A Theory of Language...

Stefan Molyneux

Philosopher Stefan Molyneux presents a theory of language that says words come from sense data and physical reality, starting with concrete things like trees and rocks and extending even to abstracts like numbers, infinity, and government. He shows how redefining words such as welfare, reproductive health, or love can hide reality and manipulate people, and urges tracing every term back to matter for clearer thinking.  0:00:00 Language From Matter 0:03:58 Abstract Ideas Explained 0:08:09 Emotions and the Body 0:11:02 Parents, Gods, and Government 0:13:56 Words as Mental Tags 0:17:20 Redefining Language for Power 0:25:05 Clarity Versus Obfuscation 0:27:23 Too Abstract, Too Sparse 0:30:06 Shared Definitions Matter 0:33:08 Family and Double Standards 0:35:07 Language Can Unite Us 0:36:37 Speak Things as They Are  My 10v1 debate in Vegas is coming up on November 16! Check out Digital Social Hour on YouTube for the livestream links: https://youtube.com/@DigitalSocialHour.  Support philosophy! https://freedomain.com/donate/  GET FREEDOMAIN MERCH! https://shop.freedomain.com/  SUBSCRIBE TO ME ON X! https://x.com/StefanMolyneux  Follow me on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@freedomain1  GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK! https://peacefulparenting.com/  Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!  Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!  You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!  See you soon! https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/FREEDOMAIN2026

Transcript

00:00So, of course, as you can imagine, given my predilections, preferences, and activities,

00:05I'm constantly fascinated by language, language. So, let me put forward to you a theory of language,

00:15a conjecture about language. You can, of course, let me know what you think,

00:19where I may have hit the mark, where I may have missed the mark, and so on. There's a provisional

00:25theory about language. So, my theory of language is that there is no word in our minds that does

00:38not come from sense data or is compared to sense data. Now, there are obvious ones, you know, tree,

00:45bird, rock, river. These are direct descriptions of things in the world. So, that's the case.

00:52But let's look at less concrete terms. Numbers. Well, the universe is full of discrete objects

01:00that we can count. So, numbers do not, like the concept numbers does not exist in the real world,

01:07but the things that numbers represent do come from the real world. Now, of course,

01:12we have the concept called infinity, which is discrete things that are uncountable because

01:19they never end, which is really the removal of a concept related to things in the world.

01:26If you say there's a forest with an infinite number of trees, that's not something that could

01:32ever be, right? An infinite number of trees could never be. They would take up more than the entire

01:37universe and go on and on forever. There'd be no room for anything else, and there certainly

01:41wouldn't be any room for us to evolve in such an infinite forest. So, an infinity of trees is taking

01:50things we know, which is that there's a limited number of trees in a forest, a limited number of

01:54trees in the world, and simply removing that limit. That's sort of an anti-concept, right? It's not a

02:00concept. It is an anti-concept, which is fine. I mean, it can be a good placeholder or bookmark and

02:05so on.

02:06And so, infinity numbers negatives, right? Do negative numbers exist in the world? Can you have

02:18minus three trees or minus three rocks? I mean, of course, you can have 10 trees,

02:25cut three of them down, and now you only have seven, but can you have minus? Well, you can certainly

02:32have

02:34deficiencies. So, if I have a thousand dollars in my bank account and I write a check for a thousand

02:41and fifty dollars, the bank may not give you NSF and non-sufficient funds. Yeah, NSF. Boy,

02:50it's been a while, but I would have minus fifty dollars. If I borrow a hundred dollars from my friend,

02:58I am minus a hundred dollars in assets because I owe the money back. Let's say I borrow a hundred

03:06dollars in order to give to another friend of mine. So, I borrow the money and I give it away,

03:10because otherwise you could say, well, I borrow a hundred dollars, I buy a hundred dollars worth of

03:13something, my assets remain unchanged. But if I borrow a hundred dollars and then give that hundred

03:20dollars to another friend, the first friend I borrowed from, I'm now minus one hundred. So,

03:24we can understand that. Of course, calorie deficits, you want to be minus in calories in

03:30order to consume fat rather than get it from food or consume calories and energy rather than get them

03:35from food. So, certainly minuses occur. A pain is a minus, is a minus experience, is a negative

03:42experience, sort of by design. Pain is a minus or negative experience compared to pleasure, which is

03:47a positive experience, which is why orgasm feels better than burning your hand on the stove. Orgasm is

03:54good for you, and burning your hand on the stove is bad for you. So, if you look at even

04:01the word

04:03abstract, what does the word abstract mean? The word abstract means something not in the real world,

04:13right? Something not in the senses, not in sense data, not in tactile data or anything like that.

