Spatial and Linguistic “Edges”

Tallis contests the post-structuralist notion that all distinctions are linguistic, imported to reality by what we say about them. This, he thinks, oversimplifies a more complex situation. For some realities, the “edges” are determined by language, because those realities depend on classifications that we have brought to the real world. For other things – simple objects for instance – the edges are already there, and we just take note of them.

“Spatial and temporal edges are not amenable to being changed linguistically by reclassification, even though the unity of certain ‘complex’ objects may have been linguistically inspired in the first place. It may be, for example, that by calling his object a ‘cup’ I have picked it out from the background into which it was integrated when it was part of an unfocused sensory field. And the single, temporally delimited verbal toke I have used to signify it confers unity upon it. But there is a clear-cut difference between picking out a particular like a cup and picking out ‘ Liverpool ’ or picking out ‘justice.’ In the last case, there is an inescapable coincidence between the borders of the ‘object’ and the semantic catchment area of a particular word. In the case of the cup, however, spatial boundaries have priority and the object can be dissected out extra-linguistically. Justice, on the other hand, cannot be grasped in the hand and it cannot be thrown across a particular room. Not only can the cup be accessed non-linguistically, but it can be reclassified linguistically in an indefinite number of ways: as part of a set; as ‘a nasty cheap import’; as a ‘medium sized object’; as part of someone’s estate; and so on. Through all these classifications, it still retains its spatio-temporal identity. Language merely offers a multiplicity of access routes to what remains one and the same referent.”