Post truth (part 11) - making things with words

In the last post, I turned my focus to the role of words in the construction of truth. This is Wordly Explorations, after all. 

Words are what humanity uses to label, understand and share our experiences of the world, and to create explanatory stories that form our coherent view of the world. We use explanatory stories to make sense of the world (and one of those stories is that humans are progressing always toward truth).

I explored how words - spoken, written, signed, symbolled - are 'representations', abstract symbolic units that 'stand in for' our experience of reality. As representations, our words are thus laden with our values, beliefs and ideas (shortened to 'subjective' for this post). 

The conundrum is that, while we might agree in theory that they are subjective, in practice, we need to assume words are stable, neutral and objective in order to use them. 

The human need for a stable sense of reality, which we construct with words, means that we need words to also be stable 'things'. So we just assume they are. We treat words as solid things, despite being confronted with numerous times when they are not (misunderstandings, disputes over meaning, propaganda, etc.). 

To integrate this into the house construction metaphor for truth, I added handmade unfired clay bricks (solid but easily damaged) to represent the words with which we build our house. We use these handmade bricks to construct our floor of 'facts' and our walls of explanatory stories, and they hold up the roof and our sense of safety in truth. 

When we have words for things and concepts for our experience of reality, we feel we know reality.

What does this mean for our understanding of the world? What does it mean for our idea of truth? And does it say anything about the word post-truth? 

Representation recap

First a recap on how humans abstract from reality to create representations - words for things and concepts.

In the last post, I used the diagram of the Structural Differential (SD)¹  to show the levels of abstracting that humans achieve. The diagram distinguishes reality from the human experience of reality, from humans using words to label that experience, and from human ongoing abstracting with words with no apparent limits. This is a different version that shows the key concept of the SD is that the meaning we ascribe a word IS NOT the same as our label for our experience of it which IS NOT the same as our perception of it, which IS NOT the same as what happens/exists. 

Despite this, words work well enough in our shared construction of meaning. Being able to 'store' and 'pass on' information about the world through words has allowed humans to survive and thrive. We don't often need to think about it. (Read more in part 10.)

But we have this strange tendency to assume that words are part of the thing they represent. 

Knowing things with words

I want to talk first about words for things - those things that have a physical (or material) status. We can touch, see and hear these things. We call the words that name physical things 'concrete nouns'.² 

Our sensory experience of 'things in the world' seems tangible and very real and the words don't matter (a rose by any other name). However, the SD above shows that humans inevitably engage in abstractions to refer to this experience - first by creating a symbol (the word itself) and then wrapping inferences, assumptions and beliefs about reality within the words we use for those things.  

So, a concrete word is a representation of (stands in for) a 'thing' in our experience of 'reality'. 

We define concrete words based on our common human sensory experience of them. So, a majority of people agrees on what makes something a 'thing': a chair is something you sit on, an apple is a food that grows on a tree, rain is water vapour condensed and falling from the air. 

We don't debate those definitions (much), and most of the time we can pragmatically ignore the whole exercise of abstracting from reality. 

Interestingly, we ignore to the point of forgetting. We assume there is a direct connection from the word to reality. 

This is understandable because words so powerfully evoke the things they represent that we feel like we are in direct contact with that thing in reality. Words 'stand in for' our experience so effectively, that the word rose can evoke a clear mental picture and the memory of the smell of a rose. We experience a rose thorough our senses, but we know a rose by having a word to name it. 

The Structural Differential diagram

Our pragmatic assumption is that words are part of the things they name.

The arrow back to 'reality' on the SD diagram shows that words - representations - become part of our sense of reality. The jargon term for this is reification.³ To reify means to treat an abstraction (in this case the word) as if it were concrete: a physical event or entity. 

Words really are amazing. Someone can describe the appearance, texture and smell of an unfamiliar flower, provide the word 'Boronia' for us, and despite not directly experiencing a Boronia plant, the description in words can give us a mental image. We can know a boronia. 

More importantly, we are quite willing to assume a thing 'Boronia' exists because there is a word for it. 

That's how we think: we assume that because there is a word, there is a thing, a physical entity. We treat the representation (the word) and the physical thing as if they are the same. And within a community with a shared sense of reality and sense of truth, this doesn't cause any major problems. (But across different communities it often does.)

When we have words for things, then we feel that we know reality.

Making things with words

A second type of word represents our ideas and concepts - words like fruit, freedom, disability, honesty, love, nationalism, etc., etc. They are thoughts about and ways of organising our experience of the world, rather than names for concrete or physical things in the world. 

