Topics Language

Question There is a general consensus that words are merely made up of arbitrary symbols and are thus themselves arbitrary symbols. I agree with the principle of this (the letter 's' is just a squiggly line...). But I have always held that words are "things" and not just symbols or shadows of thoughts. I suppose words simultaneously can be things and symbols just like any other material object--in fact this is partially why I argue that words are things. I can't fully articulate why I feel that words are things, and it seems reductive to merely designate words as the product of a complex system of signs and symbols which we all agree to. Are there any philosophical works (as opposed to linguistic) that examine this subject at length? Thank You.

Accepted:
June 30, 2010

Comments

Words are made up of arbitrary symbols, letters. I don't see that that threatens the "thingness" of words. We can construct things out of any arbitrarily chosen objects, can't we? The difficult word here, I think, is rather "thing". What qualifies something to be an object? Many people find themselves confident that the Empire State Building is an object, but far less confident that there might be non-physical things, like the number of floors in the Empire State Building - is 102 a thing? - or like the name "the Empire State Building". While the Empire State Building is located in Manhattan, its name is not located anywhere: it's an abstract entity. I wonder whether this is what's behind your concern about whether words are things. On the other hand, you also feel the strong pressures to take words to be things: we can name them after all, we can talk about them - and how can we talk about anything that isn't really a thing!? All this relates to big questions in metaphysics about what an object is, what an abstract object is, and whether abstract objects exist. You might find parts of this essay or this one helpful.