Rethinking The Relationship Among Language, Mind, And Reality: Based On The Critical Assessment Of The Three Influential Linguistic Theories' Views On Scientific Realism And The Reflection On Their Epistemological Foundations

Based on the comparison of their distinct basic assumptions about the relationship among language, mind(or thought) and reality(briefed as LMR-relation) of the three influential linguistic theories, i.e. Whorfian linguistic relativity, Halliday's systemic functional linguistics and Lakoff & Johnson's cognitive semantics, this dissertation makes critical assessments about their respective views on scientific realism. It argues that the three linguistic theories are bound to give rise to the following insurmountable difficulties: first, they cannot demarcate science from non-science or pseudo-science; second, they cannot distinguish scientific ways of thinking from nonscientific ones; finally, they cannot make a plausible account of the very facts of the growth of scientific knowledge and the success or usefulness of science in explanation and prediction. These dilemmas elicit the present quest for a tenable account for the LMR-relation so that it can justify scientific theories and ways of thinking as more reliable, stable and certain knowledge than non-scientific one such as folk theories, mythology and metaphysics. Moreover, those difficulties also induce the reexamination of the epistemological foundations of the three linguistics theories with the hope to give them sound evaluations and define their spheres of application. By means of abduction and criticism, this study attempts to dig into the nature of LMR-relation.All the three linguistic theories have their own epistemological foundations: both Whorfian linguistic relativity and Halliday's meaning theories are established on constructivism, while Lakoff & Johnson's is philosophically based experientialism. Linguistic relativity maintains that since our thought or mind is unconsciously influenced or constrained by linguistic structures, the reality itself is inaccessible to our mind. Scientific knowledge cannot be truth about reality but the construction of the Western Indo-European languages. Likewise, the meaning theories of systemic functional linguistics assume that the reality is unknowable. What we can know is the reality constructed or construed by grammars. Based on his grammatical metaphor theory, Halliday puts forth the arguments that the frequent use of nominalization in scientific discourses suggests that scientific language thingifies the events and processes into observable, measurable and testable objects or things. Scientific theories are, therefore, by no means the truth in correspondence to reality but the reconstruction or reshaping of experience by languages or grammars. Whereas as a response to the postmodern critique of science, Lakoff & Johnson on the one hand reject the post-modern relativism of truth and the anti-realism of science, on the other, they disapprove of the classical philosophical view of scientific realism, which is dubbed by them as a disembodied objective scientific realism. They advance the embodied scientific realism or experiential realism by claiming that our mind and reason are inherently embodied and even the most abstract knowledge such as logic, mathematics and scientific theories are the results of the embodied and imaginative mind.With all those controversies and disputes on the view of scientific realism, this study attempts to explore into the following issues: can mind get access to reality or correspond to reality? With what cognitive mechanism can mind acquire scientific knowledge? What distinguishes scientific ways of thinking from non-scientific ones? Is the reality inaccessible to mind as claimed by linguistic relativity because the mind is necessarily affected or constrained by the structures of languages? Or the reality is unknowable to mind because of the assertions given by systemic functional linguistics that the reality is nothing but the construction or construal of grammars? Or is it that the reality is embodied in nature, as advocated by experientialism, because our knowledge is gained through our bodily experience and the interaction of our bodies with environment? If those are the cases, how can we plausibly account for the scientific knowledge as being more reliable, stable and precise in prediction than the non-scientific one?Seeking for a tenable assumption about LMR-relationship is not only the major concern of meaning theories but also that of epistemological philosophy because the semantics is generally assumed as the study of relation between language and reality, while epistemology takes its primary interest in the relation between mind and reality. The correspondence theory of truth holds the view that truth is the knowledge in congruence with facts. The advent of cognitive science provides fresh insight into the understanding of mind as well as the LMR-relationship, which results in the novel theories on meaning and truth. Within the framework of cognitivism, mind is, therefore, viewed as an information processor, which processes perceptual and linguistic information interactively and integratively with the four complementary stages involved, i.e., the monadic stage, the structural stage, contextual stage and cognitive or epistemic stage.As a consequence, the cognitive view on meaning diverges from the traditional meaning theories because the meanings of words and sentences are either determined in isolation as assumed by truth value semantics, or are dependent on indefinite, all-inclusive contexts as regarded by pragmatics. From the cognitive point of view, however, meaning is the output of the dynamic and hierarchical processing within the conceptual frames or internal world models stored in the mind of interpreters. Mind processes linguistic information in both top-down and bottom-up fashions.The cognitivist theory of truth is no longer determined on sentential or propositional level as taken by logical positivism. Based on cognitive information processing approach of the model of mind, the dissertation argues that truth should be interfaced with discourses, that is to say, truth should be judged on discursive or textual level.Nevertheless, the cognitivist view of truth may fall into the relativism of truth since either the meaning of a word or a sentence is relative to a particular intellectual framework of world model. How to justify a scientific hypothesis or theory?Kuhn, as an exponent of the pragmaticism of truth, objects the correspondence theory of truth and denies scientific theories as truth. He claims that a scientific theory is only a useful "conceptual box", which can temporarily hold the natural phenomena. And he adheres to the viewpoint that the replacement of a new paradigm with the old one is not the consequence of rational argumentation but an irrational gestalt switch, which occurs all at once or not at all. The transfer of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm is a conversion experience.Lakoff and Johnson (1999) claim that their embodied scientific realism is compatible with Kuhnian tradition, because after scientific revolutions, the switch of paradigms is actually the replacement of new metaphors with the old ones, and hence an entire discipline is reconceptualized. The new metaphors are incommensurable with the old ones. But they cannot give grounds for why the scientific community is willing to accept the new metaphors and abandon the