04:18An abstraction is when the essence of material experiences are extracted and made universal.

04:28And this is an evolutionary necessity. It's an absolute evolutionary necessity.

04:34A lion doesn't eat, doesn't hunt, let's say. A lion does not hunt a zebra. A lion hunts the category

04:42or classification called zebra, or more broadly, prey. A deer is not afraid of this wolf or that wolf,

04:50but anything that chases it is assumed to be a predator. And all children like the idea that

04:58animals like them and do not view them as scary. And that, of course, evolves from our need to

05:04domesticate animals. There's something in Minecraft where you feed food to some wolf and it falls in

05:12love with you and becomes your pet, and so on. So, even the word abstraction comes from sense data

05:19in the same way that a hole in the wall comes from the wall. Say, oh, there's a hole in

05:25the wall

05:25that comes from the fact that there is a wall, and now there's a hole in the wall. We don't

05:31generally

05:31refer to a doorway or a window as a hole in the wall, or when you hang a picture and

05:38you put that

05:38little nail in at the angle. That's not really a hole in the wall, but a hole in the wall

05:42is usually

05:43something you don't want, like something broke through. I remember when I was in my early teens

05:47trying to impress some girls at a party with my ability to do a handstand, and I put my head

05:52through the wall. It was very, very not impressive, sort of in hindsight. So, language comes

06:00from matter. Reason comes from matter, and language comes from matter. There's a scene in

06:10The Miracle Worker or something, the woman who taught Helen Keller that she's tracing things on her

06:16hand, and these becomes letters and becomes words and so on. And so, Helen Keller learns language through

06:25matter, through pressure on her hand, which is matter, of course, impressing itself on her

06:30hand in the same way that light impresses itself on our eyes and sound impresses itself on our ears

06:36and so on. So, if language, and you know, you can go through this as a general idea and say,

06:44okay, let's pick a word. Let's pick a word. Democracy. Well, democracy is the act of pretending to

06:53legitimize political power by putting tick marks on paper in boxes or whatever, right?

06:59A sickness describes non-functioning or anti-functioning of physical processes. Physics

07:07describes the objective, predictable behavior of matter and energy and the equations that describe

07:13it. I mean, we can sort of go on and on, but if you look at good, the concept good,

07:20of course,

07:20the concept good is simply a modifier for something. Good weather, good health, good tan,

07:26right? A sunburn is not a good tan. Being totally pale is not a good tan. Good weather is pleasant.

07:33Bad weather is unpleasant and so on, right? Good weather might mean different things to different

07:37people. For farmers, good weather might be torrential rains, but for somebody who's having

07:43a wedding, outdoor wedding, good weather is definitely not torrential rains. So, good is a modifier

07:48that means more suitable to the purpose. For the farmer, it's irrigation, so good weather would be

07:54rain. For the woman or man, with an outdoor wedding, good weather is sunny and balmy. So, to the purpose,

08:01to the pleasure, to the benefit of. But all of these things wend their way back to matter. Ambivalent.

08:10Well, emotions are material. Emotions are material. Emotions are not ghosts in the body.

08:17They're not the movements of an invisible moon on an invisible soul. Emotions are physical

08:24within the body, of course, right? I mean, you can see them, right? I mean, when you get stressed or

08:30you get more cortisol, adrenaline and so on, fight or flight, you see an adrenaline spike. And

08:36calm and tranquility is when these things are absent and happiness can be measured and unhappiness can

08:42be measured. They're a little bit more tricky, right? But I mean, this is the whole idea behind

08:49SSRIs, right? That there's a chemical imbalance and you can fix it with drugs and so on, right?

08:55But emotions definitely can be measured. I mean, you can measure stress in heartbeats often.

09:02And lie detectors, although I get that they're unreliable, unreliable, liable, liable. So, but they

09:08attempt to measure signs of stress in people. And I mean, they're certainly sometimes successful.

