(Albert Einstein, slightly but relevantly misquoted.[i])
For us it is the circumstances under which he had such an experience that justify him in saying in such a case that he understands, that he knows how to go on….This will become clearer if we interpolate the consideration of another word, namely “reading.”… The use of this word in the ordinary circumstances of our life is of course extremely familiar to us. But the part the word plays in our life, therewith the language-game in which we employ it, would be difficult to describe even in rough outline. (Wittgenstein, 1953: p. 61e, §§155-156)
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe. (Carroll, 1988)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
3. Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Legibility and Reading
4. Legibility, Reading, and The Falsity and Impossibility of Strong AI
This essay will be published in three installments; this second installment contains section 3.
You can also download and read or share a .pdf of the complete text of this essay HERE.
3. Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Legibility and Reading
In this section, I’ll propose a set of fairly precise necessary and sufficient conditions for legibility and reading.
As I mentioned in section 2, according to the Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary, “character” is defined as
a printed or written letter, symbol, or distinctive mark. (Hawkins and Allen, 1991: p. 247)
In view of that, then I’ll again define a text as any sequence of one or more characters, where a one-character sequence is the lower-bound limiting case, and there’s no upper bound on the number of characters. In turn, what I’ll call a text-in-L is defined as any sequence of one or more characters belonging to a particular language L. It’s important to note that a language L can contain some characters (hence also some texts) that belong to one or more different languages L2, L3, L4, etc. So, for example, English contains some letters, words, and sentences belonging to other languages, including Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian, etc.
Then, I’ll provide necessary and sufficient conditions for legibility in two parts, as follows:
1. A text T-in-L is legible if and only if T-in-L satisfies the perceptibility condition, the syntactic condition, and the semantic condition, and
2. all and only such texts-in-L have legibility.
The perceptibility condition says that the basic orientable (i.e., intrinsically directional, for example, up-down, back-front, or right-left) spatial shape and structure of T-in-L must be at least minimally perceptually detectable, i.e., that T-in-L must be at least partially perceptually detectable, hence it’s not completely perceptually undetectable, and thereby T-in-L is able-to-be-scanned to at least that minimal extent. For example, if a text is completely blacked out, erased, otherwise completely smudged out or obscured, invisibly small, or so big that its shape cannot be perceived, then it’s perceptually undetectable and illegible. But on the other hand, as it were, even if a text T-in-L is right-to-leftàleft-to-right mirror-reversed and turned upside down, like this one in English—
it’s still able-to-scanned to the minimal extent that it’s not completely undetectable; and indeed, with a little effort, one can see that in fact it’s an upside-down enantiomorph of the extremely interesting English sentence I dubbed The Lector Sentence in section 2—
1. You, the reader of this very sentence,
can’t either coherently or self-consistently
deny that it’s self-evidently true that
you’re reading this very sentence.
in explicit comparison-&-contrast with the classical Liar Sentence.
The syntactic condition says that T-in-L must be at least minimally well-formed, i.e., that T-in-L must be at least partially well-formed, hence it’s not completely ill-formed, and thereby T-in-L is able-to-be-parsed to at least that minimal extent. For example, even if a text T-in-L is perceptually detectable, it can be completely jumbled, completely misspelled, or completely ungrammatical, or its characters can be completely randomly distributed, and in any of those ways it would be syntactically illegible. Indeed, ciphers or secret codes (as opposed to hidden messages in otherwise legible texts) are designed to approach syntactic illegibility, on the working assumption that the more illegible they are, the harder they are to break; so if there are some ciphers that have never been broken and all their creators are dead, or, more thought-experimentally, if there were a cipher created by intelligent non-human aliens that, even in principle, could never be broken by rational human animals, then they would be illegible in the syntactic sense. Therefore, a text-in-L’s satisfying the perceptibility condition, as such, is not itself independently sufficient for readability and thus it’s not itself independently sufficient for being the target of any actual or possible act or process of reading.
