Language, Branding, and the Physics of the Unspoken

This post unfolds as a philosophical duet between myself and Microsoft Copilot, whose bolded summaries serve as both synopsis and counterpoint. In the spirit of Levinasian dialogue, what follows is not a single argument but a layered composition—my voice and Copilot’s in creative tension, sometimes converging, sometimes challenging, always in pursuit of meaning.

Figures like Trump, Lenin, Hitler—savvy or not—intuitively understood something chilling: language isn’t about truth. It’s about use. It doesn’t have to mean; it has to work. If it persuades, evokes, incites—then it’s done its job. Language becomes a hammer—not just for nails, but for heads.

Branding, then, is the intelligent weaponization of language’s emptiness. It bypasses meaning in favor of function. It sells you your own ideas, shrink-wrapped.

So What’s Left?

If language can’t tell the whole truth—if it obscures more than it reveals—are we doomed to nihilism?

Not necessarily. Levinas suggests that truth begins where language fails: in ethics. In the face of the Other. In the moment where we cannot speak but must respond. Perhaps the real “theoretical physics” we need now isn’t just quantum—it’s a physics of relationship, of responsibility.

Where logic ends, perhaps values begin.

Language, Branding, and the Physics of the Unspoken

Here is Chat’s synopsis of the topic:

One of the enduring challenges in both Continental and Analytic philosophy is the problem of language. In my book, Quanta, Alterity, and Love, I explore how quantum physics compounds this issue, confronting not just classical physics but the very way language forms our notions of “reality.” Language isn’t neutral—it’s the product of history. It binds us to provincial values, binary thinking, and a need to make everything account-able, knowable, grasped.

This drive to totalize renders anything outside language—what Levinas would call radical alterity—as threatening or meaningless (I would phrase this as, “This drive tends toward totalization where even the ‘outside’ is still within the context of language”. In Western metaphysics, “being” is the assumed ground. Is-ness becomes the unquestioned foundation. Yet quantum theory fractures this ground. Everett’s “Many-Worlds” interpretation, for example, doesn’t describe parallel universes, but rather worlds within worlds, irretrievable and fundamentally incompatible. These are not anomalies in our model—they are disruptions of the model itself (or perhaps modeling itself). And language, bound by provincial convention, struggles to cope.

This is where the hyphens come in—not just stylistically but philosophically. They mirror the inescapable stutter in meaning, the repetition, the fracture. We try to stitch together the inconceivable through familiar symbols. Words like “reality,” “meaning,” and “truth” carry expectations, yet quantum physics turns them inside out (yet questions posed in Levinas and quantum physics loom spookily (in Einstein’s terms).

Even our categories of good and bad—our values—are filtered through these linguistic binaries. Reality is assumed to be self-evident; its denial is (contemporarily) labeled spiritual, delusional, Godless. All difference becomes subsumed.

And that leads to the concept of convention. I use “provincial” not as narrow-mindedness but as regional identity—language is native, local, embodied. It forces us into “us vs. them” because it cannot help but fall toward life as my life. It excludes excess. Levinas describes this as the violence of totalization: the reduction of the Other to the Same.

History offers countless examples of cultural myths rising, persisting, and fading. Even “Being” itself is historical. And here, again, quantum theory offers a jolt: what if “is” no longer is? (Can that even be thought without a hint of the ludicrous?) What if the most basic metaphysical commitment is destabilized from the subatomic up? (This sentence is still cloaked, garbed in a pseudo form of ‘realism’ as if the subatomic is the true beginning and end the ‘most basic metaphysical commitment albeit ‘destabilized’. Could the ‘destabilization’ be better thought as unrecoverable in language? …problematic as well since language must be used here even in its critique…language is the alpha and omega of totalization…in Derrida’s deconstruction unable to undue itself, its knot…the Gordian Knot?) 

Yet scientists in practical quantum research often resist these implications. Many dismiss them as “mere philosophy,” wanting a return to classical security. But theoretical physics—even the kind that doesn’t “pay the bills”—has birthed the very revolutions that keep science progressing. (I would prefer my phrasing later in this regard.)

And philosophy has its own pressures. Schools of thought, traditions, the economics of academia—these shape inquiry just as much as data and logic. In both fields, there is a tendency to smooth over excess, to conform. (Ditto on the previous comment…)

Which brings us to the title: “The Branding Expert.”

The genius of Donald Trump—if one can call it that—has little to do with intellect and everything to do with intuitive manipulation. He recognized, as did Lenin, Hitler, and a legion of marketeers, that language need not convey meaning. It need only work. It is a tool, and like any tool, it can build—or bludgeon. This is branding: the weaponized reduction of language to utility. The appeal to “plain-‘ol-common-sense” is often the grave of nuance and alterity.

