Is English language innately SOMitic?
How can we decide whether SOMitic language is problematic for Millennium III?

For this month's QQA, we want to reuse a few existing resources from our Quantonics web site. For example, rather than reestablishing foundations of English language here in this small space, we will typify English language fundamentals using G. E. Hughes' list of John Buridan's explicit assumptions regarding propositional logic.

We see Buridan's assumptions as representative of modern English and Western culture's daily uses of English language for every day thinking, reasoning and communication. In our derived list we show 48 different Buridan assumptions. It is important to understand, even though we use our English language habitually, that we adhere and apply a list of explicit axioms, like those listed above. Further, that if we do not, and to the extent we do not, we reduce our ability to (classically) convey our thoughts and reason to others.

In some cases, we may delve deeply into Buridan's detail, however, in general, we will concentrate on this abbreviated list of English language assumptions to answer our May, 2000 QQA:

1.	English language's primary constituents are formally structured propositions: i.e., sentences, fragments, clauses or phrases.
2.	Constituents of English language propositions are words and punctuation.
3.	Constituents of words and punctuation are alphabetic and special characters, and sometimes numeric characters.
4.	English language is conventional among its practitioners: I.e., it follows standard, but evolving dictionary (semantics), grammar (accepted types of use), syntax (conventional sentence structures), and logic (e.g., our Buridan list above). English language's dictionary, grammar, syntax, and logic compose one linguistic axiom set.
5.	English language word types are: noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, conjunction, article, and preposition. (Word types may be complex, i.e., phrases or clauses may represent word types.)
6.	English language sentences describe and relate things (classical objects) and nonthings (classical subjects). This English language reasoning by juxtaposition of subjects and objects, we call: 'dialectic,' or 'dialectical reasoning.'
7.	English language sentences may be conventionally and dialectically assessed: absolutely true, absolutely false, or indeterminate. I.e., when properly used in a finite yet ostensibly global context, English language can conventionally educe correct and unambiguous communication among its practitioners.

Given our list of Buridan's explicit assumptions and our simplified list of modern English language assumptions, let's try to answer our May, 2000 QQA's first part, "Is English language innately (i.e., by intentional, anthropocentric design) SOMitic?"

But Doug, you ask, "What do you mean by 'SOMitic?'"

First of all SO in SOM stands for Subject-Object (M is Metaphysics which means literally, that branch of philosophy which studies reality and its nature.). See assumption 6 in our table above. If you agree with assumption 6, then we may infer you agree that English language is SOMitic.

Also, reader, much of our site dedicates itself to answering your question, but we can provide a simplified list of statements which describe what it means for any language to be SOMitic, i.e., a language is SOMitic if:

1. It is used to dialectically describe and manipulate classical subjects and classical objects.
2. Its practitioners intuit reality conventionally as classically subjective and objective.
3. Its constituents are conventionally classically subjective and objective.

Darn it Doug, "What do you mean by subjects and objects, and subjective and objective?"

Aha! Reader, your question offers opportunity, it offers crux! Let me ask you some questions. I will group these questions into two groups. After you read both groups of questions, decide which group is about objects and is thus objective, and which group is about subjects and thus subjective.

Group 1:

1. Which ball is larger?
2. How many pages are in your new book?
3. Does your house have a basement?

Group 2:

1. Why do you wish you could own a new Dodge Viper?
2. How do American Indians perceive reality as simultaneously animate and inanimate?
3. What do you mean, you can smell blue?

A SOMitic language assumes that our list of questions in Group 1 may be assessed objectively absolutely true or absolutely false. A SOMitic language assumes our list of questions in Group 2 may only be assessed subjectively, and any attempts to assess them objectively leads to 'logical' folly. Practitioners call objective assessments in a SOMitic language, "Reasonable, logical, sensible, noncontradictory, etc." By dialectical comparison, practitioners call subjective assessments in a SOMitic language, "Unreasonable, illogical, absurd, contradictory, etc."

What we see in our two lists of questions above are examples of classicism's great dichotomy or schism. Classical foundations of thought assume a split twixt Subject(s) and Object(s). We call this classical split "Subject-Object Metaphysics, or SOM."

How did this SOM split arise? About 2500 years ago, ancient Greeks intuited that for one class of questions, e.g., Group 1, they could apparently assess absolute truth. But for another class of questions, e.g., Group 2, they apparently could not assess absolute truth. In their minds, they promoted truth-bearing assessments and demoted their counterpart 'opposites.'

These Greeks asked themselves, "What is different between these two classes of questions? Why can we apparently assess absolute truth in one case and not in its counterpart?" They concluded that Group 1 classes of questions refer substantial things, or objects, and Group 2 classes of questions refer that which is insubstantial.

