What Linguistics Cannot Explain
The Metaphysics of Meaning Before Words
I recently participated in a discussion on the metaphysics of language on Lisa Maroski’s new podcast. My contribution centered on the origin and nature of speech in Abhinavagupta and Sri Aurobindo (for a detailed treatment, please refer to my article here).
The underlying idea that motivated us to adopt a different perspective on linguistics is that modern theory remains confined to an analytical, third-person framework, systematically excluding the first-person, experiential dimension that has long been central to Eastern traditions. Contemporary linguistics approaches the origin and nature of language through a predominantly materialist, gene-centered, and neuroscientific paradigm, thereby reducing language to observable mechanisms while marginalizing insights rooted in spiritual and mystical experience. What is needed is not a minor correction but a shift in perspective. With this work, we aim to initiate the first steps toward a more comprehensive paradigm, one that integrates subjective experience rather than dismissing it.
If you would like to explore the topic further, I encourage you to check out my conversation with Lisa.
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So exactly what I have been meaning to express but did not have the right words for. If you have had a mystical experience, you will know for sure that truth is known in a post-mental, post-cognitive, trans-rational state, before it is expressed in language. Knowledge gained in such trans-cognitive states is then reconstructed, ex post facto. After the experience, which itself happens in a gestalt fashion, where the essence is known spontaneously, instantaneously. There is no step-by-step, propositional understanding in an inductive, deductive fashion. Any representation in linguistic terms happens after, a posteriori. And so, naturally, language is the derivative sideshow in understanding, knowing, and grasping truth. I really don't understand how they talk about LLMs that mimic human language ever being able to generate new knowledge.