How Do We Learn Words?

Not long ago I was lucky enough to spend the day with a little girl who I adore. She is all of fifteen months old but before anyone decides to attribute my strenuous sensation to the realm of the innocent, I would remind all how the young can teach us about our own nature of knowledge. The reason for this is because, though we are all born into the middle of a certain kind of knowledge without the benefit of a starting point, as it were, with small children we can at least get a glimpse of the very germination of it as it slowly sparks from a consciousness that is a sponge though it is unaware of it's true power to soak up a world which it really has no specific knowledge in understanding.

What I'm trying to get at here is just how we think a child learns words. It is tempting to think that a child learns through us, the adults, as we place a kind of hypothetical sign on words that the child merely recognizes and learns by rote. The child learns different words for different "things". This can extend to people even. A child might learn that a certain person is called "Johnny" and we then like to think that he differentiates Johnny from other people and things the way he might differentiate a chair (when she learns the word) from other objects not the chair. He might learn that "Johnny" is different than his brother "Jimmy" though there is a family resemblance. She will not mistake one from the other unless she is confused about who is who. If we think of Johnny and Jimmy as "objects", we also tend to think the child has learned a way of placing monikers on things that differentiate them from other things.

Yet when I spent my day with my "philosopher-child", I learned that there is world that is being perceived beyond the mere pointing to objects as a learning tool. I have hitherto mentioned the calling of names of two brothers as a way of pointing to things being named so as not to be mistaken for the other. Keeping this in mind, I was struck that when I held up a strand of her hair and I asked her what it was, she immediately called it, in her own way, "Hair!" It would seem that I have taught her a word for an object. But when I then lifted a strand of my own hair and asked her what that was, she also remarked "hair!" On the face of things, this may seem unremarkable but keeping in mind our analogy of the brothers, it is important to point out that I taught her the word for one object and she named the said object. How is it then that when I pointed, or rather, lifted my own hair, another object technically speaking, she was able to call it by the same name? Of course, the most tempting thing to say is that she "saw similarities". However, keeping in mind the simple act of teaching a child the word for hair as a simple sign of pointing and naming, the question occurs as to just how the child learned what the "similarities" are in the scheme of things.

Are we supposed to believe that a child must be taught through the simple naming of objects yet is somehow supposed to innately understand a more complex concept like "seeming the same". The answer might be yes. The problem here is just the idea that we point and the child mechanically learns as if by rote. But that would mean that when we point to a pencil and call it a pencil, a child might understand we mean we are saying this is "hard" or this is "wood" or this is "long". What are we doing when we teach a child a term for "hot"? I may turn on a stove and point to the fire and say "this is hot" but how might the child might mistake this for "fire" or "blue" or "triangular" as I've really only pointed to an object?

The fact is that a child, when learning a word, is also witnessing the world beyond just the placing of monikers on an object. "Hot" after all (like "similarity") is not an object but a feature of an object. The child learns the word, true,  but she also observes through conscious and subconscious living, that people burn themselves on the fire, and another heats themselves with the fire, and another still may cook food on the fire. So that while we think we've taught them a word, they have in fact witnessed many uses for the word "fire" by a kind of self-knowledge through a kind of rhizomial learning through living, while still learning that an object itself is called "fire." I think this is where we might demarcate the concepts of 'meaning' and of 'use.'  We give words meaning but we do this through their use.

What this tells us further is that it is a shared experience.   To understand this collectively, we know there are rules to be followed and these rules can be explained.  This is simple enough, but we also know we come to a point where our spade is turned and we can dig no more; there is a point in human language and meaning when the rules cannot be explained. I can explain the child learning the word "hair" by pointing to a strand of hair but I do not explain how the same word is to be used in pointing to anothers' hair, a "different" object. Again, saying she saw similarities still begs the question whether this child really knows exactly what the concept of "similarity" is. To my knowledge, she never used the word herself. She is, after all, struggling with the simple, ostensive definition of the word "hair" never mind the more ephemeral concepts of our language. Maybe there is an "a priori" sense that presupposes learning apart from the rules governed by the man-made world. Again, rules can be explained for things but there is a point where following rules becomes more ambiguous, especially when learning language.

One can ask a person, when they've read sentences on a piece of paper, how they knew to do it correctly and their answer might be that "I learned the rules of the ABC's" or "I learned the rules of grammar". But this still does not answer just what rules were necessary to learn the ABC's. What rules were grasped to learn that? What rules were followed for that? A simple answer might be just a general consensus but this only points to language as being innate no matter what rules we apply to it.