They are usually called 'abstract words' in linguistics. However, to avoid confusion while I am discussing the complex human mental behaviour of 'abstracting', I am going to call them 'construct words' in this post. A 'construct word' labels an idea, concept or group of concepts. ⁴  

'Constructs' are based on our ideas about how reality works and is organised. For example, fruit is a group of plants that share a way of growing and reproducing. It's a category - a human idea - that is the abstract construct. As another example, freedom is the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action. It's the complex concept of power relations between people built on other concepts of control, status, necessity and sufficiency, rights to free choice and action, etc. - all human ideas and values - that is the abstract construct.  

We define construct words by just agreeing on the definition. There is no physical 'thing' to directly experience, so we rely on agreeing on ideas about the world to create a definition. We also allow a large degree of vagueness with the word: we all sort of know what fruit and freedom mean, but personal subjectivity (values, beliefs, ideas) plays a major role in our understanding of the words. However, we each feel pretty confident that we know what a construct word like fruit or freedom means. 

That is an amazing thing humans can do: create a single word - a representation - to hold incredibly complex constructs so we can pass those ideas on to others and use them in the explanatory stories we share with our community. 

The problems start when we treat construct words - words for ideas, the same as we treat concrete words - words for physical things.

As I mentioned above, for concrete words, we assume because there is a word, that such a thing exists as an entity. The word is part of it. We can (or someone can) touch, see or hear it. A safe enough assumption, most of the time.

We can easily do the same for construct words: we assume because there is a word for an idea or a complex concept, that such a thing exists as an entity in reality. We can't touch, see or hear it, but we know it exists. 

We forget, as the QI panel did, that 'fish' is a construct (an idea: a category of things), not a physical thing.  

It must exist, we say. How can we have a word for a thing if there's not a thing for the word?

From QI There's no such thing as a fish: "How can something not be something? Something can't be not-be not-something, can it? If you've created a something, then something has to be that something, otherwise you haven't created a something. So [there] has to be a fish, if there is the idea of a fish in the first place."

We forget that construct words 'represent' ideas, concepts and groups of concepts. 

There is no physical thing, it is an idea only, but we are damn sure it is real, and if we have a word, it must exist somewhere. Try debating whether fruit exists as a 'thing'. Of course it does, you will be told! Except it doesn't. Fruit is an idea about how to categorise certain plants and food types. 

We do it all the time: we reify constructs into things. When we do this, we are making things with words. 

The main outcome is that, when we have a word for a construct, e.g. a concept of a category (fruit), or a complex idea about humans and power (freedom), we think of that construct as a real and objective thing.  

Construct words - slippery little suckers 

But construct words are always slippery little suckers. 

As subjective representations of complex ideas, 'construct words' always exist within a frame of reference to other complex ideas and assumptions, and those ideas to others. But to examine all those ideas and assumptions, we can only use other words: abstract, subjective representations!

Because construct words represent ideas and concepts, agreeing on their meaning is a continuous human project. We can't define construct words by reference to our experience of reality, like we do concrete words, we have to reach consensus about the meaning. 

But we don't accept that. We want those words to be like concrete words; we want only one accurate meaning.

And thus, we have ongoing debates about the category of fruit, and ongoing clashes about the meaning of freedom. What happens often is that 10 people can have 10 different meanings of important construct words, like freedom. 

And the arguments start. 

We get very attached to the 'things' we make with construct words 

We can have 10 different meanings of freedom is because it does not represent a thing; it represents a complex idea. This is the nature of construct words. 

But if you were to assert: There is no such 'thing' as freedom, the fireworks start.  

Some may well react by holding the word freedom tightly (or put the word representation on a poster) and asserting to all and sundry that they know and have and truly understand freedom. Some might shout indignantly when challenged, 'What do you mean there is no such thing as freedom; I believe in freedom, I love freedom. You are obviously a traitor to our country.'  

Yes, we find it pretty hard to have a peaceable chat about the problem of making things with words, the way we understand construct words, and what we then think we know about reality through our words. 

It's even challenging to write about.⁵ I am trying, but pardon me when I fall over my own representations. 

Both things and ideas are real

The assertion 'there is no such 'thing' as a [specific abstract word]' simply means that the word represents an idea/a construct, not a physical thing or entity.

But this assertion is often misinterpreted to mean that the idea the 'construct word' represents in not real. 

However, both things and ideas are real. 

Construct words are created by humans to represent complex ideas about reality. For example, humans use the construct of the unicorn to represent rarity, purity or illusory, sometimes all three ideas. Because we have a word unicorn does not mean that one exists as an entity. There is no physical unicorn but there is a real and complex set of ideas captured by the word.  

