[MD] Truth and Language

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Ron]
Therefore pre-lingual societies DID have notions of truth yet they 
did not have a universal concept of truth.

[Arlo]
Have to jump in here, as this touches on something that interests me greatly.

I think the use of "pre-lingual" is misleading, and if we substitute 
instead "pre-semiotic" we'd see that there is no such thing as a 
"pre-semiotic society", as semiosis itself derives from the 
inter-subjectivity (or inter-intentionality) of two (or more) 
biological agents. "Language", although by far the most ubiquitous, 
is but one form semiosis takes. When we think of "language", most 
still consider "words" (spoken or written), perhaps some iconography 
or representational form, but mostly "speaking, reading and/or writing".

Many contemporary semioticians (consider Umberto Eco or Michael Agar) 
instead argue that its better to broaden the totality of semiotic 
engagements into (what Agar calls) "languaculture", which includes 
semiosis occuring through art, dance, music, larger cultural 
metaphors, etc. In other words, while a society can be "pre-lingual" 
(in the sense of shared mediation via aural "sounds"), it can never 
be "pre-semiotic" since the very notion of semiosis demands 
inter-intentionality (something an isolated being simply will never 
experience).

Seen this way, pre-semiotic organisms would not have any "notions of 
truth", only a vague sense of "betterness" (strictly defined within 
its biological reality). It was not until (going by Tomasello) the 
first biological beings deep in pre-history shared an "AHA!" moment 
when their evolving brains afforded them to recognize the 
intentionality of "others", and not until that moment did "notions of 
truth" exist.