09:15People's pupils dilate when they're excited. So, emotions are physical movements. Otherwise,

09:21how could they be? How could they be? I mean, they're physical movements based upon

09:27mental processes for sure. Sometimes, like when I was hiking and doing a show a month or two ago,

09:34and I heard crashing in the undergrowth that turned out to be a deer. So, I had my adrenaline

09:41spiked because I was concerned about potential predation. And then when I found out the potential

09:45predation was not occurring, I relaxed and left. So, emotions are physical. Sad, mad, sad, bad.

09:56And scared. Mad, sad, bad, and scared. These are the general negative emotions. And they are

10:04physical. So, even our words for emotions, bemused resignation, right? That is a physical process

10:10within the mind and the body. And some emotions or some sensations, of course, occur and our body acts

10:18on them prior to the mind perceiving them. So, if you touch a hot stove, your hand will jerk back

10:23before your mind registers the pain, which is, of course, is a... Oh, we've all done this thing

10:27where, you know, we trip and we fall and our hands are out to brace or fall. If I should

10:33stumble,

10:34catch my fall. Our hands are out to brace or fall before we even really register that we're falling.

10:41The automatic occurrence. All physical. You can't move your legs if the bundle of nerves that carry

10:49electrical impulses to your legs. Don't work. Thought is an abstract idea, but it represents

10:57the movements of electricity and chemicals in our neurons. It's all physical. And it's an

11:03interesting challenge. God. Say, ah, God. Well, God is an extrapolation of the authority that we

11:11experience as children when our parents appear like gods to us. Infinitely strong. Well, our parents,

11:17you're infinitely stronger than a newborn, and you're infinitely more powerful in a way than a

11:22newborn, at least, you know, from that sort of early perspective, and so on, right? The government,

11:29well, the government names a belief in people's minds about the legitimacy of political power.

11:34And the government provides and protects in ways that few people care to evaluate the cause of.

11:43I mean, it used to bother me when I would take the GO train, sort of, you know, Ontario trains

11:47called

11:48GE for Government of Ontario. And it said, this train is subsidized or paid for by the Government

11:54of Ontario. And that, of course, is not true. It's paid for by the taxpayers. But people, I say,

11:59I want the government to provide me. What does the government provide you? Physical security. Well,

12:04that's your parents when you're little. Their government provides you health care. Well,

12:08that's your parents. When you're a child, they provide you health care. They pay for things.

12:14They provide food or should, and so on. They take care of you when you're injured or unwell or broke.

12:22Your parents will. And so, their government is simply an abstraction from the childhood experience

12:28of parents to the adult experience of political authority. So, and the provision that your parents

12:37provide to you when you're little is material, right? I mean, even if your parents are hugging you,

12:42that's physical. If they're murmuring soft words of comfort, that's physical. It's auditory and sound

12:48waves and their objective behavior of matter and energy that they control, right? They're not snarling at

12:54you. They're cooing soft words of comfort or encouragement. And so, I would make the case

13:03that all words trace back to the material. And there are words that trace back to the immaterial.

13:10I know that sounds like a contradiction, but the immaterial is distinct from the material,

13:16and even the immaterial is derived from the material. Again, the concept of forest comes from

13:21the aggregation of trees. So, of course, I'd love to hear back about what you think of this.

13:28And, of course, I would also love to hear your thoughts about words that cannot be traced back

13:34to the material. But since I'm an empiricist and a materialist, it could be a limitation,

13:41of course, of my imagination. I'm pretty imaginative, but everybody has their limits, right?

13:44But I'm fascinated by this idea that all language is founded upon or derived from the material.

13:56Because if language is defined by the material, then all misunderstandings in language is a failure

14:05of objective definitions. Because, of course, if there are words that are not defined by the material,

14:13then there are words that exist only in our mind. And if there are words that only exist in our

14:19mind

14:19and are subjective, then we cannot communicate on those. Here's another one. Orcs. O-R-C-S, right?