My little girl is not just mechanically learning words to put with an object. She is living and breathing these words and finding, within her little but potent mind, the many USES that all words have in our collective expressiveness. But how she computes these USES is the all too mysterious and all too human mystery shared by all.

Metaphors and Misuse

What is it we consider non-sense?
Consider two propositions:

1. God sees everything. 
2. The security system in the lobby of the building sees everything.

Though the subjects of these two propositions are distinctly different, the form each sentence takes is deceivingly alike. Each makes a claim on the subject that, at first glance, seem the same though I would venture to guess that the form changes drastically when we take in the particular gravity of each subject on its own. Let's see which of the two sentences may contain what we consider sense while at the same time delve to consider whether one or both (or neither) may contain no sense, that is, in the real sense of the term non-sense. The structure is all important but as we shall see, the subject will be a deciding factor in weeding out whether either the former or the latter contains real growth in the flower bed of our language.
First, I must point out exactly what I mean by non-sense. It’s not an accident that I hyphenate the words. I do want to distinguish it from the very concept of what we consider the table-top variety of the everyday definition of nonsense. I do not use the word as synonymous with ‘silliness or ‘ridiculousness’, as we might with nonsense. Rather, what I mean here is what the philosophical movement of logical positivists meant in trying to discuss what in thought and language had meaning and what did not. That is, something that, when looked at carefully, really carries no sense. Some things just really carry no sense. If we state something like, “It is not raining outside,” this proposition may or may not parallel reality. If the fact in the world is that it is actually raining outside, it’s safe to say that the proposition is nonsense. It’s ridiculous but only in the sense that we have a reality that we can then compare to our statement. The statement is logical but only in the sense that it can be right or wrong. However, if we were to use a tautology and say something like, “It is either raining or not raining outside”, we encounter a problem. This statement does not make sense but neither is it nonsense. It really lacks sense because it lacks any possibility of being compared to reality. This is the rub. When we use language we are in fact mirroring a reality that seems to be objective beyond our own thoughts.
And because language is as rich and varied as it is, there are times when we cannot distinguish the silly from the unutterable. 
To say that "God sees everything", it must be explained to us what we mean when we utter such a proposition and that explanation ought to come in a simple look at the language. We have a simple noun/verb postulate here. It might be smart here to look at the noun first. Presuming everyone entering the discussion understands (loosely) what we mean by God, that is an omniscient, always-present deity in the sky, we then have to understand what we mean when we say he "sees". This brings us to our verb. Seeing or having a visual field is a human function that takes works as a matter of the "hardware" in our eyes that are attached, and function with, the neurons of the brain. However, as is natural in our language, we have turned this into many different ways manners of speaking that use the literal use of "seeing" as a kind of anchor. For example, when we say we see with the "mind's eye" or "I can see the future", or even as a matter of understanding when we simply reply "I see", to something we’ve understood. We are using language creatively to illustrate other ways of speaking that have a loose connection with the literal. But it is this loose connection with the literal that the many uses can function as a matter of sense.
When we want to describe God "seeing", we are forced to explain it in anthropological terms naturally from a human point of view. What do we say when we propose God sees everything? Well, initially I want to ask, with what? Does he have eyes? Eyes have a function but they are also material things. We thought this God was invisible. Invisible material? Does he see the way we do? Does he have perspective? Can things obscure his vision? Does he have a blind spot? (The last two hypothetical questions also point out a problem with perfection or, more to the point, a certain lacking). The point here is that it is very difficult to have a certain ideal of a perfect being as a subject then confer on him/her certain human traits. We come up against a wall as to how a theistic perceiver of all things behaves or even just exists with certain finite attributes like "seeing". It is also in the nature of some verbs to be misunderstood. We can point to someone ‘running’ but can we point to someone ‘seeing’ or even ‘thinking’ (it’s much too difficult to say that someone is thinking hard simply because she has furrowed her brow. Someone could be thinking even harder without furrowing their brow). So how do we then scale this wall? We do not. We actually hurdle it in one giant leap by calling it a METAPHOR. Herein lies a problem. For in order for a metaphor to work we must already understand the original statement or idea. And here, in my view, is where much of the confusion begins: For a metaphor to be understood, the metaphor must stand for the original. That is that the metaphor must have the capability of being dropped so that the literal sense can then be understood.
Unfortunately, metaphors have sort of morphed into the same mistakes as when people rely on the subjectivity of opinion. It has become fashionable to say that they are arbitrary. But this is not the case. If I say my lover has rose petals for lips, I am pretty well understood to mean that her lips are as appealing as rose petals. Certainly, if I went to another culture where rose petals were considered poisonous then my metaphor has not fallen flat. It has, infact, just changed it's meaning. My lovers lips to that culture now becomes one which is negative or dangerous. But the metaphor still stands. Both the literal ideas of 'dangerous' and appealing' are understand even when the metaphor is dropped. One thing this culture would understand is what I mean by 'appealing' or positive and just replace the metaphor with something they understand. Certainly different things can be appealing but there is at least a general understanding of the word. If I say I mean it in the sense of being ‘appealing’, I am then understood. This is the same with ‘seeing’. So if we get the idea of the metaphor, it seems to be that it is our subject it is suppose to stand for that is flawed. Is the idea of the security camera flawed? If I were to say "The security camera sees everything", I can mean that to say that there is a certain camera (like an eye) that is set up in the lobby to capture images. Capturing images is important here because in a sense, this is exactly what the human eye captures when looking at a visual field. The security cameras "eye" is being used a metaphor for "seeing" in the literal human sense. In this case, if someone misunderstood what I meant by the metaphor of the security camera, I can then drop it so that it may be understood in the way meant while also explaining the metaphor. Both the metaphor and the literal now have sense.
But this metaphor hinges on the word ‘everything’. When we say ‘everything’ here, we are presumed to mean everything that happens within it’s purview of the confines of the lobby. So we have another literal sense that another metaphor stands in for. We can explain the ‘seeing’ and the ‘everything’. But when we say "God sees everything" as a metaphor and we then drop the metaphor, we become again mired in the original problem of what it is that God is doing when he is "seeing". We do not seem to have the luxury that we have with the security camera. We are back to answering the unanswerable question about God's sight that forced us to just call it a metaphor in the first place. It all becomes circular, like a snake eating its own tail. The metaphor does not do enough to explain because it never had anything itself to stand for in the first place. It is like a house with no foundation; something utterly absurd. In this way, the proposition lacks sense. It is non-sense.
When we do not have a foundation for a metaphor to stand upon the metaphor crumbles to the ground in a heap of non-sensical rubble. And when these things cannot be explained they can neither be spoken about. This, I believe, is what the famous philosopher, Wittgenstein meant when he famously said that “what we cannot speak of must be passed over in silence”. The problem of course, is that we rarely want to pass over in silence. We then proceed to hit our head against the wall or else end the argument with a scream. We want desperately to transcend certain of our own attributes but we are bounded by the world that is objective reality. And anything outside of our world either carries no sense or must be passed over in reverent silence.
We are beings that go to the end of the universe and are happy to find a wall but then suffer for the thought that our imagination tells us there is something beyond the wall.
It hasn't escaped me either that I have used a wall as a long, protracted metaphor but I only hope it makes sense.

