To What Extent Does The Nature Of Language Illuminate Our Understanding Of The Relation Between Knowledge Of Ourselves And Knowledge Of Others?

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are to a great extent
communicable. This essay will concentrate on two aspects of language. Firstly
that it gives our own thoughts and those of others a certain degree of
portability and secondly that because it has a firm (though not rigid) set of
rules governing the relationships between symbols it allows what would otherwise
be internal concepts that could not be generalised, to be made explicit,
examined in detail and compared.

If we did not have language we would be able to surmise very little about other
humans around us. Non-verbal communication has evolved to instantaneously
communicate ones' emotional state, and generally succeeds in this, however
although it can reveal what a person may be feeling at a particular time, it
says nothing about why those feelings are present and in any case is most
reliable with strong emotions such as anger, fear, disgust &c. The less intense
the emotion the more vaguely it is portrayed. If we are aware of the events
preceeding the ...

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using language humans can vicariously partake of
the experiences of another (e.g. when one watches a play or a film or when one
listens to an account of a friends experience.) In short, language allows us
to make comparisons between our own thought processes and those of others which
in turn enables us to infer that the subjective experience of others is in many
cases similar to our own.

An important property of language is that it has rules governing the
relationships between its' constituent parts. Some of these rules are more
rigid than others which gives the system considerable overall flexibility. For
instance, there is a great difference between saying "You are not allowed to ...

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