Linguistic philosophy in modern cultural paradigm

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SHEI “Donbas State Pedagogical University”

Department of Philosophy, Socio-Political and Legal Sciences

Linguistic philosophy in modern cultural paradigm

L. Mozgovоi , Doc. of Phil. Sc., Professor

V. Slabouz, Cand. of Philol. Sc., As. Professor

Sloviansk, Ukraine

Annotation

The article is devoted to one of the debatable problems of modern philosophy - the problem of language analysis in the framework of the modern cultural paradigm from the point of view of linguistic philosophy. It is proved that the representatives of linguistic philosophy consider the main single subject matter of philosophy to be a detailed analysis of using natural language to eliminate the misunderstanding that arises from the incorrect use of language, because it is impossible to express fully the richness of the latter (using) in the schemes of a certain ideal language. The various views of philosophers are analysed regarding the fact that language is a means of constructing the world and not its reflection. The interesting views of the representatives of linguistic philosophy on the logical structure of language and studying its semantic possibilities in the cultural paradigm are represented. Studying the original sources of the literature shows that in the current direction of modern philosophy there are a large number of contradictory issues concerning language as it is and its main function in human life.

Key words: ideal speech; cultural paradigm; linguistic philosophy; natural language; logical structure; semantic possibilities

Анотація

Лінгвістична філософія в сучасній культурній парадигмі

Л. Мозговий, д. філос. н. професор, кафедри філософії, соціально-політичних і правових наук; В. Слабоуз, к. філол. н., доцент кафедри іноземних мов, Донбаський державний педагогічний університет (м. Слов'янськ, Україна)

Стаття присвячена одній із дискусійних проблем сучасної філософії - проблемі аналізу мови в межах сучасної культурної парадигми з точки зору лінгвістичної філософії. Доведено, що представники лінгвістичної філософії вважають основною єдиною справою філософії детальний аналіз вживання природної мови щодо усунення непорозуміння, яке виникає внаслідок некоректного вживання мови, тому що неможна вичерпно виразити багатство останнього (вживання) у схемах якоїсь ідеальної мови. Проаналізовано різні погляди філософів стосовно того факту, що мова - це засіб конструювання світу, а не його відображення. Представлені цікаві погляди представників лінгвістичної філософії щодо логічної структури мови та вивченні її семантичних можливостей у культурній парадигмі.

Ключові слова: ідеальна мова; культурна парадигма; лінгвістична філософія; природна мова; логічна структура; семантичні можливості

Аннотация

Лингвистическая философия в современной культурной парадигме

Л. Мозговой, д. филос. н., профессор, кафедра философии, социально-политических и правовых наук; В. Слабоуз, к. филол. н., доцент кафедри иностранных языков, Донбасский государственный педагогический университет (г. Славянск, Украина)

Статья посвящена одной из дискуссионных проблем современной философии - проблеме анализа языка в рамках современной культурной парадигмы с точки зрения лингвистической философии. Доказано, что представители лингвистической философии считают основным единственным делом философии детальный анализ употребления природного языка по устранению недоразумения, которое возникает вследствие некорректного употребления языка, потому что нельзя исчерпывающе выразить богатство последнего (употребления) в схемах некоего идеального языка. Проанализированы различные взгляды философов относительно того факта, что язык - это средство конструирования мира, а не его отражение. Представлены интересные взгляды представителей лингвистической философии по логической структуре языка и изучению его семантических возможностей в культурной парадигме.

Ключевые слова: идеальная речь; культурная парадигма; лингвистическая философия; природный язык; логическая структура; семантические возможности

Introduction

Language comes to the fore in philosophical discussions of the last century, where it replaced both consciousness and being as their main subject, has become almost a truism. It has become not so much the only or main subject of reasoning, but a certain defining concept, the paradigmatic core of modern thought. That is why one can speak not so much about the philosophy of language as one of the leading philosophical directions, but rather about the development of philosophy, essentially linguistic, whatever it may be in the 20^th century. The philosophy of science has been one of the first to turn to logical analysis and has almost been completely absorbed in linguistic problems. In anthropology and ethnography since the times of Levi-Strauss, in psychology since the time of Freud's psychoanalysis, the metaphor of text, reading, deciphering the linguistic structure has been determined by studying society and culture and the intimate psychic life of a person. The textual approach prevails in art studies, where any art form is treated as a language. For the moral reasoning of modernity, the main issue is dialogue, intercourse, communication. In this sense, the analysis of linguistic philosophy in the modern cultural paradigm and the comprehension of the unique matter, and moreover, the prospects of investigating this problem are relevant and useful.

