The world is infinitely complex. Even describing a singular object proves immensely difficult, as multiple levels of resolution, multiple perspectives, and multiple layers of analysis all exist simultaneously. This presents complex creatures, such as ourselves, with a fundamental problem: how do we orient ourselves appropriately in a complex world? The answer, at least in part, is categorization. We categorize reality, we construct a map of reality, to make navigation in this infinitely complex world possible.
Much of how we categorize is through language. Humanity has evolved the capacity for linguistics and language in direct relation to the complexity of our computational powers. Professor of linguistics Salikoko Mufwene argues:
…that the phylogenetic emergence of language presupposed a particular stage of biological evolution. It occurred after hominines were endowed with a particular mental capacity that generated (more) complex thinking, greater need to domesticate their natural ecology, and larger and more social organizations. The same mental capacity also exerted more pressure to exchange rich and diversified information explicitly and to expedite the growth of knowledge.[1]
Further, certain other organs, such as the larynx, evolved alongside the mental capacities for comprehending language, shaping and bounding the audible nature of our communication. We can comfortably assert that humanity has evolved both a capacity and means for communication and language, but how, exactly, does language help shape our understandings of the world?
Language, as a function, necessarily creates boundaries and borders in our metaphysical reality. By ascribing a name, and therefore a definition, of an object, we simultaneously define everything it is not. This is fundamentally how language can be used to refer to something discreet and particular, otherwise there would be no way to differentiate between words and the objects they describe. Through language, this prescription of being alters our metaphysical world, allowing us to categorize, abstract, manipulate, and extend that insight to others, thereby altering their metaphysical reality, as well. This layers on top of the limiting nature of objective reality and our embodiment within it.
Take, for example, a cup. As soon as the label of “cup” is applied, assumptions of the nature of that object collapse, not unlike quantum wave-functions, and limits how we understand and interact with an object. A cup is not a hat, for example. Further, there seems to be a duality of patterning inherent between the limiting nature of language and the limiting nature of embodiment in reality. Returning to our cup, how I understand the cup is a combination of its embodiment and my own embodiment. The physical material of the cup dictates its texture, efficiency of function, weight, etc.; all the qualia that dictates how the cup can be interacted with (named or not) are bounded in their potential by objective reality.
The other half of this duality resides in my embodiment. My understanding of the cup is predicated by my interacting with the cup, and these interactions are limited by my embodiment. While a material object can be understood on a strictly material level, such as using technology to visualize the chemical bonds holding atoms together to create the material in the first place, much of my understanding of the totality of a cup, to continue our example, involves layers of metaphysical analysis through my cognitive structures (also roughly limited by my neurophysiology).
In other words, we don’t simply see ceramic, plastic, glass, wood, or metal, we also see a vessel, a hydration source, a celebratory device, even a routine (for us morning coffee drinkers). We also understand a cup through physical interactions; part of my understanding of a cup is its ability to be graspable, the muscle-memory used to utilize the cup, knowledge of which materials are microwave and dishwasher safe, etc. Operating under this framework, I think it reasonably follows that abstract potentialities of being are limited by their beings’ embodiment. Put simply, our metaphysical forms seem to be loosely bounded by our material/physical forms. We can turn to Plato’s famous thought-exercise from thousands of years ago to help explain.
In his Allegory of the Cave, Plato describes for us how people’s understanding of reality, nay, their reality, is limited by their experience with that reality.[2] To demonstrate this, Plato has us imagine two prisoners in a cave. The prisoners reside restrained in an alcove towards the back of the cave, facing away from the entrance. Above and behind them, raised upon a bridge, is a fire. Guards in the cave walk by the fire, lead animals by the fire, and carry good through the cave via the lighted ledge. Because all of the activity occurs above and behind them, the prisoners only see the shadows cast upon the far wall as the physical embodiment of all the commotion they hear behind them. If we presume that those prisoners have had no other conscious experiences aside from their existence in the cave, then we can assert that what the prisoners experience IS their reality. Their interactions, and thus their understandings, with reality are limited by the particular embodiment of what they interact with. Now, say one of the prisoners slips his bonds. He leaves the cave, and suddenly he has a whole bombardment of additional sensory inputs with which to develop a more nuanced and complete understanding of reality, thereby altering HIS reality as the forms and embodiment of what he interacts with becomes more complex.
Now, let’s say the escaped prisoner wishes to return to the cave to inform his compatriot of all the beautiful nuance and embodiment he has been missing through his limited experiences with reality from within the cave. Because the second prisoner, still restrained in the cave, has no basis of comparison with which to understand the escapee’s new experiences, no framework with which to assimilate the new knowledge into his schemas (a term used to describe the abstract cognitive structures with which we categorize the world), no language used would be able to frame the additional information in a usable manner. All of the information is contradictory to the embodiment of the restrained prisoner’s reality. The embodiment of our reality dictates the parameters with which we can come to understand that reality.
The post-modernists understand this well, and they accurately described the inherent limiting nature of language. However, I believe that the post-modern turn takes this kernel of truth too far, as often the limiting nature of language – that of binding and defining – is described as inherently and axiomatically oppressive. To paraphrase Michel Foucault, the act of defining something simultaneously limits its potentialities of being. The issue, to me, is that the post-modern conception tends to ignore the necessity of boundaries and definitions.
We can approach this in two ways. Firstly, speaking ontologically, nothing can be embodied without being bounded and defined, however loosely. Without boundaries, what separates me from the world? Without borders, what separates my liver from my kidneys, or our planet from space, or the urban center form the countryside? Dissolution of borders and boundaries dissolves any particularities that would otherwise describe our embodiment. Secondly, boundaries, borders, and definitions also act as starting points with which to initiate engagement and interaction with the world and others. I cannot hope to lift a boulder as easily as I lift a fork. Likewise, I cannot interact with other women the same way I interact with my wife (both because I am a man of honor AND because, irrespective of any dissolution of boundaries and borders, they are fundamentally and ontologically NOT my wife – i.e. they are OTHER people). We use boundaries and definitions as heuristics, tools to lower the resolution of sensory inputs to allow as predictably accurate responses in as short amount of time as possible. Heuristics do not describe the totality of a thing or interaction, but they provide useful starting points so that the crippling anxiety of nearly infinite discreet responses to nearly infinite sensory inputs can be more easily navigated. We can then adjust our interactions and behaviors to specific experiences, we can deviate from our heuristics, as particular needs arise, thus actively participating in the reciprocal process of binding and being bounded by reality.
[1] Mufwene, “The Evolution of Language as Technology,” in Beyond the Meme: Development and Structure in Cultural Evolution ed. Alan C. Love and William C. Wimsatt (University of Minnesota Press: 2019), 366.
[2] To read more about Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, see Book VII of The Republic.
I understand you've phrased this as an exploration, but really, I think you've begun to make the case for the necessity of clearly defining our reality. I think coherent social order also requires a concrete, agreed upon shared definition of our reality in order to exist. This is why I find the philosophy (insofar as one might sully the term) of post-modernism simultaneously and overwhelming repugnant and egregious as a way of thought in forming ideas about the nature of reality. It's not cultural or intellectual growth, it's rot, plain and simple, as far as I'm concerned.
It is nothing but fuel for the self-destructive, nihilist pathology infecting our nation, and Western culture in general. Post-modernism is a virus consuming its host alive, and as I debate the merit of lending legitimacy to its insanity by taking up the debate to argue in defense of my way of life, I wonder also about the minds of its proponents. Are they well meaning zealots, and truly believe that there is some great good to be had by deconstructing reality and sowing discord, chaos, and confusion, or are they self aware, fully cognizant of the destruction they're causing, but smiling all the while they contribute to the destruction of the way of life that made their foolishness possible in the first place?
If the former, how would you try to point out the error of such ideology in a good faith effort to save our civilization? I have been on both sides of that equation, and know that arguing with true believers is often a fool's errand, such as someone trying to argue with me regarding the primacy of individual Liberty as a way of life. Nobody will ever convince me otherwise, and I will fight to my grave to preserve it.
However, if the latter, why would you even pretend to make the attempt? Clearly those who've adopted the mantle of post-modernist theology have our destruction as a primary goal in mind. When people who appear in earnest tell you that they intend to destroy you, it is wise to take them at their word.
Words and their definitions aside, there are only two kinds of negotiation: Reason, and Force. Anyone who can't be Reasoned with to leave you alone and mind their own business will eventually have to be Forced to, likely in a permanent fashion. There's a reason the Pax Romana lasted 200 years.