Linguistics
From the latter eighteenth century to the present day, materialist thinking has exerted a deep influence on the culture of the Western world and on intellectuals throughout the world. Philosophical materialism asserts that there is nothing truly real that is not comprised of matter or energy. The phenomenon of language, however, represents a notable counterexample to this assertion. Language involves the assignment of meaning to arbitrary symbols to form a vocabulary and the application of a set of rules to join elements from the vocabulary together to generate more complex meaning structures. Because meaning is non-material and language is simply encoded meaning, language likewise is non-material. Although such linguistic expressions are normally associated with a material medium, the meaning they convey is easily demonstrated to be independent of the medium.
Moreover, language is not an incidental aspect of our world. Not only is it an essential aspect of our conscious experience as humans and central to our social interactions with others, it also plays a significant role in the ways the material world is structured around us. Robots, relying on linguistic software, today play major roles in manufacturing most of the machines on which modern society depends. At a much higher level of complexity, biological systems rely on language-based specification and control. The fact that mathematical expressions are linguistic expressions means that so are the laws of chemistry and physics. This implies that the material realm itself has linguistic underpinnings. That there exists such a clear example of non-material reality as language in its many forms is sufficient to falsify philosophical materialism—as astonishing as that may seem to many.
Because language is non-material and matter itself displays no apparent language generating capability, how language arises is obviously an important issue. The fact that we as human beings possess language capacity points to a reliable answer.
The following two papers address these and related topics.
Moreover, language is not an incidental aspect of our world. Not only is it an essential aspect of our conscious experience as humans and central to our social interactions with others, it also plays a significant role in the ways the material world is structured around us. Robots, relying on linguistic software, today play major roles in manufacturing most of the machines on which modern society depends. At a much higher level of complexity, biological systems rely on language-based specification and control. The fact that mathematical expressions are linguistic expressions means that so are the laws of chemistry and physics. This implies that the material realm itself has linguistic underpinnings. That there exists such a clear example of non-material reality as language in its many forms is sufficient to falsify philosophical materialism—as astonishing as that may seem to many.
Because language is non-material and matter itself displays no apparent language generating capability, how language arises is obviously an important issue. The fact that we as human beings possess language capacity points to a reliable answer.
The following two papers address these and related topics.