Construct words are extremely important, and label very real and often very complex ideas about human experience. An idea exists through its expression and sharing. Humans use them to interact and make sense of the world. But they don't exist as 'things', which means we don't experience them through our sense, so we can't define them through using evidence and reason. 

Thus, construct words are highly subjective and, as human mental creations, potentially always open to debate. 

We need to be alert to when this debate needs to happen. Most of us do not need to debate the idea of the category of fruit (unless you grow bananas (a herb) and are seeking a government rebate for fruit growing). But perhaps we should debate the idea of freedom when some people's idea of it leads to conflict. 

Our tendency to treat a construct word as if it were a physical thing can lead to some serious issues. 

For example, we have the abstract construct word of race. Race is an idea about the world and about people, and because we have a word for it, we tend to treat it as a 'thing' that exists in the world. This may lead some to treat other people differently, and sometimes horrendously. Race is 'real' in that it represents an idea that humans have thought, but it does not have clear, logical link to physical things [in this case physical people] in reality. The concept that race represents is awful, outmoded, and needs to change. The first step is realising it is an idea, not a thing.   

It's a vital distinction. We fall over ourselves because we mix up two concepts: real (existing) and concrete (physical or material). 

Construct words represent real ideas; they are real and abstract. If we were able to hold onto that complex idea - real and abstract - we could start to talk about them productively.  

But we don't. We treat construct words as if they were real and concrete things.

We do this so we can build a sense of truth with them.

Words as representations and knowing the world  

Humans have worked out an amazing method - symbolic representations in the forms of spoken and written words, icons, signs, etc. - for passing information from one generation to the next. This has been a survival advantage, as each generation can benefit from and build on this preserved information about the world. 

In this way, each generation, in each community, passes on a coherent picture of the world with humanity's place within it through words and stories. Each generation constructs a house of truth around the next generation. 

We forget that words are representations for things and concepts, and not those actual things and concepts. We 'know things' through words (and treat the word as part of the thing) and we 'make things' with words (and treat abstract ideas as if they were physical entities). We assume that if there is a word, then there must be a thing. 

We have heaps and heaps of words, and we use them to 'stand in for' reality. ⁶

And we think we know the world as it exists.

The result is that we tend to confuse our understanding of the world - provisional, limited, incomplete, and derived from innumerable subjective symbols/representations - with the actuality of the world.  

We confuse the incredible act of abstracting from reality with reality itself. Because words so powerfully evoke a sense of a particular reality, we mix up words and reality. 

We think we know reality because we have words to describe and explain it. And we call this truth. 

We forget that what we know is only what our perceptual organs allow us to experience (sensation, information) and what our many symbolic units (words) have allowed us to construct in layers and layers of representation: from words, to sentences, to stories, to scientific theories, to grand narratives, to truth. 

And since we have this wonderous word truth, we think truth must actually be a thing. 

There is no such 'thing' as truth

So, finally, I have explained the myriad of reasons I feel ready to assert: 'There is no such 'thing' as truth.'

Not that truth is not real or not important, but that truth is not a physical, concrete, objective thing. 

We have a word truth, so we think there must be a 'thing' that is truth. So, we ask, 'WHAT is truth?' and we hope we can go WHERE truth is. A physical location.

And we represent truth through a metaphor of a journey to an external destination, a metaphor that affirms and depicts truth as a material, objective, absolute THING. 

Truth is a construct word for a very complex idea, but we WANT it to be a concrete thing. Feeling certain that we know the world and have a stable sense of reality is so vital to individuals and societies to function, that we reject that truth is an idea. 

Because I contend that truth is not a 'thing', but the representation of a very complex idea (construct), some people will interpret this as meaning that truth does not exist or is not real. 

It does, and it is very real. 

Truth is real

Truth is real and it's vital to humans. It's just not a 'thing'; you can't find IT.

Truth sits with a group of other important and emotive words for which we think there must be a corresponding THING - love, freedom, perfection. It can do our head in when people say, 'there is no such thing as truth.' 

Truth reveals that we live in a vicious circle with the human needs for belonging, agency and certainty leading us to interpreting our provisional understanding of reality as objective and certain, then naming that understanding of reality as truth, then declaring that truth is a 'thing' we can find because we have a word for it, and then when that assumptions and our sense of truth is challenged, we defend our truth without regard to all the limits and restriction on how we can know reality, because truth is what we use to meet our needs for belonging, agency and safety (certainty).

Our fundamental physiological wiring and psychological needs lead us to intense attachment to the 'things' we construct to meet those needs. 

