Philip K. Dick on Thingness, Reality and The Word (from 1960)
2005 December 20
Central problem in philosophy. Relation of word to object . . . what is a word? Arbitrary sign. But we live in words. Our reality, among words not things. No such thing as a thing anyhow; a gestalt in the mind. Thingness . . . sense of substance. An illusion. Word is more real than the object it represents.
Word doesn’t represent reality. Word is reality. For us, anyhow. Maybe God gets to objects. Not us, though.
[From Philip K. Dick, 1960, Time Out Of Joint, pp. 60.]
The concepts are fascinating but the end of the book is a let-down. You go through a wild ride and it turns out, well, like a 1950s SF novel. Only partly written on speed.
But the idea that there is nothing but our language for it and how he makes happen is interesting.
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