Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. Genesis 2
We are the only naming creature that we know of. We name because our brains do not have enough RAM (so to speak) to consider reality directly, i.e., we need to shrink the world by creating a model of it in the form of ideas. We experience a virtual reality, which is a reduction and distortion of what is actually “out there”; then we reduce that reduction to names of the virtual reality we experience. For example, if we see a “tree” there is in reality no such thing outside of us as a “tree,” there are only the things we classify as a “tree” in our minds, based on our virtual realty experiences, because a “tree” is an idea about a thing that enables us to think about things that appear related, which we call “trees.” “When does a ‘tree’ become a ‘bush’?” is a question for man to consider because only man requires boxes to think about something; God, presumably not having this limitation would never confront this problem because God would not have the limitations that demand the use of models.
This also means that man names and therefore defines what he thinks gives meaning to his life. This may be frustrating and lead many to assume that this means that life is pointless, but this is the weight we must carry for being independent, sentient beings who think about such things. Whether God exists is obviously relevant because if He does we would have a point of reference, no matter how vague, upon which to base our value judgments. Those who believe in a revealed faith don’t need to define the meaning of life because it’s done for them by the God of their faith. To those who believe in a God that has a bit vaguer, however, the meaning of life question remains terribly important and very personal; Marcus Aurelius is a good example of how to go about this. Those who believe in no deity other than the natural world, have nearly infinite room to wander, but therefore also have no way to define “lost.”
It gets even harder. We can uses names of ideas to think about how to write a symphony or paint a picture; we can describe their effect on us. But, we can, only with great difficulty think about why these things affect us because we are in large part unknown to ourselves. Naming what we experience, however, is not the same as experiencing it as noted in prior blogs; subjective experience is a completely different thing. For example, we can say that Beethoven was a motivic composer, that he used key changes and high contrast in his work to increase the emotional impact of the music, that he was an example of right by merit overcoming right by birth in a social sense, but when we hear the great choral fourth movement of his 9th Symphony: “Freude, schöner Götterfunken Tochter aus Elysium,” we can only cheer with love and joy in our hearts even if we don’t actually understand the German or have any faith in life at all.
Photographic images are similar in that we can understand how an image comes about or describe its effect on us, but we cannot ever seem to get to the nub of things because we cannot name it; we can only experience it. Think about Ansel Adams’ great “Half-Dome” of 1927 that I am looking at as I write this blog. We can easily discuss the fact that it is a large silver halide print, toned with selenium, with very delicate tonal ranges on the face of an awe inspiring monolith, but it’s impact on us is a feeling, not a thing that we can reproduce directly in someone else by naming it.
More generally, what is it we feel when we feel something? Pain for example. Does naming it “pain” communicate the feeling? Can we imagine what pain feels like by describing it as “pain” or even “agony”? We can think about it certainly, but we cannot communicate it accurately as an idea—one can only understand pain when one is actually experiencing it.
In sum, we can find meaning in life through the use of words. We might converse with great philosophers of the past or with friends to discuss how they think about the topic; however, words privilege rational thought or subjective experience. Much of life’s meaning is experienced, and in the end incommunicable except through artistic expression or the mystery of faith; therefore, while we may be the naming creature, names can build boxes that limit our understanding of meaning in our lives.
Blog No. 76: We are the only creature that names
Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. Genesis 2
We are the only naming creature that we know of. We name because our brains do not have enough RAM (so to speak) to consider reality directly, i.e., we need to shrink the world by creating a model of it in the form of ideas. We experience a virtual reality, which is a reduction and distortion of what is actually “out there”; then we reduce that reduction to names of the virtual reality we experience. For example, if we see a “tree” there is in reality no such thing outside of us as a “tree,” there are only the things we classify as a “tree” in our minds, based on our virtual realty experiences, because a “tree” is an idea about a thing that enables us to think about things that appear related, which we call “trees.” “When does a ‘tree’ become a ‘bush’?” is a question for man to consider because only man requires boxes to think about something; God, presumably not having this limitation would never confront this problem because God would not have the limitations that demand the use of models.
This also means that man names and therefore defines what he thinks gives meaning to his life. This may be frustrating and lead many to assume that this means that life is pointless, but this is the weight we must carry for being independent, sentient beings who think about such things. Whether God exists is obviously relevant because if He does we would have a point of reference, no matter how vague, upon which to base our value judgments. Those who believe in a revealed faith don’t need to define the meaning of life because it’s done for them by the God of their faith. To those who believe in a God that has a bit vaguer, however, the meaning of life question remains terribly important and very personal; Marcus Aurelius is a good example of how to go about this. Those who believe in no deity other than the natural world, have nearly infinite room to wander, but therefore also have no way to define “lost.”
It gets even harder. We can uses names of ideas to think about how to write a symphony or paint a picture; we can describe their effect on us. But, we can, only with great difficulty think about why these things affect us because we are in large part unknown to ourselves. Naming what we experience, however, is not the same as experiencing it as noted in prior blogs; subjective experience is a completely different thing. For example, we can say that Beethoven was a motivic composer, that he used key changes and high contrast in his work to increase the emotional impact of the music, that he was an example of right by merit overcoming right by birth in a social sense, but when we hear the great choral fourth movement of his 9th Symphony: “Freude, schöner Götterfunken Tochter aus Elysium,” we can only cheer with love and joy in our hearts even if we don’t actually understand the German or have any faith in life at all.
Photographic images are similar in that we can understand how an image comes about or describe its effect on us, but we cannot ever seem to get to the nub of things because we cannot name it; we can only experience it. Think about Ansel Adams’ great “Half-Dome” of 1927 that I am looking at as I write this blog. We can easily discuss the fact that it is a large silver halide print, toned with selenium, with very delicate tonal ranges on the face of an awe inspiring monolith, but it’s impact on us is a feeling, not a thing that we can reproduce directly in someone else by naming it.
More generally, what is it we feel when we feel something? Pain for example. Does naming it “pain” communicate the feeling? Can we imagine what pain feels like by describing it as “pain” or even “agony”? We can think about it certainly, but we cannot communicate it accurately as an idea—one can only understand pain when one is actually experiencing it.
In sum, we can find meaning in life through the use of words. We might converse with great philosophers of the past or with friends to discuss how they think about the topic; however, words privilege rational thought or subjective experience. Much of life’s meaning is experienced, and in the end incommunicable except through artistic expression or the mystery of faith; therefore, while we may be the naming creature, names can build boxes that limit our understanding of meaning in our lives.