What is real is what can make sense in language

 

Peter Winch wrote that reality is what makes sense in language. I would qualify that: every aspect of reality that is humanly thinkable at all is the set of what possibly can make sense in language. When Winch writes that reality is what makes sense in language, he is pushing against the idea that reality is something completely independent of our forms of understanding. His point is that to speak of “reality” already involves concepts, criteria, practices, that what counts as real is tied to what can be meaningfully said. I wanted to qualify his statement to rule out the possible implication that reality = language. Reality transcends language and all human forms of understanding, or at least if it didn’t, we have no way to know that it doesn’t. We are finite.

      But to the extent that reality is intelligible to us, it must be expressible in sense-making ways. To imagine that some aspects of reality are not intelligible to us in principle is not to imply some aspects of reality may be unintelligible per se. At the limit, reality is at least perfectly intelligible to God (or to a theoretical absolute mind).

     This plugs into what I wrote in the last entry. Reality is independent, which is to say, not reducible to what we might happen to think: the apple exists whether or not we speak; the daughter is who she is apart from the father’s concepts. And reality is intelligible: it shows itself, can be understood, can be expressed. Meaning does not create reality but reality is not without meaning. Whatever can be thought must be capable of making sense, and this sense is articulated in language; but what makes sense in language is grounded in how reality discloses itself. Language articulates sense; reality grounds it. Not everything real is said, but whatever is understood can in principle be said. To connect it with the thought on essence: essence is what the thing is and meaning is how that essence becomes intelligible; essence grounds meaning while meaning expresses essence – without identity. Language articulates how reality discloses itself. Or again, reality is not made by language, but it is not intelligible apart from it.

   So reality may (almost certainly does) exceed what we can understand, but whatever we do understand must be capable of making sense in language. What follows? Humility (we do not grasp all of reality). But humility does not imply that reality itself is unintelligible. Again, trying to make sense of my last entry. The essence of a thing may be richer than our grasp of it. Concepts disclose reality, but do not exhaust it. Truth is not just correspondence, but successful disclosure. If you say reality just is what can be expressed in language, you risk idealism. If you say that only a fraction of reality is intelligible, you risk implying that the rest is unintelligible in principle. We may only grasp aspects of the Real, but what we do grasp is genuinely of reality.

    The limits of language are the limits of what we can make sense of but not necessarily the limits of reality itself. That, I think, is the thought of the Tractatus, and even the later philosophy.  Or in Thomist terms, truth is adequation to reality, but adequation is never complete for finite knowers.

    I hope this makes sense. If it doesn’t, then it cannot disclose what is, except perhaps negatively.