Dream of Language

I just awoke from a dream that I thought was pretty interesting, inwhich posed a point to ponder.

I was talking to someone who took the form of my cousin for some reason and he told me, "A cake is a cake." I agreed with him, but shortly replied, "A cake is not a cake," as I realized that a cake is not the word "cake," but something much more. He agreed with me and said, "Yes, a cake is a cake and it is also not a cake."

I then understood this like a realization and began to speak my interpretation of it back to this person I had familiarized with my cousin. I said something like, "So, human language is greatly flawed, there are many things we cannot portray through spoken or written text and for this reason we will never be able to properly communicate through textual language... ever."

I got to say that this left me something to think about. I believe its true and quite obvious that people are misunderstood all the time. There are more meanings than we have words for.

Anyway, Im still thinking about this dream and I thought it was interesting enough to post on here and see what anyone else thinks of it.

[edit on 8-4-2009 by Wisen Heimer]

I believe it was William Shakespeare who best said it "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

Language is just a common consensus of labels, which is probably the most simplistic understanding of it. Unfortunately it also serves to pidgeon-hole ideas into words and so yes, it has it's limits.

Re: Wisen Heimer

Very profound dream, but here's one for you, is this statement true: [(1+1=2)=(1+1=10)]? This is the mathmatical equivalent to your cake. Believe it or not, there is a condition where this statement is true, care to give it a shot?

Well, I'll give. Don't want anyone blowing a fuse. This statement: [(1+1=2)=(1+1=10)] is true if the first summation is in Digital and the second is in Binary. It is untrue if they are both in the same Base, so there is extra contextual conditionality applied to this statment as well as the analogy of the cake. We can chalk this cognative illusion up to the ambiguity of language.

right. Words and numbers lack expression or meaning. One must apply his own interpretation and this could be the exact opposite of what the author was even trying to get across.

[edit on 13-4-2009 by Wisen Heimer]