Purpose of the article. The purpose of the article is to represent the analysis of the viewpoints and interesting ideas of the philosophers who are the representatives of linguistic philosophy concerning the problem of interrelation of linguistic philosophy and the modern cultural paradigm. The purpose stated determines the objectives of the article:

a) to present the thoughts and ideas of the representatives of linguistic philosophy on the logical structure of language and studying its semantic possibilities in the cultural paradigm;

b) to make an attempt concerning the analysis of the problem of language as it is from the point of view of linguistic philosophy and to distinguish the main function of language in everyday life.

Scientific novelty. On the basis of studying the original works of the representatives of analytic and linguistic philosophy, it has been determined that reality is mediated by language which recreates it inside itself and thereby creates the image of the world which is unique for each particular language and for each particular culture. Language constructs reality. It cannot be said that language forms a physical reality, it only projects this reality into society, installing the image of the universe, and, as E. Sapir writes, “It would be a mistake to believe that we can fully realize the reality without seeking the help of language.. ,”(Sapir, E., 1924).

Statement of the main material

The manifestations of the linguistic paradigm in modern thought are infinitely diverse, which makes even more interesting the question of the reasons for its establishment and the tendencies of its development, it is the question of the foundations of this paradigm, which in itself becomes possible only within the framework of such a paradigm, because it is a question of the question - the question about language. It is the set of specific questions that determines the life and thought of one or another epoch and not the set of answers given to them. With this statement Susanne Katherina Langer starts her “Philosophy in a New Key”, defining the study of symbolic systems like this “new key”. “It is the way of approaching the solution of problems, and not what exactly they are about, that perpetuates them for a given epoch ... The “methods” of solving (or interpreting) a problem starts with its initial expression in the form of a question. The way the question is asked determines the directions in which the correct answers can be given” (Langer, S.K., 1996). logical semantic philosophy language

The development of the question, which by ancient Greeks was supposed to be the main one for philosophy and distinguished it from the practical reasoning of the eastern philosophers - the question “What is All?” - consistently passing through the stages of natural philosophy, metaphysics, and finally, theology had radically changed, probably by the end of the Middle Ages, by the time of the development of the nominalistic trend. However, despite the great interest in the philosophy of language, the latter cannot be called essentially linguistic, since this interest in the language in it was rather a special case of the emerging question of consciousness, as well as interest in the language of sophists in antiquity, was a special case about being. The change of this question is beautifully interpreted by M. Heidegger in “European Nihilism”. Finally, the question of being of the matter into the question of knowing what existed had finally been reformulated, apparently by the end of the 18^th century, when Kant boldly declared being an empty concept, reduced it to the status of a grammatical link in a sentence, and openly asserted the impossibility and uselessness of knowing anything other than and beyond our cognitive abilities. In some way, from Kant, it started the crisis of the question of consciousness. Aesthetic judgment is connected in Kant's interpretation with a number of paradoxical characteristics that constitute, according to his definition, its main distinguishing features: subjective universality, subjective necessity, expediency without a goal, expressed in a continuous “as if' mode. This subjectivity inevitably spreads from the aesthetics of Kant to the whole subsequent philosophy of consciousness.

Beauty is becoming a value - this discovery belongs to the end of the 19^th century and it is no coincidence that the Neokantians made the greatest contribution to the development of the concept of value. Following the beauty, the value sphere extends to everything that depends on the consciousness directed at it. Ernst Cassirer underlined the value character of cognition in general and the totality of symbolization in particular. In fact, values are a new way of generalisation, in the absence of its ontological and rational foundations. Values are created by people and have their source in the assessment - however, as such, they are still objective and therefore give only general knowledge. It can be said that the philosophy of values overcomes Kant's “subjective universality" of aesthetic judgment, re-emphasising the importance of the parts of this phrase in the new terminology: the value is in its essence random and individual, it expresses an individual intention - let it be even the intention of the whole humanity. However, where Kant tragically emphasised the separating force of this individual assessment, this new philosophy finds new forms of generality: instead of “subjective universality", it deals, rather, with “objective individuality".

