Do words truly have meaning in themselves or are they merely a representation of a thing in itself?

Question

Is language necessary in order for us to have thoughts as Ludwig Wittgenstein believes? This is question is from the aposteriori perspective.

Answer 1

We know that language is not necessary for thought from some of the most obvious perspectives.

Take, for example, a baby. I know of nobody who would argue that a child is thoughtless before they are capable of interpreting language. Quite the converse! As well as picking up at least one language in its entirety, they are learning all kinds of things about the universe, how it works, what they like and what they don't.

All of which denotes a degree of thought, if not as sophisticated a degree that some of us can achieve.

But this is not the only evidence. There are people who seem to think without language, using thought-concepts instead. In fact, most of us do to a greater or lesser extent: the experience of having a concept in your head but lacking the proper word or words to express it is near-universal.

As to whether words have an intrinsic meaning or not, I'd venture that some do more than others. For example, there is the whole group of words referred to by linguists as 'onomatopoeic': these things sound like the object or action they represent. Arguably, then, at least these words are not random sounds, but actual representations of what they are. Examples include sizzle, ding, cuckoo, croak, and many others.

And who knows? Maybe most words were once onomatopoeic but have just been retained long past the time when anybody knows what they originally referred to. I am reminded of letters themselves, each of which used to a pictogram which has since lost all original pictoral representation except to those interested in such things. If your curious, the lowercase 'a' is thought to have evolved from the head of an ox with two horns, and the 'r' from depictions of a person's head.

Answer 2

If a word had meaning independent of the concept or thing it represents, then each word would have two meanings: the thing denoted by the word (e.g., the word "cat" denotes a four legged furry creature with pointy ears and paws), and whatever meaning the word had "in itself". In other words, each word would have its own identity, with a set of characteristics separate from the thing it denotes. Obviously this is not the case, because when I say "cat", you know what I mean because there is an accepted definition of that word in English, and I do not need to further explain that I mean "cat" the animal, rather than "cat" the word.

Words do have characteristics of their own in a linguistic sense, but this doesn't give them "meanings in themselves" the way that the things they denote have meanings in themselves. A word has a part of speech, it is composed of a certain combination of letters, and in many cases is has both a denotation (the thing the word symbolizes/indicates) and a connotation (additional, accompanying images or concepts related to the word, which often develop as a result of how the word is used, such as in the negative connotation of the word "slaughter" as opposed to the more neutral "kill"). These linguistic features do not give the word its own identity or meaning apart from the word's definition, they simply modify how we use a word to best communicate with other people.

Regarding Wittgenstein's view on the content of thought, I agree with him that once we learn to assimilate language (a posteriori), our more complex thoughts must involve language because we have "forgotten", so to speak, how to think without thinking in words. However, anyone who has ever experienced "being on auto pilot" knows that your brain can tell you what to do without any words going through your mind. Words are only necessary at that point for more complex thought processes than just emotional reactions and motor activity. To know whether language would be necessary for higher level thought if it had never been learned, I think we would have to study the behavior of very young children who are born deaf. This is the only way I can think of that we might gain insight into how a person would think if they could not hear/speak, and also had not yet learned to read or write.

Answer 3

Words have no meaning in and of themselves...

removed from context, words are just audio and/or visual images...

Context, intention, and recognition are what determine the meaning of words.

In order for words to represent "things-in-themselves" first you have to assume that "things-in-themselves" exist...

I personally assume that the INTENDED meaning of words represents the IDEA of a thing that a person holds, which they want to communicate using these words.... and the RECOGNIZED meaning of words represents the IDEA held by the listener, which is heard in these words...and the CONTEXTUAL meaning of words is given validity by the time, place, history, agreed meanings, intonation, etc, surrounding the communication event...

I have a hard time believing in "things-in-themselves" so i tend to think that words represent IDEAS of things, which are themselves only ideas, which are themselves words...

One cannot have THOUGHTS without language..
One can have feeling or intuition, but as soon as one begins to THINK about a feeling or UNDERSTAND an intuition, one begins to utilize language...

I

Answer 4

Can I read the mind of a person from Japan?
Yes.
why? I don't speak Japanese!