Steve Watson

Remnant Auras of Absent Terms

In discussion, a friend proposed that the use of the via negativa might be defended even if it lacks logical or rational justification by supposing that there is an ‘aura’ that is associated with certain words and which remains when they have been definitionally negated in pursuit of some ‘deeper’ understanding, or in recognition that no finite understanding is possible. I thought that was an interesting idea but wasn’t quite sure what this ‘aura’ could be.

The previous discussion had covered the fact that the Greek aura or aurh was a breeze, esp. a cool breeze from water, cognate with ahr, meaning air or a morning mist, and by ways that are not too clear came to mean an emanation of some subtle fluid from a body, and then the subtle substance surrounding a body. Comparisons had been made with the idea of a halo in Classical and Christian iconography, by which the spiritual worth of a hero is displayed. In that case the power of the saint is imagined as flowing out of him and surrounding him, but more like light from a flame than like air from a lake. The same concept is found in the Persian farr (khvareneh) (‘glory’) and the Mesopotamian melam(mu) and doubtless in other places. None of this, however, provides any clue how to go beyond the level of metaphor.

I suggested that the aura desired might be understood as one of the several semantic (?) properties that Frege identified as contributing to the meaning, broadly understood, of terms. The clearest explanation of these can be found  in Dummett’s Frege. Unfortunately, Frege wasn’t particularly interested in making these peripheral issues altogether coherent, so there’s quite a bit of confusion concerning terminology. The general idea is clear enough though. On p. 2 of that text Dummett says

Frege distinguished two elements in the meaning of a sentence or expression, for one of which he reserved the word ‘sense’ (‘Sinn’), and for the other of which we might use the word ‘tone’ (‘illumination’ [‘Beleuchtung’] and ‘colouring’ [‘Färbung’] being the words Frege himself used for this latter). He explained the difference in this way: to the sense of a sentence belongs only that which is relevant to determining its truth or falsity; any feature of its meaning which cannot affect its truth or falsity belongs to its tone. Likewise, to the sense of an expression belongs only that which may be relevant to the truth or falsity of a sentence in which it might occur; and element of its meaning not so relevant is part of its tone.

And on p 85 he says

[Frege] accounts for tone as a matter of the association with a word or expression of certain ‘ideas’ (Vorstellung), by which he means mental images.

That idea won’t fly for reasons Dummett goes through. For example, Frege says that ‘dead’ and ‘deceased’ differ only in tone, but it’s hard to believe that there are associated mental images which distinguish them. Worse, the terms ‘and’ and ‘but’ supposedly differ in tone and/but it’s hard to imagine that there even are associated mental images.

On the other hand, supposing that ‘dead’ and ‘deceased’ differ in the expectations of context of occurrence or in their associated (non-imagistic) ideas might very well work. Those expectations and associations might also be able to do the work that we want the ‘aura’ to do for terms such as ‘God’ which are semantically eviscerated on the via negativa . (Now there’s a mental image to savour.)