14:27Orcs. Orcs represent what? They represent the material. How do we know that there's such a thing

14:35as the word orcs? Because we read it or we hear it. Or maybe it could be traced on our

14:39hand,

14:40so it comes to us through the senses. Orcs represents, of course, an imaginative species

14:44in Lord of the Rings or other mythologies. But orcs, the word, is a material concept. And,

14:50of course, it is based upon monsters, right? Exaggerated phenotypes that represent danger.

14:57You know, big teeth, jutting under jaw, sloping forehead. I assume that orcs is inspiring some sort

15:05of race memory of Cromanians or Neanderthals or things like that. So, orcs is the activation of

15:13race memories and so on. Just as dwarves tend to be lower class and elves tend to be aristocratic

15:18or higher class, and humans are the intermediaries, usually the warrior class of these kinds of

15:24societies, just as wizards cast spells based upon language, which are manipulators who gain resources

15:31by threats and bullies and promises and so on. People who extract resources through language,

15:37right? Called spells because words are spelt, right? It's language. So, magic. Magic. Magic

15:46is when the mind creates effects in the world not caused by physics. Well, that is manipulation,

15:54right? So, there is a spell called a fireball, right? You cast a fireball. Well, that is a king

16:03commanding a cannon, right? His words, fire, create the fireball, the explosion. There's another one

16:11called hold person, which is when a cop says, freeze, and you stop, right? So, when you look at words,

16:20words, they all are founded on the material. And, of course, they come to us through the material.

16:28That's true of all words, right? We wouldn't have words in our mind that didn't come through the

16:33material. I mean, you could say, ah, yes, but what if we invent words on our own? Well, those words

16:38are

16:38still representing something, and the very concept of language has come to us through the material,

16:42and the letters, abracadabra, sort of a nonsense word meant to make, represent magic, and Steve

16:52Milliman, abracadabra. I want to reach out and grab you. Great rhyme. So, even the concept of language

16:57and letters and so on come to us. We can rearrange them to create nonsense words as Esperanto or whatever,

17:01right? But still, they all nonetheless come in through matter. And if language and words and so on

17:10are all based upon matter, then there should be no limits to our capacity to define language

17:15so that we can understand each other and reason with each other.

17:20So, what does this mean about language as a whole? So, one of the ways that people really cheat

17:29in the world is through redefinitions of language, right? So, this would be like women's reproductive

17:38health, you know, it turns out to be abortion, and, you know, we can sort of think of a million

17:44of these kinds of things. But redefining words so that it's called welfare, not coercive transfer

17:53of hard-earned resources, right? It's called the national debt, not intergenerational enslavement.

17:59You know, there's ways to redefine words to make them sound, to make the underlying reality

18:05much less important to not provoke a sort of moral reaction from people to what's being

18:13discussed. And the beginning of wisdom, as the old saying goes, is to call things by their

18:19proper names. So, if language is rooted in matter, if all language is derived from matter,

18:32and, I mean, we get that it is, and that it's either touch or hearing or sight that gives us

18:40words and language, like the actual abstractions, the terms. If all language is based on matter,

18:49then we can talk about the same things. And then the only reason we're not talking about the same

18:54things is that somebody is manipulating us, somebody is lying to us. So, when somebody says,

19:02what is the meaning of a word, or how do words have meaning? Words have meaning because they are

19:10mental tags that always eventually reference material things. We wouldn't say that the definition of tree

19:24is purely subjective because, of course, it refers to a physical thing, a tree. When we talk about

19:31something like history, we are talking about evidence, physical evidence of things in the past.

19:37So, the Battle of Hastings in 1066, which brought my ancestors over from France to England and then to

19:46Ireland, refers to an actual battle for which we have contemporaneous accounts, so we can, you know,

19:53dig up the battlefield and we can find bits of swords and helmets and bone and arrowheads and so on.

20:01And so, history refers to material things. We can find the tiles, even erotic tiles that were

20:10in certain buildings in ancient Rome. We can find the coins, the writings, and, of course,

20:15the words in the writings come through to us through the evidence of the senses.

20:20And when we talk about futuristic fiction, science fiction and so on, then what we're doing is we are

20:28saying, here's how I think matter and energy will be organized in the future. And it's hard to think

20:37of words that don't relate to something physical. Let's say iambic pentameter, right, which is the sort

20:42of five beats in Shakespeare. What is that referring to? Well, it's referring to where you put the

20:48emphasis and where the syllables show up on the page. I remember there was an acting teacher from

20:53many moons ago who would hit with a towel the back of a chair whenever you're supposed to put the

21:00emphasis on the wrong syllable, on the right syllable. And so, even something like iambic poetry.

