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Lacan - Language, the unconscious, the parents, the symbolic order - the Other...

Language, the unconscious, the parents, the symbolic order: these terms in Lacan are not exactly synonymous, but they are intimately allied. They are sometimes spoken of by him as the ‘Other’ — as that which like language is always anterior to us and will always escape us, that which brought us into being as subjects in the first place but which always outruns our grasp. We have seen that for Lacan our unconscious desire is directed towards this Other, in the shape of some ultimately gratifying reality which we can never have; but it is also true for Lacan that our desire is in some way always received from the Other too. We desire what others — our parents, for instance — unconsciously desire for us; and desire can only happen because we are caught up in linguistic, sexual and social relations — the whole field of the ‘Other’ — which generate it.

Terry Eagleton. Literary theory; An Introduction. Wiley Blackwell. 1996.

paulgauguin-art

Landscape near Osny 1884

Paul Gauguin

astranemus

Western scholarship has turned its eyes away from the reality of life in yet a different way. Western thinkers, beginning with the early Greeks, have become used to grasping all existence solely by reason. This is grasping the meaning of things by establishing their precise relationship to other things, or grasping things in terms of definitions. Because of this approach, some Western philosophers try to grasp “self” and even the life force itself by definition. The life of the self deoes not come about by being defined. Life lives as real experience even if it is not understood or defined. Even the power to understand things by means of definitions is the power of our own life. This ought to be clear to us naturally, but all the Western rationalists’ attempts at explanation leave it muddled. If one thinks about a reality that exists before the definitions of speculative thought, that in itself creates a kind of definition, recreating the problem. The speculated-about and redefined reality no longer exists prior to definition. You can easily wind up thinking that definitions are reality.

Kosho Uchiyama, Opening the Hand of Thought: The Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice

leftoversalad

wuglife

Hahaha, oh man this is beautiful!

A quick explanation:

Pokémon only say their species name

This Meowth appears to be able to converse with the trainer

Meowth* says that it is in fact only saying its name, thus behaving as all other Pokémon *thus it is not actually a ‘Meowth’ but a species of a name that consists of every utterance it ever said or will say

If its linguistic behavior is indistinguishable from a human’s linguistic behavior, who is to say that humans aren’t also only saying their species name over the course of their lifetime?

One of the reasons this is brilliant is because “infinite utterances with finite resources” is a key tenant of human language. We (humans) can respond to unexpected situations with novel, unexpected, and unique utterances. In other words, how could every single utterance be pre-programmed into us, when (at our birth), there are words that don’t yet exist that we will use in our lifetime?

(remember this?)

For instance, Pokémon: Pokémon was released in 1996. If you were born before then, there would have to be a remarkable coincidence in genetics and biology for your pre-programmed linguistic behavior to include that word (as so many other people also, coincidentally, had that word programmed into them).

This isn’t logical.

Unless, the universe itself is pre-programmed. Freaking out yet?

Don’t worry, quantum physics suggests that this can’t be the case (or at least is highly implausible). So what does that leave us with?

If something can produce linguistic behavior (i.e., utterances) that are indistinguishably similar to humans’ linguistic behaviors, and this means that it can (seemingly) respond appropriately to otherwise unexpected circumstances. If the universe can’t be preprogrammed, this means that the utterances can’t be preprogrammed. Unless we’re all just very lucky all the time.

Anyway, this is a great demonstration of how a thought experiment can help you test hypotheses about language. It’s not 100% conclusive, but it’s a good way to start thinking about how one might test a hypothesis, or what one would need to find in order to support or disprove a hypothesis.