Com 520 - Philosophy of Communication - Week 03

Week 03

A transmission view of communication functions on the idea of accurately conveying ideas between people.  A ritualistic view is the idea of the sharing in common experiences.  Transmission theory is dominant in modern discourse, but the ritualistic view is always in play.  Common sources such as the news, the weather, sports, movies, television and traditions are examples of how we participate in communal activities.  Civil communication is the common use of language as applied to everyday discourse.  Philosophical communication is specific to how we transfer genuine knowledge to someone else.

Heidegger believed humans are aware of our existence, but we cannot define it.  This is our being.  He also understood that humans are aware of a larger existence outside our being.  It is an existence that was present before us, and something that will exist beyond us.  We live relative to the larger existence and death.  The awareness of something larger than our self is the otherness of being.

The unknown compels us to give it meaning.  As we experience things we give them symbolic references.  We then use critical thinking skills and language to give the references meaning.  In other words, the uncertainty of life compels us to use thought and language to construct the unknown into the known, or into being.

Mystery is a thing not revealed, or the unknown. The unknown captivates the mind and is the fuel for creativity.  Creativity is how we form meaning and it’s the forge of human understanding.  We can inform and choose how we engage creativity and thereby we can choose how to understand and express our world.   This is my prior personal view and approach to creativity that seems to parallel nicely with this week’s reading on communication. Dewey and Heidegger have deepened my understanding with the infusion of language and how we construct our realities relative to life’s larger themes and an uncertain future.

I share their view that reason and language overlay deeper modes of thought, and that language shapes our experiences and allows us to communicate them with others. Hyde prompted the idea that words used to express experiences such as love, beauty, truth and justice cannot be truly defined.  Definitions are for singular concepts, but fail to encompass the complexities of all the senses and emotions involved with a continual set of experiences.      

References

Hyde, M.J. (2007). Searching for Perfection. In P.A. Arneson. Perspectives on Philosophy of Communication (pp. 23-36). West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.

Radford, G.P. (2005). On the Philosophy of Communication.  South Bank, Vic., Australia: Thomson Wadsworth.