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"Their language arose naturally to fit their special needs" (H.G. Wells' The Country of the Blind) | Using language to narrow the circle of thought (George Orwell's "Newspeak").

Fable of The Born-Blind-People

The word 'know' is a tool that is used in a way of life, as this parable shows.

... our interest does not fall back upon ... possible causes of the formation of [the] concepts [that we actually have]; we are not doing natural science [our aim is not to predict anything]; nor yet natural history -- since we can also invent fictitious natural history for our purposes. (PI II, xii, p. 230; RPP i § 46)

Nothing is more important for teaching us to understand the concepts we have than constructing fictitious ones. (CV p. 74, remark from 1948)

... imagine certain very general facts of nature to be different from what we are used to, and the formation of concepts different from the usual ones will become intelligible ... (PI II, xii, p. 230)

One of the most important methods I use is to imagine an historical development for our ideas different from what actually occurred. If we do this we see the problem from a completely new angle. (CV p. 37, remark from 1940)

Imagine quite a different world (say sometime in some supposed evolutionary past), one where everyone is born blind; no one's eyes work or have ever worked.

Then, one day a child is born who can see. The child is very good at certain games, say chase ("blind man's bluff").

One day the people go for a walk -- or rather, an exploration -- in a place where they have never traveled before. They walk in lines, of course, one behind the other.

The child suddenly says, "There is a tree in front of you." And its mother responds: "Nonsense. You're behind me; how can you know that there's a tree in front of me (You haven't touched it)?"

What can the child say? Certainly not 'I see it'. Those words have no place in these people's language. The child can only say 'I know ...', but not 'I know because I touched it'. And the mother responds that the words 'I know' cannot be used in these circumstances.

"I know there is a tree in front of you." -- "How do you know. What do you mean by 'I know'?"

Asking whether or how a statement can be verified is only a particular way of asking 'How do you mean?' The answer is a contribution to the grammar [in Wittgenstein's jargon: any description of the use of language, especially of the rules of sense and nonsense] of the statement. (PI § 353)

Of course the people can -- both physically and grammatically -- verify that the tree is there. But they cannot verify that the child knows it is there. What can the child do other than guess. Perhaps the child has been here before? But no one has been here before.

It's a still day: you can't hear the branches shake or smell and taste the scent of the tree on the wind. And the sun isn't out, so the tree isn't blocking its warmth. The tree doesn't have surface roots either, nor are there leaves on the ground. "The child has no grounds for saying 'I know'", the people have the (grammatical) right to say.

The mother instructs the child: "You have to touch the tree in this case to know."

And all the people, each in their turn, can repeat this remark to the child. Perhaps they even play a "language game" with the child. They take it by the hand, have it touch the tree, and say 'I know'. And perhaps they tell the child the story of "The Little Boy Who Cried Tree!" (This would be quite important to these people -- not walking into trees.)

And, so, if the child knows only by seeing, for the people of this world it doesn't know at all -- even if it "guesses" right every time. Indeed, if the child "guesses" right too often, they may take it for a demon and kill it.

If the child persisted in saying 'I know' in these circumstances, the mother might slap it. It is her responsibility to teach the child the people's language.

Think of the words 'I know' as a tool these people use in their life. (PI §§ 421, 360) The meaning of a word is the work it is used to do in these people's life.

Can a blind man lead a blind man?

Language games are foundations, not opinions

If someone says he knows something, it must be something that, by general consent, he is in a position to know. (OC § 555)

"So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?" -- It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life. (PI § 241)

The language games that are the foundation of our way of life are foundations (there is no foundation under the foundations (OC § 559)); we do not treat them as we treat opinions, theories or conjectures. Our naive, normal way of using the word 'know' shows, not a theory of knowledge, but a concept 'knowledge' (Z § 223) -- i.e. rules (as in "rules of the game") for using the word 'know'; these rules belong to our way (or "form") of life.