The Lovely Oddness of Pushing a Bed, a Model T, and a Piano Up Ben Nevis

Above the minion hills of Caledonia,
Crowned by fog and robed by dewy dew,
Sits a green-brown king that's waiting for ya,
Benevolent wet welcoming for the few.

And there were a few who, to pay tribute to,
And place some jewels in the crown of the king,
Held fast his soil, scaled through the robe of dew,
To adorn upon his head peculiar things.

Some creative set set forth on steep ascent 
Up the Caledonian hill where it's said
They planned hard all the way as they went.
This plan, understand, it included a bed

Pulled through robed dew and thick whiskey peat.
And as whiskey'ed dreams cause one to snore aloud,
They probably did between soggy sheets,
Surrounded by a webby web of clouds. 

Yet others, it's said again, as if to top these,
Sought to push a Model T up the kings side,
Thick coats of dew and peat under old wheels,
Arguably a most unusual drive

That demanded sheer and original will.
For to haul up a combustioning engine
Over such steeply steep and stormy hills
Begs: Did they merely drive it down again?

Once more at the top of his peated plaid pate,
Again at the apex of such kingly ground,
Was seen a piano as if found by fate,
A heap of a thing mysteriously bound

And buried within. One wants to imagine,
When once in a piece, they played what all crave;
Rousing renditions heard from the glens,
And cities, and towns, of Scotland the Brave!

You! All of you showed strange reverence
Celebrated in unusual ways:
Things scaled in a country, a proud land whence
Greatness is expressed best in peculiar praise.

So, my madly mad ole Scottish brethren,
Who let your irreverent flags unfurl!
I dream those whiskey'ed dreams of when
You let them wave atop that green-brown world!