Already in neo-Kantianism, values are inextricably linked with symbols, which are a means of conveying this individual intention. Values exist as symbols. Consciousness itself as hidden intentionality does not exist except but through symbolisation. The issue of values is itself the issue of symbols.

It is curious, however, that the triumph of linguistic philosophy begins with a protest against value statements that took place at the beginning of the 20^th century. The so-called positivist philosophy of science applied the subtlest logical analysis of language in order to preserve genuinely objective, uncoloured, knowledge. After all, individual assessments are truly ineffable. The individual cannot enter the language, and L. Wittgenstein in his “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" (“Logisch Philosophische Abhandlung") makes all the value into the sphere of the “mystical" (Sapir, E., 1924).

And his argument was probably deeper than the rational explanation of supremacy of science required: the value for Wittgenstein directly appeals to the problem of the eternal, any assessment of anything in everyday conversation itself includes the hidden issue of the meaning of the world as a whole: the meaning and, consequently, the value, is eternally slipping away, always being somewhere outside and slightly ahead of the statement pointing to it (Vitgenshtein, L.) 1.A consistent logical analysis of language, aimed at linking language with value-neutral facts, has revealed, ultimately, the value colouring of any facts. Our logical concept is already a value, the fruit of interpretation, and as the American literary scholar Stanley Fish aptly notices, no matter how deeply we go in search of “reality”, we are not going beyond the act of interpretation. The meaning of the inscription on a sheet of paper is no more the fruit of an assessment than the assessment of “this object” as a sheet of paper, or as a set of molecules, or as a spatial extent. Any form is a fruit of interpretation. But all objects are created by the interpreting strategy, for Fisher, it is not the way to subjectivism as strategies are social and conventional, and values finding their expression in the symbolic system of language are never purely individual (Fish, S.). In this connection, it is no coincidence that late Wittgenstein appeals to the theory of language games and the direction of analytic philosophy towards conventionalism: truth, in fact, is the result of a contract made on the basis of a general assessment. The requirement of absolute commonality of truth is replaced by a convention. And even earlier, psychoanalysis declares: there is no norm, there is only a more or less generally accepted way of behaviour, which has been accidentally formed as a mechanism of protection and adaptation in a given situation. So, by the middle of the 20^th century, in the absence of access to being or consciousness, the problem of language becomes the main one. And it seems that in this skeptical descent it is impossible to advance further: it is impossible to go beyond the limits of language, because of everything, whatever man faces, he will have to speak. It is not by chance that Wittgenstein likens the limits of language to the limits of the world (Vitgenshtein, L.).

The state of culture corresponding to the greatest inclusiveness of the problem of language is called postmodern. Its motto is “Everything is the text”, its main direction is the development of any form of textuality. Its beginning in the art can be called the Dadaists' experiments, for example, the famous urinal brought to the museum by Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp or 4 minutes 33 seconds of silence in the famous “4.33” by John Cage. Its continuation is largely connected with the development of computer technologies and computer science, to which the most persistent of those logicians and mathematicians, who at the beginning of the 20^th century spoke about creating a language free from values, turned to. These are hypertexts and the Internet, it is “infinitely delayed signified” by Jacques Derrida, a confusion of meaning trails, sung by Jorge Luis Borges. It is, finally, a feeling of lateness from the fact that where everything is text, everything is only reading, and the irony accompanying the eternal game with a variety of what is read. This is a slight longing for the ever-elusive meaning, and the next feeling of emptiness, absence, which controls the development and movement of everything present.

The word of the language is an inseparable and dynamic link of the signifier and the signified, at least so in the early 20^th century structuralism stated. It is the link of a sign and a meaning - when reading, the value needs extracting from the sign and therefore does not exist without the sign. The meaning is the very information that has been repeatedly glorified as the main goal and value of modern culture. However, computer science creates a language only for a machine, and for a hypertext reader, information turns out to be something that is never available - otherwise, why would he continue following the endless links?

At the end of the 18^th century, as we have demonstrated above, Kant's system, especially the first two Critics became the apogee of the philosophy of consciousness, but at the same time the third Critics, revealing the paradoxes of subjectivity, was clearly a crisis text for the philosophy of consciousness. The same can be said of poststructuralist philosophy of the second half of the 20^th century which is the climax and flourishment of the linguistic range of problems revealing its dead ends and paradoxes. Moreover, this paradoxicality itself began to be considered as a distinctive feature of poststructuralist philosophy. For instance, the American poststructuralist Harold Bloom makes something like a kind of “Kantian” gesture, probably not having in mind to destroy the linguistic paradigm, although having in mind to formulate something paradoxical, argues in contradiction, or maybe just in addition to Derrida's famous phrase, “There are no texts, there are only relations between the texts” (Bloom, H., 1982).