What does Wittgenstein mean by the words 'theory' and 'opinion'? (Conjecture about something not fully known, for the words 'opinion' and 'theory' contrast with the word 'fact'.) The "agreement" in our normal use of language is agreement in following conventions (rules) -- but the conventions are co-incidences in way of life, not as it were a signed contract between people. The agreement is a matter of public fact (and therefore objective).

The metaphysical question ("What is the truth (for knowledge is knowledge of the truth)?") is not answered by describing language use, of course. But according to Wittgenstein's logic of language, the only meaning 'What is the truth -- i.e. what is reality?' has is found in our use of language (PI § 120), i.e. in our way of life, and nowhere else. (What absolute reality is -- i.e. reality independent of man's points of reference -- can't even be described.)

This agreement is "no small matter" -- men are imprisoned, sent to the gallows, burned at the stake, by this agreement.

Between belief and knowledge

Belief belongs to the individual, knowledge to the community (and that is why knowledge is objective). That is a remark about the grammar of the words 'belief' and 'knowledge' (cf. the child of the fable's 'I know') -- i.e. a reminder about our rules for using the words 'belief' and 'knowledge'. ("Belief belongs to the individual" -- within limits: what a reasonable man believes belongs to the community.)

I could have titled my story "The Fable of the Born-Blind Community".

The concept 'knowledge'

Knowledge belongs to the community (cf. the concept 'fact'). That is why the child of the story does not know what he thinks he knows. Look at the word 'know' as a tool that belongs to the community: the individual can only know what the community agrees he is in a position to know. That is the concept 'knowledge' -- defined by the Socratic standard "If a man knows anything he can explain what he knows to others", i.e. to the community -- not a theory about what knowing really is.

One thinks, " Well, but the word 'know' really isn't just a tool that belongs to a community -- because regardless of what the Blind-People's community holds, the child really does know that there is a tree in front of him." We say this because we -- who like the child can see -- are in agreement that we are in a position to know that the child is in a position to know. (The picture of a god who can see what we cannot see.)

Further grammatical remarks: that a belief = opinion may be common in a community, but a reasonable man may or may not be expected by the community (e.g. in law courts). What is reasonable, what unreasonable belongs to the community. So that it is not only everything objective (verifiable) that belongs to the community (but also sanity, insanity). Of the Blind-People's knowledge:

It is the truth only inasmuch as it is an unmoving foundation of [their] language games. (OC § 403)

Language games are ways of living (actions)

The term 'language game' is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or a form of life. (PI § 23) To imagine a language [i.e. "language and the actions into which it is woven"] means to imagine a form [or way] of life. (ibid. § 19 [§ 7]).

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What has to be accepted, the given, is -- so one could say -- forms of life. (PI II, xi, p. 226)

Wittgenstein's logic of language is descriptive: the meaning of a sign is the use human beings make of it -- in practice, as we live our life. That these practices show us the meaning of our language belongs to Wittgenstein's selected meaning of 'meaning', which belongs to the foundation of Wittgenstein's logic of language.

To ask "How does a child learn to use this word? How is the use of this word taught?" is to ask for a description of a "form of life".

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Forms of Life | Ways of Life

'Form' means 'pattern'. Thus 'a form of life' is 'a pattern of life', a recurring, not a unique event. But Wittgenstein meant more than that. In English the expression 'form of life' suggests the various species of animals and plants (or "life forms"). Wittgenstein wrote that "a dog cannot be a hypocrite, but neither can he be sincere" (PI II, xi, p. 229). The word 'sincere' and its antithesis 'insincere' have application to the life of man, but they are undefined with respect to dogs. Likewise one can train a dog to be obedient, but one cannot train a dog to be ethical (or unethical, honest or dishonest). Sincerity-hypocrisy, ethical-unethical are human forms of life. [Note 1]

"A life form" (species)

The fable says: "The lion went for a walk with the fox", not a lion with a fox; nor yet the lion so-and-so with the fox so-and-so. And here it actually is as if the species lion came to be seen as a lion. (RFM vii, § 36, p. 403)

The human life form means that it is the nature of man to live this way, or at least that it belongs to human nature that it is possible to live this way. Or again: it belongs to man's life form and not to those of the lion and the fox. [Note 2]

