I am curious what others thoughts are on this… does language limit our understanding of experiences and our understanding of meaning? So many times I hear ppl use a word that in my opinion is more symbolic of a greater meaning but many times people limit the word to how they were taught about it or how they understand that specific word. For example.. the word ‘god’, to me the word god is just symbolic for a higher power/energy/consciousness, it’s not limited to a person or a single experience… it’s all encompassing and the foundation of it is love in its purest form… many times I have conversations and use the word god and it seems I often lose ppl in translation because of the limited understanding of limited meaning they assigned to the word ‘god’. I wonder how often we do this in life… when we experience something greater but based on our understanding of the language we’ve learned; how often our perspective of that experience can be so limiting only for the mere fact of being limited by the language we know. If we experience something and can’t provide the right language to give it meaning, does that diminish our experience?
ngn0318 t1_j8q0efa wrote
Reply to /r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | February 13, 2023 by BernardJOrtcutt
Language vs experiences
I am curious what others thoughts are on this… does language limit our understanding of experiences and our understanding of meaning? So many times I hear ppl use a word that in my opinion is more symbolic of a greater meaning but many times people limit the word to how they were taught about it or how they understand that specific word. For example.. the word ‘god’, to me the word god is just symbolic for a higher power/energy/consciousness, it’s not limited to a person or a single experience… it’s all encompassing and the foundation of it is love in its purest form… many times I have conversations and use the word god and it seems I often lose ppl in translation because of the limited understanding of limited meaning they assigned to the word ‘god’. I wonder how often we do this in life… when we experience something greater but based on our understanding of the language we’ve learned; how often our perspective of that experience can be so limiting only for the mere fact of being limited by the language we know. If we experience something and can’t provide the right language to give it meaning, does that diminish our experience?