Symbolic Capacity: Understanding Human Expression

Symbolic Capacity

Aristotle defined the human being as a rational animal. Studying their origins, we know that man was and is an animal that has followed an evolutionary process. According to the German philosopher Ernst Cassirer, the definition of "rational animal" is valid but insufficient. The human animal has emotions, feelings, poetic imagination, and all this is able to be expressed symbolically. To that effect, human beings have a characteristic that perhaps most differentiates us from the rest of the animals: symbolic capacity. Man is the only animal capable of building symbolic forms such as language, art, and religion. These shapes give meaning and symbolic significance to the world in which he lives.

What is a Symbol?

• It is a substitute that humans use to refer to something that is spatially or temporally remote.
• These elements are different from the element substitutes symbolized.
• Symbols are artificially created by individuals and can have an individual or conventional meaning.
• Symbols are transmitted by learning, both to the members of society and to subsequent generations.
• Using symbols, we can express everything: identify actions, emotions, desires, etc.

Symbolic Capacity Enables Humans To:

• Go beyond the concrete and immediate, the material, and perceptions, and be able to think abstractly.
• Share knowledge and symbolic cultural content. Language and painting, for example, are fundamental tools for human communication.

Symbolic Language

In the symbolic language of human beings, there is no natural relation between signifier and signified, between symbols and what they refer to. There is a conventional and arbitrary relation. This allows us to:

• Develop abstract and theoretical representations.
• Represent the vision of reality with its speakers.
• Create new words and new meanings.
• Invent imaginary realities.

Dimensions of Language According to Buhler

• Expressive Dimension
  • Indicates the speaker's mental states.
  • Frees human emotions and thus has an important role in aesthetic creation.
• Appellate Dimension
  • It is a call to another that expresses the need to communicate.
  • May be prompted to conduct, claiming his attention.
  • Allows the sociability of human beings.
• Representative Dimension
  • It is a specifically symbolic function of language - a reference to an objective reality.
  • The individual may express concepts, i.e., universal symbols that refer to classes of objects and events with common properties.
  • Concepts allow you to organize, describe, and interpret reality, and thus build large systems of science, art, religion, and philosophy.