Wednesday, December 02, 2009

On Writing

What follows is the first of two parts that center in some sense on language and thought. The first is more of an opinion piece about the way things seem to be today. The second, to come, will be a more formal piece about the philosophical employment of language and its relation to common speech.

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If people approves that torture does make it as a moral law, people would perform torture because the actions when it is a natural law would have some massive problems and immorality does spread.

-A Student (who shall remain anonymous)

The purpose of this post is not to make fun of this student (or the one previously quoted). One reason for that is, of course, because it's not nice. But there's another reason: the sort of writing seen above is not uncommon, not at all. After recently grading about thirty papers that discussed current controversies, there were many examples of writing that exhibited errors that can be seen above; subject/verb agreement ('people approves), poor choice of verbs ('torture does make it' how?), lack of structure (the clauses in the sentence are amazing), grammar (lack of commas where they are desperately needed), unclear explanation/missing words (what actions? what sort of actions?), tense issues ('would have' and 'does'), and those are probably not all. The overall result is that, on careful analysis, the sentence almost becomes meaningless: the argument made is literally that, if someone named 'people' approves that torture 'makes it' as a moral law, then, because the actions that would happen when it is made into a natural law would lead to problems, and because torture does spread (not would, but does), then people would torture. That's barely a sentence.

Of course, the sentence isn't that hard to understand in real life. We can tell roughly what it means: If people were to accept torture as a moral law, then people would torture (the second half I can't even guess at). So is it really that bad?

Furthermore, why do I pick on this person? It's more likely that the student just wrote a poor sentence and didn't bother to revise it than anything else. Besides, why should everyone have perfect writing? As said above, it makes enough sense, and most of the time we don't need to be that literate.

Now my first response is to the second claim, that the student didn't revise. If so, then it's the student's fault. You don't not revise papers you hand in. The rest gets into more serious issues. It's true that, typically, we don't need to write (or speak; the two can, for purposes of this essay, be considered interchangeable) that clearly, just clearly enough to be understood. The sentence I picked is a particularly poor example, but there were plenty of example where the meaning could at least be inferred with accuracy. Isn't that good enough?

My answer is no, and here's why. We can take the student's sentence at face value, and say that it's good enough. But, first of all, good enough for what? For everyday speech, goes the answer. In the middle of a conversation, or the kind of debate you have over drinks, it doesn't really matter if you get everything you say grammatically correct; so goes the claim. But if so, then the actual understanding reached depends upon inference. The listener has to infer what the speaker is saying. I'll admit, when the problem is subject/verb agreement that's not too big of a crisis. But word choice is. Tense is. Even grammar is, when it tells us what the relations are between several subjects. In the student's sentence, I don't know how torture is supposed to fit in with the moral law. What does it 'make it' to? How? What 'actions' would result? Would immorality spread in that case, or is it being taken as a sort of universal fact that immorality spreads? For at least these reasons, the sentence either omits or disguises critical information. I can't be sure what the student is actually trying to say. If this sentence were used in conversation, or one with similar problems were used, the same problem would arise: I wouldn't actually know what is being said, because of incredible ambiguities in the structure and word choice.

Yet common sense is able to interpret this sentence, is it not? I say that it is not; it only thinks it can, because common sense is just as unclear as the sentence. Here is the concern I am getting at, the real reason I am writing: why would a student write a sentence like the one quoted? The sheer number of mistakes seems to be too much for just rushing; you would expect the student to get something right. The student's not trying to mess with me, either. No, I think that the student writes like this because this writing is just at the student's level; the ambiguous words are ambiguous for the student as well, the missing words reflect incomplete thoughts, the tense issues reflect real issues with tense, that is, with determining timeframes and situational reference (such as hypotheticals). The language used, in other words, reflects the student's ability.

This is my thesis: our power with language reflects our mental clarity and organization. One who can speak or write clearly, whose words have clearly defined and consistent meanings, and who can apply rules of logic and sentential structure (this latter part may be more controversial, but I hold to it), can literally think more clearly than those whose words are jumbled. This claim may initially seem off, because we all seem to have an easy enough time getting around in the world; it's just when we write philosophy papers that we are left with a mess. I answer that that is simply because the everyday world doesn't require clarity, or much thought for that matter; our own lack of understanding is not posed as an issue to us most of the time. Furthermore, our own everyday conversation trades on this obscurity; we assume that we have common understanding of language, when many words are either understood with equal confusion, or simply not understood equally at all; we only assume that they are.