old ones.Popper, however, advocates critical rationalism and firmly believes in the progressiveness of science and the correspondence theory of truth. He insists that the scientific enterprise is the pursuit of truth or the process of getting closer to truth. The progress in science is achieved through rational criticism and discussion. He denies Kuhn's view of scientific revolution as an irrational gestalt switch by arguing that since scientific theories can be formulated linguistically, and that they can even be published and become objects open to investigation and criticism, different theories or paradigms can thus be rationally assessed. He criticizes Kuhnian paradigm theory as "the myth of framework".This dissertation thus contends that the justification of a scientific theory can be viewed as its acceptance by the scientific community as a coherent and understandable discourse or text. That is to say, acceptability of a scientific theory can be reduced to the coherence of its text.The contemporary textual coherence theories have undergone four stages of evolution with distinct approaches to textual studies: 1) the structuralist approach to textual structures and forms involved in study of textual grammars; 2) the pragmatic approach to textual coherence grounded on speech act theory; 3) semiological approach to textual study including the study of textual coherence based on systemic functional linguistic theory; 4) the cognitive approach to textual coherence. Obviously, the former three approaches are merely focused on the study of text proper in terms of forms or meangings but ignore the textual processors' mental factors or their cognitive structures. The cognitive approach to textual coherence theory is, nonetheless, unable to explain the coherence of revolutionary scientific texts, or it fails to pin down what constitutes the cognitive mechanism of the coherent interpretation or understanding of a text that enunciates a revolutionary scientific theory. Because on the one hand, the theories bringing about scientific revolutions generally run counter to commonsense, conventionality, normal or established epistemic frameworks, for instance, the six revolutionary physical theories: Copernicus's heliocentric theory, Galileo's law of falling body, Newton's law of universal gravitation, Faraday and Maxwell's electromagnetic theory, Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum theory. The cognitive linguistic theories are incompetent to explain the coherence of the above six revolutionary scientific discourses for the very reason that the cognitive semantics is theoretically founded on the Gestalt psychology and experientialist philosophy, which take the everyday experience and perceptions as the objects or sources for studying mental or cognitive structures. And the evidence for cognitive semantics is gathered primarily from ordinary language or natural language. Naturally, such a theory is only applicable to the explanation of the textual coherence of folk theories or other non-scientific knowledge, but is inadequate to elucidate why the revolutionary scientific texts are understandable, acceptable or meaningful.The experientialist view of mind claims that all knowledge including scientific knowledge stems from the embodied and imaginative mind and reason. As a matter of fact, however, the knowledge derived from embodied and imaginative thinking can only achieve the level of the primitive, empirical, elementary rules and techniques, which fall short of enunciating any systematic scientific theories with general principles. That is to say, the above mentioned six revolutionary scientific theories cannot solely be the results of embodied and imaginative thinking. The famous mathematical philosopher Morris Kline asserts that it is mathematics that guarantees the acceptance of those unconventional and anti-perceptual experience revolutionary scientific theories and it is only by mathematical means that the scientists can formulate or invent those theories.At odds over the experiential view of mathematics, which claims that mathematical thinking is embodied and imaginative by nature, this study comes to the following two inferences: on the one hand, most mathematical theories, especially those go beyond the arithmetic level, are not the products of embodied and imaginative cognition but the invention of the advanced capacities of rational mind. Mind is, therefore, not inherently embodied as claimed by experientialism, and mathematical thinking is largely disembodied and transcendental. On the other, most mathematical thought cannot be expressed with everyday language and mathematical language diverges from natural language substantively with its symbolic, brief, unambiguous, precise characters. Thus it is inappropriate or ill-advised to jump to the conclusion that the mathematical way of thinking is embodied and imaginative by only deriving its evidence from the ordinary linguistic expressions.The dissertation proceeds to challenge the experientialist view of mind-body issue with the argument that it overemphasizes the embodiment of mind but neglects the transcending capability of mind over bodily experience and perception. It is also pointed out that Lakoff & Johnson's boast of their challenge to the over two millenium Western classical philosophy is all the way an exaggeration.The thesis finally arrives at the following two conclusions: first, the corresponding relation between mind and reality, i.e. the truth problem, should be judged on discursive or textual level rather than on sentential one; second, the reason in mind is so transcendentally characterized that it can not only transcend the influence or constraints of linguistic structures but also can surpass the limitations of our bodily make-up and physiological function.Two new hypotheses pertaining to the LMR-relation are proposed, one is the three level of thought hypothesis, and the other is the hypothesis about the consciousness and societality of linguistic thought.In general, this dissertation makes the following seven aspects of contributions: firstly, it criticizes and raises objections to Whorfian linguistic relativity. Secondly, this study proposes that truth should be judged on discursive or textual level instead of on sentential one by refuting the logical positivist assertion on the logical isomorphism of language, mind and reality. Thirdly, the constructivist meaning theory of systemic functional linguistics is demonstrated to be fallacious in its view on scientific realism and the grammatical metaphor theory should not be used for justifying the relativism of truth. Fourthly, this dissertation disproves the experientialist views on mind, mind-body issue, reason, mathematics and the embodied scientific realism and defines the applicable scope of this philosophical theory. Fifthly, the statement given by Lakoff & Johnson about their challenge to Western thought is revealed to be hyperbolized. Sixthly, the argument for the transcendence of reason endorses Popper's epistemology of science and refutes Kunian paradigm theory as a "myth of framework". Finally, the dissertation delves deeper into the relation among language, mind and reality on the basis of the relevant research findings on the distinction between the linguistic thinking from imagery (or non-linguistic) thinking and the stratification of the four levels of abstract thinking, and unveils the source of the fallacy lying in views on scientific realism of the three influential linguistic theories.