So, here is a refined definition of the construct word truth. Truth is a vital attachment relationship for humans with specific information making up 'meaningful beliefs' (as one reader suggested).  

Such busy little builders

Source

So, briefly, back to the house construction metaphor. 

The word 'construct' has two meanings, one is something humans do - we build things. The other is somethings human create - complex ideas to explain and order the world. 

The house construction metaphor for truth scores on both! 

We construct (build) our sense of truth using both concrete words and construct words. And that's the beauty of words: we built them, we can change them. It's not easy, it's rarely quick, but we can do it. 

In sum, humans construct a coherent picture of reality (our house of truth), through explanatory stories (the walls) that interpret the 'facts' (the floor) that we determine about our experience of the world (perception and interpretation⁷) - all using representations of things and concepts related to our experience of reality

Humans create and use words - representations of things and concepts - to build a sense of truth.  

Constructing and controlling truth.

It is useful, productive and time-saving to use words. Human abstraction is a fascinating but mind-boggling activity. 

We need words to 'open' the issues with words

Our words are imbued with thoughts, values, judgements of our experience of reality to make sense of it - essentially to give it meaning. That's complicated enough. We also use other words to represent our thoughts and ideas about our experience of reality. We tend to treat all those words as stable, neutral, objective parts of reality too, when they are far from it. 

When this is revealed to us, we do not like it. 

The main implication for the post-truth series is that we forget we are always and only ever using 'representations' to make sense of the world. Words are at a remove from reality, they 'stand in for it'. We create and use representations - words - within our own experience, from a frame of reference, within a context, and built on lots of other ideas. Even writing this is influenced and constrained by the words I have available to me. 

Words are what we have to use to construct truth; we don't have an alternative. But then we only have words to talk about the issues of using words when we construct truth.

It seems that very few of us see value in examining words in the construction of truth. We're way too busy using those words.

And yet, damaging words is the first thing a propagandist does in their effort to control truth.

Footnotes

1. Other ideas and tools exist as well, this is just my choice today. Diagrams have the advantage of needing fewer words to talk about words!
2. Concrete noun: a noun denoting a material object rather than an abstract quality, state, or action, e.g. dog, building, tree.
3. Reify is one of my favourite words: although I shouldn't play favourites I know. Reification is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete real event or physical entity. In other words, it is the error of treating something that is not concrete, such as an idea, as a concrete thing. A common case of reification is the confusion of a model with reality: "the map is not the territory". Reification is part of normal usage of natural language (just like metonymy for instance), as well as of literature, where a reified abstraction is intended as a figure of speech, and actually understood as such. But the use of reification in logical reasoning or rhetoric is misleading and usually regarded as a fallacy. 
4. In terms of the SD diagram they are the words we use to name categories, inferences, etc.
5. Because we only have words to discuss the problems with words, diagrams, like the SD or a nomological chart/diagram can help clarify ideas where more and more words may not. 
6. Despite this, it is the representative nature of words that makes them good to play with: that's why we enjoy puns, poems, literature, comedy, etc.
7. Just as we do not access 'reality' directly but through the human organs of perception and interpretation (eyes, neurons, brain)

Images

• No more fertile a region of subjective quote made by the author with text from The Maginalian, 2021 https://www.themarginalian.org/2021/06/02/ellen-meloy-anthropology-of-turquioise/  
• The Abstracting Model from General Semantics still taken and adapted from https://www.generalsemantics.org/ [Fair dealing of training materials]
• The Structural differential diagram adapted by the author from a diagram by Marino108LFS  https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83005425 [CC BY-SA]
• QI clip There is no such thing as a fish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhwcEvMJz1Y 
• Slippery little suckers: still from Pretty Woman at https://screenrant.com/pretty-woman-vivian-ward-best-lines-quotes/
• Dove of freedom https://all-free-download.com/free-vector/download/peace-love-freedom_311936.html [free use]
• The black unicorn by Katmary at https://www.flickr.com/photos/katmary/5660062124/ [CC BY-NC-ND]
• Overwhelmed by Loozboy at https://www.flickr.com/photos/30624156@N00/4878245720 [CC BY-SA]
• Truth is a word by Nick Youngson at https://www.thebluediamondgallery.com/wooden-tile/t/truth.html [CC BY-SA]
• The vicious circle of truth made by the author 
• Definitions of 'construct' the verb and the noun made by the author with text from Merriam-Webster online dictionary https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/construct  
• Scissors needed to open scissors from The Shovel https://www.theshovel.com.au/2021/11/05/scissors-needed-to-open-scissors/