How To Disappear Completely

Gavagai, or Teaching Toddlers to Talk

For everyone who has shared the experience of a Dr. Davis presentation of the Gavagai story: congratulations, you will know what I am talking about.

For everyone who does not fit into the catagory above: the Gavagai story is Quine's anaylsis of the underdeterminacy of language, or the fact that there is not a one-to-one correlation between a word and the world around us. We can point to concrete objects, (teach by ostension), but even multiple meanings can apply to each of our communicative motions. For example, suppose one travels to a dark, distant tribe and tries to learn the language. The native points to a rabbit running across a meadow and utters the pronouncement: "Gavagai." To what did that word just refer? Could have meant "rabbit." Could have meant "running rabbit." Could have meant "field with running rabbit." Could have meant "Wow, it's late. My wife has supper on the table. I'd better run like a rabbit." One cannot learn a language completely merely through simple pointing. This story tore apart the logical positivists' theories that a perfect language was within our reach, one that would correlate directly to the world around us, being empirical and thus scientific. Once distilled, all obscurity of meaning would vanish. Instead, language is just as muddled as ever. Instead of being able to read a single cheat-sheet of the rules, one has to sit through the entire Monopoly-length game in order to learn how to play (speak the language). We're talking total cultural immersion here.

All this introduction now leads into my comment. I am currently nannying for a family with seven kids, of whom the second youngest (a 15-month old) is learning how to speak. As I play with this child, pointing to objects around me and relating their names, I wonder "How do these kids get it?" How does this kid know that when I say "Ball" I am refering to the thing itself and when I say "Blue," I refer to its color? Touch seems even more tricky--"Soft" and "Hard" appear to be even more difficult concepts to grasp. The complexity of language and meaning make me believe that every baby is a genius if he even manages to sputter through his native language by the time he dies. Those who can speak multiple languages should be embalmed and their brains saved for science.

On a side note, I think that philosophers should all be required to raise children before creating theories of anything. Nannying has me rethinking all my decisions on Kant, Locke, and similar theorists of the mind and the way we learn.