What can we say
about what we say?
Do the limits of our language
delimit our world,
or meanings
our understandings?
Must a certain meaning
preclude its opposite
of necessity
– to avoid contradiction
and place logic in charge
of truth?
Mike Laidler
Language
Philosophy Alive
Philosophy is the idea that carries the present into the future, and it stays alive by being re-cast in the mind that is the future’s future. But it is the way of language, not philosophy, to further itself in the endless dissection of what has been said. For no analysis of language has uncovered the real world. Also, no record of things said lets us know what to say next. Nor is our recognition of the past masters sufficient to show us what is to come.
Mike Laidler
Meaning’s meanderings
What a wonder of nature is the human kind
What a form of being
How broad in outlook
Though how abject in insight
Yet we deign to take the measure of it all
by the yardstick of our understanding
And explain it – within the limits we bestow
on knowledge set to language.
Mike Laidler
Translations
Every word is a translation of a meaning, which we change by degrees when translating words into words, believing the words to be the source of meanings to be discovered. And so we find ourselves actively exploring what we have to say in the process of saying it.
Yet all the words ever stated and yet to be stated cannot encompass the meanings by which we bring them to life. And so we are able to debate interminably the meaning of what was said, sometimes admitting: ‘I think what I am saying is ….’.
Mike Laidler
Philosophy Alive 