old problem of Kant's supposed "thing-in-itself" beyond experience
>> which (in my opinion) Hegel so thoroughly debunked
>>
>> Andy
>> ------------------------------
>> Andy Blunden
>> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>>
>>
>>
>>> On Tue, Jan 1, 2019 at 4:52 AM James Ma <jamesma320@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Andy, here're my thoughts with respect to your message:
>>>>
>>>> I think "default", as a state of the human mind, is intuitive and *a
>>>> posteriori* rather than of something we get hung up on deliberately or
>>>> voluntarily. This state of mind is also multifaceted, depending on the
>>>> context in which we find ourselves. Perhaps there might be a prototype of
>>>> default that is somehow intrinsic, but I'm not sure about that.
>>>>
>>>> Yes, Saussure's structuralism is profoundly influential, without which
>>>> post-Saussurean thought, including post-structuralism, wouldn't have
>>>> existed. Seemingly, none of these theorists could have worked out their
>>>> ideas without the inspiration and challenge of Saussure. Take for example
>>>> the Russian linguist Jakobson, which I think would suffice (never mind
>>>> those Francophone geniuses you might have referred to!). Jakobson extended
>>>> and modified Saussure's signs, using communicative functions as the object
>>>> of linguistic studies (instead of standardised rules of a given language,
>>>> i.e. *langue* in Saussure's terms). He replaced langue with "code" to
>>>> denote the goal-directedness of communicative functions. Each of the codes
>>>> was thus associated with its own langue as a larger system.
>>>>
>>>> It seems to me that Saussure's semiology is not simply dualistic.
>>>> There's more to it, e.g. the system of signification bridging between a
>>>> concept (signified) and a sound image (signifier). Strictly speaking, the
>>>> system of signification is not concerned with language but linguistics
>>>> within which language lends itself to scrutiny and related concepts become
>>>> valid. From Jakobson's viewpoint, this system is more than a normalised
>>>> collective norm; it contains personal meanings not necessarily compatible
>>>> with that norm. Saussure would say this norm is the *parole* that
>>>> involves an individual's preference and creativity. I find Jakobson's code
>>>> quite liberating - it helps explain the workings of Chinese dialects
>>>> (different to dialects within the British English), e.g. the grammatical
>>>> structure of Shanghainese, which is in many aspects at variance with
>>>> Mandarin (the official language or predominant dialect).
>>>>
>>>> By the way, I don't think we can study a language objectively because
>>>> we are already users of that language when studying it, i.e. we must remain
>>>> insiders of that language in order to study it, plus the fact that we have
>>>> the will to meaning, so to speak.
>>>>
>>>> James
>>>> *_______________________________________________________*
>>>>
>>>> *James Ma  Independent Scholar *
>>>> *https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa
>>>> <https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa>    *
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
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