How to Do Things with Silence

Haig Khatchadourian

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781501501463
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Aesthetics in Philosophy

This work is a detailed analytical study of different forms of silent doing. It explores a range of topics related to silence, including the theory of silent doing and its relationship to other forms of action and communication, silence and aesthetics, the ethics and politics of silence, and the religious dimensions of silence. The book, as an original contribution to analytical philosophy, should be of interest to philosophers and students.

Part I: Ways of “Doing”

1Informal ‘Logic’ and Contextual Meanings of Silence

1.1Forms of Doing

Acting, performing actions, speaking and writing, and being silent are all forms of doing: we do something or other when we perform an action, speak or write (perform a speech act), or are silent. In this treatise, therefore, I shall attempt to consider silence in relation both to speech acts and to action; noting parallels as well as significant differences between the latter two in relation to the first. Doing so will, I hope, illuminate all three, or illuminate them more than they would be if they are treated separately, as unrelated “activities.” It is, in fact, quite tempting for a philosopher (and this sort of move has been common in the history of philosophy) to expand the ordinary concept of silence in such a way that, rather than thinking of silence only as the absence of speech acts (or of sounds, including noise, in general), which is what ‘silence’ means in ordinary usage, we think of it, in its broadened sense, as including speechless action together with its (silent, unspoken or implicit) presuppositions and implications. To the attractiveness of such a move due to the fact that silence is like speech and action a form of doing, is added another attraction: namely, that the interpretation of the meaning and purpose, etc. of actions involves similar problems as the interpretation of silence; since meaning, purpose, and implications in both types of cases are contextual in nature. On that understanding, actions would be conceived as “silent acts”—the very opposite of conceiving silence as a special kind of “act” For example, the burning of the U.S. Flag would be conceived as a “silent” act of protest, or of testing the freedom of speech law, and so on; just as silence in the appropriate context can be an “act” of protest against something or other. Again, and connected with this, we may remember William James’ remark that every action implies a judgment. In the example of the burning of the U.S. flag as a form of protest, we can speak of that action as implying e.g. the judgment that the U.S. political system is oppressive, or the judgment that it is essential to test the validity of the laws that are supposed to protect the citizens’ freedom of speech; and so on. In terms of the notion of meaning, one could then say that the meaning (signification and significance) of the (particular) act of burning of the U.S. flag is unexpressed, unspoken, “silently expressed”

Note in these instances “silence” forms the context of and so holds (or may hold) a key to its interpretation of the action: the very reverse of silence in the ordinary sense, where the context of the silence is either some action or actions, or speech, or both, and holds (or may hold) a key to its interpretation or understanding.

A likely gain in conceiving silence (“silence”) in a generic way, rendering silence in the ordinary sense as well as speech acts and actions forms or species of it, is the distinct possibility of arriving at a unified theory which would increase our understanding of all three types of “activities” Nevertheless, the ends of clarity or the avoidance of the sorts of errors that such moves in the history of philosophy have brought in their wake are better served if we stick to the everyday meaning of ‘silence’; especially as the basis for a unified theory is present in ordinary language, in the form of the generic concept of “doing,” of which, as I said, silence, actions and speech acts are different forms of species.

The “semantics” and the “pragmatics” of the “'language’ of silence” are complex, the uses of silence well-nigh inexhaustible. Whether silence has any meaning to nonhuman animals, it plays manifold important roles in human relationships—in expression and communication—as well as in other spheres of human culture. Silence speaks to human beings with diverse voices. The ethical and aesthetic uses of silence alone are many and exceedingly important: in the latter case, notably in literature and theater, film, instrumental and vocal music, opera and dance. The uses and the meanings of silence in various senses of the word, such as “signification,” “symbolic meaning “ and “significance” in each of these art-forms or genres, and in specific works of art, can be the subject of very rewarding studies and would considerably illuminate the expressive resources of the particular art-form or genre. That in addition to the purely sensuous, “musical” contribution of silence to the auditory texture of music—e.g., to its rhythms and tempi, melodies and harmonies—and to the “verbal music” of a poem or a prose work; and so on. It is not surprising, therefore, that the aesthetic uses of silence in these art-forms or genres have long been the subject of scholarly and philosophical writing. The psychology of silence, on the other hand, is constantly utilized or portrayed in e.g., the pages of fiction writers, playwrights, and poets. What is surprising is that, as far as I know, we find virtually no studies in Western philosophy about the “logic” and “pragmatics” and, especially, the ethics and politics of silence. The present inquiry is intended to provide the beginnings of an endeavor to remedy the situation in philosophy; while the chapters on the aesthetics of silence in the arts and in nature, as well as in our inner life and in spiritual/religious life, are intended as modest additions to the extant literature.

Respecting the conceptual, philosophical questions occasioned by the multifarious uses of silence in human culture, the rest of this chapter will be devoted to the drawing of certain logical distinctions and to preliminary analysis of certain concepts necessary for a clear understanding of silence in any area of human culture, be it art, language, moral conduct, religion, and so on.

