Language as representation and language as function: repeatedly we run against these walls. A conceptual antagonism exists between these two definitions of language, as has been demonstrated in discourse philosophic, theologic, scientific, politics, etc. For my mind, and perhaps to my detriment as a Student of philosophy, I am constantly reeled in by Wittgenstein’s most generic internal struggle: the harmonization of the two primal metaphors by which we understand language to exist, either as a picture, or collection of, or as a tool, etc. More abstract but more contentious, ultimately, is the claim that this or that deity is or basically amounts to a thing, like any other, with a name, just as any other, than whether it is a man. But in truth, which is more basic to human concern? We may say, in opposition to the inquiry into the presumably more important metaphysical-object status of the deity, for instance: But whatever a man amounts to physically, there persists all the nonphysical properties of this or that gender which most adequately captures the essential nature of the deity. Quickly, we should see that such a counterpoint invokes the notion of telos, purpose, function, and so forth, as it is clear that when I declare, however archaic: “Man is the measure of all things,” I mean nothing about the physical properties of this or that man as rule for measurement to the expanse of reality, nor, what’s more, man as a biological animal. Indeed, in god’s image is a phrasing which troubles many for just the reason that the image of man is itself difficult to fathom: yet we possess so many garden variety, prototypical demonstrations of what counts as an image, and metaphorical images speak nothing but danger, as only a kind of talent, it may be said, might count them faithfully and judiciously
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The conceptual landscape out from which ordinary-down-to-technical-up-to-mystical speakers of a language apply concepts is a primary subject matter in philosophy of language. We may look at the myriad, sometimes confused, other times aright, forms of representation, the ontological backdrop of linguistic activity, or we may observe the effectual characteristics of performances we commonly describe as linguistic. We may investigation the distinctions and overlapping between fact-stating language (constative) and value-implying language (performantive); I say value-implying to appease the anthropologist whose task it is to uncover and reveal the cultural and historical underpinnings of speakers, archetype and peculiar.
I’m terribly sorry for what I have done. And why apologize in this setting, we might enquire? Or more generally, what is the connection between the concept of forgiveness (and anticipated mercy), relative to a culture, and the language with which its members express said concept. Nevertheless, values are latent, most clearly, in performative utterances, for values are the reason for which a performatives emerge: they are necessary posits so as to explain such behavior.
We, moreover, look at the pitfalls and paradoxes engendered by (apparent) concept mix-matching, wherein interpretation of an utterance fails to clearly demarcate the conceptual inner-workings of one speech act now performative, now constative and everywhere in between. Indeed, it is not clear that a description (a statement, say, of scientific propositions or — hopefully — precise and methodologically grounded contingent propositions) always fails to possess a value, even an implicit one. Thus, we may see that an organization of
1. performative always and only implies value
2. constative always and only implies fact
which is highly contentious. But even then, this is a rudimentary starting point for my ruminations on this matter. Clearly these components ought not to be taken as gospel. The intuition, I gather, is that this is how one may typically view such cumbersome terms. So sure, indeed, a performative may be viewed as a mere behavior of a kind, and eager are we to classify it under those terms. A kind of associationism looms behind the methods in which performatives are treated. In a sense, performatives are linguistic behavior, and not the other way around; whereas the presumption, conversely, holds that constatives are chiefly and properly expressions of language. So further, one may assume that language is better understood in terms of the concept which acts as root to constative forms of speech; i.e., language as representation.
We start of inquiry into the structural or logical tethers of language by observing its objects, artefacts, things and stuffs, where every noun a noun, every verb a noun — a world of substantives and relations (which are just as well things but on a more abstract level). Readily we see the unfit nature of such a conceptual if applied to the notion of performative utterance and behavior so defined in those terms. Immediately we must observe and respect the psychical world and its denizens, motivations, agendas, goals, ideas (not as idealizations), laws (hardly describable, if at all, as nomic, but as moral or imperative): the mental. How might we connect the performative we the mental? Indeed, one may perform an action which some arbitrary linguistic behavior — but why should she, or he? And why at this very moment? Granted, to be sure, these agents speak about this or that, and intentions are abound, inundating our skulls we philosophically trivial substitutable terms, but have we more to say than S stands in a certain [psychical] relation to P?
(I should add some points about “criteria” and “process.”)