Sorry for getting started so late, but yeah.. I just posted replies to the current issue at hand using the Comment box - if anyone finds them somewhat incoherent, feel free to ask for clarification.
At any rate, I was wondering if anyone had given any thought to the relationship between high level abstraction and a previously discussed issue regarding whether or not a concept such as freedom could exist without verbal knowledge of it.
"Of course it is possible to talk meaningfully about democracy, as Jefferson and Lincoln have done...Speakers who never leave the higher levels of abstraction, however, may fail to notice when they are saying something and when they are not."
Dictionaries do occasionally take you for a wild circular ride when you try to look up the definition for a certain word and find yourself looking up new words until you end up back at the starting point with nothing accomplished. Then, what stops us from doing the same when speaking or thinking about concepts such as freedom and democracy? Furthermore, if the word were simply eliminated from the language and that circular ride - though useless for the purpose of defining - suddenly has no place to stop, or even start for that matter, does the idea simply cease to exist? (I believe that Grace brought up a similar point..?) Probably not.
Hayakawa mentions that "[t]he test of abstractions... is not whether they are "high level" or "low-level" abstractions, but whether they are referable to lower levels." (93)
I guess this answers the question Eric brought up a while back: can you describe something to someone who has never seen/experienced it before? (i.e. a color or a concept such as freedom etc.) Yes, you can, by referring to lower levels of abstraction (Describing the color in terms of primary colors and such).
In the case of 1984, however, the word "freedom" is not just twisted, but the lower levels (Independent thought etc.) are also pushed into extinction. The Thought Police destroyed Winston by breaking his mind down with the goal of eliminating his belief in the existence of things such as a past different than what the Party had put out (i.e. Independent thought). By getting rid of these lower levels, the Thought Police made it impossible for Winston to "operate on all levels of the abstraction ladder." (95) Thus, can we get rid of freedom? If we believe the possibility of Orwell's circumstances and the truth in Hayakawa's theories, then we can.
Any thoughts?
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4 comments:
This is Tiffany Yuan, by the way.
I feel that if someone were to ask about the definition of freedom, an example similar to the one Hayakawa provided would occur:
Speaker One: What is freedom?
Speak Two: It includes unalienable rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Speaker One: What are those three things?
Speaker Two: They can be found in an old document.
Speaker One: Which document?
Speaker Two: The Declaration of Independence.
Speaker One: What is the Declaration of Independence?
As you can see, this questioning may seem rather endless. The speaker is talking, yet lacking substance. So my inquiry is..other than using lower levels of abstraction, how did Jefferson and Lincoln fully convey the effect of democracy to their audience? I am guessing they put to use a load of presymbolic and directive utterances, somewhat serving as their form of propaganda.
My question to Tiffany is: How can lower levels of abstraction be fully deleted? I understand your chain of thought, however, and find it to be plausible. Yet the process of reaching such a point as Winston's seems rather unrealistic to me, especially since Winston had been experiencing lower levels of the abstraction ladder earlier in his life. But as you said, the conditions would have to be identical to Orwell's.
(Samantha Maliha)
I have to agree with sam on this point. I also believe that it is impossible to completely get rid of all the lower levels on the ladder of abstraction. With every concept, there are multiple ways to explain it, in both directions of the ladder of abstraction. The only way to get rid of the lower levels would probably be to get rid of language altogether.
(mary quien)
The instance in which the lower levels of abstraction could be deleted may or may not be possible in today's society as we know it. Orwell's 1984 was a warning of what was to come - a depiction of a futuristic totalitarian dystopia.
In Orwell's world, an overwhelming majority of the people had forgotten about the substance which makes up the lower levels of abstraction in regards to freedom. They were willing to accept the words of the Party as the absolute truth and forget about the intensional world created by their past experiences. In my opinion, their intensional worlds were shaped by the Party for not only did the Party control their experiences, but also their thoughts.
The extreme minority - people like Winston - other than the (In the Party's eye) insignificant Proles, were forced to forget the truths of the past via systematic torture and breaking down of their minds.
When there is no one left that is either able to or willing to remember the social, economic, and political liberties of the past, does that not leave the abstraction ladder devoid of its crucial lower rungs?
I hope this sort of clarified where I was coming from. Any further thoughts?
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