Katja asked:

Are our truths obscured by the language in which we express them?

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It is possible that a truth may be obscured by language. If, for example, I tried to explain relativity
theory in my very poor Spanish, it is very likely that all truth would be obscured. But this is because I
am very bad at Spanish, not because the truth is inexpressible.

The confusion that lies at the heart of this question is, I think, the idea that language sometimes
seems incapable of expressing what we think we really mean. If I was to write an intimate letter to
someone I loved, I might feel that the words were insufficient to express my feelings; that language
falls short of what I really mean.

However, to say that language doesn't do justice to my feelings is not the same as saying that any
truths are 'obscured'. The assumption seems to be that we have a language of thought, which we
translate into a public language, so that other people may understand us. And we feel that sometimes
our translation is less than perfect. Wittgenstein's assault on the idea of a private language is
probably the most famous and most important single arguments in twentieth century philosophy, but I
don't think it is entirely necessary to go over it in too much detail. (see Geoffrey's answer to Adam).
All we need ask ourselves is "What does a thought consist in, before it existed in expression?"
(Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigationspara 335). I.e. what might a truth look like if it wasn't
expressed in language? And how might we distinguish this from nothing at all?

Wittgenstein cites the (probably apocryphal) story of a French politician who wrote that the french
language was special because the words are spoken in the order in which one thinks them. If one has
only a basic grasp of another language, speaking it is a process of translating from one language into
another. But speaking in the language that one knows best, there is no translation. There is little point
in trying to 'watch what we do when we talk'; just think back to the times when you are having an
argument for example. Did you have the thought first then find the words to express it? Sometimes
we look for the right words, but often we just talk, sometimes with bad consequences.

Therefore: It is possible that language may obscure a truth, but only if we don't understand the
language. Language is the vehicle of truth: the only things of which it is correct to say are true or false
are propositions, (usually sentences, sometimes mathematical etc.). To be trueit must be possible to
be communicated, it must be public.

Will Greenwood

Language is supposed to express truths insofar as our concepts map the world as it is for us.
Language is social and intersubjective, so that if some sort of truth is obscured it is objective truth or
purely subjective truth. We cannot move outside our conceptual scheme to objective truth since as
Bernard Williams has said there is no non-perspectival absolute conception of the way things are.

Discussions about truth normally focus on intersubjective and objective truth, but Jacques Lacan
(heavily influenced by Heidegger) has argued that entry into language alienates a person from
subjective truths. Before entering into a language there are drives and desires which cease to exist in
consciousness once a person becomes a language user. The initial stage in becoming a language
user is to recognise objects, which are the non-subjective, and as consciousness becomes filled with
awareness of objects, drives and desires subside into the unconscious. This has led to the Cartesian
position that “I” am a thinking subject, and then the Kantian position that there is no “I” but only
thoughts. Later on, Freud found that he could access truths about a subject which the subject himself,
who uses thought (and cannot move outside language) was unable to get in touch with.

Rachel Browne

I remember writing in a thesis that 'plain language is inadequate at expressing subjective states'. By
this I meant that we are often more directly acquainted with what psychological states 'feel like' when
we listen attentively to expressive music (say) than when we just talk about them. Retrospectively, I
think I got it seriously wrong in the following sense (although right from an aesthetic standpoint!).

Preceding his 'Private Language Argument' at para 241 of the Philosophical Investigations
Wittgenstein suggests that the existence of rules governing how we use language in order to
communicate with one another depends on agreement in human behaviour. For example consider
the uniformity in human reactions which makes it possible make someone look at something by
pointing at it. How do they know when I point at a table and say 'table' that I am referring to the name
of the object rather than its colour or its size? How do you know? How do I know?

Some philosophers are tempted to think that numbers and sensations are absolutes which force upon
us rules for the use of their words. These truths are distinct from the words in which they are
expressed. Our words refer to objects or to ideas in the head.

Wittgenstein suggests that all this is illusory: you might thinkthat 'pain' is something you feel directly
and give a name, and that the rules for the use of the word are subsequently determined by the
sensation itself. But this is illusory because the word pain (and so your concept 'pain') derives its
logical identity only from a shareable practice of expression, reaction, and use of language. If 'pain'
were a metaphysical absolute then the possibility of shared practice would be irrelevant to the
concept 'pain'. The nature of 'pain' would be revealed in the mental act of naming it; the word pain
would stand as a mark for it and as you suggest would not tell you (would obscure) what 'pain' is like.

It is a broadly Lockean idea that interpersonal verbal communication works by translation of internal
mental vocabularies into sounds, accompanied by our hearer's re-translation of these sounds into her
own mental vocabulary. So like Descartes, one could talk to oneself about one's experiences while
claiming to be justified in saying that one does not know anything about the existence of an external
world (for example) until one has produced an argument. Sharing must be irrelevant to the meanings
of words.

These examples imply that the vehicle of my musings could be private — that it is conceivable that
my knowledge and understanding could be confined to my own case. This holds especially true of
Descartes, where in raising a skeptical question — if not to be self-defeating — he musthold that it is
possible to identify experiences inwardly without relying on resources supplied by his essential
embodiment in a world whose existence is independent of his mind and is accessible to others (which
is precisely what he doubts!).

Wittgenstein's line is that the meaning of an expression is what we understand when we understand
the expression properly; understanding consists in knowing the expression's use across the variety of
contexts in which the expression occurs. Knowing its use is having an ability — the ability to follow
rules for the expression's use in different 'language games'.

This is not a mysteriously 'inner' truth that language obfuscates when we attempt to express
ourselves; it is not grasping a calculus which objectively imposes standards of truth which we then
express to others. It is simply a practice embedded in customs and agreements in a community. It is
essentially public. To follow a rule correctly is to conform to established practices. We acquire the
ability to use words by our training as community members.

On this basis therefore our words do not obscure our truths — they anchor us to the world. What
other 'truth' could there be (however restricted your notion of truth) that was not expressible in the
form of a proposition? Whatever truths there are could only be known to us in the language that we
use. The standard of correctness would be agreement among a community, since it is only through
the publicity of language that we have a notion of 'truth' to begin with.

Adam Gatward