Language’s naming habit makes people mistake fictitious entities for real ones
Evidence
Real entities being the objects for the designation of which, in the first place, at the earliest stage of human intercourse, and in virtue of the most urgent necessity, words, in the character of names, were employed, – between the idea of a name and that of the reality of the object to which it was applied, an association being thus formed, from a connexion thus intimate, sprung a very natural propensity, viz. that of attributing reality to every object thus designated; – in a word, of ascribing reality to the objects designated by words, which, upon due examination, would be found to be nothing but so many names of so many fictitious entities. — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 404
Categorization
- XREF: This name-to-reality propensity is exactly what lets the panopticon’s fictional omnipresence be taken as real — the institution’s power depends on this cognitive slip Bentham names here. — connects to: Mental faculties like will and memory are fictitious entities, not real ones. — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 364; Past, present, and future names correspond to nothing real in the world — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 611; Language enables meanings rather than passively carrying them (+3 more)
Related
- Mental faculties like will and memory are fictitious entities, not real ones. (similarity 0.84)
- Past, present, and future names correspond to nothing real in the world (similarity 0.82)
- No higher language could exist without the fiction that dresses abstractions as real (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Language can distort as well as transmit human culture
#expands(0.85) - Past, present, and future names correspond to nothing real in the world
#corroborates(0.82) — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 611 - Meaning arises from articulating linguistic systems rather than reflecting the world
#expands(0.78) - Language enables meanings rather than passively carrying them
#expands(0.75)