Limits of What is Expressible and What is Thinkable

Humans have a tendency to value knowledge as a tool used for dealing with life's challenges. The history of human civilization offers countless examples of the quest for knowledge about the world – how does it work, what does it consist of, how does it all hang together, etc. This precious tool has always been desirable, in all ages and under all circumstances. We love to acquire knowledge, to accumulate it, to amass it, and so on.

A much more rare and unusual quest is the one for acquiring the knowledge about knowledge. Acquiring the knowledge about the world is what we're all naturally drawn to. But seldom do we ever stop and think abut the knowledge itself. What kind of a thing is it? What makes it tick, how does it all hang together, what is it made of?

Recent developments in the field of epistemology (knowledge about the knowledge) have truly pushed the focus from investigating and learning about the world to investigating and learning about the learning itself. In the past hundred years or so, we've witnessed increased activity in the field of logic, mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, and in general, in the field of cognitive sciences.

Limits Of The Language

One of the most influential twentieth century philosophers, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951), attempted to first and foremost draw a limit to what is expressible in language. Thus he proposed we divide things into two camps – on one side we place all the things expressible using language, while everything remaining on the other side will result in nonsense.

As a corollary to this arrangement, anyone who tries to say something about the other side of the boundary (i.e. beyond the limits of language) will inevitably produce a statement that has no meaning.

Although Wittgenstein claims that any proposition about something that is inexpressible is necessarily meaningless, his own propositions about those same things are somehow supposed to be sensible. However, if one actually understands those pointed propositions (furnished by Wittgenstein) about something that is inexpressible, it follows that these propositions are not nonsense.

Thus, what Wittgenstein proposed ended up being contradictory. But, when we attempt to wiggle out of that controversy, we find that it's really impossible to do so. Thus, we're faced with a particularly nasty paradox.

Russell's Paradox

Back in 1902, famous philosopher Bertrand Russell stumbled upon a very significant paradox. That paradox is perhaps the easiest to understand by using the following illustration (a hypothetical example from real life):

Imagine that you've been hired as a librarian. On your first day at work, the Senior Librarian gives your first assignment. He explains it to you like this:

In this library, we have many books that refer to themselves. For example, there are books that mention something like this – 'see page 42', or something similar to that. Now, what we would like you to do is to examine all the books in the library, and then create two new books. In one book you’ll enter the titles and the ISBN numbers of all the books that refer to themselves, while in another book you'll enter the titles and the ISBN numbers of all the books that do not refer to themselves.

Once you finish this task, you'll be faced with one final decision – where should you enter the titles of the two new books you've just created? If one of the two new books (let's call it "Catalog A") contains entries for every book that does not reference itself, and if the other book (let's call it "Catalog B") contains entries for every book that references itself, then where should the entry for "Catalog B" go?

Since "Catalog B" does not make any reference to itself, it should be placed in "Catalog A". But then, where should "Catalog A" be placed?

Russell thus encountered an indeterminate situation, which he formalized as follows:

• R is the set of all sets that are not members of themselves
• Is set R a member of itself or not?

The outcome of this impasse is that any sufficiently complex, consistent logical framework cannot be self-dependent.

Further Investigations

Other modern-day thinkers tried to deepen and elucidate on Wittgenstein's ideas. Willard Van Orman Quine (1908 – 2000) tried to enrich our understanding of the limitations of language by positing that meaning exists only in its relationship to behavior. Thus he established that our expressions in language lack determinate meanings outside of our conventions (or, outside of consensus).

Again, although Quine tried really hard to liberate our considerations of the limitations of expressiveness from the tangles of paradox, he couldn't avoid acute contradiction. If we are to accept his view, we must realize that his own statements sorely lack determinate sense. So we can't be sure if we understood him or not.

This problem that something is inexpressible and yet that something is nevertheless expressed, was also tackled by Jacques Derrida (1930 – 2004). Derrida accepted that nothing has meaning in and of itself, but only in relation to, and in opposition to, other things. These relative meanings are constantly in flux. Thus the meaning has no ultimate mode for grounding itself.

But again we see that Derrida expresses something that he shows cannot be expressible. The limit of expressibility is again reached. However, the closure is, as in other cases, marred in contradiction. If meaning is constantly in flux, perhaps it is not possible to express anything at all.

In Derrida's work, what he seems to be telling us is that his own writing is meaningless, yet we somehow understand him, and are forced to admit that the meaning was expressed, after all.

Naming The Unnameable And Expressing The Inexpressible

Such investigations, that started emerging during the twentieth century in the West, are actually nothing new. Even 2,500 years ago, Shakyamuni Buddha began teaching these concepts, and had successfully founded and launched one of the world’s greatest and most vital philosophic/religious systems. His teachings on these topics were most successfully expressed 700 years after his death, in the works of the Buddhist Master Nagarjuna.

The crowning achievement of the Buddhist philosophy is found in the seminal work by Nagarjuna Mulamadhyamakakarika ("The Treatise on the Middle Way"), written around 200 CE. In this treatise, we find the following statement:

What language expresses is nonexistent.
The sphere of thought is nonexistent.

(XVIII. 7.)

In stating this, Nagarjuna seemed to have been trying to express something similar to what Derrida was after (see explanation above). Language expresses something that, in and of itself, doesn't exist. It only appears to be existing in relation to and in contrast with other, equally non-existing "entities".

Both Nagarjuna and Derrida go beyond the limitations posited by Wittgenstein, who allowed for the existence of things that are expressible using language.

However, Nagarjuna seems to go even beyond Derrida, in stating that not only is language caught in this mire of expressing something that does not exist, the thought itself is not only incapable of expressing anything, it actually doesn’t exist at all!

What on earth could he actually mean by saying that?

To Nagarjuna, and, for that matter to any other accomplished Buddhist practitioner, all things may be seen in truth or in delusion. This twin-identity is the essence of the Buddhist teaching. Seen correctly, the ultimate, the inexpressible gets expressed and the unnameable gets named. Seen incorrectly (that is, erroneously), the ultimate appears as all-concealing truth.

All phenomena are thus the contrived, resulting from erroneous, miscalculated apprehension. As such, all phenomena are nothing but "all-concealing" truth.

Note that phenomena, contrived and erroneous as they are, are still regarded as truth by the Buddhists. This is because they are the basis of the consensus, or conventional agreement. But ultimately, phenomena, the "all-concealing truth", are nonexistent, have no identity, are unproduced.

Language expresses phenomena – their phantom apparent existence, their phantom apparent identity, their phantom apparent production/cessation. As such, language necessarily expresses what is nonexistent.

The sphere of thought, on the other hand, corresponds to the arising of the "all-concealing truth". It is where the consensus is formed. The apparent reality, the apparent substantiality of the erroneously perceived unnameable, inexpressible "that", reveals that the sphere of this activity is nonexistent. It is an imagined field of activity.

More to come...

Susan Karpasitis said,

on January 23rd, 2006 at 8:48 pm

I am thinking of investigating the link between Nagarjuna and Derrida further for my Eng Lit dissertation. Could you recommend any useful texts for a beginner to start with. Much appreciated. Susie.
P.S: You managed to explain Derrida more clearly than my lecturer was able to in five hours. Thankyou.