Do I exist in language alone?

I have been reading Humberto Maturana and his biocognitive take on what language is. I find this incredibly fascinating.





We, as a human race, exist in language.


I find this to be utterly true. Depending on the definition of language (in my understanding Maturana defines language as the continuous exchange of existence between two or more living systems in a field of being) - we would then not be human if we had no language. I am redefined, refined and reproduced through languaging. My mode of languaging depends on my current structure as a system. This system is the psychic field, i.e. my memories, thoughts, habits, subconscious structuring. In the subconscious structuring exist all the cultural and genetic predispotitions of existence: In short, everything I have been “taught”, or what I have learned. As a human I operate partly on conditioning, partly on emotional and endocrinal impulses, and the every moment-to-moment interaction is an interplay between my current structure (the “I”, or egoic structure, that I am in exact point this time and space) and my surroundings. As Maturana points out, most of our interaction with our surroundings are unconscious. There is only a small part of our awareness active in our interactions at every given time - this is partly because the physical world our bodies exist in contains an almost infinite amount of information and movement. Only a small percentage of this is available to our human senses. Within our limited scope, or range, of sensory input from our surroundings, our actual awareness (what we focus on either by will or by random chance) only take in what our subconscious filters as absolutely necessary. In short; our whole existence is maintained and experienced by our subconscious mind.

Whenever we “language” we interact with our environment with our awareness and attention. Something happens, a word is directed at us, something craves our attention, and we use our mind to focus on the event. In doing so, we instantly create a coherent story around it. This story exist in our own minds, and is a way for the human mind to cope with a random event occuring outside of our bodies (and sometimes inside our own heads). To explain this: The “I” that I am, is actually a steady stream of consciousness in the form of a syntactic structure we call language. I look at my dog, and in the act of becoming aware of my dog *I* instantaneously become aware of the subconscious story I have of a dog in general, this dog in particular, and how the totality of “I” (my body, memories and present state of being) relates to this dog.

In other words... We are constantly in relationship with our surroundings, our thoughts about our surroundings, and we distinguish, define and describe our current structural state (what we call “being” or “who we are”) through language. Language is then, at the same time, both an internal monologue in a particular form of language (for instance German or Norwegian), as well as an external cooperation and coordination of our physical being and its environment.

There is actually no point to this piece yet, this is only an establishment and definition of the role of language and being. By defining and clarifying the terms, I can use these definitions to build my further thoughts on.

The more I ponder these questions, the more I wonder at how any form of communication and relations are even possible. If the majority of our languaging (interaction) depends on our subconscious, and our subconscious is contructed by our past memories and our conditioning, well... Am I ever really talking to anyone, or am I just interacting with a collection of their own individuated caleidoscope of memories? Does my lover answer my questions from a place of present existence, or is he actually just replaying the current structural form of his system as it appears in this particular moment? If the latter is true, we are, in fact, all just ghosts in a machine.


This saddens me.