Language becomes marketable. And when values are commodities, capitalism and provincialism become close cousins. Yet these systems—language, capitalism, history—can never absorb radical excess. They cannot contain the widow, the orphan, the stranger. For Levinas (and for me), this is where ethics begins: not in identity, but in homelessness, in the unaccounted-for Other.

Quantum theory and Levinas converge here. Both lead us to a crisis of containment. Not to nihilism, but to an end of language as a totalizing force (I prefer something more akin to language as access to awe and wonder but the totalizing aspect is certainly there as well.) This isn’t about collapsing into chaos—it’s about recognizing the limits of our categories and the ethical rupture that exceeds them. (I might phrase, “This isn’t about collapsing into chaos” as, “This is about collapsing into disorder.” Chaos in what Chat is implying is understood in the totalizing. binary form of disorder, as antithetical to order – to thesis. This is not what chaos theory is in quantum physics nor what I mean by chaos as an unrecoverable excess to this binary duality…order/disorder.)

Could it be that we are not thrown from Being, but from excess? That truth emerges not from systems, but from the interruption—the face we can’t explain, the world we can’t recuperate? (nice)

The next part has Chat’s heading summary in bold, and my original text is not bolded below.

Language Isn’t What You Think It Is

Language is not a transparent tool—it’s a historical constraint that shapes reality. Western metaphysics demands “is-ness,” enforcing binaries that reduce radical difference to noise. Levinas challenges this with the notion of unaccounted-for excess: the Other that language can’t totalize.

One of the great lessons Continental Philosophy has brought us to and even Analytic Philosophy has been grappling with for the last century is the problem of language. In my book, Quanta, Alterity, and Love, I dealt with these notions in depth. I drew parallels with this basic philosophical problem and the radical alterity quantum physics brings to our conventional notions of ‘reality’. In science we use the language of ‘theory’. ‘Fundamental’ physics in quantum ‘theory’ is not just a challenge to classical physics but goes far beyond that to radically infringe on our conventional and fundamental notions built into language. Language is the product of history.

In my book I dealt with binary dualisms which set a stage in which any excess already gets accounted for, explained, understood, in its most radical form as negativity. There is a kind of lived-glue which must associate radical ambivalence with values – either pro or con. For example, we think of ‘reality’ not just as a concept but as a self-evident demand. As such it gets bonded to context…meaning. And the negative, to deny reality, must be hocus-pocus, sleight of hand, metaphysical, spiritual, Godless – empty and devoid of ‘real’ meaning. All these binary oppositions provide a kind of ‘lived momentum’ which totalizes.

Convention, Provincialism, and the Birth of Meaning

Language emerges from region and necessity—it demands locality. What we call ‘self-evident reality’ is shaped by provincial boundaries that exclude what cannot be assimilated. Levinas warns that this is where language becomes violent: it reduces the Other to the Same.

In practice this arises as ‘us and/or them’. This brings me to why language must exist in this form of convention. Convention is the product of provincialism, of region and locality. Let me add here that by provincial I do not mean narrow-minded. I really want to bring out the regionality of the word provincial. Language must reflect nativity. Our lived-body puts a demand on us to be local, to fall to earth, to prolong life as my life. The classical world, the self-evidence of God, of classical physics and science must become ‘innate’. It forms boundaries which, by the decree of language itself, cannot be violated. Any excess must be taken-account-of, totalized as Levinas would tell us.

Anyone who seriously studies history will gain a deep appreciation for how cultural myths come into being, persist in being, and then expire. Even the very notion of Being is already a necessary demand.

Quantum Physics and the End of “Is”

Quantum physics doesn’t just challenge classical mechanics—it fractures the metaphysical foundation of is-ness. The Many-Worlds interpretation presents irretrievable realities, irreconcilable with historical ontology. Language repeats and stutters—yet cannot grasp this rupture.

Being is. Is-ness is certainly at the root of Western metaphysics. Is-ness has survived the test of time in the West. I cannot speak of the East because I have not studied it in depth. However, at the heart, the very odd essence of quantum physics is the question of ‘is-ness’. Is-ness is precisely what must come to the fore of consciousness.

For later, take note of how the last few sentences must always reiterate and amplify the very concept of is-ness. Whatever else, quantum physics must ‘be’ the collision of is-ness within language itself, already driven from historic, provincial values. Quantum physics poses a fatal blow to is-ness. For example, even today, one of the most dominant theories of fundamental quantum physics is Everett’s interpretation of Schrödinger’s quantum wave function called the ‘Many-Worlds’ theory. “Worlds” is an unfortunate and necessary term in this case. The Many-Worlds theory is not ‘parallel universes’. It is better thought of as worlds-within-worlds. And these worlds ‘are’/’must be’ ‘eternally’ irretrievable, unable ‘to be’, to be recuperated. I apologize for all the hyphens, but they are there to illustrate inescapable repetition in language. These worlds put the most fundamental notions of time and space into a radical and extreme question.

Scientists and Philosophers: Collusion with Convention

Both science and philosophy have institutional pressures—economic, ideological, academic—that lead to conformity. Even theorists risk being ignored unless they serve convention. Radical ideas are often neutralized by the very systems that claim to support inquiry.

The juxtaposition here is what current history retired from previous history as “metaphysics.” Yet, quantum physics clashes with this historically retired and dis-imbued notion. It cannot be the retrieval of metaphysics. Therefore, it must stand before us as a radical alterity. As such it puts into question values, provincialism, classicism and more importantly, just plain-‘ol-common-sense. Levinas might call this ‘unaccounted-for excess’.

Working physicists in grant-funded, practical applications of quantum physics are averse to such distinctions. They vehemently want to squelch such ‘speculations’ as mere philosophy. But this is not a division between science and philosophy as conventional thinking dictates. The real distinction here is between ‘theoretical physicists’ (not named philosophical) and practical physics. Let’s get down to brass-tacks. Theoretical physics does not pay the bills. However, there are theoretical physicists in quantum physics such as Einstein, Bohr, Schrödinger, and many others most folks are unacquainted with. This is the conundrum and nag-fly of working physicists who find the unescapable need to once again bring physics and science to its glory days.

💡 Branding as the Weaponization of Language

Trump, Hitler, Lenin—whatever their ideologies—recognized that language wasn’t about meaning, but effect. Branding is the intelligent form of manipulation: the reduction of thought to tool. It exploits language’s utility at the expense of its ethical depth.

So, what does “The Branding Expert” allude to in the title of this discussion? I believe that this is the only real talent that Donald Trump has—brains be damned. Even a two-year-old can innately find ways to manipulate. This takes no real brains but only tenacity and determination. However, branding and marketing are the intelligent forms of manipulation. There is even real science behind marketing.

Trump, Lenin, and Hitler are among those most notable in what they intuited early on. These folks and marketeers recognize that language is, in their opinion, not a matter of philosophy, science or meaning but simply a tool. Perhaps analogously in some regards, they reckoned that language was practical, regional, and conventional. As such, it was really a device—no more, no less. Language is a tool. The interesting thing about a tool is that it could have been devised to drive in nails, but it can also be used to hit someone over the head with—Maxwell’s silver hammer.

So, the real value in language is its use-value (to coin Marx from another context). Along with this, they clearly perceived that ideas could have subtle or even radical contextual twists—malleable associations. These folks are masters of picking your pocket to sell you your own wristwatch…and it works.

Ethics Beyond Home: Levinas and the Termination of Totalization

Both quantum theory and Levinas reject the comforts of “at-homeness.” Ethics begins where certainty ends: in the face of the Other, in language’s failure, in the unrecoverable rupture of history. The future lies not in identity—but in radical excess.

When values can be bought and sold on the open market for certain people’s gain, we find, at the least, one path of capitalism. And just as much as provincialism is the basis of language, history, locality, etc., capitalism (previously incarnated as religion) is also its necessary cousin. But all this is the death shroud of radical-excess, unaccounted-for, alterity which finds no home in language.

This is where theoretical quantum physics and, I believe, Levinas, would bring us. Both bring us toward a reckoning—a reckoning which cannot find a home: a sojourner, a widow, an orphan—ethics not founded on at-homeness but homelessness. For Levinas and me (and many others), the conditions of the poverty of language, provincialism, totalism must meet up with an end—an exhaustion—of history which does not end in nihilism but in values.

Values in this sense are not drawn from shadows and illusions of language and history but from their termination in the face of the other. Levinas calls this radical alterity. I believe that Levinas even wants to bring us to an abyss, a kind of chaos which is not taken as disorder. This chaos is the termination (terminus) of the absolute self, of language and its adequations, totalizations, of province. The self has no home in classicism, determinations of history. Could it be that we are thrown not from Being but from radical alterity, from unaccounted-for excess? These are the topics I pursue in my book on quantum physics and philosophy.