Sei sulla pagina 1di 2

"All of the other ways of knowing are controlled by language.

"

What does this statement mean and do you think it is a fair representation of the
relationship between perception, emotion, reason and language?

To interpret the world and to gain knowledge, people have developed several ways of
knowing. These are considered to be perception, emotion, language and reason. The question "all
of the other ways of knowing are controlled by language" is a statement that requires further
investigation and reflection. Is this really a fair representation of the relationship between these
four factors?

In a way these four; perception, emotion, language and reason are closely tied together.
Perception is often influenced by emotions (which plays a great part in human behaviour), the
impressions are then expressed through language, and language is used to communicate thoughts
and to reason with people or simply to seek clarity and order. By assuming that the essay
question is right, one automatically puts language above the three other ways of knowing. One
would claim that without language knowing would be impossible, that only language could
create reality. Does language direct perception, emotions and reason or simply that these are
interdependent to some extent?

To begin with language can be defined as 'use of words in agreed way as means of human
communication, communication of thoughts and feelings through a system of arbitrary signals,
such as voice sounds, gestures, or written symbols. Thus, it follows that the structure of language
restricts thought, which is part of the process of acquiring knowledge, and therefore knowledge.
An inference can therefore be drawn that there would be no loss in the fidelity of information as
it gets transmitted from one human to another. To understand better let me take an example of the
data formats in computers. In computers, information is represented as data encoded in specific
formats. Software must be able to understand the format in order to process it. Therefore there
are standards that govern the format in which data is represented.

Most of the documents on the web, for example, are encoded in HTML. Since it is
standardized, web browsers merely have to conform to the standard in order to process the
document as display it on your screen. The same is the case for language. A language is a
standard in that it has certain words that mean certain things, and its grammatical structure that
strings words together into more complex sentences. However, language is not a syntax that is
purposefully created whole then agreed upon. It is something that forms a part of the culture.
Language grows. People invent certain words and ways of stringing them together, and they use
these languages with some people. The language spreads, undergoes changes, and encounters
other languages. Therefore we have a problem in that the syntax of language is not certain to be
definite An example would be old texts, where even though the same word might be used, the
meaning of it as the writer intended, or people of their time interpreted may be different.

The essay title states that language forms the main thread in all of the ways of knowing.
Then how is it that a small child who can't speak contain knowledge even without being able to
communicate with language? Very young children are able to grasp new concepts of the world
around them, purely by observation and perception. In conclusion, we can say that language have
some bearing on the way we perceive things. Similarly, at many instances we do things merely
on our instincts. Let me give an example of a real life incident that I read in a magazine. A boy
was going with his friends to a hill station for a picnic. They were waiting for the bus and when
the bus came the boy suddenly got a very uncomfortable feeling of getting into the bus. He felt
that he and his friends shouldn't travel by that bus. He some how persuaded his friends to take
the next bus. Another day there was news that that same bus had met an accident and fallen from
over a bridge killing each and every passenger in the bus. Here, there was no language as a way
of knowing. It was merely the boy's instinct that made him uncomfortable- an emotion of not
travelling in the bus. In the same way when we do something wrong, we know it because we feel
guilty or if we like someone we just feel it by emotion of love. Hence, emotions play a part in
our way of knowing.

The thing to consider in the above situation is that we reason on the basis of our emotion
and perception. But, for reasoning - a man's tool for understanding - we need some kind of
medium. As I asked before that a child who can't speak can acquire knowledge by perception.
However he understands this perception by reasoning out. This reasoning is carried out by the
brain. The child then knows about things in his own language unless he grows up and learns
language spoken by us and thus gets acquainted with what the things are called. Here, the child
gained knowledge through perception and reasoning in his own language but when he learnt the
language he gained knowledge about what things are named. The power of naming things gives
man the knowledge about things which helps it to describe it. Thus it is ultimately language as it
is a medium to understand things and communicate.

It is true that language controls the "knowing" of the other ways of knowing, yet without
the other ways of knowing there wouldn't be much of understanding as language itself has many
barriers and POK's. For example, a bird has feathers and hence he can fly. On the same basis you
can argue that a pillow also has feathers and hence he can fly. But, we know by reasoning that
pillow being a non-living thing it can't fly. This is also because we have seen a pillow. Reason is
something you develop through reflection and consideration of what you perceive or through
emotion and you use language when you reflect (reason)on it, but indirectly. Hence to conclude
language dosen't direct emotion, perception and reason but is simply a means of knowing.

Potrebbero piacerti anche