Language: The Cause and Solution of All The Metaphysical Problems?

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But in what way does language fools the metaphysicians? Ayer presents a few instances in which the metaphysician is fooled by language and grammar: Due to extension constraints we will focus only on the example of the concept of substance. In his already quoted book, Ayer claims that because in English one cannot refer to sensible things without introducing a word standing for the thing as opposed to whatever is being said about it (referring to a pen you say: IT is blue, IT has a little cap, etc.), the metaphysician infer that, in the same way as it is believed that to every name a single entity must correspond (correspondence theory of meaning), it is necessary to distinguish between the thing itself (substance) and any of its properties. IT being the substance of the pen in our example.

Another contemporary philosopher which illustrates the important role played by language in philosophy in general and metaphysics in particular is Heidegger. Indeed, he is also referred to by Ayer in his derogatory way when he talks of “the utterances of a Heidegger, who bases his metaphysics on the assumption that “nothing” is a name which is used to denote something peculiarly mysterious”[7].

In An Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger concentrates on general metaphysics or ontology by analizing the grammar of the word ‘Being’. ‘Being’ is a verbal noun based on the infinitive ‘to be’. It is an abstract verbal concept, designating only the most general, indeterminate meaning of a verb that, when transformed into a noun, ‘being’, further aggravated the indefiniteness and the emptiness lying in the infinitive.

At this point it is interesting to remark that whilst in English “being” is given the form of a verbal noun, in Greek, Latin, Spanish or German, to mention just a few international languages, ‘being’ is translated not as a verbal noun but as an infinitive: einai, esse, ser, sein.

Now, by English making “being” a noun, it makes being all the more abstract and empty. In addition, the noun form carries the ineradicable suggestion that what is called ‘Being’ itself is, though obviously only the individual things are and not, over and above that, “Being” also. Thus the term becomes a name for something utterly indeterminate. That is why it is better to consider ‘being’ as a verb than as a noun. It is better to say the ‘to be’ of something rather than the ‘being’ of something.

This leads to the conclusion that being is not an entity. There is no such thing as a ‘to be’ therefore there is no such entity as ‘the Highest Being’ because it does not make sense to speak of the highest ‘to be’.

‘Being’ comes from phuo, from which comes physics. And in fact for the pre-Socratics, they used the word ‘physics’ – physis, to be more correct, for what was later called ‘Being’. Thus, strictly speaking, if we understand physics properly, there should be no conflict between science, which deals with physics, and metaphysics, as the logical positivists pretended.

All the above let him adopt a different approach which can be considered to be the germens of existentialism: Instead of taking the word ‘Being’ in the abstract, he leads us to become aware in our own experience of what is meant by Being and develops the eight features of “Dasein”

Paraphrasing Homer Simpson’s toast “To Alcohol: The Cause and Solution of all problems” you can in a way, analogically, affirm that language is the cause and solution of some philosophical (mostly metaphysical) problems. And it could be reasonably argued that if there is still some problems such as free will, immortality of the soul, the beginning of life, etc. is in many occasions down to giving the same words different meanings.

This is clearly illustrated with any heated debate on abortion, in which pro-life and pro-choice will strongly disagree in what each other understand by life and when it starts. And no meaningful debate can be held unless it is agreed at the beginning how a term is to be understood. This highlights in my opinion the importance of a sound and strong philosophy of language and linguistic analytics which takes into account the uses of certain words given by different people in different occasions.

References

- Ashworth, E. Jennifer, “Medieval Theories of Analogy”, The Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL= http://plato.standford.edu/archives/win2013/entries/analogy-medieval/ [last accessed 16th April 2016]

- Ayer, A J, Language, Truth And Logic (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1946)

- Ferré, Frederick, “Language, Logic & God” (Collins, The Fontana Library of Theology and Philosophy, United Kingdom, 1970)

- Kelly, Thomas A. F., Language, World, and God: an Essay in Ontology (Dublin: Columba, 1996)

- Lyas, Colin, Philosophy And Linguistics (London: Macmillan, 1971)

- Moroney SVD, Patrick Rev. Dr; Contemporary Metaphysics notes, St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, March-April 2016

- Wheeler, Michael, "Martin Heidegger", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .[last accessed 1st May 2016]

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