The problem concerns the analysis of textuality: what is the text? Black icons on white paper, something that has become fixed once and for all - in this form it is akin to a natural phenomenon, it is a simple fact of the world - this is its literal meaning. But does it exist as a text? The text is something endowed with the meaning, and therefore with the value, not a neutral fact, but a sign that carries the meaning in itself - but this way it exists only in one respect: in respect of reading. The readable text comes to life. But how does it come to life and in what? Where does its meaning exist? Even Benedetto Croce in the early 20^th century said, “... the intuition of the meaning is identical to its expression”. The essence of the text exists only in the other text. For Bloom, this is its figurative meaning and its living existence. But at the same time, it is its tragedy - a new text as a text only is again not a text, but something dead and meaningless, although it is in fact firmly existing. It stands in a row of “previous” texts, dead texts although infinitely influential, suppressing by the fact of their firm and established reality. Life will give it only a new reading, but this will again be just a new “text” - a new set of dead factuality... (Bloom, H., 1997).

Bloom's colleague from the Literary School at Yale University, Paul de Man, in his book “Allegories of Reading”, also spoke of the semantic neutrality of language, leaving any meaning to the interpreter's will. However, to our mind, semantic neutrality, i.e. the lack of proper information value deprives language of its linguistic status. Despite this, de Man sees the epistemological value in reading: each text still tells us something - but this story is always the same: if one reads carefully and does not neglect any formal difficulties, in any text one will find not the information, but one will see it as an allegory of its own unreadability (Karnap, R.).

The post-structuralist analysis calls into question the very possibility of language: it suffers the same fate that consciousness befell before. However, one can definitely observe speaking and listening, and writing and reading, and perception of information and reaction to it. The answer of analytical philosophy is based on the socalled “emotivistic” foundations formulated as early as the beginning of the 20^th century when all value statements were interpreted not as carrying information, but only as evocative (Bloom, H., 2003). At the end of the 20^th century, post-structuralist R. Rorty agrees with the logician D. Davidson that not only artistic, figurative, metaphorical speech is something akin to a gesture, slap or grimace, but any language is just some kind of behavior, and to understand a language is to be able to predict specific behaviour based on a variety of movements, gestures, or sounds (Rorti, R., 1996).

By the end of the 20^th - the beginning of the 21^st centuries it can be said that the same process begins to occur with linguistic philosophy, which embraced the philosophy of consciousness in the late 19^th - early 20^th centuries. The expansion of the concept of language and information to all the areas of what is happening makes their boundaries so vague that in the end their very status as a language and information is lost. M. McLuhan in “The Guttenberg Galaxy” (McLuhan, M., 1962) speaks of the transition of modern culture to “pre-alphabetical” ones - emotional visual and sound forms. Other researchers have noted a growing thirst for presence in the modern world. So H.U. Gumbrecht speaks about the existence of the culture of signs and the culture of presence (Gumbrekht, X.U., 2006), and if the former was dominant in Europe of the last centuries, then the latter is clearly manifested in the modern world. The event of direct presence in all respects is valued more than the sign. The sign is aesthetic in the Kantian sense: it is a pure form of representation without interest in real existence. In the event, the main thing is that it is its being here and now its givenness in all respects and for all sensations (and not only for aloof vision and hearing easily replaced by imagination).

But can it only be achieved? Does the presence remain possible in the context of linguistic skepticism, which carried out the Nietzschean statement about the death of God - the unique and absolute source of being and knowledge? The longing for the presence turns in this context into longing for the signs of presence. The mass media and the ideological propaganda of the modern consumer society try doing their best to ensure people with this lost presence in the forms of advertising, fashion, in all sorts of entertainment, in liberalization of pleasure, in spreading the cult of bodily beauty, a healthy lifestyle, releasing natural (as well as unnatural) sexuality, in developing amusement technologies. In this they meet the demand of the mass consciousness rather than impose anything on it from outside, because, in fact, no matter how dangerous the cultural elite, brought up in the old, symbolic system, may seem this state of things, there is no sense in blaming any ideological forces in its development. On the contrary, the ability of the ideological apparatus to understand that there is no better way to successfully manage people than to contribute to their maximum satisfaction; it is a delightful achievement of modern liberalism, and no one would welcome any form of suppression, restraint, and restriction, although, in fact, from the beginning to the second half of the 20^th century, they were the last and only thing that stimulated the modernist revolt to the development of culture and art.

