If any single thing accounts for the success of the human species it is fully grammatical language. Language facilitates cooperation and the general sociality of human beings. Put a bunch of people in a room and it will likely fill with the din of many conversations. It could be quieter nowadays, with people texting on their devices. A few people might be reading or silently thinking—in words. In all cases, language seems almost magically to convey or represent meaning symbolically. How does it do that? How do certain sounds or visual symbols acquire meaning?
How can we be sure other people know what we mean when we attempt to communicate? Indeed, everyone has wondered at some time whether other people even experience the same sensations we do in a given situation. Philosophers have toyed with this idea by imagining that you could, for example, experience as red what I call green when looking at the same verdant foliage. An argument against such a possibility is our common human biology. But even granted that the grass must appear to you more or less the colour that it does to me, the communication of even such literal sensory experience often leads to misunderstanding. Words are our bridge across the privacy of personal experience. But how reliable is the bridge?
Dog is the name of a category of animal, while Fido is the name of a particular pet. Similarly, green is name of a category of colour, not the name of a particular sensory experience, much less a particular wavelength of light or a particular vegetation. Because it is a category, any particular experience of greenness is but one of an infinite variety of possible shades. And because the category is not a well-defined, borderline cases could be classed as yellow or blue. Indeed, I cannot be sure you would conjure the same mental image as me, or any at all, in response to the word ‘green.’ I can only hope that you will use the word to refer to things that for me would fall within the category ‘green’ as I know it.
The ambiguity of terms for colour is relatively unimportant, except to painters. But other terms are far more abstract and subject to multiple interpretations and misunderstandings (such as justice, for example). We learn such words in a particular context, which imbues for us the meaning of the word and therefore how we use it. Even simpler terms, like dog, are acquired in a context. Your associations to the word could depend on whether your first experience of the category was a cuddly pet or a vicious stray, a Chihuahua or a Great Dane. Words have personalized referents for each of us, which may differ widely. Even in adulthood, we learn new words in a context (for example, in a book). We get a sense of the word by how others use it. Yet we may paint it our particular shade, according to the limited examples we have encountered.
The multiple nuances of words often reflect their history. Justice comes from the Latin ius, meaning right. The Latin in turn derives from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning life force, related to a Sanskrit word for health. The dictionary lists several official meanings, ranging from “just behaviour or treatment” to “a judge or magistrate.” Apart from the moral question of what is right, the word ‘right’ also has distinct meanings, ranging from direction (left or right), to human rights, to the political right (which in turn comes historically from where delegates of certain concerns were seated before a king).
The power of words—and also their trouble—lies in the fact that most words are categories and categories are abstractions. The more abstract the category, the more ambiguous. Consider consciousness, for another example. This term has been the source of endless misunderstandings and talking at cross purposes among philosophers and scientists. Admittedly, this is inevitable, given that conscious subjects cannot stand outside their consciousness to examine it as another kind of external thing (like canines). Yet, the very act of naming things is supposed to put them within our power to deal with objects. (Hence, ‘consciousness’ is a noun, which once falsely suggested a kind of substance.) Conscious is simply too polysemous (= “many signs”) to be useful in philosophical discussions. Need I point out the several meanings of sign? Ambiguity piles on ambiguity.
The function of formal definition is to pin things down and avoid equivocations. (I will not offer a definition of consciousness.) Mathematics is the language of science because it trades on asserting unambiguous definitions, which are universally accepted mainly because they seem self-evident or tautological. (We all recognize that an object has an identity and tends to remain itself; but logic goes further to make that truth a matter of formal, if trivial, definition: A = A.) In fact, all meaning is acquired by such assertion, though not usually formal or even conscious. Through learning, I unconsciously assert a meaning to me of ‘dog’ or ‘justice’ or ‘consciousness.’ The definiteness of the referent (that early experience of a dog; that situation when I first tasted injustice; that teenage awakening) gives the meaning its unique flavour for me. My specific referents continue to colour the categories I use in a way that may not be how your referents colour yours.
Ambiguity is not only a personal matter. While mathematics is tautologically true, physics is not, though it trades on the certainties of math. Consider the concept of mass, which has a tortuous history. Intuitively, we equate it with substance. Einstein taught us to equate it with energy. But what is energy? We have learned to treat it too as substantial. But what is substance? We can talk about relationships between things (or between measurable quantities such as weight) and describe those mathematically, but ultimately we cannot say what in reality those quantities represent. Just so, in a broader sense, we treat our perceptions as veridical—believing the brain uses them to somehow represent the external world. But we do not know truly what they represent. We know only that our ways of perceiving—and of conceiving and representing—have not so far driven us extinct. Communication, like perception, seems to have facilitated human survival; but it is not guaranteed to do so.
Face-to-face communication is augmented by facial expression, gesturing, body language, intonation, etc. We can feed back with the other person in real time, trying though interaction to get and stay—as it were—on the same page. This advantage does not inhere in the written word—in text, in emails, or texting. It does not inhere in the unilateral messages of broadcasters, movies, advertising, blog posts, podcasts, or social media.
The modern trend toward social isolation, and reliance on devices rather than personal human contact, puts us in an epistemic dilemma that could prove catastrophic. Indeed, the Information Age is no longer about communication, with the implied communion. It consists rather in the attempts of others to form in us (in-form) ideas that correspond to their wishes, and vice-versa. The goal need only be statistical, as when enough are swayed to elect a candidate or to make a commercial product successful. Leaving aside outright lies, wariness is the larger side-effect of manipulation and propaganda—a word that comes from the Latin for to propagate or spread (memes). Dissension is the side-effect of polemic, which comes from a Greek word for war.
On the other hand, text has the advantage that it can be studied, edited, put in arbitrary contexts (socially a disadvantage when abused). A text is timeless, of a piece, unlike the flow of speech. As reader, a text is at your disposal to dissect, unlike a live person. But if you hope to extract truth from it, the burden is on you. As author, you can say what you want in writing without immediate reprisal. But one can fool oneself by making clever arguments that would not convince anyone else. If the point of reasoning is truth, it is wise to follow Niels Bohr’s enigmatic advice: “Never express yourself more clearly than you can think.” There are responsibilities on both sides: to think and write with clarity and to read between the lines. Know what I mean?