That episode was fantastic. I just sent it to four people. If I had the power I would weave that into the fabric of the curriculum for Lit Theory courses, because that seriously would have helped me pick up on Saussure and Derrida.
For me, the most compelling element of the “Words” episode of the Radiolab podcast is the bit involving the rats. This seems to make the most sense in relation to the idea that language constitutes reality, which is something I’ve always struggled to understand.
The rats can see color. For their purposes, they understand the color blue. And they understand direction. Left. But they can’t seem to connect the two ideas in a way that makes sense of the world around them. Left of blue.
“These different kinds of knowledge can’t talk to each other.”
The inference is that rats don’t have the language required for this kind of internal discussion because children behave in a similar manner until they reach an age where linguistic communication seems to allow for this very connection to take place. Left of blue.
“And those aren’t just words that come out of the child’s mouth… inside the child’s brain, what that phrase does—is link these concepts together.”
I operate under the stance that reality is subjective. Sure, things may exist apart from me, that is to say outside of that which I experience through sensory intake, but I can’t know that. I know that certain things feel objective and stable, but I can’t very well exit myself to find out if those feelings are grounded in something other than a singular subjective reality. I can, however, communicate with myself to try to reason with what it is that I am experiencing as the real—that which feels objective. But, in keeping with the rat study, that cognitive reasoning is based on my ability to use language to make connections between ideas. Without language there is no connection, ergo there is no reality.
Jill Bolte Taylor’s experience seems to complicate this—being removed from the realm of cognitive connection and relegated to immediate, present tense sensory information. The question then becomes, in a state where language is not possible, was she experiencing reality? Or, a bit beyond the discussion of the podcast, did she only experience those events in retrospect once she could effectively communicate her experience?