April 26, 2006

04.26.06

I know what ‘thinking’ is because I know how to use it (the word).

My belief is not a sign of my belief, in a way that is similar to the fact that my uttering, “I believe X,” is not referring to my belief, nor is it referring to the fact that I believe X (or that the subject “I” stands in the relation of “belief” with the object “X.”)

Words are not signs. We speakers use words in a very different manner from how we use signs.

When I tell you (in English), “I believe it is raining outside,” you do not have to decode or interpret my words in order to understand what I am saying. (Assuming that you, too, are fluent in English.)

This demands an investigation into the meaning of the word “fluent.”

The sentence, “I know it is raining outside.” is usually redundant. The sentence, “I believe it is raining outside,” however, is not.

It is a mistake to say that language is a system of signs that correspond to a set of signifieds. This is not how language functions.

But when I tell you, “I believe it is raining outside,” I am using the word “believe” very differently than when I tell you, “I believe in God.” Likewise, when I tell you, “I believe in God,” I am using the word “believe” in a very different way than when I tell you, “I believe in the Divinity of Jesus Christ.”

We should ask oursevles what it means to understand a word, and what it means to understand a sign. In other words, we need to investigate the meaning of the word, “understand.”