Absolute Pitch and Blindness

But then are the Blind-People of my story not human beings? The possibility of living in certain ways that sighted human beings live does not exist for the Blind-People of the story; their form of life differs from the form of life of the sighted. Just as certain possibilities exist for the man with absolute pitch that do not exist for the tone deaf. [To use Wittgenstein's metaphor, some games are closed off by very general facts of nature (PI II, xii, p. 230).] Differences in human forms of life may be illustrated by contrasting the form of life of someone who can see only the duck-aspect or the rabbit-aspect of the duck-rabbit image (ibid. II, xi, p. 194) with the form of life of someone who can see both aspects of the image. For someone who is rabbit-blind, talk about the rabbit-aspect of the image will be as much nonsense as the child's words 'I know' are nonsense -- i.e. undefined language -- to the Blind-People in the context in which the child spoke them.

If someone says, "Religion is a way of life, but not my way of life", this sounds as if this were a matter of choice. But I do not think that is what Wittgenstein means by 'form of life'. A man may hold or not hold religious belief -- but only because religious belief is a possible human form of life. A dog cannot be an atheist or a believer; religion is not a canine form of life. That is why Wittgenstein talks about "our natural history" -- our form of life concerns human nature. That is why he wrote that "If a lion could talk, we would not understand him" (PI II, xi, p. 223) nor he us ("a sense of humor"), because of differences in our forms of life. And what applies to a lion applies to a dog as well [Note 3].

There are grammarless forms of life such as use the word 'beauty'. And there is "concept-blindness", the inability to form a concept (e.g. "to see how a reasonable man can use the word 'God' seriously" (RPP i § 213) -- "I must confess that I am unable to see anything in it, although I can go through the motions well enough").

The world of a born-blind man and the world of a sighted man are in many respects different worlds. And in this case a blind man could really say: "Talking about what you see is a form of life, but not one that I am able to participate in."

Human beings do not choose their forms of life, although they may give more relative importance to some than to others. A dog cannot even be indifferent to religion or any other uniquely human form of life. Existence is a riddle to man [TLP 6.5], but is it a riddle to a cat?

A form of life is a foundation of life: "a language game is not based on grounds. It is not reasonable (or unreasonable)" (OC § 559) .

[It should be noted that 'forms of life' is Elizabeth Anscombe's translation of 'Lebensformen'. When Wittgenstein was speaking English, according to Rush Rhees he used the form of expression 'ways of life' [cf. 'manner of life']. And although we speak of life forms, we do not speak of "life ways".]

"You don't know much; and that's a fact"

"A cat is as beautiful the last day as the first." (Graham Greene, "Under the Garden" ii, 4)

From early youth through old age. But beauty is only seen by human eyes, just as "A smiling mouth smiles only in a human face" (PI § 583; of course in a fairy tale a cat is human (ibid. § 282), even if somewhat eccentrically so, as e.g. the blind cat and the fox in Pinocchio). "The cat is as beautiful" -- in our eyes, but in the eyes of the cat? Do cats have concepts -- does a cat have a concept equivalent to our concept 'beautiful'? We would have to assign a meaning to that combination of words, because it has none now. If a cat could speak, a human being would not understand it, nor would the cat understand a human being -- "I see a kitten and I see an old cat, but I do not see this thing you call "beauty" -- where it is?" Cases like this, cases of our inner life, are what Wittgenstein was talking about when he said, "If a lion could talk ..." (PI II, xi, p. 223)

"A cat may look at a king," said Alice. "I've read that in some book, but I don't remember where." (Wonderland viii)

A cat can only look at a king because a cat does not see a king. Nor does a dog see a knife; a knife is only a knife in human eyes. (Cf. "concept-blindness")

With respect to the cat and beauty, "Thou hast no speculation in those eyes", nor humor in that smile (nor any of the countless other things a smile may signify), not as a question of fact, but as a question of defined language (definition). (Do crickets dream?)

