Part 7: Language, Image & Number

Understanding how we develop and interact with language, image and number systems

This article is part of the Unified Consciousness Framework series. To gain the maximum benefit from reading this series it would be wise to read them sequentially.

When the primary way we engage with something is by reading it, it then also becomes important to consider the nature of language, images and numbers, as they are the primary medium used to communicate the ideas and concepts that are being outlined to the reader in the framework. If the content being read here was to be compared to a cake, we could think of these individual elements as being some of the key ingredients that make up that cake. These are the parts of it which make up the whole, that in turn allow us to integrate its contents and eventually come to internally realise what is contained within it.

Typically speaking, we could therefore refer to this particular part of the framework as being related to the Philosophy of Language specifically, if we were to try and categorise the subject matter contained within it. When looking at this field of study, we will often find the notion being expressed that any language we use can only be interpreted to some degree based on the context it is contained within. In other words, the idea being put forward is that there is always some gap that exists between what is expressed and what is understood when using language.

This often leads to the notion arising that each individual person is playing their own ‘language game’ of sorts and therefore, to a certain degree at least, there will always be a limited understanding between two people when they are using language as their primary means of communication. Essentially, under these circumstances, what the one person is able to communicate to the other can only happen with a certain element of interpretation being part of that interaction as well.

We can look at certain elements of this process in order to understand why this is the case. Firstly, specific words and phrases must be chosen by the person who wants to communicate some kind of message to someone else. The specific choice of the language they use will be based on their own way of looking at and interacting with the world. Then the other individual, the one who is on the receiving end of the communication, will also have to interpret what is being communicated to them by the use of the specific language that has been chosen.

We can therefore clearly see that between what the deliverer of the communication would like to communicate and what the person receiving the communication understands, there are at least two instances where a certain amount of interpretation has become a part of the total process. Firstly, the deliverer of the communication must choose words based on their understanding of how those words relate to the message they would like to convey. Secondly, the individual receiving the communication will then interpret the meanings of those words based on their understanding of them within the context of what is being communicated. Because two people do not generally see the world and interact with it in exactly the same way, there will often be a disconnect between what is meant by the person delivering the communication and what is understood by the person receiving the communication.

When approaching the Philosophy of Language therefore, the tendency, if what was mentioned previously is taken to a logical conclusion, is to arrive at the understanding that it is rather meaningless to communicate with each other because someone is always interpreting the communication through their own understanding of what has been written or said. This would seem to imply that a perfect understanding is simply not possible to achieve when communicating through the use of language. This is true to a certain degree, but we cannot say that it is absolute, because there is still some understanding that does occur between people communicating with each other. If there was no understanding gained by communicating in this way, we would likely find ourselves not bothering to communicate with each other at all, which is just not the case.