The child receives data through the sense organs; the child also has some inborn processing capacities--otherwise it would not be ...able to learn--but in addition, some "information" or "programs" are built-in at birth (for example, the child does not have to learn how to suck, for this is an innate reflex); there is a working memory, in which the child keeps those items of knowledge that are being used at a particular moment; and there is a permanent memory, which is, in Locke's terms, largely a "blank tablet" at birth, but which has a storage capacity that makes a hard disk pale into insignificance. The child gradually builds up a symbolic representation of the world around it, so there must be some inner "language" or medium of representation; even a newborn baby is starting to see and taste and smell and hear and touch, and to remember the more striking of its experiences, so the internal medium by which it represents and stores these impressions cannot be the native language (of which it is still ignorant. Jerry Fodor [in The Language of Thought] has discussed this inbuilt "language of thought," which is similar conceptually to the "machine language" that is built into the personal computer and about which most users remain completely ignorant).LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, ...and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilised people is poetical.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the language, in the slogans posted everywhere, in the only two newspapers published, among the men, we discovered one enormous... uniformity of a single way of thinking, imperious, almost despotic, but supreme, terribly true, made flesh and blood at each moment through action. We found not the passionate mobs going forward under new flags to struggles begun anew each day in tragic and fruitful confusions, but a sort of vast administration, an army, a machine in which the most burning energies and the clearest intelligences were coldly integrated and which performed its task inexorably.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Certainly, then, ordinary language is not the last word: in principle it can everywhere be supplemented and improved upon, an...d superseded. Only remember, it is the first word.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the history of human inquiry, philosophy has the place of the initial central sun, seminal and tumultuous; from time to time it... throws of some portion of itself to take station as a science, a planet, cool and well regulated, progressing steadily towards a distant final state.... Is it not possible that the next century may see the birth, through the joint efforts of philosophers, grammarians, and numerous other students of language, of a true and comprehensive science of language? Then we shall have rid ourselves of one more part of philosophy (there will still be plenty left) in the only way we ever can get rid of philosophy, by kicking it upstairs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To suppose that "I know" is a descriptive phrase, is only one example of the descriptive fallacy, so common in philosophy. Even if... some language is now purely descriptive, language was not in origin so, and much of it is still not so. utterance of obvious ritual phrases, in the appropriate circumstances, is not describing the action we are doing, but doing it ("I do"): in other cases it functions, like tone and expression, or again like punctuation and mood, as an intimation that we are employing language in a special way ("I warn," "I ask," "I define"). Such phrases cannot, strictly, be lies, though they can "imply" lies, as "I promise" implies that I fully intend, which may be true.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To anyone who still feels that there must be an identity of logical form between language and reality, I can only plead that the c...onception of language as a mirror of reality is radically mistaken. We find out soon enough that the universe is not capricious: the child who learns that fire burns and knife-edges cut knows that there are inexorable limits set upon his desires. Language must conform to the discovered regularities and irregularities of experience. But in order to do so, it is enough that it should be apt for the expression of everything that is or might be the case. To be content with less would be to be satisfied to be inarticulate; to ask for more is to desire the impossible. No roads lead from grammar to metaphysics.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The reader uses his eyes as well as or instead of his ears and is in every way encouraged to take a more abstract view of the lang...uage he sees. The written or printed sentence lends itself to structural analysis as the spoken does not because the reader's eye can play back and forth over the words, giving him time to divide the sentence into visually appreciated parts and to reflect on the grammatical function.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Money indeed may be considered as the most universal and expressive of all languages. For gold and silver coins are no more money ...when not in the actual process of being voluntarily used in purchase, than words not so in use are language. Pounds, shillings, and pence are recognized covenanted tokens, the outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual purchasing power, but till in actual use they are only potential money, as the symbols of language, whatever they may be, are only potential language till they are passing between two minds. It is the power and will to apply the symbols that alone gives life to money, and as long as they are in abeyance, the money is in abeyance also; the coins may be safe in one's pocket, but they are as dead as a log till they begin to burn in it, and so are our words till they begin to burn within us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, removed as a result of ancient... prohibitions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »