Dialectical Materialism (A.

Spirkin)
Chapter 3. Consciousness of the
World and the World of
Prev Consciousness Next

Consciousness and
Language
Communication and understanding
between people, epochs and cultures. From
the very beginning human beings have been
involved in social contexts of different
degrees of complexity and they remain so,
because this is the setting for both their labour
and leisure, even when they think of
themselves as isolated. Endless invisible
threads link them with the life of the socium.
The whole essence of the human being,
including his consciousness, is
communicative by its very nature. And this
ability defines the essence of consciousness
and also its vehicles, the individual and
society. People are constantly afloat in an
atmosphere of communication. They are eager
to say something to each other, to learn or
teach, to show or prove, to agree or reject, to
ask or order, console, implore, show affection,
and so on. Communication arose and
developed with the rise of man and the
formation of society in the process of labour.
From the very first communication was a part
of labour activity and satisfied its needs. As
time went on, it was transformed into a
relatively independent need to share, to pour
out one's soul, either in grief or joy, or for no
particular reason, a need that recurred day
after day and was of vital moral and
psychological importance to the individual.
Communication is such a vital factor of
existence that without it our animal ancestors
would never have become people; without the
ability to communicate a child cannot learn
about, absorb culture and become a socially
developed person. The depression caused by
loneliness also indicates the exceptional
importance of communication for human
beings. Not for nothing is solitary
confinement of criminals considered to be one
of the severest punishments by most peoples
of the world. In a situation where he can
communicate a person acquires and sharpens
his intellect, but in the opposite case he may
even lose his reason.
A person needs communication, whatever
state of mind he may be in, joyous or
sorrowful. But grief or suffering, which need
the consolation, sympathy or merely some
distraction, are particularly hard to bear alone.
A person may feel lonely and isolated even
among his own family and have to make up
for the lack of company with pets.
Communication is not only an essential
condition of human existence; it is also a
means of forming and developing social
experience and restraint, which may be felt by
the individual even outside the field of
immediate communication. Even when
isolated, he considers his thoughts and actions
from the standpoint of what reaction they may
evoke in others.
Historical progress has substantially
changed the means of influencing people's
minds and hearts. The speech in the forum or
the senate, the conversations of the
philosophers with their pupils, the sermon
preached in church, the choir singing, the
disputes between the Schoolmen, the speech
of the lawyer and the public prosecutor, the
professor's lecture, love letters, written
proclamations, pamphlets, stirring speeches
by revolutionaries have been replaced or
supplemented by huge editions of printed
works, by radio and television, the mass
media. Now the streams of information
circulate by means of qualitatively different
channels all over the planet, gradually
integrating the human race by means of
information. A great wealth of forms of
communication are available to people
through the rich language of the arts, through
songs, poetry, music, painting, stories and
novels. And how infinitely rich are the forms
of unspoken, intimate communication. A
psychological response or lack of it is obvious
in facial expressions, in posture, walk,
gesture, voice modulations, the movements of
the hands, those extremely mobile instruments
for expressing states of mind. In the whole
system of "body" language that people,
particularly those with artistic natures, use
with such success, the crucial role belongs to
the eyes, through which we both generate and
feel the radiance of the human spirit in all the
diversity of its varying intensity and perhaps
even depth. What can one read in a face that
has no eyes?
Communication ensures continuity in the
development of culture. Every new generation
begins its work of learning from the point
where the previous generation left off.
Thanks to communication the individual's
thoughts and aspirations are not obliterated by
time. They become em bodied in words, in
images, they survive in legend and are passed
on from century to century. Every person
leans on the ancient genealogical tree. The
motion of thoughts in people's minds is like
waves breaking on the shore; they have the
pressure of the whole ocean of world history
behind them. Books are the present's passport
to all previous culture. In the treasure-house
of their native speech, generation after
generation stores up the fruits of the deepest
movements of thought and the history of
events. The whole imprint of man's
intellectual life is preserved in words, in
written characters, by the invention of which
the human mind resolved one of the greatest
and most difficult of its problems. It
embodied, it registered speech and thus
acquired the ability to make its thoughts
immortal. "What is written by the pen cannot
be erased by the axe", says the folk proverb.
Writing is a marvellous and inexhaustible
fountain of knowledge and wisdom, a
fountain that never runs dry though it is
constantly in use. Communication goes on
between specific living individuals and
between epochs and also between different
cultures.
Any consideration of the problem of
communication inevitably raises the question
of mutual understanding. When one talks
about understanding, one usually thinks of
comprehension of real things, cognition of the
world around one. But what we are concerned
with here is "communicative understanding",
how people understand one another by
communicating, how the present generation
understands its predecessor, how the people of
one culture understand other cultures. These
are problems that have received little attention
and yet are extremely important.
Everyone is surprised by the tricks of the
conjuror, by the phenomena of telepathy, and
so on. But only a few are surprised by the
"miracle" of communication, of understanding
achieved by the language of words, gesture,
mimicry and various symbols, particularly
understanding between present and past, and
between cultures. At the common sense level
mutual understanding through
communication, the understanding of one
epoch or culture by another seems to be a
mere triviality to be taken for granted. We all
understand what we say and what other
people, epochs and cultures say to us. And
when understanding is not achieved, we often
blame language and speak of not being able to
find a common language.
Attention was drawn long ago to the big
difference between understanding the objects
and processes of the external world and
understanding human actions and words. To
understand human beings and what they do
we have to take into consideration their
motives, the discrepancy between what they
say and what they mean, we have to make
allowance for the difficulties of detecting true
motivation. One of the stumbling blocks to
mutual understanding is the great diversity of
individuals. Each of us contains a whole
world. And this world is our particular world.
In any specific context of communication a
person usually uncovers only one aspect of
himself. Understanding is further complicated
by the generalised way we perceive each
other, by our tendency to fit this perception
into certain accepted and evolved general
standards that ignore the unique in every
individual. The individuality of people's
experience and frame of reference also makes
mutual understanding more difficult. The
Sophist Gorgias once remarked that in the
process of being perceived and expressed in
words an object of thought disintegrates into a
huge number of elements of thought and thus
loses its integrity: complete mutual
understanding is therefore, in principle,
impossible. One often hears and reads,
complaints about difficulties of
communication between children and parents,
between epochs and between cultures,
between the healthy and the sick, particularly
those who are mentally ill. A foolish person
cannot fully express the thoughts of the
intelligent. From the content of what he is told
he absorbs only as much as he is able to
understand. One could say that the degree of
mutual understanding between people
depends to a great extent on their cultural
level, their power of insight. The history of
culture offers numerous examples of how the
power of genius increases through absorbing
the meaning and tendency of the epoch,
through tackling and solving the problems
raised by the logic of life. Works of genius
always embrace possibilities that have not yet
been revealed. And the degree to which they
are understood depends on the cultural level
of the reader, the audience. As it climbs the
spirals of history, humanity constantly
improves the mechanism of mutual
understanding, the content of the dialogue
between epochs and cultures. Every new
epoch, in acquiring more perfect ideas, also
acquires new eyes and sees in the great works
of the past more and more that is new, goes
deeper into their intrinsic meaning. Many of
Shakespeare's contemporaries probably
regarded him as, at best, an interesting actor
and little more. They did not see in him one of
the supreme geniuses that humanity has
produced, whose profundity has been
consistently, century after century revealed by
every new generation.
Intellect alone cannot give us
understanding of a person, an epoch or a
culture. There must also be shared experience,
the ability to empathise with other people,
epochs and cultures. Where is the guarantee
that modern man fully understands the culture
of the ancients, their writings, paintings,
sculpture? The mere translation of the ancient
Indian writings into Russian, for example,
cannot provide it. To fully understand them
one must enter into the socio-psychological
context of each work, into the life, the
everyday round, the culture of the people that
created it and the historical epoch in which it
was written.
The character of human relations depends
to a great extent on this understanding of each
other in the process of communication. If this
is adequate, the result is an unambiguous
relationship, regardless of whether that
relationship is one of liking or dislike.
Otherwise the relationship is blurred.
Argument or proof is an essential element
in understanding. Blank assertion cannot
understand itself or make itself understood.
Another important element in mutual
understanding is the ability to listen. Not for
nothing do people say that the art of listening
is as important as the art of speak ing.
Understanding takes place on an incredible
number of different planes due to the fact that
the whole fabric of language and any speech
context are interwoven with threads of
metaphor and imagery. For the same reason
there is often an illusion of understanding, as
opposed to a real understanding of what is
being said. However, despite all the
difficulties, mutual communication is built on
a sound foundation of mutual understanding,
without which there could be no rational
contact between people, and social life would
be inconceivable.
The unity of language and consciousness. If
we want to know more about communication
between people, epochs and cultures, we must
investigate the nature of the means of
communication—language. Language is the
highest form of thought expression, the basic
means of controlling behaviour, of knowing
reality and knowing oneself and the existence
of culture. Without the gift of speech man
could never acquire cultural values.
Consciousness presupposes speech as its
material reality in the form of gesture, sound,
symbol, and so on. Speech may convey
thoughts, feelings and volition in the process
of mutual communication, because words are
material and can therefore be sensuously
perceived. Speech is language functioning in
a specific situation of communication. It is the
activity of communication and its recorded
results. Russian speech, for example,
embraces an infinite number of statements by
specific individuals and all that has been
written in that language. Language, on the
other hand, is a specific vocabulary and
grammar, expressed in rules and sentence
patterns, which have been evolved historically
and are national in character. But specific
sentences, both spoken and written, belong
not to language but to speech: they form the
symbolic reality that constitutes the existence
of language.
Speech is the material expression of
thought. In speech the content of our
intellectual world is objectified for others.
Speech fulfils several interconnected
functions. It is both communicative and
thought-creating, it is a means of influencing
and of regulating. The communicative
function is primary and predominant. Since
thoughts in themselves are non-material, they
cannot be perceived by the sense organs. They
cannot be seen or heard, touched or tasted.
The expression "people exchange ideas" is
absurd if understood literally. No exchange of
ideas actually takes place. The process of
communication is effected in the form of
mutual material influencing by means of
words, which appears to be an exchange of
thoughts. We do not convey thoughts by
means of words; we evoke analogous
thoughts in the mind of the person we are
speaking to.
By means of speech a person can internally,
in his mind, manipulate things, their attributes
and relations, without touching them or seeing
them. Man has made this tremendous advance
thanks to language. It is customary to
distinguish two aspects of the word: its
meaning and the form of its existence. The
first is a representation, an experience, an
idea, a thought; the second is a sign or
symbol. A word is a unity of meaning and
symbol. What makes a word a word is its
meaning. A word represents not only the
meaning of a thing but the thing itself. A
symbol is the material object, process, action
that performs the role in communication of
representing something else, and that is used
for obtaining, storing, transforming and
conveying information. When we speak of the
meaning of symbols, we have in mind the
information about things, their properties and
relations, which is conveyed to us by means
of corresponding symbols. Meaning is the
reflection of objective reality expressed in the
material form of a symbol. Meaning
comprises conceptual, sensuous and
emotional components, volitional
motivations, and requests, in brief, the whole
sphere of consciousness.
The basic sign system is a normal,
everyday language. Non-linguistic signs may
be classified as copy-signs (photographs,
fingerprints, fossils of plants, animals, etc.),
signs as symptoms (shivering as a symptom
of illness, a cloud as a sign of approaching
rain), signs as signals (traffic lights, bells,
applause, etc.), and signs as symbols.
Consciousness is woven out of innumerable
threads, which form a complex web of
symbols, a complete and specific world.
Symbolisation is a specific act of
consciousness. It permeates all its levels and
is expressed in generalisation of that which
symbolises the object and that which is
symbolised. For example, a flag is not simply
a strip of cloth of a certain colour but a piece
of cloth with certain attributes: colour, shape,
etc. What is a symbol? It is a certain object,
action, process, word or outline, the meaning
of which lies in the fact that they express
something, that they contain, as it were,
another object or phenomenon. A symbol is a
phenomenon which may express a certain
meaning not directly but in a formalised
manner. For example, justice is symbolised by
the Goddess Themis. Consequently, a symbol
is not just a sign. In its external form it
already contains a notion, an image that it
symbolises. A symbol has an expressive
function and, thanks to the embodiment of a
sensuously concrete content, it indicates
something that in itself it is not. The use of
special symbols, and particularly the
invention of artificial systems of formulae,
yields huge advantages for science. Symbol
systems in scientific thought perform the
function of formulating conceptual images.
They contribute to the progress of scientific
cognition in its eternal movement towards an
object and in the creation of a true picture of
the world. For example, the use of signs or
symbols from which formulae are made up
enables us to register a connection between
thoughts in abbreviated form, to carry out
communication on an international scale.
Artificial sign systems, including the
formalised and code languages used in
technology, in interpreting machines, are a
supplement to the natural languages and exist
only on their basis.
Everything known to humanity is in some
way named, given a symbol or sign. People
have acquired a permanent need to know the
names of things. Even when they acquire no
information from the name of a certain person
or object, they feel a certain satisfaction in
knowing what she, he or it is called and often
show intense curiosity concerning names, for
example, the name of a girl we happen to
meet, or the name of a plant or a distant star,
although it tells us very little.
Because of the unique individuality of
things and human conditions, every word in a
certain context has certain shades of meaning,
or even a whole range of different meanings.
Its sense differentiations are as varied as the
shades of colour in a peacock's plumage.
The meaning of a word is "minimum
knowledge", which probably refers only to
certain attributes of the object rather than
reveals its essence. For example, when we
seek the meaning of the word "water", we do
not reveal its physico-chemical nature, we do
not explain the content of the given scientific
concept (that is the task of physics and
chemistry); we merely indicate that this is a
liquid that is transparent. Many words may be
used in a figurative sense. For example, the
word "water" is sometimes used to refer to a
lack of substance in a lecture, an article, a
book, and so on.
Although the sense organs are directly
influenced by speech, speech in itself, its
material fabric, is something that cannot be
consciously perceived. A person is not
conscious of the word itself, just as he is not
conscious of the light rays by which he
perceives a thing. Speech is concentrated
entirely on the object. In relation to reason,
which perceives things, events in their
conceivable reality, it is neutral. We are
confronted with a word or sentence and in our
heads there arises a whole world of things and
events. A person only begins to notice words
when he ceases to understand their meaning.
Or he may specially fix his thoughts on the
material envelope of the word for purposes of
analysis, etc.
It would be wrong to intellectualise speech
altogether, relegating it merely to the role of a
vehicle for thought exchange. Speech
performs an emotional, expressive and
regulative-volitional function. Its emotional
content is ex pressed in rhythm, pause,
intonation, in various kinds of interjections, in
emotionally expressive vocabulary, in the
whole range of lyrical and stylistic devices.
As a means of expression speech, including
gesture, facial expressions and so on, ties in
with the whole complex of expressive
movements.
Thought is always mental activity in any
language. If a rational being from another
planet were to visit the Earth and describe all
the languages that exist today and in the past,
it could not fail to notice their astonishing
resemblance in logical structure, which is
determined by the structure of the unified
Earth system of thinking. If a given thought is
expressed in English, Russian or French,
despite the differences in linguistic form, the
content of all three sentences remains the
same. The structure of a language is formed
under the decisive influence of objective
reality, through certain unified standards of
thought, through the category structure of
consciousness. But at the same time these
unified universal standards of thought are
materialised in thousands of different
linguistic ways. Every national language
possesses its own structural and semantic
specifics.
It is sometimes alleged that people
speaking different languages perceive things
in different ways: that language determines
the character of perception. People classify
things, their properties and relations according
to existing linguistic categories. Language, we
are told, is responsible not only for the
content but also the structure of thought.
Different peoples analyse the world in
different ways, the structure of the language
entirely determines forms of thought and
behaviour and every language possesses its
own philosophy.
Actually, language has only a relative
independence, its own internal logic. Whereas
the categories of consciousness as a whole
have a universal character (otherwise contact
between different groups would be impossible
and translation would also be an impossible
task), the basic means of expressing these
categories are extremely varied. At present
there are more than 3,000 languages on the
globe. This shows the complexity and
contradictory nature of the connections
between consciousness and speech. In its
structure, speech is not simply a mirror
reflection of the structure of the world of
things, their properties and relations; it is also
a reflection of the individual's intellectual
world. It cannot therefore be fitted on to
thought, like a hat onto a head. Language
influences consciousness in the sense that its
historically evolved forms, the specific nature
of its semantic structures and syntactical
peculiarities endow thought with different
shades. We know that the style of thinking in
German philosophical culture differs from
that of the French, for example. Each style
took shape under the influence of the peculiar
features, including language, of the two
respective peoples and their national cultures
as a whole. On the other hand, any
absolutising of the influence of speech on
consciousness leads to the mistaken assertion
that consciousness is determined not by the
object, the objective world, but by the way it
is represented in language.
To sum up, by means of speech we
communicate something to a person, we
inform him of our thoughts, moods, feelings,
motives. We share the content of our
intellectual world. Consequently, speech
carries a certain intellectual content, which
must pass through language and come to
terms with its structure. Otherwise this
content, if not rendered meaningless, will
assume an amorphous shape which we shall
be unable to examine as something with a
definite quality. The linguistic form is not
only a condition for conveying the thought
content; it is primarily a condition for the
realisation of that content.
The relationship between consciousness
and speech is not simply coexistence and
mutual influence, but a unity in which
consciousness plays the decisive role. As the
reflection of reality, consciousness "moulds"
the forms and dictates the laws of its existence
in the form of speech. Consciousness is
always a verbally expressed reflection: if
there is no language there can be no
consciousness. And no deaf mutes or blind-
deaf mutes who have received even a little
training would deny this general principle:
they have their own special language. And
only out of ignorance can it be maintained
that these people think barely on the basis of
visual images.
There is no case for the view that
consciousness and speech live parallel,
independent lives and come together only at
the moment when a thought is uttered. They
are two aspects of an integral process: by
carrying on speech activity a person thinks;
by thinking he carries on speech activity.
Think before you speak, says popular
wisdom. If there is a thought in our
consciousness, it is always contained in a
word, although it may not be the word that
best expresses that particular thought. And on
the contrary, if we remember a word, a
thought occurs in our consciousness together
with that word. When we are inspired by an
idea, when a person has a thorough grasp of a
certain thought, it "comes out of his head"
clothed in suitable words.
In its search for the truth human thought
cannot bypass the barriers of language.
Language is not the external vestment of
thought, but the element in which thought
actually lives. Naturally, the relation between
language and consciousness should not be
oversimplified, for example, by comparing
thought to the contents of a vessel, the vessel
being language. This comparison won't work,
if only because the "linguistic vessel" is never
empty, despite the not infrequent emptiness of
its contents. Moreover, the individual's actual
intellectual content does not exist outside the
"vessel of language". Language is never
exhausted by the outpourings of thought, and
thought is not detached from language at any
stage of its existence. Thoughts are not
converted into language in such a way that
their intellectual uniqueness disappears.
The history of science records many
attempts to identify thought and language, to
reduce the one to the other. These attempts are
still being made today. They are expressed,
for example, in such statements as "reason is
language" or "all philosophy is grammar".
The notion of language as a highly abstract
structure that consists of a system of universal
rules (universal grammar) generating
linguistic sentences, fits in very well with the
universal nature of thought, and this leads
some people to identify formal linguistic
universals with the categorial structure of
thought.
Consciousness reflects reality, but speech
symbolises reality and expresses thought.
Speaking is not yet thinking. This is a
platitude and it is only too frequently
confirmed by life. If the mere act of speaking
indicated thought, as Feuerbach once
remarked, the greatest chatterers would be the
greatest thinkers. Thinking means knowing,
cognising; speaking means communicating. In
the process of thinking a person uses verbal
material and his thoughts are formed,
moulded in speech structures. The work that
is needed to formulate thoughts in speech is
performed more or less subconsciously. When
thinking, a person works on the cognitive
content and is aware of it while the speech
envelope of thought may remain outside the
control of consciousness or be controlled only
on the general plane. Thought should not be
imagined as a kind of "cloud suspended
overhead", which opens and rains down
words. One cannot agree with the assertion
that the relationship between language and
thought has formed in such a way that, on the
one hand, there is thought, or ideas, i.e., that
which goes on in consciousness and is
observable only introspectively, while, on the
other hand, there is the semantic structure, the
primary filter through which thoughts must
pass before they are embodied in sound.
Speech serves not only to express, to convey a
thought that has taken shape. Thought is both
formed and formulated in speech.
In the process of communication the unity
of consciousness and speech appears to be
"self-evident". But is it possible for mind to
exist without being expressed in words?
Processes of consciousness that are not
externally expressed take place on the basis of
so-called internal speech, which in its turn is
realised in the form of internal dialogue.
Speech had to arise and mature as something
external in order to become something
internal. When we think silently, we often
unconsciously rehearse certain thoughts in our
minds. Internal speech is soundless. It is a
kind of inhibited and abbreviated form of
external speech. Meditation, which takes
place in the form of internal speech, is always
a kind of dialogue with oneself. Such speech
performs only an imaginatively
communicative role and its basic function is
that of an instrument for forming and
developing thought. Internal speech is
distinguished from external speech not only
by its function but also by its structure. Since
internal speech is aimed at itself, it leaves out
everything that can be taken as understood.
Is thought possible without speech? We
emphasised above that there was an
indissoluble unity between consciousness and
speech, and this is true as a general rule. But
if it were possible to express everything in
words, why should there be expressive
movements, the plastic arts, painting, music?
And how do matters stand in relation to
scientific theoretical thought? As Einstein told
us, at certain moments in the mechanism of
his cogitative activity ordinary words, as
pronounced and written, played no decisive
role. He was able to think in more or less
clear images of physical reality: the sea in
motion symbolising electromagnetic waves
that cannot be visually perceived, physical
forces operating in a manner similar to the
work of muscles, and so on. And how does
the act of thought take place when a person is
swept towards the light of truth on the "wings
of intuition" and not by means of the "rope
ladder" of logic?
This is not only because the process of
conceptual thought is constantly interspersed
with imagery that does not need any verbal
forms. Thinking in images may be profoundly
conceptual because images may perform the
role of symbols richly endowed with
conceptual content. Generally speaking, no
one has yet been able to prove by facts that
thought takes place only by means of the