The Limits of Language | Stanley Fish, Hilary Lawson, Genia Schonbaumsfeld

Watch the full debate at iai.tv/video/l...
Should we accept that some things transcend our conceptual grasp?
We think that everything can be talked about. Yet from metaphors to the mystical, there are many things we seem unable directly to express.
Stanley Fish is a literary critic and legal scholar, Fish regularly contributes to the New York Times. He is the author of Winning Arguments, and a member of the IAI Advisory Board.
Hilary Lawson is a philosopher and award-winning broadcaster who has been hosting IAI TV’s philosophy and global politics debate strands since 2010.
#reality #philosophy #language
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[@TheInstituteOfArtAndIdeas]

What do you think of this debate? Leave a comment below You can watch this debate, The Limits of Language, in full at iai.tv/video/limits-of-language?KZbin&

[@iloverumi]

interviewer is great- intelligent, asks great questions, stays out of the way, etc. excellent conversation- thank you!

[@davidetomsu]

Thank you Hilary. I add also that words are confusing, they mean something different to everyone, according to their experience and culture. In other cultures, there are for instance many words for different types of 'snow' or 'love'. They are deeper descriptions than our limited English vocabulary. Furthermore, you can't really describe experience, or feeling, just approximations of it, i would have thought that Stanley would realize that, but alas not

[@zettle578]

Hillary Lawson appears to take all alternative views as a challenge to his theory; a theory which he seems applies to every debate he’s in, whatever the topic. The only thing the later Wittgenstein avoids is the temptation for putting forward theories. What he offers instead is a technique of analysis. Genia Schonbaumsfeld gave an admirable account in defence of Wittgenstein’s philosophy.

[@steeneugenpoulsen8174]

It's not a cup, it is a glass, a cup need the handle. So I guess he is right, he proves his own point by failing to even describe a common item.

[@rusty1here]

This is a hopeless debate until you come to terms with the fact that man is a three-fold being physical spiritual and unutterable.... If you can't swallow the music of the duality of paradoxes then you shouldn't be playing the flute...

[@rasugukinara]

Hilary Lawson is confusing mental reality and external reality. Language creates mental realities that is why it is fluid. But language does not create external realities. Language never made the thing popularly called a cup. You can call it by any name and it wouldn't change its shape or disappear - because it is what it is. Reality is that which exists outside of the mind. Language is in the mind, it is symbolic and subject to cultural and personal induced fluidities. Reality (external) is not.

[@livondiramerian6999]

Language grows as anything else.

[@samrowbotham8914]

Words are made from symbols and they are limited so some experiences remain abstruse and worse ineffable.