21:05What does poetry refer to? Poetry refers to the physical matter in which poems are written or

21:13the physical matter that changes to vibrate in your ear when poetry is spoken. And poetry refers

21:22to matter quite often. I remember there was a phrase that I read. It was a poem about bitter cold.

21:33And it said, the bladed air. The bladed air. The air is so cold, it feels like a knife.

21:44Oh, that old Brian Adams song, cuts like a knife, but it feels so right. It cuts like a knife.

21:50Losing you cuts like a knife. A knife produces physical neurological pain, and emotional loss produces

22:01physical neurological pain. I mean, it's two sides of the same coin. So, since all language refers to

22:10the material, and when I say refers to the material, when we're talking pure abstractions, we're talking

22:15about that which is differentiated from the material. So, refers to the material, if you say, ah, yes,

22:21but some language refers to immaterial things, that is true, but immaterial things are differentiated

22:28from material things. So, they still refer to the material. In the same way, a shadow does not exist

22:34in the same way as an object casting the shadow does, but it's still utterly dependent upon that object, right?

22:40So, if all language

22:42has its origins in the material, and the material is universal and objective,

22:49then language

22:50language has the capacity, if correctly defined, to bind us together as universally and with as much

22:58certainty as the material world. In other words, no person can walk through a closed door. No person

23:08can walk through a closed door. It is impossible, cannot happen. No person can walk through a closed

23:19door. So, if all language is based upon physics, then we can be as certain of language as we are

23:35of physics. Now, people, of course, as I mentioned, love to redefine language to better suit their own,

23:43usually petty emotional preferences and needs. And the only way that we can take this redefinition

23:52and this pettiness, this manipulation, this harvesting of resources through lying about language,

24:00you know, do you call people migrants or do you call people invaders? And so, the only way

24:05that we can resist predation is to continue to tie language back to material things. Because if

24:16language is not in reference to material things, then it is open to endless redefinition.

24:23And I don't know if you've ever, you know, when I was younger, and I would, I love to climb

24:30things

24:30and so on, right? And I remember climbing a steep embankment full of small rocks. And as I climbed,

24:39the rocks slid away. And it became kind of impossible to climb. Because every time I climbed,

24:49the rocks shuddered underneath me, slid down, and I didn't obviously get very far. And one thing I've

24:57noticed that is in certain types of conflicts, things get more and more convoluted until you

25:03don't know which way is up, and you just kind of give up. A lot of people, of course, this

25:07is a

25:07fairly trite observation, they use language not to clarify and communicate, but to obfuscate and

25:13dominate. And if we have in our minds the idea or the standard that what we should do is always

25:23point language back towards the material. There was, for some reason her name escapes me at the

25:29moment, I'm sure it will come back to me. There was a woman who was a lesbian who said a

25:34rose is a

25:35rose is a rose. This was sort of her big thing she said of her dysfunctional brother and their bad

25:41relationship. Little by little, we never met again. It's a lovely phrase. A rose is a rose is a rose.

25:47So love is like a rose. Well, yes, it kind of is. Love is kind of like a rose in

25:53that

25:54the petals of a rose can look like a vulva in that the rose has pollen with which it reproduces

26:01and something comes and enters it, which is the bee, like the penis. Love is like a rose in that

26:07a

26:07rose reproduces and love is like a rose because a rose is something given to a woman to signal romantic

26:15interest or to cement romantic interest and so on. So love is like a rose. Okay. And there are analogies

26:21and the analogies tend to be physical. A rose is a plant that reproduces itself unless a man wants

26:28to reproduce with a woman, in which case he plucks the rose, gives it to the woman and attempts to

26:34mate with her down the line. But she said a rose is a rose is a rose. A rose is

26:40itself and not an

26:42analogy. And she was trying to, as Ernest Hemingway was, trying to get language and strip it back down

26:49to its bare essence and not have it be overly abstract and florid. You know, there's an old

26:56Scott Adams that says, you know, some business organization and there's some new leader who says,

27:02well, you know, we need to centralize. Things are too scattered. And so he centralizes. And then

27:07the next business leader comes along and says, we need to decentralize because everything is too

27:14central. We need to give people more autonomy and let them do their own thing. And far-flung

27:19satellite empires should be able to manage themselves, so to speak, right? And it's the same

27:24thing with language. Language that is too sparse and spare does not fuel imagination. And language

27:32language that is too abstract is unrooted in reality and tends to feel dissociated and disconnected

27:40from things. So, you know, one of the examples is Gaia. G-A-I-A-I or something like that.

