Lars Löfgren

    PHENOMENA OF LANGUAGE AND PHENOMENA OF PHYSICS

    In ordinary linguistic activity, such as describing what we see, we hardly notice that a language is being involved. We tend to be under the impression that language is universal, or totally self referential, and cannot then see or observe it, at least not the way we see or observe physical objects.

    Certain deeper questions, however, which arise not only from a linguistic outset but also from a physical end, enforce conceptualization of a full phenomenon of language (i.e., not of fragments of it like an easily seen grammar, etc). What then results is a holistic, comptementaristic conception of language, which encompasses particular species like genetic language, programming languages, formal languages, cerebral languages, and external communication languages.

    Starting out from a holistic end, we have obtained the following views of a linguistic complementarity, namely:

      1) as descriptional incompleteness: in no language, its interpretation process can be completely described in the language itself;

      2) as a tension between describability and interpretability within a language;

      3) as degrees of partiality of self-reference (introspection) within a language: complete self-reference within a language is impossible;

      4) as a principle of "non-detachability of language".

    Starting out from a physical end, Finkelstein and Rössler have proposed an endo-exo-physical perspective. They consider Bohr's doctrine that there is no quantum universe but a partition separating a quantum part of the universe that is being determined, the endosystem, from the vaster part that is determining it, the exosystem. The idea is then (as I have understood) to extend the endosystem by certain relativistic schemes, thereby approaching a holistic view(beginning to include phenomena of language?).

    We have previously been able to relate the linguistic complementarity with Bohr's primary view of complementarity in quantum mechanics, namely as a tension between definability and observability. Now, the question if, and how, the endo-physical scheme can be compared with the views of the linguistic complementarity is considered in terms of a reducibility concept which allows reduction between complementaristically conceived entities.

    An associated problem is whether information, in its full-fledged linguistic sense, can be reduced into a physical concept. To that end we suggest how information types are to be related with degrees of partiality of self-reference. We illuminate a recent question concerning algorithmic information theory and Gödel incompleteness.