I think we can find evidence for this in our own experience. There are times when we are looking for the right word or expression for a situation. We sort of know what we want to say; No, we know what we want to say. But what is it, then? Without the right word, we can't say. But, the response goes, we still know what we want to say. It's on the tip of our tongue. Yet, I claim, it's still not quite there. Without the right word, we tend to talk around the phenomenon, offering descriptions related to it, but we can't quite define the thing itself in most cases. It's on the tip of our tongue, but we don't have it. There's still an uncertainty, an indefiniteness about it. Then, when the right word is found, we welcome it into our minds like it has a place in our home. It fits right in, and the thing becomes clear in a way it was not before the word was found.

One can also take another phenomenon I see as a grader: people using words they don't know how to use (and boy, do they do it often). It is always instantly clear when someone uses a word they don't actually understand, because it always stands out. It doesn't complete the thought; it is like a sudden rough patch on a smooth object. When asked what they mean, the answer is universal; the student thinks she has an explanation, but in fact does not know. She only assumed she knew.

This latter example is the much greater problem, because, I assert, there are many more of these mystery words than we recognize. Not just words such as 'subtle' or 'incongruous,' but words like 'nature,' 'moral,' 'making it,' and so on. What does it mean for something to 'make it' as a 'moral' law? People all know what it means. But when you actually get into what the content of the sentence is, it's not clear at all. What is being made? What is the standard for morality? (The latter is particularly problematic in the essays I've graded: there were frequent arguments to the effect that one philosopher was wrong because his standard of morality wasn't moral, without further elaboration) We think we understand such an expression, but we don't; in other words, we fool ourselves into thinking we have knowledge. Heidegger says it better than I: “Idle talk is the possibility of understanding everything without previously making the thing one’s own.” (Heidegger, Being and Time 212 (HarperCollins hardcover edition)) One understands, but because there's not much there to understand; just a bunch of half-finished meanings glued together by context and circumstance.

In other words, I'm saying that, in a very real way, language -is- knowledge. We think in words, and when we imagine, the images and sounds are ones that we can describe in words, or else they are something 'beyond us.' Where our words are vague and unclear, so is our understanding, our ability to conceptualize and organize knowledge. Where we don't understand the words of another, we don't know that other; and where we speak the same language, but one filled with ambiguity, then we think we know the other, but know nothing.

And this form of talk is standard. It's standard in part because, indeed, it's sufficient to get us through life. But being sufficient to get us through life doesn't tell us much about whether it's actually good or not. If we want to make any assertions about the way things really are, if we ever want the 'truth' of the matter, if we ever want real answers and real understanding between people, this sort of half-truth language isn't sufficient. We can't trade on ambiguities and expect everything to work out, because sometimes we want real answers, and that's when our laziness with language turns against us.

What should we do, then? We should improve language use, obviously. I doubt there's a single target I can conveniently point to, but I would imagine that the duty should be heavily upon (1) parents, who teach their children, willingly or not, how to speak in the first place, and (2) primary and secondary schools, who are supposed to help children move from basic language to clear expression. This latter, in particular, is where the problem lies. Something should be done; our minds in no small manner depend upon it.

2 Comments:

Blogger sidfaiwu said...

I agree with your thesis, "our power with language reflects our mental clarity and organization." But you then seem to go on to describe how shortcomings in language use inhibit the ability of a clear and organized mind to properly express itself. That seems to me to be a separate thesis. The first implies that in order to improve one's language skills, all that needs be done is improve the clarity and organization of one's thinking. The second fits with your recommended remedy for poor language use, "(1) parents, who teach their children, willingly or not, how to speak in the first place, and (2) primary and secondary schools, who are supposed to help children move from basic language to clear expression." You left out any remedies suggested by your first thesis. In order to improve people's language skills we should teach logic and critical thinking - i.e. philosophy! See, you're already part of the solution.

December 18, 2009 at 9:40 AM  
Blogger Derek said...

The short answer is that the two are connected. Our language abilities reflect our mental abilities because, I think, the two are almost the same thing. When we have an experience, say a visual experience, we can do certain things with it in our minds, such as analyze it, break it down, change parts of it, and so on. But if we lack the ability to express what we are doing and what it is we have in the first place, that seems to reflect a real gap in our ability to conceptualize. So the first thesis is simply a corollary of the second, which could be restated as: one's linguistic power reflects one's ability to conceptualize anything. Though one can be conscious before knowing how to speak, and perhaps think in a rudimentary sense, I don't think that counts against my claims, first of all because not all language is verbal and learned only once one knows language, second of all because, even if one is able to go beyond pattern recognition into real thought without language, I believe that language essentially takes over that function and turns it from a helpful tool to a basic part of human existence.

In short, language (broadly understood as expression) and thought amount to almost the same thing. One knows something when one can communicate it, not because that is the only way to show someone else what one knows, but because that ability requires in us an ability to conceptualize, to mark something of as something. This is a new idea I'm batting around to see where it goes - the new post might provide some clarification.

December 19, 2009 at 3:57 PM  

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