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| Cebu Island, Philippines |
Every time I take a shower every morning, I always find
myself in a difficult situation: locate the exact place of the shower knob so I
can take a bath neither with hot water that would boil me nor with cold water
that could freeze me. It is always a tedious task to find the ideal water
temperature to have a worry-free shower.
But I have never succeeded so far, after so many tries. Taking a shower
has been for me a “burden” to endure. The truth is I just bear the coldness or
the hotness of the water for I do not want to waste time just to find the ideal
temperature of the water, or I will be late for the next schedule.
This daily challenge
of mine was never a philosophical problem until I read the article of Bertrand
Russell about vagueness. I complain too much, but I have realized that an
Eskimo would have considered warm what I consider cold, while what I consider
warm or hot could be cold to a Berber.
Is the water that I take a bath with hot or cold? Up to what extent that
we can say that it is hot or it is cold? Do hotness and coldness depend on the
one who perceives? How do we call the temperature when it is neither hot nor
cold?
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| El Nido, Palawan, Philippines |
The English term
“lukewarm” is generally accepted as the continuum between hot and cold; however,
the said term is defined as just slightly warm, that is, fairly or moderately
hot. But one of its synonyms is cool which is defined as fairly or somewhat
cold, therefore not hot or warm. Russell would be quick to vent that this is
just an example of vagueness of our human language: “All words denoting
sensible qualities have the same kind of vagueness which belongs to the word red”. Are definitions merely circular?
Are all natural human languages vague?
Our knowledge and sciences are based on concepts. If all words
or concepts are vague, then we can never achieve true knowledge. If our
languages are vague, then our sciences would be futile. It is true that our
words do not totally grasp or express the reality that they represent, but it
does not mean that the words are meaningless. Words are representation of
things, states, or ideas. The idea that I would like to convey here would be
incomprehensible if the words used are vague or meaningless. Precisely, the
readers of a book understand the thoughts of its author because they know what
the words represent. If the relation between the words and what they represent
is vague, then nobody could understand each other. Communication would be
impossible.
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| Camiguin Island, Philippines |
Russell opines that in an accurate language, meaning would
be a one-one relation, and that no word would have two meanings and no two
words would have the same meaning. And a little further, he states, “The fact
that meaning is a one- many relation is the precise statement of the fact that
all language is more or less vague.” In many, if not all languages, there are
words that have different meanings, but they are understood in a context. In English,
the word conduct is understood when it is used in a context, for example: The senators conduct the negotiation with
total secrecy; and the senators’ conduct
is laudable. In the first sentence, conduct is used as a verb, and it means
to carry out or manage something while in the second, it is used as a noun, and
it means behavior. When the same word is used in a context, we clearly
understand what it means. The intricacy of our languages is just a proof of
their richness. There is no ideal language. There is no perfect language
because human beings are not perfect. But human language, as vehicle or
expression of his thought, is an evidence of man’s enigmatic and complex
nature.
I continue to struggle in my morning shower. But I know what
is hot and what is cold, the same way an Eskimo or a Berber understands them.
There could be varied degrees of how we perceive the hotness or the coldness of
the water, but we have the same understanding or idea of what they are.
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| Bertrand Russell |