27:49Gaia.

27:50G-I-A-I. The spirit of nature and so on, right? And, you know, that the trees are crying,

27:59the leaves, trees are crying, leaves into the river. It's an old Tristaberg song. Some of his

28:04early stuff was fantastic. And when you look at the universe as if it is populated by a mind,

28:13and of course, religious people do this with God and environmentalists do this with nature and so on.

28:19And so when you look at the universe and you believe that it is alive, there's an old sort of

28:24cheesy phrase that often shows up in medieval movies, hewn into the living rock, hewn into the

28:33living rock. Well, of course, the rock is not alive. Love is alive. Great song by Anastasia,

28:39cover, song. But the rock is not alive, hewn into the living rock. But if language can be as precise

28:48as matter, then language can unite humanity in the same way that physics unites scientists or

28:59numbers unite mathematicians. I refuse to let people have their own definitions of things,

29:08right? So you've heard me a bunch of times on call-in shows say, if somebody says, I love

29:15my abusive parents, or my parents were abusive, but I love them. Well, I cannot let people have

29:23their own definitions of love. I cannot let people have their own definitions of free will.

29:30And of course, I'm not saying that they have to accept my definitions, but we can't have different

29:36definitions, kind of different definitions of things, because then we cannot communicate.

29:42If I have a GPS that says north when it means south and east when it means west,

29:48then I have a very bad GPS. It's going to send people in the wrong direction until they figure

29:55it out, in which case they're going to have to kind of rewrite what it's saying in their mind.

30:00Oh, it says turn left, it actually means turn right. We have to have the same definitions,

30:05or we can't communicate. Or to put it another way, all communication not based on the same

30:11definitions is obfuscation and exploitation. So some parents might say, you need to be loyal and

30:20you need to show me respect. Now, loyalty and respect have positive connotations. Generally to

30:26be loyal is a good thing, and generally to show respect is a good thing, at least that's the general

30:31perception, right? So it's always the same with Dr. Phil and dignity. Treat people with dignity and

30:37respect. I don't know that you can treat people with dignity. They can have dignity. I mean,

30:44you experience hot flashes, you experience something like dignity. I don't know. You can

30:47treat people with dignity. That's like treating people with hot flashes, applying hot flashes to

30:51people, applying dignity to people like makeup. So I can't let people have their own definitions.

30:58What is virtue? Universally preferable behavior. Not being nice, not being helpful, not giving money to

31:06the poor, not obedience, right? Because, you know, when parents say, you need to treat me with respect

31:13and you need to have loyalty, but I'm your father, I'm your mother, what they mean is, obey me without

31:19question. But generally what they mean, when people say, your brother needs you, even if your brother is

31:28kind of a jerk, your brother needs you. He's family, right? Okay, yes, he is. Technically, he would be

31:35family, blood related. I get that. But people don't ever want to universalize that, right?

31:42So you got Bob and Jim. Let's mix it up a little. Bob and Jim. And Bob is the younger

31:48brother. Jim is

31:48the older brother. And Jim's being a jerk and Bob doesn't want to deal with him. So then the parents

31:53call Bob and say, you need to talk to Jim. He's your brother, right? And what that means is, you

31:58know,

31:58give him additional considerations over and above normal human interactions because he's your brother

32:05or there's his history, genetic similarity. And I fully agree with that. I fully agree with that for

32:11what it's worth, that family deserves additional considerations, especially immediate blood family.

32:16I mean, I hung out with immediate family members, honestly, decades beyond what I would have,

32:23or at least 10 years more than I would have in a perfectly free society. Like if I met my

32:29mother

32:29at some dinner party, I'd be like, whoa, she's really unstable. She's really, that's not good. Not

32:37good at all. I wouldn't have, so, and I don't regret the extra time that I spent with my mother.