And the semantic condition says that the conceptual content and/or essentially non-conceptual content of T-in-L must be at least minimally coherent, i.e., that the conceptual content and/or essentially non-conceptual content of T-in-L must be at least partially coherent, hence not completely incoherent, and thereby the conceptual content and/or essentially non-conceptual content of T-in-L is able-to-be comprehended to at least that minimal extent. For example, even if a text is minimally perceptible and also minimally well-formed, nevertheless it can still violate minimal requirements of conceptual sortal correctness and/or essentially non-conceptual sortal correctness, or be strictly non-referential, and be semantic gibberish, hence be illegible in the semantic sense, like this non-poetical text-in-English, a paradigm case of sortal incorrectness, devised by Bertrand Russell (Russell, 1940: p. 166)—
quadruplicity drinks procrastination
or this famous poetical text-in-English, a paradigm case of strict non-referentiality, taken from Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, that I quoted as the second epigraph of this essay—
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe. (Carroll, 1988)
Therefore, that text from Jabberwocky’s satisfying the perceptibility condition together with the syntactic condition, yet also failing the semantic condition, shows that the first two conditions are not themselves conjointly sufficient for readability and thus that they’re not themselves conjointly sufficient for being the target of any actual or possible act or process of reading. Of course, millions of people, including you, the reader of this very Investigation, have in some sense or another “read” that text from Jabberwocky; but my way of explaining away this apparent inconsistency is just to point out that Jabberwocky is indeed legible in both the perceptible and synactic senses (so in two senses, readable), but illegible in the semantic sense (so in one sense, unreadable), hence not legible in all relevant senses, hence illegible by my contextual definition, or conceptual analysis, of legibility. The same point holds, mutatis mutandis, for “quadruplicity drinks procrastination” and all other essentially similar texts-in-L: you can “read” it in two senses (the perceptible sense and the syntactic sense), but strictly speaking, it’s illegible according to the necessary and sufficient conditions of legibility, precisely because it fails the semantic condition.
Assuming all of that so far, I’m now in a position to provide precise necessary and sufficient conditions for the act or process of reading. In the following contextual definition, or conceptual analysis, by person I mean rational human minded animal: namely, a living human organism that’s capable of (i) consciousness (i.e., subjective experience), (ii) self-consciousness (i.e., second-order consciousness of first-order consciousness), (iii) caring (i.e., desire, feeling, and emotion), (iv) sensibility (i.e., sense-perception, memory, and imagination), (v) all other modes of cognition, including conceptualization, thinking, judgment, logical inference, theorizing, and a posteriori or a priori knowledge and (vi) free will and practical agency (see, e.g., Hanna, 2015, 2018a, 2018b, 2018c, 2020). Then, I’ll provide necessary and sufficient conditions for reading in two parts, as follows:
1. A person P reads a text T-in-L if and only if P consciously or self-consciously at least minimally scans, at least minimally parses, and also at least minimally comprehends T-in-L, and
2. all and only such acts or processes are reading.
It’s important to note that, consistently with this contextual definition, or conceptual analysis, of reading, a person P can read a text T-in-L either aloud or silently to themselves. It’s also important to note that neither scanning, nor parsing, nor comprehending, need be self-consciously or reflectively performed: this can be done in a more-or-less or even altogether pre-reflectively or unself-consciously conscious way; indeed, we typically “look right through” what we’re reading in order to go directly to the meaning (whether sense, reference, or speech-act uptake) of what we’re reading, and altogether overlook the scanning, parsing, and comprehending dimensions of the act or process of reading itself. In order to bring those dimensions back into view, all you have to do is to repeat any text-in-L—for example, a sentence or word—out loud a few times (say, ten times) until it sounds strangely bereft of meaning; that strange absence-of-meaning has then become vividly manifest to you precisely because the perceptibility and syntax of that particular text-in-L have been temporarily self-consciously detached from what you’ve been previously been pre-reflectively and unself-consciously yet still consciously comprehending.
And it’s also important to note that the point I made above about “readers” of Jabberwocky and “quadruplicity drinks procrastination” goes, mutatis mutandis, for my contextual definition, or conceptual analysis, of reading: of course, millions of people, including you, the reader of this very essay, are in some sense or another “readers” of that text from Jabberwocky; and no doubt a few thousand people have read “quadruplicity drinks procrastination”; but my way of explaining away this apparent inconsistency too, is just to point out that Jabberwocky and “quadruplicity drinks procrastination” can indeed be read in both the perceptible and synactic senses (so in two senses, that’s reading), but cannot be read in the semantic sense (so in one sense, that’s not reading), hence it’s not reading in all the relevant senses, hence it’s not reading by my contextual definition, or conceptual analysis, of reading.
