more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
If there were no speech, neither right nor wrong would be known, neither the true nor the false, neither the good nor the bad, neither the pleasant nor the unpleasant.
Gist of Idea
Without speech we cannot know right/wrong, true/false, good/bad, or pleasant/unpleasant
Source
Anon (Upan) (The Upanishads [c.950 BCE], 'Chandogya')
Book Ref
'The Upanishads', ed/tr. Prabhavananda /Manchester [Mentor 1957], p.71
A Reaction
This could stand as the epigraph for the whole of modern philosophy of language. However, the text goes on to say that mind is higher than speech. The test question is the mental capabilities of animals. Do they 'know' pleasure, or truth?
| 8155 | Without speech we cannot know right/wrong, true/false, good/bad, or pleasant/unpleasant [Anon (Upan)] |
| 19758 | Language may aid thinking, but powerful thought was needed to produce language [Rousseau] |
| 7084 | What can be said is what can be thought, so language shows the limits of thought [Wittgenstein, by Grayling] |
| 23065 | If only we could write like a reptile, of endless sensations and no concepts! [Cioran] |
| 11144 | Concepts are only possible in a language community [Davidson] |
| 12592 | Concepts in thought have content, but not meaning, which requires communication [Harman] |
| 18577 | The word 'grandmother' may be two concepts, with a prototype and a definition [Machery] |