Subject: [b-hebrew] Uncancellable meaning and conceptual unity
Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:16:13 -0700
Two cents' worth from a philosopher:
"Uncancellable meaning" is another name for the old philosophical idea
of conceptual unity. Plato said conceptual unities exist in nature.
Aristotle said they correspond to the essences of things, and to
definitions. Kant said they derive from the logically necessary
structure of perception and reason. But experience showed that natural
language ("natural" as opposed to the artificial constructions of
logicians) continually violates the supposed conceptual unity designated
by a word. Wittgenstein greatly clarified the point for 20th century
philosophers with his example of "family resemblance", where all the
members of a family share properties with some other members, but there
is no property shared by all members. (He also used the example of
games, which can't be defined by any essential property such as winning
and losing; and on this basis went on to talk about "language games" as
the primary linguistic realities, rather than unified entities called
"languages", each with a single system of meanings and concepts.) The
same phenomenon has also been described as the "dissemination" of
meaning, through changes not held in check by any conceptual unity.
I believe that these considerations are applicable in general, and that
it would be pointless to ask whether some particular language such as
Biblical Hebrew does or does not express the unity of concepts. The fact
that you can come up with definitions or conceptual properties that you
think are necessary for the "proper" or "standard" usage of this or that
word proves nothing. Meanings and usages change, and whatever boundaries
you draw will be erased.
The changeability of language also tells against the alleged
lexical-grammatical-stylistic unity of a language called Biblical Hebrew
spoken from 1400 to 400 BC. Belief in such an incomparable phenomenon is
a religious belief.
Gabe Eisenstein
[b-hebrew] Uncancellable meaning and conceptual unity,
Gabe Eisenstein, 06/26/2009