32:43It taught

32:43me a lot. So I agree that you should give additional consideration to family. You know, call your

32:50brother. He's waiting for you to call. He's too proud to apologize. You need to just find a way

32:56to smooth things over, right? In other words, you, Bob, owe your older brother Jim additional

33:01consideration because he's your brother. And I agree with that as a general principle, not infinitely

33:06more, but additional is fine. However, if you universalize that, which is to say family owes family

33:14additional considerations, then Jim, the older brother, also owes Bob additional considerations

33:22and should treat Bob better than the normal because family is saying, I will treat family members

33:29better than normal, better than average. In other words, I may forgive things in a family member that I

33:37wouldn't forgive in a friend because family deserves additional consideration for history and

33:42genetics and so on. And that's fine. I think that's, that's reasonable. But if the younger Bob

33:48owes the elder Jim additional considerations, because family, then Jim obviously owes Bob additional

33:55considerations and should treat the younger brother better. I mean, it's hard to say. I'm trying to

34:02think, is it raising standards or lowering standards? So if the elder brother does something really mean

34:08that would crack a friendship and the younger brother says, okay, well, we can survive that,

34:12we can move on, I think, in a way that's having lower standards. So you can lower your standards

34:19of family because they're family. Or you should treat people better than you otherwise would. That's why

34:25it's hard to say is it higher standards or lower standards. You should treat people better because

34:30they're family. In other words, if the elder brother says something that's just horrible to the

34:35younger brother, the younger brother should treat him better than a friend and should go back and

34:40try and talk about it and work it out or whatever is going to be said, right? But if having

34:45higher

34:45standards and treating people better is very important, especially with regards to family,

34:50then the elder brother Jim should never have said whatever he said to the younger brother Bob

34:53that is negative or bad or hostile or destructive. So your dignity and respect, right? He's your brother.

35:02You've got to be nicer to him. It's like, okay, I'm his brother. He should be nicer to me.

35:05But it's not universalized in that way, right? So if language is tied into matter and matter

35:14unites us within reality, then language has an even more powerful ability to unite us within reality.

35:22But only if we keep matter tied to, but only if we keep language tied to matter. If language is

35:32tied to

35:32matter, then language has the capacity to unite us even more than matter does, because language

35:42includes both matter and universals and abstractions that don't exist in matter. You can say to someone,

35:50I'll meet you at the entrance to the forest, even though the forest does not exist as a concept,

35:57does not exist in actual reality. I mean, the path that leads into the big group of trees, right?

36:02That's what you're talking about. And so language can unite us even more than objective material

36:09reality can unite us, which is a very big, good, and juicy plus. And so the work of philosophy is

36:19to

36:19bring humanity together by disallowing language that is not tied back to matter. So with abortion,

36:28you're killing a fetus, you're destroying the life of a fetus, men, women's reproductive care, blah,

36:37blah, blah, right? You have to see and speak things for what they are. So as a whole, my suggestion

36:45is

36:45to, you know, when you're talking and thinking to do sort of the following exercise, how can I trace

36:51this word or idea back to matter? Again, I would argue that you always can. A country is a geographical

37:00area where people are forced to agree on the same laws. Nothing magical changes when you go from one

37:05country to another. The physics don't change. Gravity doesn't reverse. It is simply a geographical region

37:11where the initiation of the use of force takes one configuration and then a different region.

37:17It takes another configuration. So America has the first and second amendments, nobody the country

37:22does. So when you go from America to another country, your free speech and gun-owning rights

37:27diminish enormously. You got to speak things for what they are. When you're thinking, when you're

37:32reasoning, when you're reading, ask what, which of these words can I tie back to actual matter?

37:40And then work as hard as you can to tie these words back to actual matter. And I think that

37:44your

37:44thinking and speaking and reasoning will improve. I've certainly been working on this for a while

37:49with myself. I thought I'd share it with you guys and hopefully it'd be helpful. And of course,

37:53I'd love to hear more of what you think about these things. Freedomain.com to help out the show.

37:57Thank you so, so much for the opportunity to speak truth and reason to the world. Lots of love from

38:03up here. We'll talk soon. Bye.

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