From this we arrive at modern Classical Thing-king Methods (CTMs), based on a SOM dichotomy of substantial versus insubstantial, object versus subject, objective versus subjective. CTMs promote objective thinking and demote subjective thinking. Why? Because objective thinking allows its practitioners to assess truth, and subjective thinking does not. Well, at least that is what CTMs assume. For comparison, see also QTMs.

In Quantonics, we think modern English language is SOMitic because it manifests extreme bias in favor of SOM's great schism. To go even further, we claim that English language breaks when one removes its underlying classical assumptions. What do we mean by 'breaks?' We mean that English language assessment of objective truth fails when we remove its underlying classical assumptions.

Let's take a look at how its underlying assumptions constrain English language.

Perhaps English language's greatest constraint is what we call its "SOM wall." What does English language's SOM wall do?

1. Imposes an either/or mindset on its practitioners.
2. Retains bivalence as means of logical decision-making.
3. Introduces simple negation as truth's only complement, i.e., "opposites are complementary."
4. Predisposes its practitioners to oppositional argumentation. (dialogue, debate, etc)
5. Chooses true/right versus false/wrong based upon absence of contradiction.
6. Encourages practitioners to discard subjective, and thus insubstantial concepts.
7. Encourages practitioners to revere objective, and thus substantial concepts.
8. Uses nouns, pronouns, articles, and prepositions to name or refer objects.
9. Uses verbs, adverbs, and adjectives to act upon or modify objects.
10. Encourages practitioners to strongly associate object references with objects themselves so that symbols may 'stand for' objects in English sentences/propositions.
11. Deludes practitioners that, since English language adheres one conventional set of linguistic axioms, sentences' semantics are unilogical within that convention.
12. Induces inference that only known 'reality' is objective, and treats all newly discovered stuff subjectively.
13. Adheres Aristotelian syllogistic logical 'laws.'
14. Insists that referred objects and their linguistic names or referents:
    1. Are stable while practitioners refer them.
    2. Change only via uniform motion in homogeneous time.
    3. Have property of localability. See lisr.
    4. Have property of isolability.
    5. Have property of separability.
    6. Have property of reducibility.

Beyond those many constraints, we can see English language's SOM wall appears as space or some other punctuation between words. Here are three words with SOM walls shown between them:

word | word | word

or

word word word

We can observe many SOMitic aspects of English language with just this simple construct of a sentence fragment:

• Notice an assumption of sentence linearity: words read left to right. By convention, words are never read right to left (like Hebrew), or vertically (like oriental languages), or diagonally, or above or below our working surface.
• Notice how each word is uniquely separated from others in our sentence by punctuation. Each word is itself a localable, isolable, separable, reducible SOMitic object.
• Notice an assumption of word linearity: characters form words left to right. No other convention is allowed.
• Notice an assumption of words in sentences and characters in words as dyadically related objective monads. In both cases, immediate word or character context is bidirectional and unidimensional. (Has this linguistic syntax carried over into English speaking humans' basal interpretations of reality? Has a purely arbitrary linguistic syntax biased and extremely limited our abilities to experience and understand reality?)
• We can go on and on here, but we think we have made our point.

We can cite countless examples, other than SOM's wall, of how its underlying assumptions constrain English language and its practitioners. For example, its assumption of one global and conventional context for any consistent assessment of truth. We will discuss several of these in next month's QQA. But for now let us be satisfied with our list of SOM wall constraints to help us answer our May, 2000 QQA.

So how do we answer our first part of our May, 2000 QQA, "Is English language innately SOMitic?" Simply, we answer, "Yes, indubitably yes!" Our evidence above shows that English language is without doubt classically objective.

What about second part of our May, 2000 QQA, "How can we decide whether SOMitic language is problematic for Millennium III?"

This answer is easier, if you will allow us just one assumption. We, in Quantonics, assume that reality is not classically objective, rather we assume reality is quantum. We assume quantum reality's constituents are quantons, not classical objects!

If you accept our assumption, then you probably agree with our answer to part two of our May, 2000 QQA:

"First of all, we can (we are capable to) decide whether SOMitic language is problematic for Millennium III.

"How can we decide?

"Simply by stating that Western culture's English language and its assumptions and its innate axiom set are incapable of describing and relating quantum reality for its practitioners! Why? Because quantum reality's basal constituents are not dialectical subjects and objects! Quantum reality is not a dialectical reality!"

To exemplify a quantum language metaphor/meme vis-à-vis a classical language idea/concept, we can show you a neural network probability chart which depicts 'ideal' binary (i.e., true/false, black/white, right/wrong) thing-king vis-à-vis 'ideal' dialectical thing-king vis-à-vis more quantum real sophist/rhetorical thinking. See our Quantum Stage as Neural Net with Reserve Energy. Graphically we depict this comparison in our How Classicists View Reality? web page. Doug - 12May2003.

In next month's (June, 2000) QQA, we will continue our discussion of English language's quantum problematics.

Thanks for reading,

Doug.