The Perils of Nominalization
I have always been weary about the effects of nominalization on philosophy. I worry that our habit of forging nouns from verbs and adjectives give us little choice but to consider, analyze, and speak of non-entities as if they were things and substances. Might this lead some astray?
With the use of a suffix, a term once used to modify and give information about nouns can become the noun in our grammar, and henceforth, to be treated as one in our thoughts and expressions. Consciousness, happiness, mind, perception, being, life, experience, certainty, will and representation—some of the most perplexing philosophical questions are centered around nominalized terms, and as such, things and substances that do not exist beyond our musings.
It takes a sheer act of will, or might be impossible, to avoid nominalizing terms. It is a natural feature of many languages. But I propose that without at least recognizing a concept’s status as a nominalization beforehand, nominalizing verbs and adjectives may result in a sort of eliminative idealism, where these abstractions become primary to the extant beings they were once used to provide information about.
For example, consider the term “consciousness”, which has littered the expressions of philosophers, neuroscientists, and spiritual gurus alike. Attach the suffix “ness” to the adjective “conscious” and we have created a new element some panpsychists have deemed fundamental to the universe. Fair enough. But perhaps one reason the hard problem of consciousness is difficult is because nominalizations occupy the position and function of a noun in the question itself. Why are the “performances” of bodily functions accompanied by “experience” or “consciousness”? A short answer is: they aren’t. It would be accurate to say “the body experiences” or “the body is conscious”, but I cannot assume the body is accompanied by, or gives rise to, any thing worthy of occupying a noun position and function in the sentence.
These objections might all be pedantry on my part, but should philosophers try to avoid nominalizing verbs and adjectives lest they risk leading others astray?
With the use of a suffix, a term once used to modify and give information about nouns can become the noun in our grammar, and henceforth, to be treated as one in our thoughts and expressions. Consciousness, happiness, mind, perception, being, life, experience, certainty, will and representation—some of the most perplexing philosophical questions are centered around nominalized terms, and as such, things and substances that do not exist beyond our musings.
It takes a sheer act of will, or might be impossible, to avoid nominalizing terms. It is a natural feature of many languages. But I propose that without at least recognizing a concept’s status as a nominalization beforehand, nominalizing verbs and adjectives may result in a sort of eliminative idealism, where these abstractions become primary to the extant beings they were once used to provide information about.
For example, consider the term “consciousness”, which has littered the expressions of philosophers, neuroscientists, and spiritual gurus alike. Attach the suffix “ness” to the adjective “conscious” and we have created a new element some panpsychists have deemed fundamental to the universe. Fair enough. But perhaps one reason the hard problem of consciousness is difficult is because nominalizations occupy the position and function of a noun in the question itself. Why are the “performances” of bodily functions accompanied by “experience” or “consciousness”? A short answer is: they aren’t. It would be accurate to say “the body experiences” or “the body is conscious”, but I cannot assume the body is accompanied by, or gives rise to, any thing worthy of occupying a noun position and function in the sentence.
These objections might all be pedantry on my part, but should philosophers try to avoid nominalizing verbs and adjectives lest they risk leading others astray?
Comments (11)
I think that you’re describing a specific aspect to a problem most people already recognise: the problem of imprecise language. That is something that people try to address in everyday life and in philosophy to varying degrees of success and is combated mainly by being aware of the problem. It’s the same with the problem of bias or erroneous pattern recognition, perhaps inevitable or unavoidable in the end but none the less our best tool is awareness. Pitfalls of the human condition we best avoid by being aware and accounting for their existence.
So yes, philosophers should try to avoid what you describe and do indeed do them...maybe what you are noticing is how poorly it’s often done rather than a lack of inclination.
Quoting bongo fury
Quoting DingoJones
Sadly not...
I think not. Nominalising verbs or adjectives have the goal of creating complex words and then introduced it in our vocabulary. When we are speaking about consciousness, darkness, happiness etc... we are debating about something that happens in our lives. I guess it is not as simply as say “the body experiences” because somehow goes farther than it.
Maybe this is the beauty of our vocabulary. This exactly happens when we see a paint in a museum. Aren’t we do the same as nominalization? We create words which drives us in another world bigger than the tangible.
Consciousness is complex. Yes. But not only due to our vocabulary but all the information, doubts, theories and debates we can extract from it.
What do you mean? To me it’s sadder if it’s being done poorly , that means a bunch of people are out there making mistakes and creating confusion. Also, does that mean you think it’s being done well, in general?
... You did mean an inclination to avoid/reduce?
Ah, right. I phrased that poorly lol
That’s the problem I have: none of those can be categorized as a “something” in my view, so I’m left wondering what exactly in the universe we are speaking about.
Consider Nagel’s assumption that “we all believe that bats have experience”. Am I wrong to object and argue bats have nothing of the sort? that his famous essay is a round-about way of saying humans do not have bat bodies? Or should I forgive him this, and say “Well, it’s the limitations of language”?
I understand your point. No, of course you are not wrong. Probably I am even the wrong here. I guess we have the right of object and debate about everything about around us. The core situation here is not doubt about others theories because this is somehow inner in all philosophical works. But at the same time we don’t have to find the language as guilty because how complex could be.
People, themselves, are complex by nature. I don’t know how exactly explain it but I think humans love to do this. Complexity over complexity because we all always want to improve ourselves.
Maybe... ¿?
I'm not sure that changes anything.
My native language is very verb-centred. It's a language that allows for a great variety of word formation patterns; and pretty much anything can be said with a verb.
On the whole, I don't have the impression that this changes anything about the problem you talk about.
In the end, if one wishes to talk about something, one will have to use words for it -- whether it's nouns, verbs, or adjectives, or other categories of words.
How (unnecessarily) abstract or awkward a particular word (esp. a newly formed one) will seem seems to have more to do with how the particular word formation pattern by which the word was formed is experienced by fluent speakers of said language, rather than whether it's a noun, a verb, or an adjective.
For example, English, in comparison with Slavic languages, has a relatively poor fund of endings and other affixes for making new words out of existing ones. So making new words with affixes in English perhaps feels more awkward to English speakers than making new words with affixes in Slavic languages feels to Slavic speakers.
Another thing that comes to mind is that English is such a mixture of many languages with so many words that have been borrowed from other languages that words that talk about the same theme aren't necessarily also etymologically related.
Pairs such as this come to mind: Slovene "hrana - hranljiv" vs. English "food - nutritious" (as opposed to "foody" or some such). For some foreign learners, this is an awkward feature of English, and I imagine that English natives have some difficulty with that too.