Conclusions

However, all these attempts to recreate presence rather recreate only the presence of a sign, or the presence of a sign of presence, the simulacrum of presence: the sign of pleasure instead of real pleasure is caused by the sign of presence instead of real presence.

The linguistic analysis made during the 20^th century already sufficiently destroyed the illusions about penetration to reality, and popularization of scientific achievements, liberalization of society, wide appeal to psychological schools brought to ordinary consciousness, or, more likely, subconsciousness, the idea of its inaccessibility and ambiguity. If the text exists only as a reading of the text, and reading itself is the text then pleasure exists only as an expression of pleasure. It is likely that the pathos and intention of such theorists as McLuhan is to completely eliminate the sign significance if the text did not need to carry meaning, and the value did not need to be extracted from the text, so that the presence of the text would coincide with its natural factuality, which caused genuine pleasure.

It is difficult to say whether such a variant of development is possible and whether it will not lead to a total collapse of the culture. Axiological thinking and linguistic philosophy connected with it for the first time have learned how to raise the question of the foundations - the foundations of any paradigm of thought, including one's own. But a similar question turns out to be destructive for what it asks.

This deconstructive question is at the same time a self-destructive one. And in this sense, it is the basis for total skepticism. Any skepticism, as it is known, is also directed against itself, but linguistic philosophy can be called not only skeptical in nature but also the most radical form of skepticism. Asking the question about everything it leaves nothing. Going beyond the limits of linguistic skepticism is so vague that it is possible only as going beyond the limits of any questioning in general. In the early 20^th century, Wittgenstein said, “We feel that if there were an answer to all possible scientific questions, the problems of life would not even be touched. Then, of course, no more questions remain; this is the answer” (Vitgenshtein, L.).

Список використаних джерел

1. Витгенштейн, Л. Логико-философский трактат. П. 6.41-6.42.

2. Гумбрехт, X. У. (2006). Производство присутствия: чего не может передать значение. Москва: Новое Литературное Обозрение. 183 с.

3. Карнап, Р. Преодоление метафизики логическим анализом языка. Случайность. Ирония. Солидарность. Москва. С. 35-41.

4. Rorti, R. (1996). Sluchainost. Ironiia. Solidarnost [Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity]. Moskva.

5. Bloom, H. (1982). Agon: Towards a Theory of Revisionism. Oxford University Press. 350 p.

6. Bloom, H. (2003). A Map of Misreading. Oxford University Press. 240 p.

7. Bloom, H. (1997). The Anxiety of Influence. A Theory of Poetry. Oxford University Press. 208 p.

8. Fish, S. How to Recognize a Poem When You See One?

9. Langer, S.K. (1996). Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art. Harvard University Press. 313 p.

10. McLuhan, M. (1962). The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 336 p.

11. Sapir, E. (1924). The grammarian and his language. American Mercury 1, 2. P. 149-155.

References

1. Vitgenshtein, L. Logiko-filosofskii traktat [Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus]. P. 6.416.42.

2. Gumbrekht, X.U. (2006). Proizvodstvo prisutstviia: chego ne mozhet peredat znachenie [Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey]. Moskva: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie.

3. Karnap, R. Preodolenie metafiziki logicheskim analizom iazyka [Overcoming Metaphysics by Logical Analysis of Language]

4. Rorti, R. (1996). Sluchainost. Ironiia. Solidarnost [Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity]. Moskva.

5. Bloom, H. (1982). Agon: Towards a Theory of Revisionism. Oxford University Press.

6. Bloom, H. (2003). A Map of Misreading. Oxford University Press.

7. Bloom, H. (1997). The Anxiety of Influence. A Theory of Poetry. Oxford University Press.

8. Fish, S. How to Recognize a Poem When You See One?

9. Langer, S.K. (1996). Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art. Harvard University Press.

10. McLuhan, M. (1962). The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

11. Sapir, E. (1924). The grammarian and his language. American Mercury 1, 2.

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