When Spoken, the World Solidifies — The Paradox of Abductive Naming and Ontologization

1. The “Mind” of Animals and “Being Happy”

When we observe a pet dog, we can almost intuitively sense the changes in its feelings?loneliness, anger, hunger, joy. If we were to verbalize this, happy would be the closest adjective. Yet, the instant we transform it into the noun happiness, the singular, fluid emotion becomes frozen into an abstract concept. Words no longer point to events; they turn events into objects. This is the effect of nominalization?the very beginning of ontological fixation.


2. The Freezing Effect of Nominalization

Ramon Llull (Logica Nova, 1303) argued that “naming should be gerundive.” He sought precisely to avoid this freezing. The world is in becoming, and existence appears only in movement. Hence, words themselves should remain verb-like, attuned to becoming. Tim Ingold’s remark that to name the world is to walk along its flows expresses the same orientation*.

*This sentence paraphrases Tim Ingold’s account of naming and wayfaring. See Tim Ingold, Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description（London: Routledge, 2011）, Part IV, ch.14 “Naming as Storytelling: Speaking of Animals among the Koyukon of Alaska”, pp.201–214；および Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill（London: Routledge, 2000）, ch.13 “To Journey Along a Way of Life: Maps, Wayfinding and Navigation”, pp.273–304.

3. Abductive Act and Ontological Act

When we think, we cannot but use language. In confronting new phenomena, we create new words. Coining a term is an act of abduction—an inventive leap—an event that introduces an unnamed state of affairs into the world. Yet, the moment the word is defined as a noun, thought ceases to generate and turns into an ontological act. The word no longer opens the world but fixes its cross-section.

4. Ontologization through the Understanding of Others

The originator of a term may still be aware of its abductive vitality. But as soon as others understand, quote, and use it, that immediacy disappears. The word arises in the world as a “fact.” Language, as an interface, generates “reality,” and once that reality has been generated, it can no longer be undone. When Heidegger spoke of Being and Time, these became, in subsequent philosophical discourse, self-evident entities. The power of language lies in its dual capacity to expand the world and simultaneously to close the frame of discourse.

5. From “Expansion and Closure of the Linguistic Frontier” to “Recovery of Gerundive Language”

The frontier of language expands when spoken, but solidifies through repetition. To preserve the generative power of thought, one must resist the temptation of nominalization and keep language gerundive: not happiness but being happy; not language but languaging. To verbalize the word, to remain within becoming—this is the continuation of the abductive act in the world of language.

6. Conclusion: Language as an Interface of Generation

Humans touch the world through language. The linguistic interface is both an apparatus of observation and an apparatus of creation. Once spoken and heard by others, words become part of the world, generating reality. Yet when nominalized words continue to circulate, the world loses its re-describability and sinks into an already-described reality.
Philosophical creation, therefore, is not “re-describing the world” but “renewing the very act of speaking.”

To speak is not to define the world but to renew both world and self. The mission of language is not to name being, but to reveal that within what seems arid and fixed—both in world and in self—chaos still breathes quietly beneath the surface.