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Postscript

"Their language arose naturally to fit their special needs" (H.G. Wells)

Twenty-two years after writing the above (Spring 1979), I discovered the short story "The Country of the Blind" by H.G. Wells (May 1904). It describes the accidental arrival of a sighted man named Nuñez to a long lost valley in the Andes Mountains where all the human beings have been born blind for so many generations that they have forgotten their origin as sighted people.

"Why did you not come when I called you?" said the blind man. "Must you be led like a child? Cannot you hear the path as you walk?"

Nuñez laughed. "I can see it," he said.

"There is no such word as see," said the blind man, after a pause. "Cease this folly and follow the sound of my feet."

[In the Country of the Blind] they would believe and understand nothing whatever he told them, a thing quite outside his expectation. They would not even understand many of his words. For fourteen generations these people had been blind and cut off from all the seeing world; the names for all the things of sight had faded and changed ... and they had ceased to concern themselves with anything beyond the rocky slopes above their circling wall.

He spoke of the beauties of sight, of watching the mountains, of the sky and the sunrise, and they heard him with amused incredulity that presently became condemnatory.

And the eldest of the blind men explained to him life and philosophy and religion, how that the world (meaning their valley) had been first an empty hollow in the rocks ... [how] time had been divided into the warm and the cold, which are the blind equivalents of day and night, and how it was good to sleep in the warm and work during the cold .... He said Nuñez must have been specially created to learn and serve the wisdom they had acquired, and that for all his mental incoherency and stumbling behaviour he must have courage, and do his best to learn, and at that all the people ... murmured encouragingly.

It was marvellous with what confidence and precision they went about their ordered world. Everything, you see, had been made to fit their needs; each of the radiating paths of the valley ... was distinguished by a special notch upon its kerbing; all obstacles and irregularities of path or meadow had long since been cleared away; all their methods and procedure arose naturally from their special needs.... Intonation had long replaced [facial] expression with them, and touches [had replaced] gesture ...

"Everything, you see, had been made to fit their needs ... arose naturally from their special needs ..." Everything, including their language.

Note: Edward Shanks said, more or less, that H.G. Wells' story is a myth than can be interpreted in many different ways. I have presented an understanding of H.G. Wells' myth -- i.e. put his fable to a use -- that is different from Wells' own.

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Second Postscript

Narrowing the circle of thought (George Orwell)

In "The Principles of Newspeak" George Orwell tried to draw a picture of just how narrow a circle our thoughts could be made to move in:

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.... Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller." (Nineteen Eighty-Four I, 5, 1949)

The purpose of Newspeak was ... to make all other modes of thought impossible.... [In Newspeak] a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc -- should be literally unthinkable at least so far as thought is dependent on words. (ibid. "Appendix")

Of course not all thought is dependent on words. For instance, even if the people in my story had not had the general word 'know' -- that is, if their language had only the words for the means of knowing, e.g. touch, hearing, so that they could not say 'I know' but only 'I touch' etc. -- the child would nonetheless have seen the tree and known from experience that it was something to avoid walking into (and that knowledge is thought).

But it may be that philosophical thought is dependent on words, whether for clarity or confusion. And here the circle in which our thoughts move may be very limited (both internally by our laziness and blindness, and externally by our vocabulary) indeed.

Animals and small children are not acquainted with the problems of philosophy. (cf. PG i § 138, p. 191)

What we know is that they do not have the language in which to express philosophical problems. Or rather, what we know is that they do not share our language (i.e. they do not participate, i.e. make moves (speak and act), in our language games).

"If no word, then no idea""

If someone does not believe in fairies, he does not need to teach his children 'There are no fairies'; he can omit to teach them the word 'fairy'. (Z § 413)

"If there is an idea, then there is a word for it." As we normally reason, the conditional would be false if 'There is an idea' is true but 'There is a word for it' is false. But are there in fact ideas for which there are no corresponding words?

Ideas as weapons and therefore as language to be promoted or silenced.

When schoolchildren do "vocabulary building" (They are given lists of words and their definitions to memorize and then they are tested; this is continued through the final year of secondary school English), are they not learning how -- i.e. acquiring tools with which -- to think? Vocabulary building is concept-formation. It is often the case that (although language is packed with synonyms) to learn a new word = to learn a new idea.