Silence, whether in human life or in nature, always exists in some context or situation; it is fundamentally and inescapably contextual. Noise, in many forms, is always with us—in the modern world, as “sound pollution,” often assaulting our ears out of the blue so to speak. The noise of a plane passing over our part of town is an example. But silence in human experience—and this is also true of most extant auditory art and often in the everyday employment of language—is often “framed” by or “embedded” in sound, including noise of various sorts; though sometimes it also constitutes a sound's framework or context, when prolonged and complete silence is “broken” or “punctuated” by sound. This, as we know, clearly affects the meaning(s) of silence for a particular perceiver or, correspondingly4, the meaning(s) of the sounds or noises in the particular context.

“Meanings” and Uses of Silence

Silence, like speech and action, “initiated” by a human being, whether by being silent, becoming silent, or breaking silence is frequently if not always significant or meaningful in some sense or senses of these terms.

A number of important meanings of ‘meaning’ silence can be readily distinguished in different contexts. They include (1) meaning in the sense of signification— in a sense of ‘meaning’ and ‘signification’ that in relation to silent acts is the counterpart of meaning/signification in relation to illocutionary/perlocutionary speech acts. In the case of speech-acts meaning consists of speaker- or utterer-meaning; i.e., what the speaker means in/by performing a particular illocutionary/perlocutionary speech act-in-context, not so-called linguistic meaning, the meaning that individual words or sentences of a given language have as such. Likewise in the case of acts of silence, (1) meaning-1 consists in meaning a particular silent person has in mind, what she means (or wants or intends to mean) in/by performing a silent act.5

In addition to meaning in sense (1), and by virtue of it, a silence-in-context may have meaning in the sense of (2) significance of one sort or another analogous to the sense in which linguistic utterances may have a particular significance. Silence may also have (3) symbolic meaning/significance. This sense of ‘meaning’ is important in relation to the aesthetic, political and religious uses of silence. A painting, a sculpture or an edifice—may itself refer symbolically to or include a symbolic reference, to silence.

Further, the word ‘silence’ or the concept silence may have (4) a metaphorical use. Indeed, silence can also function as (5) a sign or (6) a symptom or some special state or condition of the silent person. Since “symptoms” are psychophysical causal effects independent of the silent person’s, desires, intentions or will they significantly differ from the meanings distinguished in (1)–(4) above, which are meanings for the silent person herself and depend, as meanings, on what the silent person explicitly (or implicitly) intends to mean in the particular context (and if successfully conveyed, would be the meanings the audience would interpret or understand the silence to have). If a silent is prolonged and total, accompanied by certain physical or mental conditions, it may serve as a sign of temporary unconsciousness, coma, or death; while a person’s total silence about one’s past would likely be a sign (and perhaps also a symptom) of deeplying psychological-existential trauma, such as physical or sexual abuse or the traumas suffered by survivors of the Holocaust or other genocides. Again, in the case of what we call “silent or taciturn type” of person, her habitual silence may be a sign or indication of either introversion or extreme shyness. Protracted silence may also be a symptom of some physical illness or disease; or a symptom of some temporary or lasting pathological, psychological or mental condition, such as profound sorrow, sadness, depression, melancholia or even catatonia,6 etc. (See also Chapter 5, “Silent Minds”)

Since silence is a non-verbal act, a form of doing, it signifies, hence expresses and communicates through (7) suggestion or intimation. In addition, through silence one may (8) imply various ideas and thoughts, feelings, emotions or sentiments, desires, etc., by silence reinforced by appropriate looks or glances, facial expressions and suggestive movements—by body language in general. Now consider: “In keeping silent, he was trying to protect himself in court from self-incrimination,” where the defendant’s attempt to protect himself was the meaning of his silence in that situation. Here ‘meaning’ has the sense of “implication,” since silence does not and cannot literally state anything, hence mean in the way in which words can signify, in the primary dictionary sense of word-meaning (“meaning 1”). Only words, signs (e.g., in the sense of posters), signals (e.g. Morse signals) and verbal symbols can state something or other, hence mean in the primary sense. One interesting similarity between silence and speech that may be noted here is that just like speech, “body language” may sometimes “conflict” with or “contradict” rather than reinforce what one says. For instance, sarcasm or irony would become possible through a silent person’s consciously or unconsciously giving conflicting or contradictory signals through silence on the one hand and body language on the other. Although that does not constitute an additional sense or meaning of ‘meaning’ to those I have listed, I should mention what may be called “audience-meaning,” the meaning the audience understands or interprets a particular silence-in-context to express and communicate/miscommunicate.

As in the case of speech and action, the meaning of a given voluntary silence-in-context, in any of the preceding seven meanings of the word, may be ambiguous whenever the audience is unable to know which of two or more possible meanings is intended by the silence; as opposed to situations in which the silence is non-ambiguous and the audience understands its intended meaning. In the latter cases audience-meaning would be the same as the intended meaning. In the case of involuntary silence, where the silence functions as a sign or symptom the audience-meaning may or may not be correct. In the latter case it may be due to the ambiguity of the signs or symptoms shown by the silent person, or for other reasons.

It is clear that a silence’s non-ambiguity, hence the audience’s understanding of its meaning is necessary for the audience’s proper understanding and response, hence for the realization of the silence’s intended expressive and communicative goals. In contrast to ambiguity the concept of vagueness is inapplicable to the various sorts of meanings silence may have, though some elements in the silence’s context, such as the body language accompanying the silence, may be vague: fo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: Ways of "Doing"
• Part II: Aesthetics of Silence
• Part III: Ethics and Politics of Silence
• Part IV: Silence and the Spiritual/Religious Life
• Index
• Endnotes