Does naming a thing destroy what it really is?

Question

people the question is a bit more complex than you are thinking. Ask yourself what you would think about something in your life if for some reason you wokeup tomorrow with complete amnesia and you didn't even remember what things are called. What names would you come up with? Would your new names be more accurate? We learn about things because we can confine them into a box by labeling them. I am just wondering if anyone has a better way of thinking.

Answer 1

I suppose that if we see something, and do nor know what it is called, we make up a name for ourselves to identify that object.
If we called an object a "magic box to talk to people in any country in the world". We would think it was pretty cool. Then, of course, someone would burst our bubble by saying "Oh,that- that's just a phone" Or we might see a complex set of levers and gears, and think it is used to manipulate some complex machinery. Once we find out it is named a can opener, it kinda spoils it, eh?
But, in general, naming things is useful, because it allows us to communicate more effectively.

Answer 2

No. I don't think so. There was a poem: "Never pain to tell thy love, love that never told can be as the gentle breeze doth blow silently invisibly" but I disagree. I don't believe that vocalizing something ruins it. Granted, mere words seem to fall short in many instances. How do you really describe love or beauty or joy? But words are how we communicate. Of course sometimes a picture is more powerful. A touch, a look. There are other forms of communication.

I'm a bit of a control freak. I have a need to label & categorize things to give my life structure. But even if my label isn't perfect, that doesn't detract from the thing itself, whatever it may be.

If you don't name something, if you can't talk about it, does it really exist?

Answer 3

Sporeformer has it right.

Another way to look at it is thinking through language itself.

Let's take it down.

Potato, spud, tater in English fairly demeaning lowly common names for a basic staple food that most people like at least one way if not the other.

Then in french its 'pomme de terre' or 'apple of the earth'. Beautiful. But when you say that do you think about a dirty nub of a root that has to be cleaned, peeled and cooked to be eaten?

It is an interesting question particularly when you explore language itself as a basis of forming an opinion on something. Perhaps that's the answer. Names don't destroy but preformed ideas of the language of a name can shut down our ideas on the potential of something.

Answer 4

Greeeeaaaatt a post-modernist. Just what we all needed, another person who wonders if the contextual and social concepts that are applied to things are changing the truth of the object--or if the object would even be there.

Some po-mo's that draw on Foucault would say that most people can't even conceptualize this question. The try and have a world with no names is a world without metaphors--a world without language.

My comments are: woopde-do. We have to start somewhere. Even if language is arbitrary it still has a recurrent factor that allows articulation of ideas between people.

Answer 5

For a Taoist. The answer is yes, but not possible.

"The name that can be named is not the eternal Name."
The names we give to things are merely, identifiers. A guide that helps you refer to the object. By simply changing its name, we only change the way we refer to it. The true name of it remains untouched. That's the point of view of me, someone who likes and study (not extensively) Eastern philosophies.

But if you ask your office computer geek about identifiers, objects, reference, instances, he'll probably tell you almost the exact same thing.

Answer 6

It doesn't destroy it. But it does distort it. That's unavoidable, though, if we're going to be capable of abstract thought... and abstraction = naming. Only direct experience is true. Words can't communicate it exactly. You don't need to name things at all, just to think about them, but you've got to name according to a convention if you want to communicate. You might get better at choosing the words you use to communicate about the world, if you tried to think without naming, and reflected about the names you have for things. Maybe that's what good poets do.

Answer 7

Depends on the Culture.......most of the ancient Nothern European cultures believed naming a thing gave it power and the namer power over it. I suppose it depends on what you mean by destroying it.

Answer 8

No. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Answer 9

Well Kierkegaard (sp) thought so.

Answer 10

to name to define is to destroy!