These necessary and sufficient conditions for legibility and reading, when taken together with the logic of legibility, amount to the basics of a theory of legibility and reading. To be sure, in the interests of full philosophical disclosure, I must admit that for the purposes of these analyses and this theory, I’ve presupposed (i) the very ideas of (ia) a language, including its characteristic syntactic and semanticproperties,and (ib) our knowledge of a language, including our knowledge of its characteristic syntactic and semanticproperties (see, e.g., Chomsky, 1957, 1988), (ii) a certain theory of linguistic cognition and logical cognition (see, e.g., Hanna, 2006: esp. chs. 4 and 6), (iii) a specifically dual-content cognitive semantics of conceptual content and essentially non-conceptual content, the latter of which also crucially functions as the source of what Otto Paans and I call thought-shapers (see, e.g., Hanna, 2015: esp. chs. 2 and 4; and Hanna and Paans, 2021), for the explanation of linguistic meaning, and above all, another necessary condition of reading: (iv) the rational human capacity to understand at least one language, at least minimally (see, e.g., Wittgenstein, 1953; Chomsky, 1957, 1988).
But, one need not necessarily be able to speak a language L—in the sense of being able to talk-in L—in order to be able to read texts-in-L. For example, like many other English-speaking people, I can understand and read a few words or sentences in some other languages (say, Finnish, Hungarian, or Russian) that I cannot talk-in at all. More interestingly, perhaps, it seems that there are or at least have been some actual children who can understand texts-in-L, and thus, at least in principle, can read texts-in-L, where L is their first or native language, before they can talk-in L. For example, Albert Einstein—pictured at the top of this essay as a world-famous adult–according to various sources, did not talk until he was 3, 4, or 5; but according to others’ testimony and his own, for some period prior to that time he was in fact able to understand German (see, e.g., Brian, 1996), a phenomenon that’s more generally known nowadays as late-talking syndrome or Einstein Syndrome (Smith-Garcia, 2020). Given Einstein’s native intellectual brilliance, then presumably, during the time when he understood German but couldn’t yet talk-in German, he could still have been taught to read German or have learned on his own to read German. So, my theory of legibility and reading predicts that for at least some actual children who are late-talkers, it should be possible for them to be taught to read texts-in-L or learn on their own to read texts-in-L, before they can talk-in L. At the present time, I haven’t done a systematic survey of the relevant scientific literature in order to find out whether this prediction has already been empirically tested, and if so, whether it has been confirmed or disconfirmed by means of replicable studies, although at least one book by a non-scientist says that it has been confirmed (Sowell, 1997). But in any case, it would be extremely philosophically interesting to me, and also perhaps of some real-world interest and value to late-talkers and their families, if it were indeed confirmed or at least confirmable by replicable studies. Correspondingly, here’s something about the relationship between reading and writing, in view of what I’ve just been arguing about the relationship between reading and talking. If there actually are some late-talkers who read before they can talk, then reading logically precedes and sometimes also psychologically precedes talking. Now, the very act or process of writing presupposes that the writer is already able to read, at the very least, their own writing: therefore, reading logically precedes writing. Of course, writing is typically taught to children only after they can talk. But if reading logically precedes and sometimes also psychologically precedes talking, and if reading logically precedes writing, then a late-talker who can read, could also, at least in principle, be taught to write or learn on their own to write. So, my theory of legibility and reading also predicts that for at least some actual children who are late-talkers and readers, then it should also be possible for them to be taught to write texts-in-L or learn on their own to write texts-in-L, before they can talk-in L. And again, it would be extremely philosophically interesting to me, and also perhaps of some real-world interest and value to late-talkers and their families, if this prediction were indeed confirmed or at least confirmable by replicable studies.
NOTE
[i] The original quotation is: “The only thing you absolutely have to know, is how to locate the library.”
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