Then is it true that if you want to keep people stupid, you should just not teach them language? A dog is far from stupid, but it has no words with which to contest decisions that affect it.

But if we visit a foreign land whose language we do not understand, are we not in the same condition as the dog? No, we are only without words to defend ourselves in the foreign language, but we are not without ideas -- and we are not without reason; can we say: we have learned a language and therefore we have learned to reason? No, but we have learned a language and, therefore, ideas. -- And because we have learned ideas we have something to reason with and about. (Philosophy is discourse of reason, discussion with oneself or one's companions.)

"Limiting language, therefore limiting thought." In the context of natural science, limiting the vocabulary of science (its "pictures, maps, models") = limiting thought = limiting knowledge and understanding. (Mathematics is language.)

The relation between language and ideas

Language makes possible the formation of ideas, in some cases. Suppose there were no word 'fetus' but only the word 'unborn child', that there were no word 'abortion' but only a word 'infanticide', that there were no word 'pregnant' but only a word 'with child'. Through the subtraction or addition of concepts (words), wrong-doing may be created, or covered up. (Suppose there were no word 'God'.)

With a multitude of words transgressions are increased. (Proverbs 10.19, quoted by Drury, DW p. 1)

Although note that the addition or subtraction of words not only affects wrong-doing, because good-doing [moral virtue] may also be created or obliterated by language. As language melts away, ideas and ways of life may melt away with it, and vanish.

Ideas and Forms of Expression

On the other hand, is there always only one way to say a thing? It doesn't follow, of course, that just because unlimited combinations of words are possible, every such combination of words has a meaning -- but even a normally meaningless (i.e. undefined) combination of words may suggest a meaning to us (as poetry and aphorisms often do). And new meanings may be given to old combinations of words that already have defined uses in our language. In such ways concepts -- i.e. language to express ideas -- may be invented to meet felt-needs (as in H.G. Wells' story).

Newspeak's project of limiting the number of words, therefore, is not a method that by itself would necessarily control thought completely. (It would be helped towards its goal if it were used in combination with other techniques for controlling thought, such as meaningless slogans (cf. what Samuel Johnson called "cant words") and making nonsense ("mere sounds without sense") common currency.)

Some words seem essential to particular ways of thinking or ideas, others maybe not. For example, the words 'free' and (in contrast to) 'caged' seem inessential whether applied to man or animals (if animals are thought to have "non-verbal concepts" rather than be moved by impulse only).

Less, not more, Newspeak

"We're getting the language into its final shape ... We're destroying words -- scores of them, hundreds of them, everyday ... Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings [eliminated]." (Nineteen Eighty-Four I, 5)

What does Orwell mean by 'concept' here? Not 'rules for using a word', not 'definition of a word' -- but an essence, a strictly limited idea. But language rarely works that way. (Concept fluidity: Wittgenstein compares using language to playing a game according to fixed rules, but generally we don't use language according to fixed rules.)

In the natural world concept-blindness may cause percept or phenomenon blindness. But man is not primarily a creature of instinct: man's thought-world, vocabulary, does not seem entirely dictated by nature -- nor by training (schooling). A human being is not a beast wanting discourse of reason: man can doubt, question, and man is a conceptual-tool maker (e.g. Newspeak's 'un-good' can be used ironically; compare the WW2 quip "Do what you're told -- that's how we stay free"). Silencing speech is not silencing thought.

Language and concept-formation

The limit of concept-formation is human imagination, not linguistic signs -- i.e. spoken sounds, marks on paper (i.e. the purely physical aspect of language). Even when limited in signs, language is not necessarily a cage.

Language is not only used to express ideas, but also to express a range of emotions: can emotion be limited by limiting the language available in which to talk about it?

"Finite but boundless": thought can be limited by limiting the number of "pictures" available to the user of language, with the result that alternative points of view appear impossible. "In general, there is nothing that explains the meaning of words as well as a picture" (LC p. 63; cf. PI II, iv, p. 178).

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