As I’d meant to in my last post on Wittgenstein but ended up writing something completely different, I wish to focus our considerations to the way in which words might first be associated with their meaning. Before we are able to understand language, and so learning cannot be by language (as one who does understand language might), we must have some predisposition to associating words with meanings. We see people yammering, and we have some way of thinking to ourselves “What’s that?” and so seeing what is being pointed out. But this requires some intrinsic attachment to the idea of pointing. Therefore, there is some intrinsic virtue of Pointing. (What I call “Pointing” is only analogous to, say, pointing with one’s finger; while this is certainly an instance of “Pointing,” there are other ways in which we signify or cause to associate.)
With language as a medium of learning, this operates on the assumption that something has already been Pointed, so that some association that has been established is utilized to span the gaps between what wasn’t known but now is. If there were no Pointing, then it shouldn’t be possible for one to be inducted into the circle of language, as language operates on the assumption that one understands the principle of association that one operates in understanding the meaning of words, i.e. attaching some directed-towards phenomena with its term, like how “snow” refers to snow. Our understanding of Pointing is not itself learned, for how should it be except by Pointing? You can’t get at Pointing without Pointing, implying that our perception of Pointing is ready to occur in our structuring of the world.
Pointing is built into our understanding of the world. But this is really to say that we cannot remove intentionality; Pointing is the assumption that something has intentionality, some directedness, in order to explain what is perceived. Without intentionality, all sense is removed from the phenomena of language and meaning. Therefore, intentionality cannot be discounted, not without opening oneself to a fundamental contradiction. The fact of Pointing is irreducible and derives our understanding of the world.
This brings us around to indexicality, which will be touched upon soon.
