2 - LANGUAGE AND THE SENSIBLE WORLD
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
Summary
How is it possible for men to communicate their perceptual organization?
Firstly, an analysis of the conditions making this communication possible will reduce the question to the classification of the linguistic categories of individuals. Next a thread for the deduction of these categories will be sought. Linguistic categories will be shown to bypass perceptual organization and to allow its communication. Finally, the deduction itself will be made.
THE SENTENCE AS ULTIMATE CONSTITUENT OF LINGUISTIC COMMUNICATION AND HOW THE CLASSIFICATION OF INDIVIDUALS BY MEANS OF ELEMENTARY SINGULAR SENTENCES MANAGES TO COMMUNICATE THE ORGANIZATION OF PERCEPTION
The question if and how it is possible to communicate perception subdivides into two questions. There is first the general question of the possibility, answered by the general concept of a sentence. Then the particular question of finding a possible correspondence between perceptual organization and language will be shown to amount to classifying the categories of individuals through classifying the elementary singular sentences.
For individuals to be able to communicate their perceptual experiences, two conditions must be fulfilled. Their system or code of communication must be universal, and it must be open. A code is universal if no particular restriction is imposed on the content or on the nature of the messages, and it is open if nothing, in principle, limits their lengths. Natural language is such a code.
These conditions are necessary to build a complete sign, but a complete sign is not a complete message, i.e. a sentence.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- What Are Philosophical Systems? , pp. 36 - 95Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1986